The Matt Walsh Show - April 24, 2018


Ep. 16 - Feminists Hate Men But They Also Want To Be Men


Episode Stats

Length

16 minutes

Words per Minute

173.3179

Word Count

2,946

Sentence Count

173

Misogynist Sentences

21


Summary

Jay Feeley's photo of his daughter and her prom date goes viral, and the reaction to it is nothing short of hysterical. But is there anything to be outraged about here? And why is there so much anger directed at a former NFL kicker?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. As you can see, a different studio today. This is our other car or the big
00:00:07.620 car, as our kids call it. Or as my wife, my wife says that it's her car because it has all the car
00:00:13.700 seats in it. And so she's the one driving it around for most of the day. But I strenuously
00:00:18.260 object to that description of it. Anyway, over the course of this past weekend, some controversy
00:00:26.400 erupted. And you know it's a big deal when there's controversy. I mean, in our society,
00:00:34.980 if there's controversy, you know something serious has happened because it's controversy is so rare
00:00:39.740 these days, right? It's like there's hardly ever anything that people are outraged about. So if
00:00:44.860 they're getting outraged, you know that it can't be frivolous, right? So in this case, the outrage,
00:00:51.060 the anger, the hurt, the heartbreak, the sadness was directed at former NFL kicker Jay Feeley.
00:01:00.080 And you see Jay Feeley posted a photo on Twitter. This is a former NFL kicker who posted a photo on
00:01:07.560 Twitter. So we know, as I said, we know it's serious business. And the photo depicted him
00:01:13.440 posing with his daughter and her prom date. And Feeley has his arm around his daughter,
00:01:19.440 kind of protective, in this sort of protective way. And then his other hand is holding a gun.
00:01:26.500 A gun. A shooty thing. Okay. A shooty, shooty, dangerous thing. And so this is a classic dad joke.
00:01:34.180 I mean, this is, it's even cliche. And it's a dad joke that 10 years ago, nobody would have noticed
00:01:40.480 or really cared. Maybe a few people would have laughed. Most people would have rolled their eyes
00:01:44.420 because that, as a dad, I know that that's the, really the appropriate response to a dad joke is
00:01:49.580 just to roll your eyes and move on. But this is not 10 years ago. This is 2018. And so in 2018,
00:01:57.140 the photo went viral with thousands of people expressing their righteous indignation
00:02:03.560 at this terrible, awful, offensive photo. Now, before I go any further, I need to stipulate that
00:02:11.060 when I talk about, when I say people were outraged and they were angry, just keep in mind that there
00:02:15.880 are really, there are quotes around that. There are sarcastic air quotes around outrage and anger,
00:02:21.380 because as I've said before, the main thing about the collective outrage that goes on is that there's
00:02:28.400 very little authentic outrage in it. I mean, I don't think anyone really actually cared that much
00:02:37.580 about what Jay Feely posted. Most of the things, when we get this, this huge outrage, everyone's so
00:02:43.420 angry. Most of the people who are outraged and angry, they are not really outraged or angry. What
00:02:50.000 they're doing is they're just, they're just seizing on this opportunity to make a point and to destroy
00:02:56.120 somebody. And we know that that's not, that's, that's, uh, that's been going on since the dawn of
00:03:00.800 time. What makes it different now is that it used to be, you know, if you were a politician or a
00:03:07.040 political figure of some kind and you said anything at all, then yeah, you're going to have people from
00:03:12.020 the other side who tried to take your words and use it against you to try to win. Right. Um, and I
00:03:18.040 think that used to mainly be reserved for people like that, people who are in controversial jobs
00:03:23.820 or jobs that inherently involved controversy. But now what we find is that anybody at all, it's just
00:03:30.020 any, any old average person, doesn't matter what you do for a living, doesn't matter who you are,
00:03:34.700 it doesn't matter what side you fall on. It doesn't matter if you're completely apolitical,
00:03:39.840 anything, just just anyone at all. If you put something out there publicly, people will seize
00:03:46.100 on it and try to destroy you to the point where even an NFL kicker, he's just a retired NFL kicker.
00:03:53.000 I mean, even if what he did was terribly, you know, even if that photo really was legitimately awful,
00:03:59.620 which of course it isn't, but even if it was, who cares? It's just an NFL kicker. What does it
00:04:05.180 matter? I mean, what, what, why would anyone care what he posts? Just let him be just letting just
00:04:10.080 whatever. So he's got to, who cares? There's what, what are you hoping to win or accomplished by taking
00:04:15.820 this and making a thing out of it? So the anger is, uh, is, is not really authentic, but be that as it
00:04:23.040 may, we will deal with it anyway. So this fake anger seems to be based on two things. One,
00:04:28.440 they say that he's making light of gun violence and it's dangerous to have a gun out like that.
00:04:37.960 They said, because I saw a lot of people say, if that was my son, I would be so, I would, I would
00:04:43.320 be so angry that he put them in harm's way with that gun because these people think that a gun
00:04:49.460 through some mysterious gravitational force could actually load itself and then point itself and,
00:04:55.360 and, and, uh, and pull its own trigger. That's what they think could happen.
00:04:59.760 But in reality, the gun was, did not pose a threat to anybody because it wasn't loaded and
00:05:05.880 he had it pointed down and he didn't even have his finger on the trigger. So really that, that gun
00:05:10.960 posed as much of a threat to the people in that photograph as there would have been a threat if
00:05:16.040 he was holding like a pancake or something. It just, it posed zero threat whatsoever. But the other
00:05:20.720 source of outrage is, uh, the one that I want to focus on. Plenty of feminists were scandalized or
00:05:29.880 pretended to be scandalized because as they put it, Feely was treating his daughter as property
00:05:37.000 and how dare he? Um, just as one example, feminist Lauren Duca or Dusa, I don't know how to pronounce
00:05:43.120 her name, but she's got a lot of Twitter followers and, uh, which means she's important by the way.
00:05:48.700 So the, um, she said that the photo was a violent reminder that Feely considers his daughter to be
00:05:54.740 his property. Now, first of all, Jay Feely did, well, he didn't quite apologize, but he did post
00:06:00.260 something clarifying the tweet and explaining it, which I wish he hadn't even done that much because
00:06:05.840 it required no explanation and it required no clarification. And anybody who was offended by
00:06:10.560 it, their feelings do not matter at all in this case. But I understand why he did, because like I
00:06:16.300 said, he's just, he's not a political figure. He's not, he's not like a pal or even someone like me,
00:06:22.360 where I know that everything I say, there are going to be people who try to take it and, and, uh,
00:06:26.880 and I'm going to get hate mail and everything. I, so I know that I know that's what I do for a living.
00:06:30.620 So I understand that, but Jay Feely, that's not what he's, he wasn't, that's not what he's looking
00:06:35.620 for. He just thought he was posting a funny picture. It turned into a whole thing. So he's like,
00:06:39.620 fine. I'll just post something clarifying. And what he said was, um, the prom picture I posted
00:06:45.260 was obviously intended to be a joke. My daughter has dated her boyfriend for over a year and they
00:06:49.300 knew I was joking. I take gun safety seriously. The gun was not loaded and had no clip in it.
00:06:53.940 And I did not intend to be sensitive to be insensitive to that important issue.
00:06:58.720 So this is where we are now as a society where a guy has to explain that a picture of himself
00:07:04.180 holding a gun in a prom picture with his daughter and her boyfriend is a joke. He has to explain that.
00:07:09.620 To all of these people that again, already know, they know that he's joking, which is the main
00:07:15.760 reason why I think there shouldn't be an explanation. But putting all that aside, I think
00:07:20.500 what we really see here more than an attack on guns, we see an attack on the role of fathers
00:07:27.760 because it's a, it's a father's job to protect and defend his family. And he ought to be protective
00:07:35.140 of his daughter. He ought to be protective of her dignity and protective of her, of her innocence.
00:07:39.620 Obviously Feeley's photo was a deliberately cartoonish, exaggerated, humorous depiction
00:07:45.980 of that role. It wasn't supposed to be serious. But what we see is that feminists are mad or
00:07:52.060 pretending to be mad about the role itself. They hate the idea that a man would protect
00:07:58.040 his family, especially that he would protect his daughter. They hate that idea. So this again
00:08:03.620 goes back to the piece that I wrote a few weeks ago about the challenges that men face in
00:08:07.420 this culture where a man really can't win because a man who is not there for his family,
00:08:12.180 a man who does not protect his family, does not defend his family, a man who has no problem
00:08:16.220 with his daughter shacking up with any old scumbag, that sort of man is still rightfully
00:08:21.280 derided and shamed in our culture. But a man who does the opposite, the opposite sort of man
00:08:25.960 is also derided and shamed in our culture. So again, men are left saying, well, what do you
00:08:30.600 want me to do? How am I supposed to be? What would make you people happy? Now, I don't
00:08:36.600 ask that because I don't care what makes anyone happy. But a man who is concerned with how society
00:08:42.960 views him is going to be very confused because literally no matter what he does, he's going
00:08:49.660 to hear it. And I'm not just drawing all of this from this one reaction to this picture.
00:08:54.780 Uh, I'm drawing it from the, from society in general, but there are also plenty of other
00:08:59.860 examples. For instance, just look at if you really want to get a headache. Okay. If you,
00:09:05.040 if you, if you feel like having a migraine, here's what I recommend go on Google and type in
00:09:11.060 father, daughter dance, and then just see all the blog posts that pop up talking about how problematic
00:09:19.960 and weird and creepy and old fashioned and patriarchal these father, daughter dances are
00:09:28.060 because this is a good example of how the role of the dad has become this, has become this evil,
00:09:34.680 creepy thing. Here's a bit from an article on a romper.com titled father, daughter dances are
00:09:41.760 anything but innocent. We just read you a couple, a few sentences. The writer says, these aren't sweet.
00:09:47.520 They aren't cute. They're creepy. And they seek to enforce patriarchal notions of femininity.
00:09:53.540 These little girls who are taken out on dates by their fathers are taught that men should do
00:09:57.120 everything for them. Men open the door, men pull out the chair, men buy everything. It's incumbent on
00:10:02.480 the man to ask questions and draw her out. This is 2017 and newsflash. Women don't need men to do
00:10:09.980 things for them. We don't need some big, bad patriarchal figure to hold the door or compliment our inner
00:10:15.360 beauty. We deserve men who are equal partners, who share life's journey with us and who treat us as
00:10:21.280 equals. Uh, daddy daughter dates include an, include an implicit power dynamic and it's not in favor of the
00:10:29.900 girl. Now, uh, I mean, just imagine, okay. Imagine being the sort of person who hears about a man
00:10:43.080 taking his, his, his, his little girl out on the father daughter dance. And the first thing they think is
00:10:48.780 implicit power dynamic or imagine being the sort of person who sees this, you know, funny, nice, cliched photo
00:10:57.280 of Jay Feely and sees it as some kind of patriarchal conspiracy and that he, he thinks he owns his daughter
00:11:04.800 like a slave. I mean, this is what I re I, you know, I, I, I, I honestly, I pity, I really have a lot of pity
00:11:10.820 for these people, for feminists and all these people in our culture because they live in such a miserable
00:11:18.540 world. I can't imagine living in the world that they think we live in. I can't imagine having that
00:11:26.800 mindset. So the question is why, why are so many people so hostile to the idea of a man being a
00:11:37.280 figure of protection or security or authority in the home? And I think there are two reasons.
00:11:44.660 The first reason is pretty simple. We have to remember that many feminists are feminists because
00:11:50.340 they had no father in the home. At least they didn't have a good father. Uh, that's not the case in all
00:11:55.620 for all of them. Of course, it's theoretically possible that a good father could produce a
00:12:00.580 feminist. Very unlikely. Probably if your daughter ends up being a radical feminist, it means that you
00:12:08.400 as a dad screwed up big time, most likely, but I mean, it is, I'm saying it's theoretically possible
00:12:14.020 that you could have a good father because people, you know, human beings make their own choices. And
00:12:18.140 even a woman who's raised right could end up, um, unfortunately going down the path of feminism.
00:12:23.040 So most of them had one way or another absent fathers. And there's this certain kind of childish
00:12:30.720 self-centeredness that's really common in our society where people insist on spreading around
00:12:36.720 their misery and they came from broken homes. So they must attack and hate homes that are not broken.
00:12:44.560 It's envy. And it even goes a little bit beyond envy actually, because a really envious person
00:12:50.960 knows that he doesn't have something. And so he covets the people who do have it.
00:12:58.000 But here though, what we see so often in our society are people who don't have a certain good thing.
00:13:05.080 In this case, an intact family. And so they insist that the thing must not be good.
00:13:10.660 So rather than trying to have what other people have, they say, well, nobody should have it.
00:13:17.640 But second, the reason why people, especially feminists, lash out at men who protect and provide
00:13:26.340 is, is really this. And I've said it before. Feminists, they don't really hate masculinity.
00:13:34.340 I think we have it wrong. We don't really understand the motivations behind modern feminism.
00:13:40.760 And I, and I say it myself, just kind of for lack, just kind of for the sake of argument or just
00:13:45.920 sort of laziness. I'll say, well, feminists hate masculinity because in a sense they do. But
00:13:52.660 I think even deeper than that, they, they actually idolize masculinity.
00:13:58.640 So it's more accurate to say they hate men who are masculine because they themselves want to be
00:14:08.240 masculine. It's masculinity itself is what they idolize. They want to be that. So they say,
00:14:14.520 well, we don't need no man to protect us. This is 2018. We don't need that because they have idolized
00:14:20.920 the ability to protect. They have taken this and decided that, well, this is, everyone should have
00:14:27.780 that ability. Um, they want it for themselves. The kind of physical masculine strength that a man
00:14:35.880 has, they want it. They hate it when men show it because they want it. They have idolized it. They
00:14:43.220 have, they have decided that masculinity is really the height of existence. And that's why you get all
00:14:49.800 these silly movies with the kick butt female action heroes who go around beating up men and everything.
00:14:55.020 Um, and it's just, I, again, it's kind of this silly childish thing that feminists do where they
00:15:01.700 say, well, men have all the action heroes. Now we want some, well, one of the reasons why typically
00:15:06.780 men are the action heroes in movies is because men are the action heroes in real life. And you're
00:15:13.100 simply not going to get a woman who's running around just hand to hand combat, beating up, um,
00:15:19.020 a bunch of strong beefy men. That's just, that's, that's not going to happen in real life. And yeah,
00:15:26.180 it is a movie. So fictional things can happen, but, but generally you want a movie, even an action
00:15:30.980 movie to be grounded in some sense in reality. Um, so that's why typically you don't have as many
00:15:35.940 movies like that, but feminists covet the strength of men. They covet masculinity itself
00:15:44.540 and they want to have it or to use the common phrase. Now they want to appropriate it,
00:15:51.020 which is why if a woman had taken that exact same photo that Jay Feeley took holding the gun and
00:16:00.740 everything, feminists would have celebrated it. They would have said it was the greatest thing ever
00:16:05.660 because they don't hate toxic masculinity. They just hate that men are so much better at being
00:16:14.320 masculine and they think they're in a competition with men. Really in the end, we should stop saying
00:16:22.320 that, that feminists hate masculinity. What they really hate is femininity. That's what they hate.
00:16:29.880 They hate themselves. They don't want to be themselves. They want to be men. And so they
00:16:37.700 hate men who are men because they see it as some kind of personal attack on them. So that's what lies
00:16:47.100 underneath all this, uh, all this controversy, which, as I said, it's not even a real controversy.
00:16:52.000 So maybe I didn't even need to spend 20 minutes explaining it, but I just did. So hope you enjoyed
00:16:57.120 it. Uh, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day, everybody.