The Feminist Gift Guide: For Every Feminist on Your List!
By Emily Scott
Image via BlueQ
“Men Ruin Stuff” socks
For: The ironic feminist, who is also always cold
Price: $9.99
Ironic misandry has grown consistently in the latest iteration of the feminist movement. And some people don’t really get it. Why be jokingly dismissive and excluding of men? Won’t it alienate people from the cause?
The answer is, maybe. But as a woman and as a feminist, our lives are really hard. First of all, being subjugated in small and big ways every day takes a huge toll on your psyche. And if you’re a feminist, then you’ve likely committed to calling out those subjugations and educating the people around you about feminism and women’s issues. And that is exhausting! Bottom line is, you can’t be a social justice warrior all the time. In order to fight another day, you have to figure out how to take care of yourself and how to find humor in it all.
And that’s where the ironic misandry comes in. If you took it seriously every time a troll on Twitter calls you terrible, sexist names, you would be depressed all the time. So instead, you pour glance at your “Male Tears” mug and giggle about it. It’s a mechanism of self-care as well as solidarity with other women going through similar things.
So you know these socks would give you a better day. Every time the dude next to you man-spreads into your subway seat, or a guy in your class interrupts you and talks over you, you can just look down and laugh. “Men Ruin Stuff.” It has never not been true! I mean, #NotAllMen, but seriously a lot of them.
Being able to have a sense of humor about a movement that’s so critical and important is hard. But these ironically man-hating socks will warm both your feet and the cockles of your activist heart!
She’ll Love It If: She already has a “Male Tears” mug and uses it regularly; she loves to get snarky with “men’s rights activists” on Twitter; she has recently had her stuff ruined by a man (i.e. breakup, ignorant coworker, dad voting Trump, etc.), but is at the place where she can laugh about it