Bowling therapy.

You know what I really want to do with "Men's Rights activists," "pick-up artists," anti-feminists, "men are from Mars women are from Venus" theorists, straight-up misogynists, and other varieties of people who hate or just fundamentally misunderstand women?

I want to take them bowling.

I suck at bowling, but that's not the point; the point is to drink terrible beer and shoot the shit, cheer each other on strikes and take the piss out of each other on gutterballs, and just generally do something that's fun and sociable and low-pressure. Bowling's just a way to give the evening some structure. We could play pool or go fishing or whatever. Some recreational activity that keeps you mildly busy but gives you plenty of time to talk.

I'd invite some female friends, too, but not to launch a feminist assault on these guys. (And certainly not to date them; not only do I respect my friends more than that, I don't want this to be reduced to a pickup opportunity.) Just to talk about our lives, to joke around, and to interact with each other and the guys the way people interact on a casual night out.



Why? I'm going to answer with a confession I hope doesn't cause strife in my relationships: sometimes I get jealous of Sprite when she's not around. Not like "SHE MUST DIE" jealous, but "I worry she resents me or something" jealous. And then I spend time with her in person, and it absolutely melts away when I realize what a warm and kind person she is when she's actually there. It's only the theoretical Sprite I'm jealous of, the Sprite that I construct in my head from circumstantial evidence; the actual present Sprite is awesome.

I think women-hating types have this same problem with women--the imaginary woman in their head is strange and cruel, and they don't have enough real women to compare her to. (Some of them are burned-out divorcees, but many more seem to have never had a significant relationship with a woman.) I'm convinced a lot of these guys have no female friends and not that many male friends, so their view of humanity is largely interpretations based on media characters, glancing observations of strangers, and the limited interactions of work or school. They've developed this giant hate-on for the theoretical woman and all the evil she theoretically would do. And then they get together and tell each other about their theoretical women, and the meta-theoretical woman, a truly fearsome critter, is born.

And the only antidote for all this is real women. Not real women as dates--in some ways that just cements the concept of "woman" as a Martian with a pussy attached--but just as people. I want these guys to go bowling with women and hear about our preferences in cheap pitcher beers, our minor annoyances, our quirky interests. I want them to tell us their daily problems and funny stories and watch as we react in a sympathetic and entirely human way. I want them to get to know women who are doctors and women who work at Starbucks, women who are self-identified sluts and women who are celibate, women who are kinda annoying and women who are completely adorable.

I want them to learn that spending time with a woman isn't a laborious prerequisite to fucking her, but a pleasant thing in itself, a way to feel more alive and connected to the world.

Funny thing is, not only would this shake some of the asshole out of those guys, it'd probably get them laid. I believe that you can't really have a girlfriend until you know how to be friends with a woman, and learning how to hang out and just chill with women is excellent practice for all the hanging out/chilling that a relationship entails. Getting these dudes laid would definitely be a side effect and not a goal--I hold the radical feminist opinion that you should treat women like people even if this doesn't get you laid--but if they learn that treating women like humans leads to happy penis feelings, so much the better.



In the end, it's not argument that wins people over to your side. It's showing them the essential humanity and ordinariness of the people they were trying to hate. I have no way to make the Woman-Haters-And-Women Bowling League really happen, but it's a beautiful dream for me.