So I Married a Radical Feminist
By Bernard Chapin (01/16/07)
Politics isn't the only area in which strange bedfellows are made. One can say the same thing about poker as its unique characteristics have proved alluring for presidents, plumbers, starlets, professors, and even common criminals. Author, and noted poker authority, Ed Miller is none of the above, but he is one of the more intelligent and industrious individuals associated with the game. Personally, I am quite familiar with his books, and my keen appreciation of them led me to interview him last month. He came off as a bright and enthusiastic man, and I am sure many a rounder found our conversation enlightening, but it seems that his wife did not. The young lady posted a blog on her website in which she took exception to one of my questions concerning her husband's appearance on the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy television show. Normally I would not trouble readers with such mundane matters but Mrs. Miller's criticism provides me with a nice opportunity in which to excoriate the notion of the radical feminist wife.
Before going any further, I must note that her name isn’t actually “Mrs. Miller.” Predictably, this former Woman’s Studies major refused to change her name after marriage, and even gloated in a post about her plans to name her kids something other than Miller. Those paragraphs were quite amusing and I’d love to quote from them, but I cannot as they were deleted over the summer after causing her husband considerable embarrassment. At any rate, due to her aversion to abandoning her maiden name along with a stated desire to become famous, I will not refer to her by anything other than Mrs. Miller here.
What really “got her goat” was that she found my query about Mr. Miller’s stint on the little screen to be homophobic. She also thought that it would have been unwise for her husband to turn down any type of free publicity. Homophobic? Let’s take a look at exactly what I said:
Allow me to ask you a final, non-poker related question. Your bio mentions
that you appeared on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, where “the Fab Five
transformed [you] into a hip, clean cut television personality with Buddy Holly
glasses.” I cannot help but ask, why would you do that show? Who cares about
fashion and being trendy? It seems to me that with your physics background,
work at Microsoft, brilliance at poker, and voluminous publications you’d be
a continent above that stuff.
Well, how can I deny her accusation? The type of anti-gay hate I spewed was worthy of the Marquess of Queensbury. All kidding aside though, as the reader can see, there was nothing homophobic about those sentences; nothing whatsoever, which is precisely why political correctness is so vile. Nowadays, when one questions a gay person it means you question all gay persons which is exactly the same anti-intellectual response issued when after one questions a woman. Here, the connection is even more tenuous as I questioned a straight man’s interest in fashion which really doesn’t have much to do with gay people at all, but, if it did, it would only be wondering about a gay person’s hobbies rather than their sexual orientation. That makes no difference though as the charge of homophobia comes without evidentiary requirements. Such mental impoverishment is what happens when one wastes the best years of their lives in a Woman’s Studies’ curriculum. Of course, the same could be said of many other majors within today’s politicized and corrupted liberal arts programs. Its graduates never learn how to think and never learn how to argue. They see something they disagree with, and condemn rather than consider it. They then call it a name and get on with the serious business of being perpetually confused about life.
Most importantly, it is the person who regards all gay people as being concerned with superficial things like fashion who is the real “hater.” These are the persons who embody intolerance. Just as one can be put off by the heterosexuals who starred in Friends without being put off by heterosexuals in general, one’s lack of esteem for the hosts of Queer Eye does not automatically translate into their having negative feelings about all homosexuals. Furthermore, shallow and frivolous people can be found within every demographic grouping within our society.
Mrs. Miller isn’t concerned with such nuances, however. Like every other radical feminist, she is all too eager to start a fracas over any slight even if it is hallucinatory in nature. The motto for her website is that she has been “generating resentment since 1976” which is presumably the year of her birth. Perhaps she would do well to consider that alienating people is not a productive strategy for negotiating the terrain of life, but it is doubtful she will. Marrying a good earner has provided her with an impregnable fortress from which to launch attacks upon the general population.
One feels tremendous sympathy for the husbands of such women. Much like Frodo on his way to Mordor these girls come into your life bearing great evil. In Mrs. Miller’s case, she brags in a separate post of creating a riff between her husband and his employer which caused them to break off relations, and brought about a cross-country move. I think the old cliché about a good woman benefiting a man’s rise is quite accurate as is its converse. For the man who has laid his future in the hands of a radical feminist, endgame is always right around the corner. That he’s finished cannot be doubted, whether his demise comes this year or the next is irrelevant. There will never be any quarter as he’ll be invariably demeaned, criticized, humiliated or beaten to death. Mrs. Miller has let her husband know that things will be different, however, as she has previously mentioned: “[S]ometimes I wonder if we did the right thing. Sometimes I just think I’m not the marrying type, like this wasn’t designed with me in mind.” Great! In another post, she she celebrates herself as being an expert on getting fired, and also mentions the fact that she dropped out of school shortly after meeting her beau. All I can say in response to this is: Prognosis Negative. Facts like these would even turn Tony Robbins into a pessimist.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to get out of the quagmire after saying “I do” to a feminista because any thing you say will be discounted due to their ironclad belief in male inferiority. Their narcissism knows no bounds and will be apparent to everyone except for themselves. Luckily, Mrs. Miller is aware of this, and shudders of the thought that she might not be as special as she once presumed:
Too often I find myself focusing on myself and my life, looking down a
tunnel at all the tragedies and horrors that have passed and have yet to
pass. I become solipsistic and narrow-minded…Sometimes the
realization that my life might be insignificant strikes me as particularly
sad and horrific.
It is rather peculiar, but the true kryptonite for these women is the realization that they’re infallible and mortal just like everybody else. Rather than be horrified, they would do well to embrace the fact that they are one among many. This would purge them of their feminist false consciousness while bringing about the realization that who we are is a reflection of who we are, rather than a product of what does or what does not swing from our legs.
What is optimal is to avoid all dealings, particularly intimate ones, with the radical feminist. If one encounters a very attractive specimen and feels that they cannot resist temptation then they should wear earplugs for a few dates (or minutes) until the act of coitus is reached. Then, seconds afterward, it is recommended for the man to enact a scripted melodrama of his own. He should turn sorrowful and whine like Woody Allen over the way that the little Dworkinite has used them for sex. He should state how vulnerable he feels and passionately quiver, “Was I good enough for you? Oh, you probably don’t even care. I’m just a notch on your Louis Vuitton bag.” He then should become dejected, put on his clothes, and skate—forever. The last thing he should ever do is marry one these characters because that’s a death sentence.
1. I am aware that the show’s name was shortened to Queer Eye alone, but the old name is far more descriptive of its purpose.
2. Here are her exact words: “Publicity is publicity. Free sh*t is free sh*t [my asterisks]. Image is important, whether you care to believe it or not. Just because Chapin and many of Ed’s fans are homophobes doesn’t mean anything. Ed does what he does.”
3. I’ve argued in the past that there is no such as homophobia anyway, but did not have the space to recapitulate the entirety of my position here.
4. Specifically, she says, “I got my husband fired. Well, sort of. When I pissed off my husband’s pimp publisher we broke off relations and moved to New York with our five cat-sized pets.”
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