“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”

-unknown

The above quote is one that I’m sure many people have heard before, or in its alternative state “hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works.” In any iteration, the context is clear, and that is that malfeasance or evil deeds often masquerade as good intentions. Furthermore, even when one has good intentions, they must be acted upon to bring them to fruition and in doing so there may be unintended consequences.

That brings me to the topic of discussion for the day. In Austin, Texas there is a movie theater by the name of Alamo Drafthouse that has made waves by having a women only screening of Wonder Woman. Here’s the explanation given by the theater in their official announcement:

“The most iconic superheroine in comic book history finally has her own movie and what better way to celebrate than with an all-female screening? Apologies, gentlemen, but we’re embracing our girl power and saying “No Guys Allowed” for one special night at the Alamo Ritz. And when we say “People Who Identify As Women Only,” we mean it. Everyone working at this screening — venue staff, projectionist, and culinary team — will be female. So lasso your geeky girlfriends together and grab your tickets to this celebration of one of the most enduring and inspiring characters ever created.” (www.drafthouse.com)

Now, I do believe that this is in fact well intentioned. Wonder Woman is in fact a symbol, icon and role model for a lot of women and girls. I don’t begrudge them for that. She basically means to them what Superman means to a lot of men and boys. I’m all for positive examples, especially for children, in this otherwise crazy world.

I understand the value in being able to have someone who looks like you to look up to. I’m a black man, and as such we didn’t have a lot. I was born in the 1981, so I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s. The only black superheroes that I could readily recall growing up were Black Panther, Luke Cage and Falcon. The popular X-Men cartoon of the 90’s brought Storm and to a lesser degree, Bishop into the mainstream. Blade became more popular after his movies in the late 90’s and early 2000s. On the DC side of things, John Stewart, (Green Lantern) Black Lightning, and Static Shock became more mainstream as well due to their portrayals in the Justice League and Static Shock cartoons respectively. Spawn was popular for time during that period as well.  So, as I said, there wasn’t much to choose from, and that’s just comic books, to say nothing of TV, movies, video games etc.

As a father of 14 year old daughter, I definitely want her to have positive women in general, but especially those look like her to identify with. Few characters, if any, fit the bill better than Wonder Woman. Now back to this women only screening of Wonder Woman.

As I said, I do believe that the theater was well intended, or the very least, not mal intended.  However, as stated earlier good intentions often come with unintended consequences.  The unintended consequence is that instead of coming off as pro-female, they came across as anti-male. To be fair, loving or valuing oneself doesn’t mean that you hate those are different from you. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. For example, one can be a Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) and not harbor any ill will or have any inherent dislike or disdain for women.

Me personally, and I would surmise men like me, have a problem with modern or 3rd wave feminists if you prefer, because they aren’t about female equality. If they were, I could respect that. I believe that everyone should be treated equally, and as such be held to same standards and be accountable for their choices.  Female equality is the good intention by which they masquerade their true objective. One of the ways they like to use to achieve this is to make false equivalents. The women who support this, namely feminists, are saying that men should be ok with it because a group of men are deciding women’s reproductive rights. What they conveniently neglect to mention is that men are elected officials, meaning that women have a say in who holds those offices and makes those decisions. Also women make up the largest block of registered voters, as well have the highest voter turnout. So, women have the option to vote for whom they want. Or simply they can run for office themselves if they feel under represented.  Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “Put your iron hand in a velvet glove.” That’s exactly what these feminists and their supporters are doing. They appear benign when in fact their true intentions are much more sinister.

See, what these feminists and people who support them are really saying is that they are ok with exclusion, so long as they are doing the excluding.  Spiderman: Homecoming is releasing in a little more than a month. Do you think the same theater, Alamo Drafthouse, would have a men’s only showing it? First off, hell no they wouldn’t, but for the sake of argument let’s say that they did.  Can you imagine the backlash that would come from that? Along similar lines, why is ok to have things such as women’s only gyms or female only cab services such as See Jane Go and Safeher? If these things had male only variants there would be outrage and the proprietors and their customers we be labeled as sexists, misogynists, and all manner of negative publicity would be deployed against them.

This boils down to 3 very simple things. First, by and large women don’t want equality because that would come with equal expectations (selective service, draft, etc) and equal accountability.( child support, alimony, child custody, charged for same crimes, serving the same amount of time for the same crime, etc) That is not what they want.

Second, they want to enjoy a special status that allows them to reap the benefits of equality without any of its responsibilities. They don’t want to be seen as equals.  They don’t want inclusion, they want to be one doing the exclusion.

Finally, they want to be allowed to have spaces where they’re allowed to voice their opinions on all manner of things, while simultaneously denying you the same right or subverting such spaces for men by demanding access to them. To not acquiesce to such a request is tantamount to a death sentence in the court of public opinion.

Sadly, even Wonder Woman’s goodness, can be used to pave the road to hell it seems.