I broke a feminist last weekend.

She wasn’t my first, and she won’t be my last, and I am not in the habit of writing field reports, but…. so many young men have asked me for cunning arguments and ideas to arm them in some verbal war against feminism and some clam or other they have fallen into the trap of wrangling with. Always, I have asked them, “Why are you arguing with feminists?”

Here’s what I do instead.

“Jezebel” is FanGirl’s sorority sister from {small expensive private university for rich kids}, and when she hove into the area we live in for a job interview, FanGirl suggested that the three of us might meet her for lunch, although she was “slightly worried about how I’d get on with someone who used to share Jezebel.com articles on the sorority chapter mailing list”.

Oh, ye of little faith… why would you doubt me?

Over lunch (purchased from a much-touted, oh-so-trendy, but overrated, food truck, and eaten in the lobby of a hotel to shelter from the heat), Jezebel was at least able to converse like a human being, with no more than the occasional dribble of nonsense about how socialism was a good thing, or how everything (people, nations, rocks, trees, squirrels) was racist, or how the diversity who rape, rob, and murder are really just misunderstood angels who do bad things because they feel bad.

Since I am well aware that people who are in control of themselves speak to have an effect on others, and people who speak to adjust their own feelings are not that much in control of themselves, I let her ramble, content in the knowledge that I was learning far more about her than she was ever saying about sociopolitical reality.

Later, in my living room, when I became bored, I steered the conversation to her purpose for the job interview in this city.

More petty resentments spilled out. She was underpaid. Others on her level made more than her. GigantiCo was a pain to work for, a bureaucratic nightmare of government contracts. Her supervisors were oppressing her. She wasn’t a rich kid like FanGirl, she was a scholarship kid, and {small expensive private university for rich kids} had put her deep in student loan trouble.

Now she had given me enough rope to hang her. I began simply enough. I spoke of how to negotiate salary. Of viewing things in terms of supply and demand. In abstract metaphors of markets and apples, I explained, without naming the demon, how the free market works (leaving out for now how everything else just doesn’t).

Then, having laid the ground, I struck.

“You’ve got to stop seeing them as the enemy.” I said. “So long as you do, you will expect them to refuse you. You will enter the negotiation anticipating no. You will be hostile, and defensive, and you will fail.”

“But they have...”

“Because you do expect no, don’t you? You feel like you don’t belong there. You feel like it’s just a matter of time before they see that, and throw you out.”

She began to cry.

I just went on laying it out. The little insecurities, each one revealed to me by her boasts, her carping of injustice, her complaints of the misbehaviour of the rough working-class men of her childhood, of her neglectful father.

FanGirl began to speak once or twice, but fell silent when I raised a hand to cut her off. Good girl. FunSize just made sympathetic noises, and fetched a box of tissues. She knows better than to interrupt Master at work.

“How do you just… know… what I’m thinking?”, she kept asking. “How did he DO that?”, she asked FanGirl. “How did he just break me so easily?”

I drew her into my arms, let her sob on my shoulder for a while, told her how she had tried to be so strong, so independent, and not need anyone… but she had really wanted her father to protect her, to take care of her… how she tried to take care of others because that was what she wanted for herself.

More agreement. More tears.

After an hour or two of crying out all her secret pain while curled up in my lap, she was purring remarks like “I think I love you right now”, and “{FanGirl}, marry this man. If you don’t marry him, I just might” (she is already married), and talking about how I had missed my calling as a therapist. (What, because I can read an open book? Hah.)

I’ll leave off the story there. It’s not important what happened after that, or whether I fucked her or not. (Could’ve. Didn’t. 5/10, married, and I have threesomes on tap at home.)

What’s important is that you lot get to see where feminism comes from.

Fear.

Fear of men. Not just fear of what we might do, but a deeper, more primal fear of how they need us, how they crave our approval, how they want to submit to us. How every time we “mansplain” they feel the urge to shut up and listen. How every time we patronize them, they feel the urge to say “Yes, sir”, and fawn on us for pats on the head.

Jezebel isn’t a hateful person. She’s scared. She grew up surrounded by men who weren’t strong and protective, so however submissive she instinctively wanted to be, she couldn’t see a single solitary male anywhere who was trustworthy enough to submit to. So she set out to quash the submissive urges from her soul. Telling herself they were “cultural”. That they were instilled in her by “The Patriarchy”.

Well, the first taste of actual patriarchy she was given, she rubbed against it, purred, and then rolled over and exposed her tummy fur for pets.

That’s why feminists are so vehemently against female submissiveness. In the words of the bard of Avon, the lady doth protest too much.

And that is the lesson of this story for ya’ll young bros. Don’t ask me how to “smack down” feminists. Don’t ask me how to argue with them and show them up. Don’t have long debates where you point out the weaknesses in their principles.

Because women don’t have principles. They have feelings. Any principles they invent are just camouflage. If you argue with a feminist, debate her, you treat her like your peer. She’s not your peer. She’s a scared little girl inside. She’s acting out of fear, and the more you show her up, the more scared she will be.

If you feel threatened and angered by feminists, you’re being scared by the facade of the strong-independent-woman-who-don’t-need-no-man. It’s a mask worn by a submissive woman who gets just as wet as any other off of Fifty Shades of Grey. Feminists can only hurt you in groups, by invoking hordes of White Knight beta males (also scared), or by voting for the next Joseph Stalin.

You won’t always be in a position to do this. Sometimes feminists just have to be laughed at or avoided. But if you must engage with one, don’t argue principles like you would with a man. Look for the scared, hurt little girl behind the facade.

I broke Jezebel by first showing her I was far stronger than her, then, when she was at my mercy, being unexpectedly protective. She couldn’t resist that, because male protectiveness was what she always wanted. All women are submissive. Learn to tap into that.

Tip Whisper for their post.