In real life, the lion would also eat the lamb. Sorry lamb. Sorry lion! Also in real life, no man is a lion and you don't have to be. What kind of lion falls in love with a lamb that they also want to eat? Why are men falling in "love" with women that they also want to hurt?
I've been watching a lot of Jordan Peterson's videos lately, partly to counter-balance my own views but mainly because I've seen him speak on TV and he hardly sounds as hateful as everyone on leftist media makes him out to be. He claims he's not anti-feminist, but here's where it get tricky. What he has to say about gender roles suggests he's put a great deal of thought in it without ever engaging in feminist commentary (especially second-wave feminism). I think he might have quickly dismissed Germaine Greer in some interview, somewhere on the web, but I actually think he has a lot in common with Greer - they have similar 'rules' towards life. But anyway, I understand why anyone who's only ever come up against the most insubstantial, ignorant parts of feminism finds it an incoherent movement. And that's before we even go into how the movement itself has split, ideologically, on major fault lines. Since he's a scholar, and generally of a very serious, thoughtful temperament, I'm surprised that he hasn't bothered to learn more about it, choosing instead to just get angry at some very flat depictions of what feminism means. He's generally well-reasoned in his arguments, but his refusal to engage properly with a feminist who's as well-reasoned shows a certain closed-mindedness.
Enough digression. He said in one of his talks, in an understandably bewildered tone, that in amongst all the cries for gender equality, criticism of gender roles and male oppression and privilege etc. the bestselling book in many countries around the world was literally about a sadist stalker who loved to smack his girlfriend! Women have spoken - and they love Fifty Shades of Grey. The more women shout about equality, he wondered, the more they secretly just wanted to be dominated by a strong man (insert some Jungian interpretation here).
Maybe this is true for some women, or even a lot of women. But that's not the point of feminism. Feminism is there to tell women that they have other choices - choices that maybe they never even thought about because no one in their life was ever there to put it into their head. Once you know that choice is available, you are free to choose to be dominated by a strong man and get spanked about (but in a sexy way!) for speaking out of turn, if that's what you want. The most important thing is that you need to know what you want. Removing the strictures of gender roles is about freeing individuals to make the best decisions for themselves. Feminism isn't saying that women should prioritise their careers over their families, it isn't even saying that women shouldn't have kids, or shouldn't get married. It's just saying you need to know why you want a career, to marry, to have children, and to be more careful when making decisions that will affect you for the rest of your life.
It is asking women to think more consciously. When couples don't talk about how the household chores get divided, when they don't explicitly communicate who will work and who will look after the children (if they decide to have children), they will probably end up defaulting to the norm. Feminism isn't saying the norm is bad, but it is saying that the norm is bad for you if it doesn't make you happy (and of course there is lots of discussion that with less income, less super, less social capital, but more education, how can women be happy trapped in the family home? But then again, as Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight suggest, maybe women do want their asses trapped and spanked).
More than anything, feminism is saying that you can make an active choice rather than just defaulting. If you care about your happiness and potentially your family's happiness - don't you owe it to yourself and others to make an active, responsible choice for something that's so important?
When it comes to being responsible for ourselves, and making choices that are true to ourselves and prioritise our own happiness, rather than some meaningless standard espoused by those who don't live our lives - Jordan Peterson and Germaine Greer are saying exactly the same thing.
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The other thing I wanted to mention is hurtful male stereotypes. There is a lot of (female) demand for books like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey - I'm not sure how much of it translates to actual expectations of what women want from men. But the tropes in those books are very toxic ideals. No well-adjusted man is going to want you so much that it kills them inside when they can't have you. No man is going to have that amount of rage in them, passionate or otherwise, while also having enough control to function like a normal person in society and be emotionally intimate and available for you when you need it.
No well-balanced, emotionally mature man can compartmentalise their life like that. No doubt their raging desire, which would probably also translate to raging jealousy, will spillover one day into some violent act that is not sexy. These tropes all depict men trying to put a lid on their violent emotions, rather than dealing with them in much healthier ways. Apparently what sells is a barely-controllable passion (but only from a hot, rich guy! Never mind the fat, short, farty, guy in mid-level management who snores in his sleep but has the same passions, they're just creepy and sad). You can see why men sometimes get mixed messages, and why incel cultures exist. When women and men look for these kinds of tropes in their relationships, they are objectifying both sexes rather than seeing a person for who they really are.
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