After a group of college kids put a funny and entertaining ad on Craigslist looking to hire a “BBQ Dad” for an afternoon of grilling out with them, feminists were upset because it was, “a harsh reminder of how gender roles become the star of the stage during a BBQ.”728 The ad said they were looking for an older fatherly figure to join them to, “Talk about dad things, like lawnmowers, building your own deck, Jimmy Buffett, etc. Funny anecdotes are highly encouraged. All while drinking beer.”729 But a group of college guys aren’t allowed to enjoy the tradition of grilling out with each other anymore.
One feminist critic complained that the meat is the central focus of a barbecue, saying, “All the annoying, extra bits that make a barbecue work go unpraised, but the meat? That’s the star of the show. Whoever cooks the meat gets praised and thanked for their brilliant job.”730
A male feminist who writes for Slate is so conflicted about being a feminist and liking to grill, that he wrote a whole article describing his struggle. “I hate how much I love to grill,” it starts. “It’s not that I’m inclined to vegetarianism or that I otherwise object to the practice itself. But I’m uncomfortable with the pleasure I take in something so conventionally masculine. Looming over the coals, tongs in hand, I feel estranged from myself, recast in the role of suburban dad. At such moments, I get the sense that I’ve fallen into a societal trap, one that reaffirms gender roles I’ve spent years trying to undo. The whole business feels retrograde, a relic of some earlier, less inclusive era.”731
Another triggered feminist complains, “there’s one aspect of the barbecue that I just can’t get my head around. Not the desire to use a substandard cooking facility for no better reason than that it’s outside, but the way that having a barbecue sends groups of intelligent, emancipated people back to the 1950’s.”732
She goes on to complain that men, “stand around the big fire, drinking beer and discussing the best way to cook meat [but] the women sit around a table, drinking rosé and perhaps making a salad,” and asks, “where else socially do we segregate ourselves so strongly?”733
Apparently it’s not just grilling meat which is a problem. Just eating it is. A Ph.D. candidate at Pennsylvania State University argues that simply eating meat perpetuates “hegemonic masculinity.” She argues that, “Doing vegetarianism in interactions drives social change, contributing to the de-linking of meat from gender hegemony and revealing the resisting and reworking of gender in food spaces.”734 She also said that, “vegetarians defy attempts to hold them accountable to gendered social expectations,” whatever the hell that means.
Air Conditioning is Sexist
Virtually nothing is safe from being sucked into the social justice warrior vortex where everything is racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ablest, etc., etc.— not even air conditioning. As you know, most women wear skirts even in the winter time (which is completely asinine), but they want to show off their legs and as much skin as possible, so they wear skirts and sleeveless low cut tops to the office, whereas men wear a suit and tie (which is also asinine, but that’s a subject for a whole other book).
And because women choose to wear such skimpy clothes, they often get cold, even in the office during the summer time since the air conditioning keeps room temperatures down in the low seventies or upper 60s, depending on who is in control of the thermostat.
But for feminists there’s more to it than that. They see a sexist conspiracy behind it all. “Most AC units are designed for a man’s body temperature — not a woman’s” says one columnist who whined about the “sexist air-conditioning” problem in offices in an article titled “Air Conditioning In Your Office is Sexist: True Story.”735 She went on to explain, “In modern offices, most climate control systems are based on the resting metabolic rate of a 40-year-old man, which runs up to 30 per cent faster than a woman’s.”736
Since men have more muscle, their core body temperature is slightly higher on average than women (only .4 degrees higher), and one study cites the average hand temperature for women is 87.2 degrees, while men’s are 90 degrees.737
This particular columnist went on to warn about the “dangers” of offices being too cold saying they cause “thicker blood,” an “increase in blood pressure” and the “tightening of the airwaves.” She concludes her sob story by saying, “If that’s not an incentive for employers to finally sort out the AC problem once and for all, I don’t know what is.”738 What the hell does she want employers to do? Segregate men and women, putting them into different offices so the women can have a separate HVAC unit and keep the temperature warmer?
Other outlets have covered this “controversy,” including The Washington Post with their “investigation” titled, “Frigid Offices, Freezing Women, Oblivious Men.”739
A Time magazine writer was upset that the issue wasn’t being taken seriously enough by society and also concluded that air conditioning is sexist. “Certain facts, no matter how well-established, are always being contested by those who think that just because they themselves do not understand or experience them, that they are not, in fact, facts,” she wrote, pointing to the same “evidence” of women’s body temperature being lower than men’s.740
The New York Times reported, “Chilly at Work? Office Formula Was Devised for Men,” and mentioned a recent “study” that looked into the conspiracy by the Nature Climate Change journal which recommended it’s time to end “gender-discrimination” in “thermal comfort.”741
Since feminists think the world revolves around them, the solution to this “problem” isn’t to just put on a sweater, or stop wearing skimpy clothes to the office, but that the standardized office temperature should be raised by a few degrees, which would obviously cause men wearing heavy sports coats and tight collars wrapped with ties around their necks to become uncomfortably warm with no recourse because most dress codes require men to wear a suit and tie.742
“Abortions are Cool”
After a viral meme game on Twitter of people wishing for certain kinds of Disney Princesses called “We Need a Disney Princess Who… [fill in the blank], a Planned Parenthood branch tweeted (and then later deleted), “We need a Disney Princess who’s had an abortion,” sparking outrage and disgust among conservatives. But Jezabel, a radical feminist website created by Gawker Media and currency owned by Univision, endorsed the idea and posted an article titled, “Statistically, at Least 2 Disney Princesses Have Had Abortions,”743 and cited a poll claiming 23.7 percent of women will have had an abortion by the age of 45.
Some researchers say that figure is inaccurate because it’s based on certain subgroups of women (poor, and black) who have a much higher abortion rate compared to the general population, and then those numbers were extrapolated to represent all women, which is a flawed methodology, but that’s a whole other story.
Jezabel then tallied up the number of Disney Princesses and concluded, “That means statistically around two and a half of these strong women have gotten abortions and aren’t telling you about it because of a national culture of shame and misogyny!!!”744