OH, SNAP: ‘Godfather of Hipsterdom’ Gavin McInnes: Feminism makes women miserable (and men!)
Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice and often described as “The Godfather of Hipsterdom,” kicked a hornets nest this week by suggesting that modern feminism has been detrimental to women.
“We’ve trivialized childbirth and being domestic so much that women are forced to pretend to be men. They’re feigning this toughness. They’re miserable,” McInnes said in part during a contentious and expletive-laced exchange on a HuffPost Live panel on Monday.
McInnes received forceful push back from the panel, media and social media for his comments.
The founder of Street Carnage, however, explained in an interview with The Daily Caller that he has no regrets about what he said, and that his comments were in fact very pro-woman.
“I think the most interesting thing about this story is all the controversy it generated. I consider my comments pretty mundane and when I read them in context. I don’t regret anything,” he said. “Every time I see my words quoted I go ‘yeah!’
“That study that I cited was all over the news a year ago — Lou Dobbs covered it on CNN — it didn’t seem to generate that much controversy when it came out, and all I did was cite that study and say a lot of women in the workforce would be happier at home. What is wrong with that?” he asked.
McInnes said that the real reason his comments set off such a firestorm is that “deep down” women realize what he said is true.
“I think a lot of women smash through the ‘glass ceiling’ and get to where [men] are and they go, ‘wait a minute, I thought you guys had brandy and went to strip clubs, you’re going over expense reports?’ And they see their friends from their small town with 3 kids going to soccer practice and they think, ‘That looks kind of cool, actually.’
“So I think they know I am right and that is what is making everyone freak out. All I did was point to the elephant in the room, but as I made very clear in that interview — what made me fly off the handle, too — is I am not saying women should not be in the workforce. If you were meant to be there, by all means, be there, and when I work with a qualified woman who is driven, like a Barbara Corcoran type, I love it because I get the job done,” he said.
He said that overall his words have been twisted into being anti-woman, when in fact believes his comments to be empowering.
“I see a lot of women without kids, in their 40s, who are miserable and I see a lot of women after they have children saying, ‘what the fuck was I doing? Why was I doing fashion PR? I was doing seating plans for a fashion show telling what people sit in what chair. Now I’m shaping human life,’ he explained.
“And that is another thing maybe I didn’t get across, I see the housewife as a far superior vocation to mine, and to most,” McInnes continued. “I mean I make commercials, and funny videos, and T.V. shows or whatever, film projects that people will watch for ten minutes and go ‘heh’ and get on with their day. I essentially… make comic books. You flip through it and you’re done. My wife creates life from her vagina and then — that’s just the beginning — then she shapes this human life.”
McInnes explained how much more fulfilling his wife’s day — making memories with their children — than his, working on a “fuckin’” cheese commercial.
