What do you think about all the people who don’t understand feminism? Especially the women who supposedly “are against feminism because they don’t hate men”? Should we argue or is it a lost cause?

No, we shouldn’t argue. We should teach. We should enlighten. We should in the friendliest of spirits and without the slightest trace of condescension drop so much fucking knowledge on those people that it crushes their flawed and simplistic understanding of gender politics.

We should be patient in the face of ignorance until we know for sure that it is willful. We should give them every opportunity to change their minds, because at the end of the day, very few people are built around a core of malignant, incurable misogyny. Very few people have a world view so grotesque that they actually believe women should be subjugated. Very few people will openly admit that equality isn’t a noble pursuit — especially women for whom so often their only fault is being misguided about the fundamental concepts.

No one is a lost cause until we find out for sure that their identity is tied to an aggressively misogynistic belief system, and when we come across those broken souls, we don’t argue. That’s wasted breath. We simply mark them with red flags and keep them at arm’s length, because those are the ones who aren’t safe to be around.