Revisiting Tulathimutte's "The Feminist"

Blake Nelson on an Incel Classic

Dear Republic,

I think of Blake Nelson as the Ry Cooder of Substack — endlessly chill, always with a kick within the tuneful song.

As a reminder, the ‘Commencement’ address prompts are due June 15. Details here.

-ROL

REVISITING TULATHIMUTTE’S “THE FEMINIST”

I recently re-read Tony Tulathimutte’s stunning short story “The Feminist.” It was fun to read again. The writing is so smart and funny. And it’s a benchmark in contemporary literature, daring to enter the realm of extremist gender-politics, which most contemporary writers assiduously avoid.

When I first read the “The Feminist”—about a year ago—I was so shocked by its subject matter that I read it in a state of anxious anticipation. (Also: how had I missed the initial controversy when it was first published in 2019 in the literary journal N+1?)

As soon as I grasped what “The Feminist” was about, I raced through it to see how the author would handle this volatile and cancellable material.

Even more important: what would be the final takeaway? What would the story ultimately say about the main character (a feminist ally turned proto-Incel)?

The answer to this question seemed so important, I couldn’t settle in with the story. I couldn’t relax and enjoy the flow of the narrative. And of course, I barely registered the humor.

Which isn’t to say I missed the humor. I saw where Tulathimutte was joking. I saw the funny stereotypes and running jokes, like the main character’s trauma over his pitifully narrow shoulders or his absurdly detailed masturbation practices. (I pictured the main character as Asian the first time around, like Tulathimutte, but apparently he’s a white guy named Craig.)

Still, during that first reading, I was less interested in the satire or the nuance. Being an adult male, I feel great sympathy for any young man caught in the meat-grinding warfare of current gender politics. So in some strange way, pathetic as “Craig” was, I was rooting for him from the start.

*

The story begins with a description of Craig’s small, private, progressive, mostly-female high school.

The school ingrained in him, if not feminist values per se, the *value* of feminist values. It had been cool, or at least normal, to identify as asexual. And though he didn’t, it was a better label than “virgin.” His friends, mostly female, told him he was refreshingly attentive and trustworthy for a boy.

So begins Craig’s introduction to feminism: a doctrine that contains some double standards and hypocrisies, but which is essentially a positive, and anyway makes life easier for women, giving them ways to rationalize their plight.

Unfortunately for Craig, beginning his education in such a setting, leads him into a worldview that is not intended for him. He is not a woman. And yet for some unspecified reason, he continuously takes their side, which he sees as the righteous side, the “defending the oppressed” side.

And of course, being young and naive, he makes that most fatal error of all: he thinks being an ally to women will earn their respect, their love, and will eventually, hopefully, lead to sex.

*

At college, he tries to get close to women . . . by befriending them. Craig writes an email to a “friend”:

Hey, this might be super random, and she can totally say no, but he’s attracted to her, so did she want to go on a “date” date sometime? “Oh,” she filibusters—she had no idea he felt that way and she doesn’t want to risk spoiling the good thing they have . . . .

In Craig’s mind, this is just bad luck. He asked the wrong girl. He doesn’t yet understand that being everything a woman wants you to be, doesn’t work.

In fact, such behavior becomes tiresome and eventually abhorrent to most females.

This insight is constantly affirmed in “The Feminist.” It is one of the central premises of the story.

*

Post college, Craig enters adult life:

Dragging his virginity like a body bag into his mid-twenties he watches a certain amount of domination-oriented porn probably due to internalized sexism, though he’s read that porn is a safe, healthy venue to explore kink, that sexuality is neither a choice, nor shameful, especially if the studios follow good labor and aftercare practices.

Like everyone else in the 20teens, Craig tries internet dating, with predictable results. His profile:

He/Him/His (or whatever pronouns you are most comfortable with). Unshakeably serious about consent. Abortion’s #1 fan. Loves books, Thai food, a glass of vinho verde on my balcony, endless conversation . . .

That’s another thing. Craig talks too much. And he thinks he has to ask for consent to kiss someone. A female acquaintance laughs at him when he says this. But he has a point: THE FEMINISTS TOLD HIM HE HAD TO!

Craig doesn’t understand that the boy/girl stuff is a game and that feminism is just one of the weapons one side uses against the other.

He is unaware that he has weapons too (indifference, contempt). Poor Craig. Here he finds himself in the most important competition of life, and NO WEAPONS!

*

People try to explain the realities of romance to him. Often, it is women who attempt to gently guide Craig toward the truth. And then one day, some male coworkers give it to him straight:

He’s too honest and available, not aggressive enough—friend zone shit, they say unironically. Don’t be a fucking pussy is all! You gotta challenge them, be a puzzle for them to work out, that’s how girls’ brains work, it’s evolution.

But Craig just doesn’t get it. He is still intellectualizing, using logic and rationality.

Dating online, he realizes one has to choose between fraudulence, or the sort of honesty that can’t compete with fraudulence. But then he thinks: Isn’t the idea that women don’t know what‘s best for them sexist?

*

Moving deeper into his 30s, things get dark:

He develops thoughts of self-harm, which are sharpened by his awareness that rejection, loneliness, and sexual frustration are nothing compared with institutional and historical oppression. His sadness, he knows, is a symptom of his entitlement, so he is not even entitled to his sadness.

Craig is a straight white man. So, technically, he’s in the wrong no matter what he does.

He contemplates all the organisms in the natural world having sex constantly, effortlessly. Stray dogs. Mosquitos. Dandelions. Yeast. At work, when he isn’t thinking “This is all I’m good for,” he thinks, “I should kill myself.” But then he imagines his former female friends hearing of his death and not caring, or even laughing. To them, it wouldn’t be tragic. They did not need him as much as he needed them. Or at all. This maddening thought keeps him dismally alive.

Poor Craig. Bugs can get laid . . . and he can’t! He continues to age, and eventually his body betrays him. He begins suffering stress-related physical problems.

He can seldom achieve a full erection. When he manages to ejaculate, it falls out of him like a touchless soap dispenser. So he’s finally managed to sexually bore even himself.

At one point, he dives headlong into physical fitness and the various elixirs that go with it:

He hits the gym, where he targets his deltoids with set after set of shrugs and lateral raises, and afterward takes zinc sulfate, lysine, and arginine to increase seminal volume . . . .

He takes solace in online support groups and manosphere-style forums, which only deepen his isolation:

He’s never wanted to consider it, but with his hard-won lived experience and the stark authority of his disprivilege, he can declare that women, in aggregate, are just—wrong. That either they have failed feminism, or feminism has failed them.

By the end of the story, Craig has become desperate and hopeless, and it isn’t a big surprise when in the last sentence, he takes the final step of the classic incel trajectory and shoots up a café full of happy, sexually successful yuppies.

*

But the real climax of “The Feminist” is not the shooting. It is a rant that comes just before. This rant comes via a satirically depicted support-group forum called NSOM (Narrow Shoulders/Open Minds). Here, Craig and other narrow-shouldered men discuss the discrimination, oppression, and sexual invisibility they face every day.

One day on the forum, Craig encounters a new poster who reminds him of a younger version of himself: still idealistic, still pro-feminist, still defending the status quo, even though it marginalizes the narrowly shouldered.

This young man dares to criticize the older posters at NSOM. Claiming Craig and his ilk are bitter, sad, defeated and perpetuating their own misery.

Craig is roused to full fury by this young man’s post. And for several pages expresses the all-consuming resentment that has occupied his entire life.

I have actively combated misogyny both in the world and within myself, tithed monthly to Planned Parenthood, marched and canvassed and fundraised and posted for women’s rights. I’m commitment friendly, prosperous, successful, not ugly, in fact a solid eight from the neck up and the nipples down, six inch penis from base to shaft, high sperm count and seminal motility . . . .

This is Craig’s Incel Manifesto. How feminism told him how to act, then betrayed him for acting that way. How society pretends to value honesty and integrity, and then rewards liars and bullies. As Craig eloquently puts it:

We are made to eternally repent for the sins of the worst men, while those very same men reap the benefits of our care and counsel.

We are getting the ultimate rendering of what the manosphere called “the beta male.” The beta male follows the rules and gets nothing. The alpha male breaks the rules and gets the girl.

I would have thrown my bleeding body on the barricades of the patriarchy, and they would have let me do it, indifferently accepting my death as their due, with not a punctum of guilt as they go off to bed and wed my murderers.

*,

Even though all of this is funny, and Craig is a tragic/comic character, there is still some obvious truth in Craig’s rant. Women say they want sensitive feminist men. But that’s not how they act. Which I assume Tulathimutte realizes, since he is making this same point throughout the story.

So why did Tulathimutte tweet, “To be clear in advance, feminism is good, this character is not good”?

Probably because he wants to have a career. He is very talented and has a good shot at being A Major American Novelist. And to do that, he has to defend feminism even if he sees the obvious flaws in it. And so he disavows his own story. And who can blame him?

Blake Nelson

’s many novels include Girl, Recovery Road and Paranoid Park (adapted to film by Gus Van Sant). He’s also written for The New York Times, Sassy, Details and Conde Nast Traveler. New novel: The City Wants You Alone.