A Feminist Critique of Female Fans

by smteixeirapoit

In The Washington Post, Jaclyn Friedman wrote an article entitled “He Trashes the Ladies. They Love Him For It.” In this article, Friedman provides a feminist critique of females that endorse Tucker Max.

In 2002, Tucker Max started a website detailing his “life as a self-involved, drunken womanizer”. Recently, his New York Times best-selling book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell turned into a movie. In this movie, he argues that “all women are whores” and that “fat girls aren’t real people”. Given these statements, Friedman questions: Why are some females fans of Tucker Max?

Currently, Tucker Max is promoting his new movie on college campuses. At film screenings, his audience tends to be about half female. Tucker Max uses this piece of information to combat his critics: “I am still waiting for a protester to answer the question: ‘If Tucker hates women, why does he have so many female fans? Why is half of each screening women?’”

Friedman offers several possible answers to this question. She argues that the current generation of college-aged females received abstinence-only education and was taught to “just say no”. Although these females understand that “no means no”, they lack direction on what to expect when they say “yes”.

Additionally, Friedman explains that up to ninety percent of eight- to sixteen-year-olds have viewed pornography online. Because of this, many females reject virginity and think that their only alternative is acting like a porn star.

Although Tucker Max’s female fans have identified sexual purity as a setup and have recognized power in claiming their sexual identities, they do not know how to assert their power while demanding respect from males. Tucker Max’s defenders employ rhetoric of female empowerment, but avoid discussing an important goal of feminism: to provide females realistic alternatives between “virgin” and “whore”.

On college campuses, sexual assault has reached crisis levels. Conservative estimates suggest that 150,000 females will be sexually assaulted on college campuses in the United States this academic year. Given this crisis, Friedman problematizes college campuses “allowing an ‘entertainer’ promoting the idea that female sexual consent is the ultimate prize in a drunken game to be won by any means necessary — no matter how much the students clamor for it”.

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