Today in Your Feminist Backlash

This is Newsweek's actual fucking cover this week:


[Click to embiggen.]
The article can be read here, and contains such gems as:

It is intriguing that huge numbers of women are eagerly consuming myriad and disparate fantasies of submission at a moment when women are ascendant in the workplace, when they make up almost 60 percent of college students, when they are close to surpassing men as breadwinners, with four in 10 working women now outearning their husbands, when the majority of women under 30 are having and supporting children on their own, a moment when—in hard economic terms—women are less dependent or subjugated than before.

Yes, "intriguing." Possibly even more "intriguing" is the description of this article on Newsweek's Tumblr:

In an age where women are dominating—in the workplace, at school, at home—why are they seeking to be dominated in their love lives? Recent media portrayals have shown that a rising number of modern women fantasize about being overpowered, while studies are turning out statistics that bewilder feminists. New shows like HBO's Girls and books like Fifty Shades of Grey are showcasing the often hidden desire for powerlessness. But why? Katie Roiphe examines the submissive yet empowered female in Newsweek. "It is perhaps inconvenient for feminism that the erotic imagination does not submit to politics, or even changing demographics," she writes.

So, basically, Newsweek has allowed a writer to invent the claim out of whole cloth that US women are "dominating" in public and at home—despite 16% female representation in Congress and 15% representation among corporate CEOs, and despite the fact that study after study finds male-partnered women still doing the majority of housework and childcare, even if both partners are working full-time—and pair that specious contention with the popularity of a few random pieces of pop culture—despite the fact that relying on Girls as evidence of any phenomenon is pretty wild, considering it just premiered last night, and is produced by well-known feminist Judd Apatow, lulz—in order to implicitly claim that feminism is bullshit because all women REALLY want, deep down, is to be dominated by men.

And not only did Newsweek allow this garbage in its magazine; it put that shit right on the cover, with a reprehensible image.

I certainly hope that Newsweek will accept my pitch for next week's cover story, in which I use the ACTUAL popularity of The Hunger Games, Bridesmaids, Nurse Jackie, Parks & Recreation, and Downton Abbey to illustrate the fervent desire among USian women for feminist entertainment with strong female protagonists.

In which I will also elucidate the difference between consensual submission and nonconsensual subjugation.

[H/T to everyone in the multiverse, and thanks to each and every one of you.]