Send Help Made Me A Misogynist 

I don't particularly hate men. I mean, I have a distaste for the inherent power imbalance (patriarchy, gross), but I wouldn't go as far as to label myself a misandrist. Although some men might vehemently disagree:

Do We Really Need To Know How Sad Shakespeare Is?

We're Not Asking For It

The! Bride! Is! Not! That! Bad!

Divorce, Divorce, Divorce

Okay, yeah, I get it. But still, I think there's a difference between reading a narrative using a feminist lens and hating men. I just happen to tug on that thread a bit more than others. You take a gender studies class once and then everything changes, you know? It was like that for me; I started seeing a certain pattern in the way that women were being depicted in narratives. I wanted to talk about it. I wanted someone to be as fascinated by it, as indignant, as open to it as me.

Women Don't Want More

The issue is that once you start screaming into the void, you forget just how much you've been screaming. I came to the realization of how obnoxiously loud I was when the universe sent me Send Help. It was a sign, guys, that the whole entire world was tired of me ranting about the same injustices. #itsnotaboutme

For the first time in my life, I got the ick...

towards women.

Disclaimer *triggering for women and women-allies alike*

The Story of How I Actually Became A Misogynist

I've never trusted birds. I trust women who like birds even less.

They fulfill a stereotype that I don't want to tackle. It's overdone. We get it. You're lonely and weird. You're quirky in a way that cat women will never be. You can't, for some reason, eat a tuna sandwich correctly.

Like, God, is that the standard? Get yourself together, woman.

That is the image that Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is introduced with in the movie, Send Help: frizzy hair and an outfit so neutral and unkempt, it loses any personhood. Liddle's so weird that she's not even really human. She's the kind of quirky that'd shove an odorous fish sandwich into a drawer for some reason; she's the kind of quirky who'd audition for Survivor because she's not like other girls.

So, she comes on screen in her beige cardigan and clearly unbrushed hair, and I feel myself cringe. She doesn't even have the social skills to want to root for her. Everything about her screams weird and off-putting from the get-go. This is who we're supposed to root for? Come on.

I understood Bradley Preston's (Dylan O'Brien) reaction. I was disgusted, too. She was literally the epitome of everything I stood against. As she desperately tried to be noticed by anyone around her, I was repulsed. Read a room, lady. Read the context. Play the stupid game and show some cleavage. Would it kill her to put a little bit of lipstick on? All the other girls are doing it. Something to make her look less like she just rolled out of bed. She couldn't even be the goody-two-shoes, brown-noser correctly, like god.

That tuna flake sits so obnoxiously on her mouth, I almost retch. I didn't want to look at the screen anymore. It made me think about what Bradley must've been thinking as a CEO. Where is the professionalism? The self-regard? The hygiene?! For a second there, I was like, if the margins look like this, maybe it's better we stay in it.

Because, all I really, truly, desperately wanted was Linda Liddle to disappear back into the background where I wouldn't have to deal with her again. This was the moment where I realized that everything I stood for was all wrong. Survival of the fittest matters, guys. It's a dog-eat-dog world, and sometimes some people need a little bit of bullying to be put back on track. I think Linda Liddle's one of those people. She can't just expect Preston's respect, okay? Not in that state. A semblance of decorum would be a good place to start. Less tuna. A hairbrush.

You know what, men have the right to feel outraged with our plight. The pushback makes sense. We keep talking about giving marginalized voices space, but then the spotlight sheds light on the weirdo nobody wants as part of the group. I mean, Linda was equivalent to an INCEL kid, cheeto-lined lips spewing horrendous sentiments from the background, whining, why don't they see me? Meanwhile, a poor, normal woman is relegated to the backdrop of his abuse.

So, yeah, screw feminism.

Poor Preston's just lost his bud and suffered a serious injury to his leg, and Liddle thinks this is the perfect time to indoctrinate the egotistical, power-hungry womanizer into her feminism. Which is basically subservience. That's not how things work. As a great philosopher once wrote, "women should be subservient to men" not the other way around, not some weirdo-woman-bird-whispering-freakshow with a bloodlust for toxic men.

And, yeah, I was rooting for Preston. I wanted him to survive. He was learning. He was adapting. What he did was in self-defense, alright? I mean, poison his captor and try to escape on a makeshift raft? Yeah, bud, I'd do that, too. He paid his dues. He was a dick but at least he said, "I'm sorry."

So yeah, I was shocked and infuriated by the turn of events. Someone get ahold of this woman. Like right now. This is the reason nobody wants to hear about feminism anymore. It's too extreme. Too painful. Too on-the-nose and abrasive. Too cliche that Liddle gets out and actually achieves her goal and writes a self-help book all about it. Like, leave that to the radical red-pilled men, okay? They've taken claim of it. We don't need an opposing left-extreme cult of man-killing women.

I left the theatres infuriated and red-faced. How dare a female protagonist flip the script on us? What happened to the good old times when women didn't have any rights? I needed my palate cleansed. Immediately. So, I went over to my good friend and I asked him to mansplain what I missed in Send Help.

Send Help is feminist because the main character is a woman and she is getting marginalized at her workplace. It takes the natural world, mother earth if you will, to prove her feminine powers actually exceed that of her patriarchal heteronormative boss. This confirms the woman's power over the man, exemplifying how society ought to be. Yet, despite her feminine power, she cannot overcome the classic pitfall trope of power going to one's head and corrupting her moral high ground.

I didn't want to talk about feminism anymore. I wanted to talk about Liddle's hideous skirt and her inability to comb her hair. I wanted to rant about her audacity, her belief that she could just own Preston, that he was her pet. She was grooming him, trying to reshape him into what she desired; it was disgusting! And, think of the age-gap between them; she's like a million years old now and he's just a middle-aged baby.

The way she stared him down as he bathed, predatorily, objectifying him for her pleasure, exploiting his vulnerabilities. This was not okay.

It's giving Epstein.

And, if that is where feminism is going, I'd rather live my time in patriarchy.