5 Feet of Fury

Patrick West on Justin Trudeau: ‘Never trust a man who says he’s a feminist’

Patrick West writes:

Trudeau is a good-looking chap, and that he has marked himself to be a compassionate feminist must make him the tastiest catch in geopolitics today. Right, ladies?

Wrong. Never trust a man who says he’s a feminist. The words ‘I’m a feminist’ uttered from the mouths of males is up there with ‘I love refugees in Calais’ and ‘I love the NHS’ in terms of self-regarding attention-seeking masquerading as high-minded altruism. And ‘I’m a feminist’ has an added layer of menace, being the words every young man has tried at least once in an effort to seduce a woman. The pronouncement is the trademark of creeps.

Then there are men who protest they are ‘feminists’. Beware such insidious guile. In the same week Trudeau boasted as much, Canada also signed an arms deal with Saudi Arabia – that bastion of gender equality – worth $15 billion. ‘I’m a feminist’ is gesture politics at its most mendacious.