Feminist women do not need men; they are self-sufficient.
Although I do find that some women do display a haughty career-minded aura around themselves, I think the men's discontent of feminism is not due to the women's career goals, but rather due to the women's haughtiness over career ambitions, emphasis on their superiority over the men, or expectation that men should earn more than them. Haughtiness is never a virtue, because it indicates that the person thinks she or he is better than other people in some way. No one wants to feel inferior, when there is no justifiable reason for the inferiority. Therefore, I believe that men should direct their anger towards the haughtiness of some career-minded professional women, not towards women's career ambitions.
Feminism empowers women and emasculates men.
Although I admire that feminism has given women a lot of opportunity and power, I think it does so without changing male gender norms. In fashion, women are allowed to wear dresses, skirts, jewelry, makeup, whatever they want. Men, on the other hand, get labelled with pejorative terms if they wear feminine attire. In work, women are allowed to work as a homemaker or work professionally, and they receive a lot of support from other women.
Men, on the other hand, get ridiculed for occupying a traditionally feminine gender role in the home. In competitions, women experience no taunts from their peers for losing to a competitor, while men, especially if they lose to a female, experience taunts that suggest inferiority. I believe that raising the status of women is a good thing; however, not doing anything for men is doing a disservice to feminism, because it gives feminism a bad name. Affected men will look at feminism and grumble about the inequalities, even though they should really direct their anger toward feminism's weak spots and failures to correct pre-existing gender norms.
If feminism truly holds egalitarian values, then feminists should help men better themselves and reshape the gender roles of men, so that men in traditionally female positions do not feel so emasculated or threatened by the presence of a feminist. Modern feminism should not only be about women's issues (i.e. access to birth control for low-income women, education for women in developing countries); it should also pay attention to men's issues (i.e. men who cross-dress, effeminate men, men as homemakers).
Feminist women are pro-choice. Abortion is bad, so condoning feminism is bad.
The problem with this belief is that it connects feminism and being pro-choice. First of all, those two things are not the same. In the past, many feminists were anti-abortion, and today, many feminists are anti-abortion. It's just that today pro-abortion proponents frame the anti-abortion position in a way to make it sound anti-woman. Feminism is a widespread value, whether explicitly acknowledged or not, so making the pro-life position anti-feminist or anti-woman would win votes from women. In reality, the pro-choice/pro-life abortion debate is not as easy or clear-cut as people make it to be.
If you examine the pro-choice position and take it to the extreme, then you have to imagine a society where women are allowed to have an abortion for any reason or even at a whim. If a woman's birth control fails, then the woman would use abortion as birth control. And if abortion-as-birth-control is legal, then why not just legalize infanticide? Is the differentiation between human being and the process of becoming a human being really that important?
If a woman does not want a baby girl, then she would abort the female fetus. If a woman rapes a man and gets pregnant, then he may not have a say in the abortion, because abortion is "her choice". Pro-choice proponents may argue that pregnancy does a lot of changes to the woman's body, so women are entitled to choose to abort. However, in a case where a female rapes a male and gets pregnant, this implies that the woman's life is placed on a higher priority than a man's life.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not arguing for pro-life, because I am criticizing pro-choice. Rather, I believe that both sides do not explore nightmarish scenarios and frame their opponents' positions in a bad light. This polarization of politics is doing no one good. And abortion is not a feminist issue; it is a political issue.
Conclusion
Feminism should not be about making men and women equal by empowering women and doing nothing for men. Feminism should be about making men and women equal by empowering women and changing male gender norms (making traditionally feminine gender roles more acceptable for men to preserve their dignity). Changing male gender norms so that traditionally feminine gender roles are more acceptable for men exalts the activities that were long maintained by women, so if those activities were exalted, then perhaps men wouldn't feel inferior if they were doing something girly.
By the latter definition of feminism, men and women should both be feminists. As feminists, men and women should be free to be pro-choice and pro-life. Finally, both men and women should recognize the importance of women in the workforce. If a man loses his job and his wife has only been trained with proper homemaking skills, then she's not going to be very productive outside the home. The blame should not be on women's entering the workforce, but on women who are just arrogant and proudly show off that arrogance to get an extra boost to their ego.
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