Trudeau Needed Joseph Gordon-Levitt to Help Him Come Out as 'Feminist' and That’s Cool

Is it OK for men to call themselves feminists, or is feminism the exclusive terrain of women where men can, at best, play a supporting role? This is a debate that has raged across seminar tables and campus struggle sessions and internet forums for many years.

Even Justin Trudeau, possibly the world's most famous male feminist, had to grapple with this question. As reported by Althia Raj at HuffPost, the prime minister revealed to a conference of international liberal activists organized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that his wokeness was indeed a hard-won struggle. On stage for a casual armchair discussion with Melinda in New York, Trudeau revealed that while he was a student at McGill back in the 1990s, a female colleague informed him that while male allies and supporters are always welcome, only women can truly be feminists.

Wounded but unbroken, Justin Trudeau kept his fondness for the F-word to himself for many years—until one day in 2014, when he saw a YouTube video of Joseph Gordon-Levitt calling himself a feminist, and realized he would never have to hide again.

Gordon-Levitt taught him that it was OK for men to be out and proud as feminists, and to embrace the value of their social position in the fight for women's emancipation. He then proceeded to tell a crowd of screaming pre-teens that not only can men be feminists, but that men should be feminists. Real men shut down the chauvinistic garbage they hear from other dudes in the locker room or while they're hanging with their bros.

Of course Justin Trudeau did this, because it is so incredibly on brand for the prime minister that it's almost painful. He's playing political popstar to thousands of adoring 12-year-olds by serving them platitudes about the lowest common denominator of human decency, and he's doing it in New York as part of the global ruling class' latest effort to put a smiling face on the terminally rapacious international capitalism we all know and love. This is the Trudeau that everyone loves, and hates, for exactly the same reasons—Trudeau the dazzling celebrity for everyone who earnestly enjoyed Hillary Clinton's new book.

But, eye-rolling aside: credit where credit is due. Besides the goofy superficiality of the prime minister respecting women so much that he needed a famous man to tell him it was OK to publicly respect women, this is alright. He may just be giving a lesson in the absolute base level of human decency—do not be a gross piece of shit to or about women!—but it's still nice to hear the man say it. It's good for the kids, especially given that his American counterpart is maybe the worst role model for anyone, anywhere, doing anything.

Anyways, it's weird to basically write 500 words about how the prime minister is being pretty reasonable by very minimal standards, but here we are. 2017, man. What a goddamn rollercoaster.

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