Janice Fiamengo is one of the go-to “researchers” among MRAs when it comes to citing an “expert” on feminism to the extent that one of her articles got hosted by kosher right outlet PJ Media and, despite MRAs circle-jerking over her, most feminists have barely heard of her. Indeed, I can only think of one feminist response to her, and it amounts to just an answer post at Quora:
https://www.quora.com/What-arguments-do-you-have-for-or-against-Professor-Janice-Fiamengos-view-on-feminism/answer/Frederic-Christie?ch=17&oid=27190247&share=dd688188&srid=3gfRuZ&target_type=answerI should also note that, in spite of her many interviews with various outlets across the Canadian and American right-o-sphere, she still remains an obscure figure and you’ll never see her ever debate her views on video. Hmm, wonder why? 🤔
I wouldn’t talk about her if it wasn’t for the fact that she is one of the most cited female apologists for the manosphere, and her audience is mostly made up of run-of-the-mill chuds and MAGApedes who circle jerk over her as shown by how almost every result shows her works whenever you type her name on search engines.
Now, while I’m unfamiliar with her academic work in English literature back when she was professor of English at Ottawa university, I am familiar with her anti-feminist polemics and overall right-liberal takes on other matters.
So, first let’s get out of the way and say that she does point out many flaws in the history of feminism such as the disdain towards men shown by even some of the first-wave feminist figures, the elite-driven nature of feminism that runs contrary to the rugged individual image common in the mainstream, as well as the anti-social behaviour they display since the second wave.
But with that said, that’s where my praises for her ends, since I’m really critical of her since despite her facade she is merely an ideologue that uses factoids to spin a narrative that fits into the chudintern’s incessant culture war paradigm.
A key example would be her take on Emmeline Pankhurst and her mail bombing campaign that led to her arrest, as well as her securing female suffrage in exchange for promoting the British empire’s “white feather” campaign as part of the recruitment drive for WW1. If you read Janice’s article, her adherence to Whig history is blatant as she implies that women’s suffrage would have happened anyway because Britain just loves to give rights to whoever, as if history is one of progress barring a few hiccups, and the same theme would be reiterated on Janice’s article about the death of Queen Elizabeth II where she admonished critics of the British empire’s for failing to see how much progress it brought. In other words, “west dindu nuffinz cuz liberalizm”.
This trend towards ideological narratives also shows in her “analyses” of feminism as a whole where she cherrypicks various statements from some feminists to try to discredit the whole movement as anti-“white male”, which leads me to the next example. Namely, Janice’s bizarre obsession with portraying the feminist movement as “anti-west” by basing it on the few fringe undercurrents within second and third wave feminism like Shulamith Firestone et al. as shown by her articles on Iran and Gaza where her ideological zealotry shines through. She effectively tries to communicate that western feminists are somehow “soft” on the Islamic republic of Iran (the latest anti-government protests preceding Trump’s 2026 war) and Hamas (specifically, the “Oct 7th mass rape” hoax) because they are “brown people” so western feminists are less willing to attack them compared to white men…
Obviously, to create such a false narrative, Janice has to ignore both how historically then and now feminism has often been a tool for western imperialism that only ends up with disempowering global south women who weren’t already part of the upper and middle classes, as well as the fact that western feminists in general aren’t sympathetic to Iran and Palestine since they went along with the allegations of mass rape. In fact, genuine leftists were the only ones pushing back on said narratives.
Third but not least, what irks me the most is also what alienates me from most MRAs, and that would be the fact that, for all the problems they (often rightfully) point out with feminism and how misandristic the modern west is, their solutions are just tradcon-adjacent BS like “we need to restore masculine ideals” whilst rejecting welfare programs as “socialism” and promoting laziness. Indeed, despite pointing to many flaws in feminist thinking, it seems they are incapable of escaping the capitalistic libertarian paradigm they’ve built their entire ideology over, thus showing that they don’t give a shit about men after all.
Now, is she a racist? Not really, but a “liberal racist” perhaps insofar that she externalises misogyny to colored men when it suits her culture war-type slop, as well as when crafting “white men are the most oppressed victims in the west!” Agitprop, but overall she’ll defend men in general when it suits her (e.g., when being sympathetic to the mixed-race perp behind the École Polytechnique massacre).
All in all, Janice is a hack who mostly parrots the talking points of other zio goyslave moids who are as insufferable as the very feminists they love to hate, and despite her credentials and lack of critique from feminists the fact that there are no debates with her is very sus.