A HuffPost Live conversation about the contemporary meaning of masculinity crossed the line into hostile territory when ex-Vice bad boy Gavin McInnes lashed out at a female panelist and called her a "f**king idiot."
McInnes, who co-founded Vice but left the company in 2008 and has since founded website StreetCarnage, joined a discussion about the changing definition of what it means to be a man and spoke about the importance of an innate toughness within all men. When host Ricky Camilleri pointed out that women often "embrace toughness" and are the primary breadwinners in their homes, McInnes asserted that the majority of women don't actually want to attain power the way men do:
Women are forced to pretend to be men. They're feigning this toughness. They're miserable. Study after study has shown that feminism has made women less happy. They're not happy in the work force, for the most part. I would guess 7 percent [of women] like not having kids, they want to be CEOs, they like staying at the office all night working on a proposal, and all power to them. But by enforcing that as the norm, you're pulling these women away from what they naturally want to do, and you're making them miserable.
McInnes got some much-needed pushback from Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, who said she is "pretty darn happy" as a feminist and accused McInnes of "presenting what's wrong with masculinity."
"It's just a sign of weakness and fear and at least some kind of figurative impotence to say, 'No, it has to be like this, I demand that it stay like this, and all of you who are doing things that are different are messing with nature,'" Franks said.
As the segment came to an end, McInness unleashed a tirade about "40-somethings" who he says pursue a career and end up frantically taking hormones and searching for surrogates to have children. See his outburst in the video above.
Watch the full segment on today's definition of masculinity today at HuffPost Live HERE:
Clarification: This post has been updated to reflect that McInnes left Vice in 2008.
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