One question that those of us who are male feminists are bound to get asked over and over again: “What’s there for men in feminism?” The Chief asks a version of that question below Monday’s post:
Hugo, particularly, loves to preach on how men CAN change. He’s weak on providing the reasons why we SHOULD. To put it crassly, what’s in it for us?
I suppose I could quote Aristotle to the effect that virtue is its own reward, but something tells me that wouldn’t go very far.
I do answer this question regularly, as I’m asked it semester in and semester out. As most any serious feminist will tell you, feminism is about reconfiguring the culture in order to create greater equality between men and women. For most feminists, it’s also about liberating both men and women from the chains of sexism and patriarchy. As countless men in the pro-feminist movement have pointed out, oppressing women doesn’t make most men nearly as happy as one might imagine. We make a huge mistake when we assume that to be complicit in injustice brings joy and fulfillment. Yes, the benefits of living in a sexist culture are there for most men — but most men are so accustomed to taking these benefits for granted that they derive little if any sense of satisfaction from their own privilege.
When I meet with young men, I hear the same lament over and over again: “Why won’t women trust me? Why won’t women smile at me? I”m not a predator, I’m just a nice guy. Why am I always guilty until proven innocent?” I’ve answered those questions before: read “Guilty until Proven Innocent” and “No Right to be Assumed Harmless”.
When men work to transform themselves, to become genuine egalitarians in the bedroom, the boardroom, and cleaning the bathroom, they make the world a better place for themselves as well as for the women with whom they interact. When men challenge other men’s catcalls, porn use, leering stares and rude comments, they work to eliminate the very things that cause so many women to be justifiably mistrustful of so many men. Many men’s rights activists (MRAs) decry the epidemic of t-shirts that say things like “Boys are mean, throw rocks at them” or simply “Boys lie.” I’m not fond of those shirts myself, and I don’t think they’re in the least bit funny. But I recognize that in addition to reflecting an adolescent desire for attention, they reflect a legitimate anger, a legitimate fear, a legitimate frustration on the part of many women with men.
Quite a few men I know would love to be trusted more. They’d love to have their friendly “hellos” returned; they’d like it if everyone, male or female made eye contact with them and returned their smiles. They’re depressed by the way so many women respond to them, with guarded distance. Some of them become angry at women, blaming the targets of sexism for not being more warm and open to those who might well hurt them further. But the wiser ones understand that creating a world where men are trusted, believed, and smiled at involves changing the basic rules of masculine behavior.
One of the cardinal rules of American maleness is “Don’t call another man on how he treats women.” Men co-sign each other’s bad behavior far too frequently; the end result is that the “nice guy” who doesn’t harass women is rightly lumped into the same group as the jerk who does. Boys, if you’re not actively part of the solution you are — at best — passively part of the problem. If you’re respectful, friendly, honest and thoughtul to women in your interactions with them, but you remain silent while your male friends and relations behave otherwise, then you’ve got no right to complain about women’s suspicion!
I’m tired of living in a world where a man who wants to work with small children is automatically presumed to be a pedophile; I’m tired of living in a world where folks worry that the embraces I give the boys and girls in my youth group have a perverse, ulterior motive. But simply pleading my innocence isn’t enough. The incidences of abuse, the incidences of betrayal, the incidences of profound irresponsibility on the part of men in positions of trust aren’t just anecdotal — they’re overwhelming. And the answer for those of us who are trustworthy and long to have others know it isn’t to blame other people for being suspicious. It’s to work doubly, triply hard to create an authentically feminist culture in which men hold each other accountable, in which bad male behavior is immediately called out by other men.
In his comment, The Chief compares men to wolves. Just as its not easy to make a carnivorous wolf into a herbivore, he doesn’t think it’s easy — or even desirable — for men to change their essential nature. (I’m not a great believer in anyone’s essential nature, and have written umpteen times of the ways in which biology is used to excuse passivity and defeatism in the face of sexual injustice.) But it’s true that a great many women do see men as being like wolves, and a great many men do behave in ways that give women reasons for thinking that lupine comparison is apt. The damage predatory male behavior does to women is obvious. But what’s less obvious is that the “lone wolf” of lore is a symbol of isolation. I know a lot of guys who’ve tried to be lone wolves, tried to live up to the masculine ideal of the strong, silent, sturdy oak. Most of them, as Thoreau pointed out, lead lives of quiet desperation. Most of them, especially as they age, cope with an alternating sense of numbness and profound pain.
A sexist culture leaves men cut off from their own pain. Years and years of hearing “boys don’t cry” leaves many men in their teens and twenties in a state of permanent numbness, with only anger and lust as identifiable emotions still flowing through them. Feminism — with its insistence that men are as entitled to emotional expression as women — liberates men from the awful standard of “lone wolf-hood”. It allows us to stop being ciphers and become human beings, complete and whole and kind and good. It allows us to balance our strength with our humanity.
I am a feminist because I see organized feminism as one of the great vehicles for social justice and personal transformation. I am a feminist because I want to see a world in which both men and women are free to become complete people. When we shut down women’s anger, women’s desire, women’s impetuousness — we create half-people. When we shut down men’s tenderness, men’s vulnerability, men’s empathy — we create half-people. Half people alternately long for a partner to complete them, and resent the hell out of those partners for being able to do for them what they could not do for themselves. It makes for a pretty miserable existence, characterized by the strange and odious way in which men and women simultaneously long for and loathe each other. That’s not nature, that’s a social construct that needs to be dismantled.
I’m a feminist because I want to create a world where men and women alike can realize their potential; I’m a feminist because I believe that our potential is not directed or confined by our chromosomes or our secondary sex organs. My penis and my Y chromosome do not destine me to be unreliable, predatory, and emotionally inarticulate. My wife’s uterus and her estrogen do not limit the horizons of her professional or athletic ambition. Feminism is, as we’ve all heard, the radical notion that women are people. But it’s also the radical notion that men are people too, complete human beings, with the same range of emotions and the same capacity for empathy and self-control as any woman.
Feminism frees men to become truly complete human beings. And there’s an amazing payoff in that.
Note: You don’t have to be a feminist to comment here, but misogynist broadsides and anti-feminist bromides — as well as personal attacks — are out.
