A year and a half ago, I wrote a review of the very fine anthology Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power, edited by Shira Tarrant of CSU Long Beach. I was honored to be among those asked to contribute to the volume, and am glad that the book has been generally very well-received.
Shira — with whom I will be speaking on a panel at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in November — has a new book out which I’ve been tardy in reviewing: Men and Feminism, published by Seal Press as part of its wonderful “Seal Studies” series focusing on various aspects of feminism, history, and society. Barely 160 pages, Men and Feminism is a quick primer rather than an in-depth analysis of every aspect of this fascinating topic. Yet despite its brevity, Shira’s book is a marvel of economy, offering an astoundingly comprehensive survey of the role of men in American feminism from even before the First Wave down to the present.
But Men and Feminism is more than a history text; it offers a short but thorough introduction to the contemporary understanding of how masculinity is constructed in American culture. Shira offers concise summaries of the insights of the most important pro-feminist writers on men’s issues; in a few short pages, the reader is introduced to the work of Michael Flood, Michael Kimmel, Jackson Katz, and Robert Jensen — perhaps the most indispensable theorists and activists doing this work today. In her chapter “Gender Advantage”, Tarrant offers a devastatingly effective case that, despite the shrill claims of right-wing men’s rights activists, male privilege is an omnipresent reality in the lives of Americans of every social and ethnic group. She quotes the aforementioned, and also cites the wonderful blogger Barry Deutsch (of Alas, a Blog) whose “male privilege checklist” is indispensable reading for newcomers to men’s work. For the guys — and the women — in your life who continue to insist that “feminism has gone too far” and that “men have it harder today”, this single chapter in the center of the book offers a bracing corrective.
As Shira says in her introduction, this book is “about what men can offer feminism and what feminism can offer men.” I’ve been a self-described male feminist for over half my life, and I’ve been teaching women’s studies for a third of the time I’ve been on the planet. Though I label myself in many ways — Christian, vegan, husband, father, teacher, mentor, brother, son, progressive, runner — there are precious few terms that have meant as much to me as that of “feminist.” Feminism gave me a chance to be a complete human being rather than a stunted caricature; feminism gives me a chance to explore a full range of emotional possibilities for my life and for my relationship; it is feminism as an idea and the feminists I’ve known throughout my life who extricated me from the straitjacket of masculinity. To paraphrase a line from my favorite Merwin poem, it was and is feminism that helped me “wake and slip from the calendars, from the creeds of difference and contradictions, that were my life and all its crumbling fabrications.”
The feminist movement doesn’t center men, nor should it. But Shira Tarrant’s book suggests that the feminist movement is at its strongest when it reaches out to men as well as women, and when it does so without compromising its message in order to soothe male anxieties. The feminist movement surely doesn’t need men as leaders, but it does need men as activists, particularly as agents of change in the lives of other men. Men and Feminism offers a long list of opportunities for men to get involved in the ongoing struggle for gender justice, and in its short span, makes an irresistible case that men have vital, perhaps even indispensable roles to play in that struggle. For that reason alone, this book is both timely and welcome.
I’ve used other books in the splendid Seal Series in my classes; my women’s history students find Rory Dicker’s A History of US Feminisms to be very helpful. I’ll be incorporating Shira Tarrant’s Men and Feminism the next time I teach my Introduction to Masculinity class; in the meantime, let me shower it and its author with well-deserved praise.
“…despite the shrill claims of right-wing men’s rights activists…”
Shrill? I thought we weren’t supposed to use that word anymore.
Hugo,
indispensable? That list? Seriously? Quite frankly, if anything, that list is a testament to the analytical weakness of the discipline, and apart from that, it’s certainly doing the opposite from what you’re suggesting – explaining men what feminism has to offer. The list is an antagonizer par excellence. And that’s probably *not* an unintended consequence. Glad you found a home in feminism, though. For me, a self proclaimed gender rights movement that doesn’t even theoretically equally center women and men (which feminism doesn’t need to, in your opinion) isn’t actually about gender justice. It’s a part, probably, but clearly not the whole thing.
For some reason, theoretical analyses that repeat the same rhetorical positions often result in unsound statements. It is intellectually dishonest to claim that men of color are “privileged” over the women in their own groups and women in general, particularly when there are dozens of studies demonstrating that gender plays a major role in treatment of those men, especially black and latino males. Someone should tell them that it is not discrimination or oppression that they experience, but rather the benefits of male privilege.
In general, however, any analysis whose premise claims that a broadly over-generalized group’s lives are intrinsically easier and better than another broadly over-generalized group’s starts with weak premise and will have no evidence other than unprovable assumptions and manipulated statistics to support it. It is tactless when men’s advocates do it feminists, and it is tactless when feminists do it to men.
That said, I quite enjoy someone with zero knowledge my life telling me how it has been a bastion of unearned privileges and benefits as there is nothing like being forced to live up to a stunted caricature.
@Toysoldier
“That said, I quite enjoy someone with zero knowledge my life telling me how it has been a bastion of unearned privileges and benefits as there is nothing like being forced to live up to a stunted caricature.”
I had a bit of trouble following you there. Sure, I can see you might find it insulting to be told that you have a whole bunch of unearned privileges and social benefits, especially if you don’t regard your current position in society as especially favourable. (That’s how I felt when I was first shown the ‘privilege list’). But why should being told about privilege force you in any way to live up to a ‘stunted caricature’? Are you saying Hugo is still the ‘stunted cacicature’, and that you’re being forced to live up to him? Or are you saying that the idea of a man embodied by that list is the real caricature?
“In general, however, any analysis whose premise claims that a broadly over-generalized group’s lives are intrinsically easier and better than another broadly over-generalized group’s starts with weak premise and will have no evidence other than unprovable assumptions and manipulated statistics to support it”.
Okay, you do realise that you started out a paragraph criticising generalisations with “in general”, right?
I think the difficulty here is that you take “privilege” to mean something that makes life automatically “easier and better”. I think it’s more accurate to say that privilege is a type of social power, which can be *used* to make your life easier and better, **given the right circumstances**.
If I were to do an analysis of, say, british society in the 19th century – it would not be a weak premise to say that most white men had many more powers than most women, and most white people had many more privileges than persons of colour. This is something accepted by the leading scholars of the period, and backed up by extensive, wide-ranging research.
This is not to say that those men and boys forced to work in appaling conditions as machinists or servants had a magically ‘better’ life just because they had male privilege. But, it would be disingenuous to say that they didn’t have any particular advantage or disadvatage compared with women. For example, they had a much greater social mobility, either through advancement at work or by marrying ‘up’ the social ladder. And, although death through work, espcially if you were a miner or a navvie, was high, your life expectancy as a man was improved because you got better nutrition than the rest of your family, and because you weren’t ever going to die in childbirth (bearing in mind women might have up to 15, excluding miscarriages).
Now, if you accept that it’s fair to use generalisations for this period in time, I think you’d have to concede that’s it’s fair (in principle) to use such generalisations for any period in time.
Toy soldier:
Nobody is suggesting your life, or the lives of all men, is easy; just that statistically, it is likely to be easier than a woman of similar social status to yourself. You weren’t being addressed personally in Hugo’s post.
To take the hispanic etc example you give: Yes, non white men are singled out for treatment which, statistically, is less frequently metred out to white men. But this phenomena also applies to non-white women, who also must deal with the overwhelming likelihood that they will be treated as being lower in status by their non-white brothers, so it’s a double whammy situation.
Without discussing the lives of men and women in more general terms how on earth can we proceed? If we all only relate our personal experiences, how can we address a worldwide issue? When scientists consider nutrition, or other health matters, that’s what they have to do. They don’t just sit down and say, ‘well, I always have porrige for breakfast, and my neighbour has muesli, so everyone in America must eat those things too’. They look at sales figures and statistics for a more complete idea of what is going on, just as social and cultural analysts look at statistics.
Yeah, this is a blog, but to try and disallow iformation other than personal anecdotes and accounts seems pretty unrealistic and narrow.
The Hanged Man,
I do not care about Hugo’s character, but what he presented is a gross oversimplification of men, which could fairly be construed as a stunted caricature. The list is, without question, an incredible stunted caricature that rivals the inexcusable cartoons Warner Brothers produced during the 1940s.
In both its meaning and in the feminist application, which is apparent in Hugo’s post and in matey’s response, “privilege” means a person’s life is intrinsically easier and better than another person’s. If we were to go by your definition, then it is technically possible, indeed probable, that the majority of men do not have privilege as the majority of men lack social power and lack the opportunity to exploit the right circumstances to use it. While some may be able to, it would be unfair to attribute those people’s power to all men.
That said, it is being stated that men and boys magically have better lives just because of male privilege, which you go on to do here: “For example, [men] had a much greater social mobility, either through advancement at work or by marrying ‘up’ the social ladder. And, although death through work, espcially if you were a miner or a navvie, was high, your life expectancy as a man was improved because you got better nutrition than the rest of your family, and because you weren’t ever going to die in childbirth (bearing in mind women might have up to 15, excluding miscarriages).”
The argument you made was literally that working or dying in a mine is better and easier than having a miscarriage or dying in childbirth purely on the grounds that the miner is male and the childbirther is female. There is a difference between acknowledging specific social situations and making over-generalizations. To say that 19th century men had more opportunities than women is a fact. To claim that all 19th century males had it better than all females because they were male is opinion. The criteria is not even based on the actual circumstances or the impact of those situations on the people. It is based on nothing more than gender, which makes it not only completely subjective, but logically unsound as it assumes that, no matter what the situation, the circumstances will always affect women worse.
Matey:
Technically, the claim is still, without any knowledge of it, that my life has been easier than women’s solely because I am male, only now with the backing of a false attribution.
The social issues men of color face are not shared in total with women. Men of color are more likely to face judicial discrimination, police discrimination, job discrimination and educational discrimination specifically because they are male. There are also more educational and job opportunities and services dedicated to helping women of color, especially in working-class and poor communities and for immigrant women, than there are for men of color. Likewise, the gender dynamic in those communities is not exactly one-sided. Many of those women, particularly in the black community, treat the men of their communities as being lower in status as well.
The problem is not generalization, but broad over-generalization. Each culture is different and similar problems develop for different reasons. To equate what occurs in the United States with what occurs in Iran is beyond illogical. However, the major problem is that only one group gets to make generalizations and only they get to dictate the terms of the discussion. Any other generalizations get touted as “shrill claims,” which effectively silences half the people being generalized. Their experiences are simply dismissed as nonsense, regardless of whether they can demonstrate certain things happen primarily to their group. So technically, one is not trying to have a discussion, as a discussion implies a willingness to hear the other side’s perspective, opinions and experiences.
Hanged Man:
Regarding your statement about 19th century Britain: “your life expectancy as a man was improved because …”
Do you have a cite for your claim that life expectancy at age 0 (and thus accounting for the dangers of childbirth) was greater for men than women? I can’t find the UK statistics, but you can see here that in 1850 America, female life expectancy was greater than male life expectancy.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html
Okay, folks, we’re done with the anti-feminist posturing here. This is a review of a book on a blog, and your comments need to be either feminist-friendly or about the merits of a book you’ve actually read.
“privilege†means a person’s life is intrinsically easier and better than another person’s
Well, no. But the Indignant Academic Lecture is so much easier to generate when you pretend that it is, isn’t it?
Hugo,
reminds of something you said last week…
“There is an element, I note of the old “suffering Olympics†problem, in which various constituencies compete for the title of “most maligned†and “most deserving of sympathy.—
What do you expect when you build a philosophy based on such inaccessible, overlapping and elusive concepts? I’d expect this kind of sport.
Toysoldier,
It’s amazing the way you will not read what people are writing. You say that men in the 19th Century had more opportunities then women. That makes men in the 19th Century better off then women in at least one particular way. Having more opportunities is better then having fewer opportunities.
This has been said again and again but to repeat once again, no one is saying that all men where better off then all women. But, if you change only one criteria in a person’s life, gender, that person would be worse off as a woman in various ways. It’s not all ways. However, opportunity and the ability to have some meaningful control over your own life and body are pretty substantial advantages.
Victoria,
actually, it’s not even always better for a person’s mental health (or being better off) to have more choices than less. That very much depends on that person’s ability to deal with the added burden of having to decide between rivalling options. As notably Barry Schwartz pointed out in “the paradox of choice”, if we accept that degrees of freedom are not a free lunch, we have to conclude that, sometimes, less is more. Of course, ir’s still very likely that – based on the level of possible self-actualization in the 19th century – most people would have benefitted from more choice, and thus women would have benefitted more, which, in turn, would suggest that their degrees of freedom of self-actualization were more restricted than mens. But that’s one snapshot.
With respect to pretty much everything else, feminism’s very own standpoint epistemology denies the possibility of women to even make such an assessment. If women have epistemic privielege with respect to being women, men have the same with respect to men. So, what may *look* like privilege from one point of view may (potentially) be seen as oppressive from another. IF we cannot manage to agree on some way to operationalize and measure the variables we will never be able to answer this question. It’s all purely subjective, and, moreover, individualistic. Intersectionality theory is the beginning of thinking about this issue, but if you think it logically through to the end, you’ll end at individualism. For two people, it may be possible to agree on mutual categories, if they have enough time to get to know each other (think Habermas ideal speech), but apart from that? These are philosophically empty concepts, even though they may have a positive aspect if they can make people think about themselves – I think that’s what Hugo refers to above. On the other hand, they can also act as a currency in oppression olympics and be used to shame and silence people who disagree. In a way, in some discussions, it’s a privilege to have no other privilege… right?
Pingback: New Review of Men and Feminism at Shira Tarrant
Victoria: “You say that men in the 19th Century had more opportunities then women. That makes men in the 19th Century better off then women in at least one particular way. Having more opportunities is better then having fewer opportunities.”
– which may lead us to the conclusion many people have already drawn: that men hold privilege in some ways and women hold privilege in others.
Comments were closed a while ago. Now they are open again. Maybe this was a technical glitch on the site?
As I can’t defend myself on the ‘A note on harmonious disagreements thread’: Hugo you failed t odefend me when I was attacked, in a much stronger fashion, by Ren, two other women and one man on a violent porn thread you ran a while back. You intended the thread to give a voice to all women – yet allowed me to be bullied off it by three pro – violent porn women and one pro violent porn man. Even though I requested your support there was none – and even though one other poster commented on the unfairness of their bullying attitude. This incident stopped me from visiting your site for some time – and I can’t see myself coming back here to contribute for quite some time after this latest unfair response.
It isn’t just sex workers who are capable of being treated in an ‘inhumane’ manner, or who need to be given a chance – that was my point, but you seem to have a bias towards sex workers and against those who object to violent porn.
It is deeply unfair to tell me to ‘watch it’ but serve the group who attacked me on your site – which included Ren – no redress. I found Ren’s comments deeply hypocritical given her previous – now seemingly Hugo Schwyzer liscensed – behaviour on your site.
Now actually on topic:
I’d be interested in how accessible this book is to men who don’t identify as feminist. I have someone I’d like to educate more about feminism who I’m pretty sure has never spent much time thinking about it and an approach that deals with issues that affect him directly seems sensible.
I also really like the checklist, which is interesting because the first time I read it I wasn’t impressed. Somethings require time to sink in.
I’d love to add some stuff off topic but Hugo’s blog and Hugo’s perfectly reasonable request to keep on the topic of the post instead of discussion 10009 on the need for feminism. Surely there are other places to have that discussion? Again.