Girlfriends, Boyfriends, Feminism: a Response to Gwynn (reprinted)

From April 2008.

A reader named Gwynn writes:

I’ve been thinking about you recently as my boyfriend and I have been talking about feminism.

I guess my sort of general question is, without doing all of his work for him, or letting him off the hook, how does a girlfriend help a boyfriend with feminism?

One of the problems in any age-disparate relationship — particularly when the older partner is committed to a spiritual or political ideal about which the younger knows little — is that a kind of complicated mentoring relationship can develop. The younger partner, so often infatuated with the older, can easily associate their new love’s beliefs with the new love himself or herself. In other words, the interest in feminism could (and in Gwynn’s boyfriend’s case, I don’t know for sure) become inextricably linked with Gwynn, and his receptivity to feminism thus rises and falls with the status of the relationhip. That’s always problematic.

But there are two basic issues here: how to get young men to understand — and embrace — feminism, and how can a romantic partner help in that process, if at all?

Whether we’re talking about sons, boyfriends, brothers or friends, the best way to introduce men to feminism is to give them access to some basic feminist primers. A great place to start that wasn’t mentioned in Gwynn’s letter: Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog. It’s the best “starting point” on the web; just the FAQs section alone is wonderfully educational for the newbie. It’s non-threatening, but it also doesn’t dumb down feminist thinking. If Gwynn’s boyfriend isn’t ready to call himself a feminist because he doesn’t “know enough” yet, FF101 is an excellent site for him to use to help him make that decision.

For young men who are interested in gender justice, there are many fine examples on the ‘net and elsewhere of men “doing feminism”. Some good blogs (with their own blogrolls that go many fine places) include Feminist Allies, No Cookies for Me, and Diary of a Black Male Feminist. There’s the wonderful new Shira Tarrant anthology, Men Speak Out, which I’ve reviewed here. There’s XY Online, run by the splendid Michael Flood. The links alone could keep you busy for a year.

But Gwynn is asking for more than links and references. The larger question is a tougher one: how does a woman who is a feminist inspire or guide or challenge a male partner to accept feminism?

The dynamics of sexual and romantic relationship often make this task particularly challenging. A man falling in love with a feminist woman might be initially very receptive to feminism, because he’s receptive to everything and anything about his new lover. If she likes cheese, he likes cheese; if she’s a feminist, he’s going to be open to it as well. The problem is obvious: when we’re smitten with someone and become smitten with their passions as well, our newfound ideological commitments become inextricably bound up with the relationship itself. And whenever the relationship wanes or ends, the newfound interest in cheese or comic books or feminism vanishes along with it.

The most important thing a feminist woman can say to a man she’s dating who, like Gwynn’s boyfriend, isn’t sure about this whole “feminist thing” is: “Don’t become a feminist to make me happy. Don’t just see feminism as a way of treating me as an equal. Feminism is about me, and it’s about us, but it’s also about the way you interact with every other woman and man in the world.”

I’m convinced that the best test of a man’s feminism is not how he treats the women he already respects and loves: his girlfriend or wife, his sister, his mom. It’s about how he treats the women he doesn’t know, or has been trained not to respect: Hillary Clinton, sex workers, migrant laborers. His feminism, if it’s more than skin deep, will also impact how he interacts with men. I’ve always insisted that the “acid test” for male feminists is whether they live out their feminism when they are alone with other men, with no women around.

So how do you “get” a man to go to that place? The simplest answer is also the hardest one: insist on it. That doesn’t mean insisting that he subscribe to Bitch Magazine and learn to talk knowingly about continental feminist theory. What Gwynn — and any feminist woman dating an as-of-yet-not-feminist man — can do is make clear that behavior matters more than intellectual assent. What boyfriend reads may or may not help him, but how he speaks and how he acts matters. That doesn’t mean just “treating women with respect”; after all, even conservative anti-feminists make a great deal of noise about respect. It means negotiating an egalitarian life together, and it means a willingness to, at the least, support his feminist girlfriend’s commitments without mockery or indifference.

Insecure young men in American society live in fear of being labelled as “whipped”. To be “whipped”, in the eyes of other men, is to have noticeably altered one’s behavior as a result of being in a relationship with a woman. Those men who are still stuck in a prolonged adolescence often worry a great deal about “losing their identity” in marriage and relationship; they fear a kind of psychic neutering will occur if they give too much ground and make too many compromises. Their fear, of course, is usually less about actually changing and more about the kinds of disparaging reactions they’ll get from other men. An insecure young man might worry that if he “comes out” as a feminist, especially as a result of being in a relationship with a feminist woman, he’ll be greeted with howls of derision from male buddies and eye-rolling skepticism from other women in his life.

But one of the reasons we are called to be in relationships is so that we can grow and change and leave behind “childish things.” There is nothing more childish than the anxiety that others — a brother, sister, mother or buddy — will suggest that you’ve had your “balls cut off.” Adult men, as opposed to teenage boys, need to be past that homosocial fear.

Sometimes, only those who “know” us in the biblical sense also know us well enough to help us transform and grow. This doesn’t mean it’s uniquely women’s task to change men; it means that enduring commited relationships have, as one of their primary purposes, a crucible effect. In the crucible of a lasting relationship, a lot of our old prejudices and insecurities ought to get melted away. If we aren’t being changed, if we aren’t being forced to do some painful growth as a result of being in a relationship, it’s probably time to break up and look for someone who can and will offer a more significant challenge.

So the question for Gwynn’s boyfriend is a simple one: is he ready and able to grow and change? If he says, with the typical petulance of the puerile, “I’m fine the way I am”, then it’s time for Gwynn to move along. There’s nothing “fine” about the casual bigotry and sexism that infects so much of our modern world; overcoming it is exhausting, exciting, joyous, and overwhelmingly difficult work. If being in love with Gwynn has sparked an interest in becoming a different kind of man, one more complete in his humanness, then their relationship is doing its work.

Healing the world is vital work. If we spend a sizeable amount of energy on getting a stubborn partner to share our view of the world, we waste precious resources that might better be put to use elsewhere. With that in mind, the best answer I can give to Gwynn’s question: “how does a girlfriend help a boyfriend with feminism” is a simple one. She helps by pointing him towards the right resources, and then behaving towards him as if he already has become a feminist. Assume he is one; treat him as if he already “gets it”. And when and if he lapses back into anti-feminist behavior, make it clear that part of being in a relationship with a feminist is being one too.