Feminists treat men badly. It’s bad for feminism.
The fixation on men behaving badly distracts from more fundamental issues.
By Cathy Young
right on the money
:bravo:
More complaining from people who don't WANT to understand.
The link this article provides to Straight White Boys Texting, as a supposed example of feminists just being mean about men, is actually fully of men sending gross, objectifying messages to women they don't even know, demanding boobs, harping on race, and describing how they want to pound the **** out of them. Why shouldn't they be complaining about that, exactly? Why shouldn't men be expected to just be civilized to women online?
The fact that this writer, and you, don't see the problem with that, is exactly the problem.
Feminism does include men. Lots of men are feminists.
Feminism also includes male issues. I've seen lots of feminist discussion and action about issues men have on a number of issues, from mental health to child custody.
I've had a lot of success talking to men I know who are about as high on the privilege ladder as it's possible to be about various concepts of social inequality, and I've never had one tell me I'm shaming them. I have had a couple, if they had never thought about these issues before, feel sort of guilty, but I also have a whole spiel prepared on exactly why they feel that way and why they shouldn't, which sorts that problem out quickly. They never walk away from me still feeling that way.
It is normal and expected that, when hearing about these things for the first time, a decent person may be tempted to feel shame, or anger, depending on what side of the ladder they're on. It's an expected reaction of our empathic minds, which still think more like we live in small tribes than the massive societies that we actually do. So they tend to think, on a subliminal level, "This is the group I belong to (which is implicitly small and therefore I have an implicitly large role in the reason it is the way it is), so I feel bad."
Wrong response. We live in massive societies. An individual can have almost no role in any of it, no matter where they're born in the kyriarchy. We shouldn't drag ourselves over the coals for beliefs we may have picked up from society when we were still in diapers. We all have those things -- even those of us who have been in activism for 10 years, as I have. We just have to do the best we can, and try to improve day by day.
Being helpful from a privileged place in the kyriarchy (and pretty much all of us are privileged in one way or another) is actually easy. Spend some time learning about the issues affecting people on the other side of the ladder, be a good listener, and observe yourself for what sorts of messages and beliefs you've adopted over the years. Be supportive and understanding for people you know who are facing struggles that you perhaps don't. Easy.
But, here's the rub. The men I know in my own life who are really high on the privilege ladder are still fundamentally nice people, even if, when we meet, they are totally unaware of the problems affecting other groups.
But, in larger society, men behaving badly are frankly just all over the place. Trump talks about women life furniture, or sometimes even just animals who shouldn't be freely roaming in public. So do many of his supporters. Men online stalk, harass, and bully women simply for existing in certain arenas, like gaming or sports, even if they have said absolutely nothing about politics or feminism -- just existing. MRA's have thousands of advocates for legalizing domestic violence and rape, exclusively against women. How can we possibly move on to stuff like workplace equality when we're still dealing with men who don't see women as people, much less equal colleagues?
Starting with a slate like that, and a serious contender for the presidency who is probably the most open misogynist I've seen in presidential politics in my entire life, what do you expect us to focus on?
It isn't because most men are bad. However, for some reason, the guys who ARE bad get a TON of airtime. For some reason, our society seeks out the bad ones and gives them a soapbox to scream on. For some reason, they are able to take over a lot more social time than their numbers should reasonably allow.
That's worth talking about. Even as men as a whole continue to become generally nicer and more equality-minded people, why do we still hunt out the crappy ones and throw power and microphones at them?
When most men are decent, why do people like Trump wind up being serious presidential nominees?
Stop hunting out bad men to support, and we'll stop talking so much about them. I'd love to move on and focus on more tangible things. But you're not letting me, or the majority of decent men, do that.
