“After careful consideration, I have concluded that I am not only an expert on feminism, but arguably one of the greatest feminists that has ever lived.”
~The Male Blogosphere
Can men be feminists?
This is the point where your typical leftist male blogger dives into a narcissistic soliloquy of pervy self-exposition, lame excuses for past predatory behavior, pleas for absolution masked as self-discovery, and thinly-veiled demands for praise and cookies.
Fuck that noise. I can’t say “I” and “me” that many times without needing a shower anyway.
Unlike other male bloggers, this is a question that I take very seriously. It is also a question that I do not have the right to answer.
To quote Lavender Blume:
“…members of the oppressor class referring to themselves as the liberators of the people they oppress is itself an act of domination, whether intentional or not. It’s not for men to decide what or who is feminist.”
So instead of the traditional male fiat, I’m gonna post a few thoughts both for and against, then pass the baton to those whose opinion actually matters: the female readers of my blog.
FOR: Men Can Be Feminists
Let’s start with the definition of “feminist”:
fem-i-nist (adj. or n.) a person who advocates feminism.
fem-i-nism (n.) the policy, practice, or advocacy of political, economic and social equality for women.
That is the definition I got off of an old Feminist Majority t-shirt (1). But all mainstream definitions of “feminist” have no restrictions on the gender of human beings allowed to advocate for it.
QED? Not even close.
Given this definition, any man could be a feminist. And if I’m totally honest, any man who wishes to differentiate themselves from a bigoted, savage, vaguely human-shaped pile of wasted organs (also known as a Men’s Rights Advocate) SHOULD be a feminist. Only the most deplorable souls would advocate FOR inequality and injustice. It’s like being pro-slavery, or pro-Nazi, or refuting environmentalism by saying that you hate the Earth and all life on it. Only the most deplorable people would take up such a position.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of deplorables in the world (see the 2016 election)! A recent poll even found that, when the full definition of “feminist” was provided, 39% of US men and 32% of US women STILL said that they were not feminists.
Think about that: over 30% of US women and nearly 40% of US men knowingly declared that they oppose the equality and full humanity of over half of the humans on the planet.
This is the hellish and hostile environment that feminism in the US has to fight in, and has been fighting against for ages. And it was in the middle of such open (and largely male) hostility that the National Organization For Women (NOW) was founded. Right from NOW’s inception, they had to grapple with the issue of whether or not men would be included within its feminist ranks. The debate went all the way to the organization’s very name: should NOW be the “National Organization OF Women” or the “National Organization FOR Women”. Should the organization’s membership be made up solely of women (like many professional women’s organizations, such as the Organization OF Women Architects or the Society OF Women Engineers), or should NOW fight for women but accept anyone, regardless of gender, who supported the advancement of women’s equality?
In the end, NOW chose to be inclusive, and named themselves the National Organization FOR Women. At NOW’s first national conference in 1966, they codified this sentiment of inclusivity in the very first sentence of their Statement of Purpose:
“We, men and women who hereby constitute ourselves as the National Organization for Women, believe that the time has come for a new movement toward true equality for all women in America, and toward a fully equal partnership of the sexes, as part of the world-wide revolution of human rights now taking place within and beyond our national borders.” (2)
It’s interesting to note how significant that little three-letter-word has become over the years. If you do a Google Web, Google Blogs, or Google Books search for “National Organization OF Women”, you’ll run into hate sites with long-winded screeds against the mislabeled organization, such as the following:
[Content Warning: bigotry and hate groups that I will not link to here]
- Jew Watch (anti-semite shitstains: jewwatch.com/jew-organizations-NOW.html)
- Kitchen Cabinet (antifeminists: thekitchencabinet.us/the-national-organization-of-a-few-women-attacks-laura-bush/)
- Liberal Betrayal of America and the Tea Party Firestorm (Tea Party douchebag book on Amazon)
Now why would these assholes change “FOR Women” to “OF Women”? And no, it’s not because they’re too stupid figure out NOW’s true name. They can google “NOW” just like everyone else. No, these antifeminists are well aware of the lies that they are spreading. They have intentionally replaced “FOR women” with “OF women” because they needed to paint NOW as their all-female evil matriarchy within the “Battle of the Sexes”. Antifeminist propaganda requires the monolithic, uniform, and most importantly, unbridgeable separation of men and women that the “Battle of the Sexes” implies. Antifeminist ideology falls apart when confronted with the diverse spectrum of people who make up the National Organization For Women, nor can it cope with a reality where people across all genders fight for feminism.
This is because the philosophical root of antifeminism is the belief that biology is destiny. Antifeminism requires that gender stereotypes are taken as absolute doctrine: God invented Man as slavemaster to rule over women (Genesis 3: 16) and Woman as slave his helper (Genesis 2: 18). Homosexuality cannot be normal. Trans-anything cannot be natural. Genderqueer cannot exist. Any deviation from traditional gender norms must be a sickness.
And feminists cannot be anyone but women. Because in their fanatic, cult-like worldview, men are simply hard-wired to abuse and oppress women.
There is a reason why antifeminists refer to men who support women as “castrati” or “manginas”, because they cannot believe in the possibility that men could even choose, let alone desire, equally with women over a brutal gender dichotomy. In their sick and twisted minds, all men would naturally and instinctively side with their own gender in support of the violence and oppression that the antifeminists themselves are wedded to.
Unfortunately, anyone who believes that men cannot be on the side of feminists are inadvertently supporting the same ideology: the ideology that gender defines what humans can and cannot be. And as Andrea Dworkin pointed out, that is a very dangerous ideology to cling to:
“In considering male intellectual and scientific argumentation in conjunction with male history, one is forced to conclude that men as a class are moral cretins. The vital question is: are we to accept their world view of a moral polarity that is biologically fixed, genetically or hormonally or genitally (or whatever organ or secretion or molecular particle they scapegoat next) absolute; or does our own historical experience of social deprivation and injustice teach us that to be free in a just world we will have to destroy the power, the dignity, the efficacy of this one idea above all others?” [Emphasis added]
To win the war against Patriarchy, the very idea of gender essentialism must be destroyed in its entirety. Every person who refutes the horrific ideology of gender essentialism, who lives a life outside of the gender binary, who stands opposed to the global humanitarian crisis that is patriarchal oppression -be they female, male, or anyone in between or beyond- is an advocate of feminism, and thus also a feminist!
Because it is only when we come together to erase the artificial gender binary, when we come together to form a fully equal partnership of all sexes, that we can hope to end the cultural legitimacy of male superiority and male privilege, and all the pain and suffering that it causes.
AGAINST: Men Cannot Be Feminists
Gender essentialism is a lie, and any man with a soul should advocate for feminism and against the gender binary. But that does not mean men can call themselves “feminists” without consequences. When everyone believes in a false idea, it does not make that idea true, it makes that idea dangerous.
The lie of the gender binary is so powerful that it creates its own social reality, with very real and potentially deadly consequences for everyone, especially women, who defy it. Men who choose to ignore the reality of gender (3), artificial or not, will harm women in the process. And that includes men giving themselves the label of feminist.
Yes, gender essentialism is a myth, Men are absolutely not genetically hard-wired to be misogynists.
Men are raised to be misogynists.
Under Patriarchy, the rearing of boys and girls is so universal, so dogmatically homogenous, and so draconianly policed that even slight deviations from gender norms have generated global outrage. When a baby in Canada was raised without knowledge of its gender, it became an international controversy! The decision of one family to forgo strapping a pink or blue bonnet on a bald baby’s head led to their older kids having to, “hopscotch over an NBC executive camped on their front porch”.
And there is so little variation (and so much policing!) in the raising of male children that parents begin to panic when a boy dares to cry, or loves their mother a little too much, or gawd forbid decides to play with something pink.
And that upbringing includes a complete and thorough indoctrination into male privilege. Men are normalized into a life of injustice: from having more opportunities than women, to believing that they understand the world better than women, to being able to ignore women’s suffering, and learning to feel comfortable with their privileged status above women. Sabotaged from birth at the moment a blue bonnet is slapped on their heads, men are kept in a pristine state of oppressive expectation and normalized domination until they are (typically) buried in the ground next to a woman who was forced to take their last name.
Male privilege is a social disease that rides within the minds of men and surrounds us everywhere we go. This social conditioning is so strong that men’s actions will default to privileged actions, even when we don’t want them to. If you are a man, it is 100% likely that you have, routinely:
- Abused male privilege without realizing it.
- Treated gender inequality as normal, and treated actual gender equality as being biased in favor of women.
- Responded with knee-jerk defensiveness to others calling out our privilege
And if you somehow manage to act in a way that doesn’t abuse male privilege, don’t worry, everyone else around you (both men and women) will automatically invoke male privilege for you, because:
“It’s not about one person saying or doing one thing, it’s about a whole lot of people saying and doing things that, collectively, end up giving men an overall advantage.”
Men will always get the advantage of male privilege, whether asked for or not. You don’t have to insist that your wife take your last name, she will have been raised to accept your name and both your families will likely expect it. You don’t have to ask to be paid more than the women in your office, it’s probably happening anyway. (And since it’s taboo to discuss wages, everyone will pretend it’s not happening!) And once you’ve been paid more, you don’t have to insist on doing less than your fair share of housework, you can just sit back and wait for society to ignore you and come down hard on your wife for not picking up the slack.
And when it comes to men and feminism, male privilege is still a barrier. Take something as simple as speaking. How can men and women discuss equality of the sexes when the speech patters we were raised on are unequal by design? Men are raised from an early age to treat conversations as debates. We are taught to speak loudly, and with rock-solid conviction.
All.
The.
Fucking.
Time.
In contrast, women are socialized to be silent and deferential when a man is talking, waiting patiently until they are done. Women are also trained to soften their speech with caveats and qualifications, and to apologize often. Now when the purpose of a conversation is the pursuit of truth, these socializations make conversations more open and efficient.
But in co-ed groups, these socializations hamstring women in ways that men have been raised their entire lives to exploit.
Our highly gendered social norms of conversation are so unequal that even educated men are caught frequently mansplaining to women. It’s like going to High Tea with a bullhorn: the civil conversation is ruined once the first word is uttered. Every man enters a co-ed conversation with the social equivalent of a bullhorn, and how do you put the bullhorn down when you are the bullhorn?
You can’t.
And just like how male privilege cannot be turned off, the term “feminist man” cannot be cleansed. Whether you follow the broad definition of the term “feminist” or believe that the use of the term “feminism” by men is an oppressive act, the fact is that the well is already poisoned. Society and the media have already awarded the “feminist man” label to a bevy of misogynist male douchebags:
- Joss Weldon frequently undermines, abuses, and assaults his female characters, yet he is still being extolled as one of Hollywood’s biggest “feminist” directors.
- Hugo Schwyzer was a prolific “male feminist” who taught gender studies at Pasadena City College. He’s also a predatory monster who tried to murder his girlfriend.
- James-fucking-Dean, a male porn star who was also called a feminist, has long promoted sexual violence and was outed for raping his girlfriend.
- The Dalai Lama (yes, that Dalai Lama!) said that any future female Dalai Lama “must be very attractive, otherwise not much use.” Yet after that douchey remark he has still been called a feminist.
- Pope Francis, I kid you not, was declared by the Washington Post to be a feminist pope!!! (4) That is the not-so-liberal head of one of the oldest and most vehemently anti-women’s-agency patriarchies on the planet being called a “feminist” by a major news outlet! He still opposes the idea of women ever becoming priests too.
The term “feminist man” carries the same taint as Nice Guy™, and will not be redeemed by men who actually believe in feminism: the “feminist man” misogynists already outnumber the good guys and have far better deals with sexist news outlets.
So what do we do about it?
Personally, I like the terms “pro-feminist” and “feminist ally”. As long as we are careful to avoid the trap of gender essentailsim, “Feminist ally” acknowledges the deep social inequities between the genders. And while nine out of ten male feminists probably aren’t, few sexist dudes and gaslighting male predators can stomach playing second-string to women. So we could let the term “Male feminist” become a social honey-pot for domineering assholes, while “pro-feminist” and “feminist ally” can become filters for the real thing…
…at least, until the Hugo Schwyzers of the world figure out the new paradigm.
And that’s the problem with labels: exploitative men will always adapt to the words of the day, and the sexist mass media will always spin them against feminists. We live in a world that would make George Orwell puke: where the mass media rebrands white supremacy as “alt-right” and basic human civil rights as “identity politics”. The label “feminist”, let alone “feminist man”, is just another toy for media moguls to play with.
But that’s been true for ages, and anyone whose eyes are open to the evils of Patriarchy has long ago lost their faith in the veracity of society’s labels. Like gender, labels are constructs. Like gender, labels have incredible power, but it is a power typically wielded by the dominant society against the oppressed. This is one of the reasons so many “Can men be feminists?” think pieces exist in the first place: feminist know that labels created by the oppressed shall become the self-certified “credentials” of assholes looking to abuse and silence them, and so they are policing their borders.
So….can men be feminists?
You tell me. It’s still an open question. Last time I did a poll of my female readers they were okay with the name and setup used by this blog. But times change, and I am happy to change again with them. So let me know in the comments below what you think.