Archive for the 'Male feminists' Category

Claiming the name

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 07, 2009
in Feminism and Male feminists
. 11 Comments

I got a message on Facebook from Delia, asking a familiar question:

I’ve got a good friend of mine, a man, who is absolutely supportive of feminist causes. But he really dislikes the word feminist, and prefers to call himself (and me) an “egalitarian”. To him, “feminist” sounds too exclusionary. I’ve tried to give him a good answer as to why focusing on women matters, but am not having much luck. Perhaps you could respond?

First off, let me recommend the indispensable Feminism 101 blog, a wonderful resource for answering all sorts of questions about feminism. Delia’s friend’s problem is addressed in this pithy answer, and it’s well worth the read.

I think it’s vital to “claim the name” of “feminist”. As the Feminism 101 site explains, refusing to use the term in favor of more general words like “egalitarian” obscures the reality of misogyny. While there’s nothing wrong with a commitment to egalitarianism as a principle, to use it to title an ideological perspective implies a false equivalence between the sexism that is directed towards men and that towards women. If someone were to say, “Oh, I believe blacks should be equal to whites, but I don’t feel comfortable calling myself an ‘anti-racist’; I’d rather just be an ‘equalist’”, we’d hear the statement for what it was: a refusal, probably motivated more by ignorance than malice, to accept the reality that black oppression in American history far outpaces that of whites.

As it says at Feminism 101, these are not mutually exclusive terms. One can be a feminist and believe in egalitarian principles. One can be a feminist and a Christian; one can be a feminist and a Republican, or a Democrat, or a defiant independent. To claim the name of feminism doesn’t mean rejecting all other names; it means, simply, that one acknowledges the reality of misogyny and one commits, in whatever way one can, to struggling against that ugly reality.

I call myself a feminist. I was once wont to call myself a “pro-feminist”, largely because in the 1980s, when I first began to do academic feminism, there was considerably more skepticism about men doing this work than there is today. As I’ve written before, younger feminists are much more willing to accept — and demand — men’s full participation in anti-sexist activism. A new generation of men has grown up, sons of mothers (and occasionally, fathers) who were steeped in feminism. The notion that a “man simply can’t get it” seems to be one that divides many feminists generationally, with those under 30 particularly unlikely to believe that essentialist view.

Men don’t get cookies merely for calling themselves feminists. But it is important that we do, at least as long as we are willing to strive to match our life to our language. We send a message that this disease of misogyny has done damage to us all, but especially to mothers and daughters, sisters and wives, partners and pupils and professional acquaintances. When we call ourselves feminists, we remind ourselves and others that the belief in the inferiority of women is the Great Crime. We renounce our complicity with that crime, and pledge — imperfectly — to work to build a world beyond misogyny. But we can’t build that world if we don’t accurately identify that which we fight for, and that which we fight against.

Eloquent in self-deprecation, inarticulate in self-celebration: on masculinity and the male feminist dilemma

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 16, 2009
in Male feminists
. 17 Comments

One great disappointment for me this fall was that I wasn’t able to attend the first annual National Conference for Campus-Based Men’s Gender Equality & Anti-Violence Groups, held the weekend of November 6-7 in Collegeville, Minnesota. My commitment to be at the National Women’s Studies Association in Atlanta the following weekend meant that I had to forego the men’s conference, and I regret that. Still, many of those who attended our panel in Atlanta had been present in Minnesota a week earlier, and my co-presenter Tal Peretz was hardy enough to have offered papers at both.

The Men’s Gender Equality conference has received a fair amount of coverage in the feminist blogosphere, particularly thanks to Courtney Martin (author of the indispensable Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters), who attended the conference. Courtney, who has been immensely supportive of men doing feminist work, wrote a provocative piece in American Prospect after her return from Collegeville, noting what she sees as a “dangerous” problem: the absence of a clear explanation of what feminist men do as opposed to what they don’t:

This contemporary movement of gender-conscious young men is largely identifying themselves in terms of what they are against. They’re not rapists. They’re not misogynists.

They’re also not particularly effective in imagining what they do want to be. Case in point: back to (conference facilitator Ethan) Wong at the chalkboard. The negative associations with masculinity poured off the tongues of these feminist-friendly college kids. They’ve taken Women’s Studies 101. When their buddy says, “That’s so gay,” they spit back, “That’s a sexual identity, not a dis.” They let a few tears fall during the Take Back the Night March. They devour Michael Kimmel’s Guyland and proselytize about Byron Hurt’s documentary, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes. This generation is saying no to toxic masculinity.

But what are these young men saying yes too? We’ve all failed to envision an alternative.

I didn’t read Courtney’s piece when it first came out, but several folks mentioned it to me at the NWSA conference, and I’ve received a couple of email requests to post a response. (I’ve seen at least one so far from a male feminist, AJ’s at Feminists for Choice.)

There’s a lot of debate among feminists of all sexes about whether masculinity, as a construct, can be redeemed and reimagined along feminist lines, or whether it needs to be abandoned all together. Allies are divided on the issue; the lads at Men Can Stop Rape famously created their Men of Strength campaign, seeking to offer young men a masculine counterstory in which something traditionally associated with maleness, physical toughness, becomes something pro-feminist. (Posters for the campaign featured young men of color holding their girlfriends tenderly, with the tag line “My Strength is not for Hurting.”) Robert Jensen, on the other hand, is a celebrated representative of those who regard masculinity itself as irredeemably toxic, a point he drives home vividly in his powerful Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, a book which deeply troubled Courtney Martin.

I don’t know if we can say it’s reached the point of a growing consensus, but there are a great many self-described male feminists who see masculinity (like its feminine counterpart) as something we perform rather than something that we are. Masculinity and femininity aren’t as tied to male and female physiological identity as we once imagined; they occur, as our transgendered friends are particularly good at pointing out, on a spectrum. Both males and females can “do” masculinity and femininity in terms of a kind of performance; both males and females can embody the positive traits traditionally associated with the former (strength and courage) as well as those linked to the latter (tenderness, the capacity to intuit).

The problem that Courtney is getting at is a real one. Most of us who are involved in anti-sexist work already acknowledge the fluidity of gender roles. We honor women’s capacity to adopt traditionally masculine dress and behavior. We celebrate men’s capacity to explore traditionally feminine roles. And though it remains a source of tension within feminist communities (a tension often inter-generational in nature), we are increasingly willing to acknowledge that women can be feminists while still delighting in normative female behavior. In other words, we’re clear that a feminist woman can wear make-up and get bikini waxes without compromising her feminist credentials. But there’s one area where we’re understandably more cautious: can a feminist male, particularly a het man, “perform” traditional masculinity without reinforcing toxic misogyny? Relatively few men who do feminist work are willing to say “of course”. And this creates the problem that Courtney Martin — and a great many other sympathetic observers of anti-sexist men — sees: a movement in danger of being defined by what it isn’t rather than by what it is. Continue reading ‘Eloquent in self-deprecation, inarticulate in self-celebration: on masculinity and the male feminist dilemma’

How does a feminist ally fight fair? A follow-up on men and women’s anger

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 21, 2009
in Favorite Posts 2009, Male feminists, Men and Masculinity and Relationships
. 18 Comments

We’ve had more than 90 comments below this post examining the degree to which women’s wariness of men is justified. It’s a fairly good discussion, for which I am grateful.

I wrote a few years ago a post called Words are not fists: some thoughts on how men work to defuse feminist anger. An excerpt:

Part of being a pro-feminist man, I’ve come to realize in recent years, is being willing to face the real anger of real women. Far too many men spend a great deal of time trying to talk women out of their anger, or by creating social pressures that remind women of the consequences of expressing that anger. Many men, frankly, are profoundly frightened by women who will directly challenge them. In a classroom, they don’t really fear being struck or hit. But by comparing a verbal attack on their own sexist attitudes towards physical violence, they hope to defuse the verbal expression of very real female pain and frustration. I know that it’s hard to be a young man in a feminist setting for the first time, and I know, (oh, how I know) how difficult it is to sit and listen to someone challenge you on your most basic beliefs about your identity, your sexuality, your behavior, and your beliefs about gender. It’s difficult to take the risk to speak up and push back a bit, and it’s scary to realize just how infuriating your views really are to other people, especially women.

The first task of the pro-feminist male in this situation is to accept the reality and the legitimacy of the frustration and disappointment and anger that so many women have with men, and to accept it without making light of it or trying to defuse it or trying to soothe it. Pro-feminist men must work to confront their own fears about being the target of those feelings.

I’d like to say a bit more about how men can do this last bit, as it’s not something I addressed in the original piece. I don’t want to imply that I think that a feminist man simply “stands there and takes it”. One of the ideals of traditional American masculinity is of the man as “sturdy oak”, able to withstand any tempest, even that of a woman’s righteous anger. That comes dangerously close to reinforcing the notion that women are “naturally” more volatile (at least emotionally), perhaps even hysterical (a dangerous word, given its origins) — and that is a “real man’s” job to hold his ground, silently, in the face of what will be a formidable, but (it is to be hoped) brief feminine storm. Though I’d like to believe my readers of the original post didn’t infer that I was reifying this myth, it’s important to clarify how I think we ought to help men respond to women’s anger. Continue reading ‘How does a feminist ally fight fair? A follow-up on men and women’s anger’

Of Schrödinger’s rapist, Zeno’s paradox, and the problem of trying to prove a negative

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 15, 2009
in Male feminists, Rape, aggression and violence and Sexual harassment
. 94 Comments

Lorie H., a longtime blog-and-Facebook friend, sent me a link earlier this week to the Phaedra Starling post that is heating up comment threads across the sphere: Schrödinger’s Rapist: or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced. It’s the indispensable post for the first half of October, and I recommend it highly. (For those of you wondering who this Schrödinger is, here’s a link to the Wikipedia entry on the famous epistemological problem about his unfortunate cat.)

Some excerpts:

So when you, a stranger, approach me, I have to ask myself: Will this man rape me?

Do you think I’m overreacting? One in every six American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. I bet you don’t think you know any rapists, but consider the sheer number of rapes that must occur. These rapes are not all committed by Phillip Garrido, Brian David Mitchell, or other members of the Brotherhood of Scary Hair and Homemade Religion. While you may assume that none of the men you know are rapists, I can assure you that at least one is. Consider: if every rapist commits an average of ten rapes (a horrifying number, isn’t it?) then the concentration of rapists in the population is still a little over one in sixty. That means four in my graduating class in high school. One among my coworkers. One in the subway car at rush hour. Eleven who work out at my gym. How do I know that you, the nice guy who wants nothing more than companionship and True Love, are not this rapist?

I don’t.

When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape. I won’t know for sure unless you start sexually assaulting me. I can’t see inside your head, and I don’t know your intentions. If you expect me to trust you—to accept you at face value as a nice sort of guy—you are not only failing to respect my reasonable caution, you are being cavalier about my personal safety.

Fortunately, you’re a good guy. We’ve already established that. Now that you’re aware that there’s a problem, you are going to go out of your way to fix it, and to make the women with whom you interact feel as safe as possible.

Bold emphasis mine. I’ve written about the “absence of a right to be presumed harmless” before. Starling’s spot on, and her point about the perniciousness of “rape culture” is something that most young men need desperately to understand, and don’t. Well-intentioned but clueless fellows cry in indignation “But you should trust me until I prove myself to be unworthy of the trust”, focusing only on the hurt they feel at not being immediately accepted — and refusing, sometimes willfully, to acknowledge that when women view them as threatening, they do so because it is rational and life-preserving to do so.

Starling offers a short but excellent list of things men who don’t like being viewed as Schrödinger’s Rapist can do; please read the whole post, and the 1216 comments currently below it.

But I’d like to pick up on the theme of trust, and in particularly, the “guilty until proven innocent” notion. One thing that I’ve learned in all my years doing men’s work and feminism: I can never prove myself “safe” to everyone. Indeed, a substantial number of women with whom I interact on a regular basis as students or colleagues or mentees or friends will retain, despite my best efforts, some small element of caution when dealing with me. Some of that caution may be based upon specific knowledge about my past, but far more of it is based on the inescapable reality of my maleness. Folks with my physiology tend to inflict far more physical harm on the world than those with female plumbing; men in positions of authority are notorious for abusing that power sexually. No mater how earnest I am about my feminism and my boundaries and my transformation, the reality is that regardless of who I might be on the inside, I still come across as “a man”. And in the inescapable math of rape culture, man=threat.

Mind you, I don’t spend much energy wondering to what degree I am trusted. It’s very important for male allies to not fall into a dynamic where they find themselves trying to pull out all the stops to convince the women in their lives that they are safe. That’s just another form of seduction after all; it places one’s own ego ahead of the very real, complex needs and concerns of the women with whom one is engaging. This isn’t a competition in which other men are rivals. I’ve seen some ostensibly feminist men make this mistake. Masculine culture sets up males as competitors, with women used to measure a man’s prowess. For many, that means sleeping with as many women as possible as a means of proving one’s masculinity — and, in some sense, bettering other men. The faux pro-feminist corollary is trying to prove to as many women as possible that you, their male feminist friend, are somehow different from all the other guys. The reward isn’t sex or homosocial validation — the reward is being told that you’ve done what other men couldn’t do, and that’s earn trust. While hardly predatory, there’s still something problematic about this kind of “safe seduction” behavior — because it places the man’s ego, rather than women’s safety, front and center.

In creating a safer world for all of us, men do well to follow the sensible sort of advice that Starling offers. They also do well to direct more of their efforts towards calling out predatory and sexist behavior in other men, rather than expending tremendous energy trying to earn women’s trust. (It’s probably obvious that the two activities aren’t mutually exclusive: a man who is actively feminist when he’s around other males is more likely to be viewed as sincere in his commitments, rather than merely pretending to be egalitarian for a female audience.) But in the end, it’s important for men who do this work to understand that no matter how hard they work, no matter how committed and sincere their efforts, a great many women will continue to view them as potential predators. They may succeed in lowering the intensity of the threat they pose until it is very near zero, but, like Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, they can likely never get to that elusive goal of total and complete trust. The sooner men understand that, accept that, and redirect any attendant frustration away from women and towards a culture that encourages rape and abuse, the better off we’re all gonna be.

Tired of being coddled and feared: standing up to the myth of male weakness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 08, 2009
in Male feminists, Modesty, Myth of Male Weakness and Sexual harassment
. 53 Comments

A reader writes in from the East with a query. “Micah” is an undergraduate, taking a class on Gender Issues in the Workplace. He writes of a problem he has with his female professor and her reactionary views:

… in our discussion on sexual harassment, we got into a (I’m
shy to call it a discussion), on how woman’s clothing is partly to blame.
She took the position that women should dress more conservatively, and that
it’s their responsibility in this way to prevent sexual harassment. Her answer to my question “If we make this opinion the norm, doesn’t it negatively affect a woman’s ability to seek redress after being harassed, in that she as the victim is blamed?” was simply, “No”.

I don’t want to create an adversarial relationship with my professor, but at the same
time I’m frustrated at the message she’s sending to both men and women in the class. It’s awkward to be a male student trying to take a feminist stance with an anti-feminist female professor! I’m having trouble explaining my concerns, and am wondering if you could offer some insight into approaching the situation.

Certainly, Micah is in a difficult situation. Indeed, it’s frequently problematic for a male feminist to engage in an argument about gender justice with an avowedly anti-feminist woman. Most men who embrace feminism in a public way run into this particular pickle sooner or later, and it is made exponentially more challenging when the anti-feminist woman is an academic authority figure.

Despite the awkwardness, there are a couple of tacks that Micah can take if he’s willing. The best one, of course, is to challenge his professor’s low expectations of men. The notion that women are responsible for “inviting” harassment by the way they dress is rooted in the belief that male sexual desire is a problem that is women’s to manage. It’s the old myth of male weakness, a myth that suggests that those of us who are incarnate as males simply lack the capacity to control our urges. Therefore, it is women’s job to set boundaries and to “help us” overcome temptations that we are incapable of overcoming on our own. It’s a myth that’s damaging to women, but Micah can point out that it’s incredibly insulting to men.

To borrow a phrase of which conservatives are over-fond, it’s a variation on the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” It’s a complex bigotry to be sure, as the real victims of the myth of male weakness are not those presumed to be weak but those who are, because they are presumed to be morally strong, forced to assume the role of sexual gatekeepers. In the sexual harassment dynamic, the myth insults men by suggesting that all of the be-penised are knuckle-dragging, simple-minded thugs who would never get anything done at all if it weren’t for women’s careful encouragement and cajoling. The myth insults women by suggesting that while men’s sexual appetites are extraordinarily voracious and uncontrollable, women’s sexual desire either doesn’t exist at all or is so weak that it can be easily managed. (If a woman does experience intense desire, the myth suggests that there may be something wrong with her.) And above all, the myth holds women accountable for bad male behavior, forcing women to second-guess themselves endlessly while depriving men of something they desperately need, which is the chance to grow into kind, rational, self-soothing and self-controlled human beings.

Micah is right to be indignant in the face of the myth of male weakness. As a young male feminist, he is right to be furious at what sexual harassment does to women, and he is right to be exasperated at the pervasiveness of the belief that women somehow bring mistreatment on themselves through their behavior or their dress. He is certainly right, too, to be frustrated at what the dominant discourse about men, women, and harassment says about him and his fellow males. If he’s old enough to be in college, he probably already knows what it’s like to live as a relatively privileged American man: alternately coddled and feared, loathed and loved. If he pushes back — in a polite but robust way — against the damaging message his professor is sending, Micah will send a message to his classmates that not all of their male peers are willing to be complicit in the Great Lie. Whether he gains any traction with his prof is another question.

See more in the Modesty and Myth of Male Weakness categories.

Two cheers for Dan Savage: rape, male accountability, and the curse of the Nice Guy

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 05, 2009
in Emotional and Sexual Boundaries, Male feminists and Rape, aggression and violence
. 11 Comments

My friend Leslie, noting my recent postings about my consent workshops and the issue of men’s role in sexual assault prevention, sent me a transcript of a recent Dan Savage podcast. Dan, one of America’s best known and respected sexual advice columnists, authors, and speakers, took a call from a guy whose most recent love interest had broken up with him after she had been sexually assaulted by another man.

Caller:

I’ve been trying really hard to be supportive of her even though honestly I don’t really know how to be. She sort of shut down emotionally, socially, as I guess, is kind of expected. But she’s lost trust and comfort in hanging out with guys of any sort, which includes me, and maybe especially me, considering our history includes taking things a bit far, or further than what was really comfortable for her, for either of us. Anyway, like I said, I’ve been trying to be supportive and helpful, but she recently told me to kind of back off as far as that was concerned because she doesn’t really feel comfortable talking about what’s going on with any guy. So my problem is that I’m still really interested in this girl, but I don’t know what my next move should be or how I can show this girl that I’m supportive of her without crossing any comfort lines, or basically how I should handle this kind of touchy situation.

Dan, bless his heart, reads the caller the riot act, calling him out for the bit about a past history of “taking things further than what was really comfortable for her.” Savage also makes two points that I think are hugely important, and are sufficiently universal as to be applicable to a great many men in situations not dissimilar from the caller.

First of all, Savage points out that many men find themselves interested in women who are survivors of sexual assault. He commends the caller, and other men like him, for the desire to help their current or prospective partner heal. But he also points out that trying to help a woman heal from what happened while also trying to get her into bed is at best working at cross-purposes and at worst indefensibly predatory. And though he doesn’t name it as such, Savage also touches on the “knight in shining armor” fantasy with which so many well-meaning men who are partnered with sexual assault survivors struggle. It’s incredibly easy for the line to be blurred between a compassionate desire to assist in another person’s healing and the narcissistic desire not just for sex, but to be the hero, the one who gives a traumatized woman a chance to “believe in men” again. Continue reading ‘Two cheers for Dan Savage: rape, male accountability, and the curse of the Nice Guy’

Lust and humanity, desire and dignity: some thoughts on an all-male Consent Day workshop

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 25, 2009
in Consent trainings, Male feminists, Men and Masculinity, Myth of Male Weakness, Rape, aggression and violence, Sexual ethics and transformation and Youth
. 72 Comments

I’m heading back to New York City after a couple of days in Providence. The weather, so humid yesterday, has turned wonderfully brisk and autumnal. I think of my native state, sweltering and drought-ridden and smoke-filled, and feel — almost — guilty that I’m not there with the millions of other suffering Californians. Home on Tuesday.

Brown University’s first annual “Consent Day” was a great success, not least because of the immensely popular t-shirts (a photo here) designed by Catherine McCarthy, the student who led the organizing team for the event and who first contacted me about coming to speak. The front of the shirt is visible in the photo, the reverse includes the reminder “Consent is active, enthusiastic, and freely given.”

I gave a workshop entitled “Sex, Consent, Enthusiasm, and Stoplights: Rethinking the Language of Yes and No”. The basic thesis is familiar from this post, but I also touched on the “all men are dogs” (myth of male weakness) ethos which undergirds so much of the way we socialize modern males (and socialize women to think about them). I also brought in what my women’s studies students know as the “upside-down triangle”, which I wrote about in this post.

There was some good give and take, and some very thoughtful questions from a mixed audience of Brown students.

In the second part of the workshop, we held a male-only discussion group. It is, of course, important to do anti-rape work with both men and women. When doing survivors workshops, it’s obviously beneficial to have women-only spaces. (And yes, men can also be survivors of sexual assault, though usually at the hands of other men rather than women — which may make all-male space more problematic, but that’s another topic for ‘nother post.) But in dealing with issues around sexual consent, the topic on yesterday’s table, single-sex space can also offer an opportunity for a higher degree of safety. And I was eager to meet with at least a few of the young men who had been through the workshop to hear their thoughts and feelings.

As our hour together Thursday evening bore out, many young men (certainly all of those who, gay and straight alike, participated in our closed discussion) are frustrated by the absence of a discourse of healthy male sexuality. This was a self-selecting group; these were guys who had volunteered to participate in Consent Day activities and who identified themselves as sympathetic to feminist goals. Several were already involved in peer counseling or in campus progressive politics. They were energized and excited by the discussion about enthusiasm and consent; there were no rape apologists to be found. But the real hunger that many of them articulated very well (not surprising for Brown University students) was a hunger for some kind of validation of their sexuality as good, healthy, okay.

“I know all the things not to do”, one guy said; “I work really hard at being a good ally. But I sometimes feel that in order to be a good ally, I have to pretend that I’m asexual; my fear is that women won’t trust me as a friend if I show any sign of sexual desire.” This lad hastened to add that he wasn’t sexually interested in most of his female friends; what he’d like to be able to do is talk about his sexual feelings (as some of those friends talk with him about theirs) without losing their trust. Several of the other men in the room nodded in agreement. We talked at length about the familiar but still-powerful compartmentalization phenomenon, one in which “good guys”, those who strive to do justice with their lives and with their bodies, live a separate, secretive sexual life (usually involving pornography) that seems, at least to the guys themselves, to be something profoundly shameful.

Timothy Beneke’s Men on Rape is now out of print, but one of the many memorable lines within that invaluable text is this: “I’m not aware of any common English phrases that allow one to express sexual desire in a way that acknowledges both lust and humanity.” Beneke captured a truth about our idiom, but he also captured a truth about the way in which we see male sexuality in our culture. For a host of excellent reasons, rooted in countless painful anecdotes and our own collective witness, many of us — perhaps most of us — have a difficult time believing that heterosexual desire doesn’t invariably compromise a man’s capacity for empathy. We men can’t want sex, our culture tells us, and while still seeing the people we want to have sex with as they really are. “A hard dick has no conscience”, we say with resignation or cynical bravado. But as is so often the case, our language in this instance doesn’t so much reflect an immutable reality as it creates and maintains a distorted understanding of our nature and our potential. Continue reading ‘Lust and humanity, desire and dignity: some thoughts on an all-male Consent Day workshop’

Reprint: “No right to be assumed harmless” — more on men and suspicion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 01, 2009
in Male feminists
. 68 Comments

This post needed reprinting in light of yesterday’s response to Melissa McEwan. This post below originally appeared in September, 2006:

In my "letter to a young pro-feminist" post of September 6, 2006, I wrote:

Don’t be hurt or frustrated if you encounter people who are initially suspicious of your professed egalitarianism.  In our deeply sexist culture, men are "guilty until proven innocent."  That’s our own damned fault, frankly, and the sooner we cheerfully accept the burden of proving ourselves innocent, the better off we’re all going to be.  (I’ve blogged about this before.)

Rex commented:

I really can’t agree with you on "guilty until proven innocent". Males are not born sexists, homophobes, rapists, or what have you.

Sorry, but I’ve read far too many articles and reports about countries and cities in those countries where "guilty until proven innocent" is the default operating standard and it’s nothing short of hell.

And Jeremy replied, nicely:

Yes, the principle "innocent until proven guilty" is vital to a free society, but it only applies if you are in court being charged with a crime… you do *not* have the right to be assumed harmless. If I’m walking home late at night and a woman takes the trouble to keep her distance from me, well, it really sucks that she’s acting as though I’m a potential threat but guess what, I just have to deal with it. I *don’t* have the right to demand that a passing stranger treats me the way I would prefer them to.

The bold emphasis is mine, not Jeremy’s. It’s an important point he makes, and a good one.

I wrote a few years back about the frustration of the "good guy" who is judged by the actions of others.  I wrote:

First of all, the obvious point is that women’s intuition, while not entirely the stuff of myth, is not so powerful that it can automatically separate "good guys" from the bad. No woman can walk down the street and as she passes a man, know with certainty that he isn’t a threat. Given the high incidence of rape and assault and harassment and other forms of mistreatment, a woman would be a fool to leave herself continually vulnerable. The old adage "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" seems to apply here. When a simple smile is so frequently misunderstood and construed as a sexual invitation, American women generally do have to operate on the assumption that men are guilty until proven innocent. 

I stand by that today.

When I hear my brothers complaining that women don’t smile enough at them, or don’t respond to their "innocent hellos", I am reminded of my white friends who are bewildered and indignant when people of color point out their white privilege to them.   Men who complain about being "guilty until proven innocent" are demanding to be seen as individuals, separate from their perceived sex and the history that goes with it.

While "innocent until proven guilty" is an excellent guideline for courtroom proceedings, it doesn’t translate nearly as effectively into public life and relations between the sexes.  When men complain that women are suspicious of their intentions merely because they are men, they are forcing women into the role of the district attorney, the one shouldered with the burden of proving guilt.  In a society where women, rather than men, are overwhelmingly the victims of harassment and assault, those who have suffered most are the ones being asked to lay aside their prior experience and knowledge and approach each new male in their lives with a blank slate, free from judgment.   That’s a hell of a weight to ask women to carry, and a hell of a risk to ask them to take, again and again and again.

In our culture, where rape and harassment and abuse are so common, men have lost the right (if it ever existed) to insist that women should be able to differentiate (in a matter of seconds) between the harmless and the threatening.   A man is entitled to a presumption of innocence from a jury in a courtroom, but not from his classmate with whom he tries to strike up what she ought to know is just an innocent conversation!

Is it frustrating to be viewed with suspicion merely because of one’s sex?  Heck yes. (Is it frustrating to be viewed as a sexual object merely because one is young and female?  Ask around.)  Men ought to be angry that they need to "prove their harmlessness".  Indeed, they ought to be enraged!  But our anger is rightly directed not at women who have been the victims (individually and collectively) of predatory males, but at those men who have "poisoned the well" for everyone else.  Rather than demand that women "smile more" or "trust more" or "just know that I’m a good guy", men need to channel their frustration at being "pre-judged" into a commitment to end what it is that causes women’s suspicion in the first place.   

Holding other men accountable, challenging sexist and objectifying language and behavior in yourself and in other males (whether or not women are around) is the single most effective thing men can do to change the culture of "guilty until proven innocent."  Rape, assault, and harassment are allowed to flourish not merely through the actions of a few "bad apples", but through the unwillingness of the "nice guys" to challenge other men.  Silence is, in practical terms, tacit consent and approval. 

There’s more to being a "good guy" than not raping women.  Good guys hold themselves and other men accountable, in public and in private.  That’s a high standard to meet, particularly for the young.  But it’s only by meeting that standard that men can help to change the culture.

The importance of “talking the talk”: male feminists and visibility

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 31, 2009
in Male feminists
. 31 Comments

Reader Vir Modestus sent me a link to this Melissa McEwan post that appeared while I was out of the country. It’s a powerful piece by one of the best-known and most widely respected of feminist bloggers, calling out men — some of us in one sense, all of us in another — in a searing indictment of the way in which our sex is acculturated to treat women. An extended excerpt:

No, I don’t hate men.

It would, however, be fair to say that I don’t easily trust them.

My mistrust is not, as one might expect, primarily a result of the violent acts done on my body, nor the vicious humiliations done to my dignity. It is, instead, born of the multitude of mundane betrayals that mark my every relationship with a man—the casual rape joke, the use of a female slur, the careless demonization of the feminine in everyday conversation, the accusations of overreaction, the eyerolling and exasperated sighs in response to polite requests to please not use misogynist epithets in my presence or to please use non-gendered language (”humankind”).


There are the jokes about women, about wives, about mothers, about raising daughters, about female bosses. They are told in my presence by men who are meant to care about me, just to get a rise out of me, as though I am meant to find funny a reminder of my second-class status. I am meant to ignore that this is a bullying tactic, that the men telling these jokes derive their amusement specifically from knowing they upset me, piss me off, hurt me. They tell them and I can laugh, and they can thus feel superior, or I can not laugh, and they can thus feel superior. Heads they win, tails I lose. I am used as a prop in an ongoing game of patriarchal posturing, and then I am meant to believe it is true when some of the men who enjoy this sport, in which I am their pawn, tell me, “I love you.” I love you, my daughter. I love you, my niece. I love you, my friend. I am meant to trust these words.

There are the occasions that men—intellectual men, clever men, engaged men—insist on playing devil’s advocate, desirous of a debate on some aspect of feminist theory or reproductive rights or some other subject generally filed under the heading: Women’s Issues. These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun—and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed and why, after an hour of fighting my corner, hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. Why do you have to take this stuff so personally? ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that’s so much fun for them is the stuff of my life.

Nearly 300 comments follow beneath Melissa’s post.

Melissa followed up with this post last week: Crank it up to 11, in which she noted how many men had written or spoken to her in the aftermath of her first piece, assuring her that “not all men were like that” and that yes, they felt the same way that she did about those who were. While appreciative of the support, Melissa calls out feminist men to do more:

I can certainly understand why men don’t want to get involved in the rage-making timesucks that are threads about feminist women’s lived experiences. Aside from the crushing feeling of futility such participation inspires, men who engage on the side of feminist women inevitably face a barrage of intense vitriol. In return for allowing me merely to publish his response to the piece, Iain (Melissa’s partner) has been resoundingly pitied by misogynists across the blogosphere for his lamentable fate to be married to such a gruesome harridan.

Now here’s the other thing about leaving the rectification of gender-based inequalities to the ladies: Misogynist men don’t respect women. They don’t listen to women; they won’t acknowledge a woman’s authority on her own lived experiences; they’re not going to learn anything from women, and certainly not feminist women.

Men who think women are less than need to hear that they’re terribly, infuriatingly, and demonstrably wrong from other men. Publicly. Passionately. As loud as the loud, so very loud, voices on the other side. One of the ways their self-reassuring bullshit works is via the effective void of male dissension, which supports their erroneous belief that they are the “objective” arbiters of womanhood. Well, if we’re so wrong, where are the other people [men] to say so? they wonder smugly.

They count on feminist men never showing up en masse for the main event.

As we say in Christian circles, that’s a “come to Jesus” message I needed to hear this week. I learned early a basic truth that I repeat to my students and my mentees every chance I get: the acid test of a man who claims the mantle of feminism (whether he calls himself a feminist or a “feminist ally” isn’t particularly relevant) is not how only how he treats women, but how he deals with the men in his life. Feminist men need to be able to be vocal allies of women even when there are no women around; in all-male and mixed settings, male feminists have a special obligation to stand against misogyny. If that’s too scary to do in “real life”, it surely isn’t too much to ask in the world of the blogosphere, where nasty language doesn’t carry with it the threat of imminent physical violence. Continue reading ‘The importance of “talking the talk”: male feminists and visibility’

“She’s got you wrapped around her finger”: fathers, daughters, and a variation on the myth of male weakness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 25, 2009
in Father, Favorite Posts 2009, Male feminists, Marriage, Men and Masculinity, Myth of Male Weakness, Parenting and Youth
. 23 Comments

Little Heloise Cerys Raquel is indeed an enchanting baby, at least in the eyes of her doting parents. Now seven months old, her delightful personality emerges more and more each day — or so it seems. One of my favorite things about being on vacation this summer was the chance to be with her virtually every second; as I type this in my office, I note the hours (about five) until I will be home to her.

When we’re in public and Heloise is in my arms, we invariably get the same remarks: “She’s got you wrapped around her finger already, doesn’t she?” Or, “Watch out, when she gets older, you’ll have to watch the boys like a hawk!” My wife frequently gets told how much our daughter takes after her, but never receives anything like these comments. (When we were in Britain over the past few weeks, we got almost the same comments as we do here in the States.) And as a male feminist and father to a daughter, I find the subtext of remarks like these troubling, even as I honor the innocuousness of the intent behind them.

The bit about a daughter having her daddy “wrapped around her finger” repeats the old myth of male weakness. The myth of male weakness suggests that men are inherently vulnerable to temptation and manipulation. Men, the myth insists, have a much harder time practicing fidelity than do women, as men are biologically less capable of resisting sexual temptation. Heterosexual men are easily seduced by women, or so the trope goes, and thus women can use this weakness to flirt their way out of, say, traffic tickets or into jobs and marriages. The parental corollary, I’ve been realizing, is that daddies are far easier for daughters to manipulate than mommies. Fathers, the myth suggests, are powerless to say no to the pleas of their infant (or adolescent, or grown) female children.

Fathers, like other men, are supposed to be at least somewhat aware that they are being manipulated. I’ve gathered already that if I say “Yes, she’s already got me right where she wants me”, I’ll get indulgent smiles and teasing warnings about what she’s going to be like as a teen. And if I say — as I have said in one way or another several times — “I adore my girl, but she’s not going to get away with murder on my watch”, folks tend to shake their heads in real or mock pity at my stubborn refusal to acknowledge my own obvious frailty in the face of my daughter’s feminine wiles. A great deal of homosocial cameraderie is built and sustained on the theme of genuine or feigned exasperation at the supposed male inability to resist the charms of “hot chicks and pleading little girls.” Continue reading ‘“She’s got you wrapped around her finger”: fathers, daughters, and a variation on the myth of male weakness’

“Mommy, was that your friend?” More on Dr. Tiller, two months on.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 29, 2009
in Abortion and Male feminists
. 2 Comments

It’s been nearly two months since George Tiller was murdered, and I still feel the shock of that assassination keenly. The most emotion-driven (albeit also — I’d like to think — reason-and-theology-informed) post I’ve written in 2009 was in response to the killing.

There’s a great piece in the new summer issue of Ms.Magazine about Dr. Tiller, and an extended excerpt is online. Here’s how it finishes:

“The last time I talked to him,” says (Tiller’s friend) Susan Hill, “I said, ‘Why are you still doing this, George? You certainly don’t need to. Why don’t you just retire, enjoy life?’

“He said, ‘I can’t, I can’t leave these women. There’s no one else for them.’”

“When I found out about the murder,” says Miriam Kleiman, “I just kept hugging and kissing my boys and telling them I loved them.” Her 8-year-old asked, “Mommy, why do you keep crying?”

“And I said, ‘There was a man who helped us about Junior’”—the family’s name for the son whose life was unsustainable. “Someone killed that man, and I’m sad.” Later, her son saw a headline and a photo of Tiller in the newspaper and asked, “Mommy, was that your friend?”

“At whatever level,” says Kleiman, emotion welling up again, “my son got it.”

I liked that bit about Kleiman embracing her sons, born after a previous, hopeless pregnancy was ended in Dr. Tiller’s office. I wanted to hug my daughter a lot (even more than normal) on the day Dr. Tiller died. In 2009, for the first time in my life, I watched a woman I love give birth to our child; in 2009, my feminism has become even more personal as the consequence of now having a daughter (as well as a wife, sisters, a mother, and many other wonderful women in my life.) Dr. Tiller wasn’t just a physician who provided a full range of reproductive care, he was a feminist who, as is now well-known, abided by a simple motto: “Trust Women.”

One reason I’m a feminist is that I do trust women. And one reason I admire Dr. Tiller, and continue to be so moved by his life and so troubled by his murder is because in his life and in his ministry (there is no other word as adequate) he embodied what it meant to be a man who believed in women. Going back to John Stuart Mill and Frederick Douglass, there have been men who believed in women’s rights and were willing to fight to see those rights acquired. But very few male feminists have been martyred; very few male feminists took the risks, the calumny, the hatred of so many in order to continue to do what so few would do and what in so many tragic instances desperately needed doing.

I said it on May 31, the day of his murder: I am Dr. Tiller, and treat me as you would him. And while I certainly have no desire to be shot, I continue to find myself inspired this summer — my first as a father — to live out my feminism more fully and more boldly as a consequence of this gentle, good, Christian, feminist man’s legacy.

Men and Feminism: a review of Shira Tarrant’s newest

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 09, 2009
in Books and Male feminists
. 18 Comments

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.

Feminism, fatherhood, and enduring male privilege

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 15, 2009
in Father, Feminism, Housework, Male feminists, Parenting and Working
. 41 Comments

This post by Jessica at Feministing, responding to this risible Neil Lyndon piece in the Daily Mail has revived many of the familiar arguments about feminism, the men’s rights movement, and gender essentialism. It’s all part of a response to the latest flurry of op-ed pieces (far too numerous to which to link) suggesting that feminism has proved a failure, largely because so many women today (especially middle-class American and European women, presumably those most likely to have benefitted from the movement) report being exhausted, overworked, anxious and, well, unhappy.

If you follow the feminist blogosphere, this topic has been debated over and over again in one form or another since the earliest BBS discussions of the mid-1990s. I’m not interested in rehashing the arguments, though the latest round of anti-feminist bromides seem unusually poorly constructed. Most are guilty of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: if women are anxious or frustrated or unhappy after the coming of the first three waves of feminism, then they are anxious and unhappy because of the first three waves of feminism. One might as well make the same argument about the arrival of the cell phone, electrolysis, or the designated hitter rule. Repeat after me, class: correlation is not causation.

What made me want to write today was the comment thread below the Feministing piece, a thread in which a number of classic MRA (men’s rights activist) arguments were raised. The basic thesis: feminism has created a world hostile to men (at least in the industrialized West). Feminists have co-opted judicial, political, and educational institutions in order to advance what the MRAs call a “victim ideology”. Men and boys are alternately harangued and ignored, viewed by the feminist elite as either dim-witted oafs or dangerously calculating and predatory. Men are dying earlier and committing suicide more frequently because of their alienation from these woman-centered institutions, say the MRAs; the legions of young men hooked on pot or porn or Playstation (or all three) are the inevitable result of their cultural and social emasculation at the hands of a shrill and craven matriarchy. Or so say the MRAs.

So let me say this in defense of feminism, not only from the perspective of someone who makes his living in no small part by teaching it, but from the perspective of a new father: my relationship with my infant daughter is, in a very real way, made possible by the critical work feminists did to reframe traditional gender roles. It is thanks to the gains of the feminist movement that I was encouraged and expected to go through every aspect of the pregnancy and birthing process with my wife. It is thanks to the cultural shift initiatied by feminists and male allies that I was able to take the time away from work to be there for my wife (a right alas not yet universal). It is thanks to the feminist movement that a generation of committed and dedicated fathers has emerged, fathers who actively practice co-parenting with the mothers of their children. Though men neither get pregnant nor breastfeed, these biological inadequacies are no impediment to developing the capacity to nurture, something I am living out as best I can every day. Continue reading ‘Feminism, fatherhood, and enduring male privilege’

The New Second Sex, or Architects of their own Adversity? A response to Christina Hoff Sommers

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 21, 2009
in Male feminists, Men and Masculinity and Youth
. 76 Comments

There is much both to lament and praise about the new women’s site, Double EX, but it does have the virtue of being readable. Yesterday, noted anti-feminist Christina Hoff Sommers, whose public career seems largely based on her willingness to peddle the theory that our society is at war with boys and all things male, offered up Are Men the Second Sex Now? It’s not nearly as reactionary as some of her other pieces, but it still serves Sommers’ larger agenda of delegitimizing the contemporary American women’s movement. Others will find plenty with which to take issue, but I wanted to note these paragraphs of hers:

In (Betty) Friedan’s day, women were clearly the second sex. Not so today. Yes, many women are struggling with the challenge of combining family and work. But men do not have it easy either. They are increasingly less educated than women. They are bearing the brunt of the recession. The New York Times recently reported that “a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen men.” Reuters referred to the surging male unemployment rate as a “blood bath.” Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “FastStats” show that men are less likely than women to be insured—and more likely to drink, smoke, and be overweight. They also die six years earlier than women on average.

Why are there no conferences, petitions, workshops, congressional hearings, or presidential councils to help men close the education gap, the health care gap, the insurance gap, the job-loss gap, and the death gap? Because, unlike women, men do not have hundreds of men’s studies departments, research institutes, policy centers, and lobby groups working tirelessly to promote their challenges as political causes.

Few feminists I know dispute that men die earlier, are more likely to commit suicide and engage in risky behaviors, and are increasingly less likely to seek out advanced degrees. This isn’t feminism’s fault, of course, and to her credit, Sommers isn’t saying it is. But she implies that boys and men are suffering because they are being overlooked by feminist thinktanks, and that’s a serious misrepresentation of the crisis. Continue reading ‘The New Second Sex, or Architects of their own Adversity? A response to Christina Hoff Sommers’

Self-awareness good, navel-gazing bad: some thoughts on men, accountability, and the lesson of Kyle Payne

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 10, 2008
in Male feminists, Narcissism and Borderline Personality and Rape, aggression and violence
. 36 Comments

Cara, Jill, Belledame, Renegade Evolution and Jeff are just a few of the feminist bloggers to take on the disturbing story of Kyle Payne, a progressive feminist blogger and anti-pornography activist in Iowa. According to the Iowa Independent:

An Iowa blogger who claimed to use activism and education to promote “a more just and life-affirming culture of sexuality” for women, especially those women who have been victims of sexual violence, has pleaded guilty to photographing and filming a college student’s breasts without her consent.

Kyle D. Payne, 22 of Ida Grove, presented his guilty plea Monday in Iowa District Court for Buena Vista County. He agreed he was guilty of felony attempted burglary in the second degree and two counts of invasion of privacy, a serious misdemeanor.

At the time of the incident, Payne had been employed by Buena Vista University as a dormitory resident adviser. Police reports indicate that while attending to an intoxicated and unconscious female student, Payne reportedly assaulted and photographed her. The guilty plea entered Monday did not include assault charges. Tips received by police and campus security following the incident led to a 10-month investigation that resulted in Payne’s arrest in February.

There are other allegations on some of the blogs that Payne had child pornography on his computer as well, though I haven’t been able to find any substantiation — if anyone has more info on that aspect of this case, please include it in the comments.

It’s always immensely disheartening when any advocate for social justice is discovered living a life in contradiction to his or her professed values. In my initial comments on the subject at Jill’s, I wrongly implied that there was something particularly troubling about a “male feminist” betraying his commitments. I noted how angry I was that a young man who shares the same passion for sexual equality that I do had done such a thing, and I worried — and indeed still do worry — about the negative impact Kyle Payne’s appalling behavior will have on the public perception of feminist men. Some of the commenters on the thread pointed out that my concern was at least partly misplaced; Kyle’s real victim was the woman he attacked, and worrying about the impact on progressive men distorts the real impact of his actions. I think that’s right. Continue reading ‘Self-awareness good, navel-gazing bad: some thoughts on men, accountability, and the lesson of Kyle Payne’