Many of you might be wondering what a 24-year-old guy is doing writing the Feminisms series this week. Well, I asked for a slot, and the powers that be agreed that I might have something interesting to say! So here goes.
What I'd like to discuss this week is the principle of the "male feminist". Are they allowed to exist? Do they exist? What ideology is requisite for being one? In addition, I'd like to discuss why the word "feminist" has negative connotations for so many men, even many progressive men who share the same ultimate goals of full equality, rights, respect and equal pay.
I'd like to start with some personal experiences that might help explain where I'm coming from.
Growing up in my household, the word "feminist" was kind of a dirty word. My dad was a patriarch of sorts, a traditionalist. When I was growing up, there was strict separation of household duties: cooking and laundry, for instance, was entirely women's work.
In addition to the strict division of labor, however, there was also a certain quality of superiority with regard to gender relations. It was the man's job to do most of the thinking and planning and have say in most decisions, and the woman's job to do a substantial amount of the work involved in executing those decisions.
Now, I was homeschooled--and one of the primary areas in which the traditional gender stereotypes was reversed was in the area of education. My dad stayed home and taught me and my brother, while my mom worked. This made me consciously aware of what Arlie Hochschild calls "the second shift": my mom had to work during the day, but also had to come home and make dinner, do laundry if necessary...you get the idea.
And in addition to that, the family tended to operate on principles that could be considered a little patriarchal. Ultimate authority for most decisions rested with my dad, and at least while I was growing up, his attitude towards women in general regarding their emotional strength, intelligence and leadership capabilities was often condescending. One of my dad's main outlooks on the issue was that the feminist movement only been allowed to start because the rise of state power substituted for the function that men used to play in families and caused women not to be as dependent on men as they used to be--something he wasn't all that happy about.
My dad could certainly hardly be called a feminist--and yet from a political perspective, he would have, and still does, agree on many of the issues that are of concern to women. Equal pay? Check. Unfettered access to abortion? Check. Just to name a few.
It raises an interesting question: what about men who may have the "traditional" characteristics I described above, but still support the broader political agenda of the feminist movement? How much of the feminist movement is an attempt to enact or maintain specific aspects of policy, and how much of the movement is an attempt to engineer an attitude of equality, rather than merely enforce it by law? And is there a distinction between the two?
Oftentimes, it's the perception of an attempt at social engineering that scares men away from the notion of the feminist movement. Take my case as a further example. I was an avid student of Greek and Latin during what would have been my high school years, and I attended national conventions for students in the subject--they were replete with tests, events, competitions, you name it. Some of the most fun I've ever had--think YearlyKos, for Greek geeks. Now, coming from the background I came from, it really opened my eyes. Not to toot my own horn, but I was one of the most accoladed participants at these national conventions. I got the chance to meet some fellow female students my age from across the nation--smart, confident, attractive women, many of whom could match or exceed me step for step. And I was amazed. At first I felt a little threatened, but the more time I spent with them, the more I admired them.
That began a serious transformative process in my thinking. I began to repudiate a lot of the traditional outlook on gender relations I had inherited by osmosis with regard to issues like sexuality, household divisions of labor, emotional strength, and the like. In short, my attitude changed--and was reinforced by my college experiences--to be one of respect under all circumstances.
Now, in my case, the reversal took a little bit of an extreme turn. I was seriously under the impression for many years that the mere act of asking a woman out on a date was offensive because it carried with it the connotation of sexual interest, which I perceived as inherently disrespecttful. I don't advocate that for anyone else, of course--but it's an adequate setup for the story that follows.
I was on the "chauvinist" side of the pie fight. And I'm completely unapologetic about it. I honestly don't see what the big deal was. And yet, there were so many who did, and described me as an "enemy of women"--whatever that means. Now, for someone of my background and belief system, those accusations were quite hurtful and offensive.
Now, I'm willing to look past that, because it doesn't matter what the bone of contention is, there will be people like that with regard to every issue. But the problem for the feminist movement, in my view, is that most men think of the movement as being comprised of people like I described in the preceding paragraph. Many men think that the feminist movement is out to marginalize them or try to identify them as part of an "oppressor class". But from my experiences, I know that that's not exactly true.
To my mind, it would be interesting to discuss what drives those perceptions, and what, if anything, should be done about it to convince my fellow men that it's about equal opportunity, equal protection and equal protection.
The floor is yours.