Men and Feminism

As you probably know, I am a man who identifies as a feminist. A recent blog post made me reconsider exactly what that means. In the post and the comments on said post, I learned that some people don't think men can be feminists/shouldn't take the label for themselves. This started a long thought process for me that I'm going to share here. One of the things I have concluded is that adopting the label is a conscious act. It means something.

First, I want to talk about what my feminist identity means to me. It is a statement to others about my agreement with an ideology (feminist theory) and my stance of solidarity with the women's movement. The blog writer and several commenters expressed a fear that men who identified as feminists were simply doing so to score points with women and/or insert themselves into leadership in feminist movements. I'm sure that's happened and will happen in the future. It sucks and men who do that are dickholes.

I agree with those who were arguing that specific viewpoint insofar as I know that applying the label of feminism to a man does not exempt him from male privilege. Feminist men are still fully subject to male privilege, no matter how long they have identified this way. I know that. I try to check my privilege every day because I know that it blinds me and advantages me at the same time. This makes it a lot more difficult for a man to be a feminist.

Where I disagree, however, is the argument that because of male privilege, men cannot be feminist. In the selfsame comment thread, they seem to accept a definition of feminism as "the struggle to end patriarchal oppression of women." MEN CAN DO THAT TOO! I have heard it said (and said so myself) that feminism doesn't hate men-it respects them enough to have higher expectations. Not to imply that these people hate men, but I don't think men are so crippled that they cannot struggle to end patriarchal oppression of women. Must they acknowledge and constantly be aware of their position in the power hierarchy in which they perpetuate systems of inequality while doing so? Absolutely. But honestly, give men some credit here. I believe that men are good enough to (with much effort) be feminists too.

P.S. This discussion is brought to you by The Gender Binary™ and Cissexist Assumptions Productions, Inc.

Seriously though, I might write another blog post about why this blog post was informed and shaped by assumptions about gender that aren't true. No promises, but I totally might.