Walk Against Rape

Last year I participated in SF Women Against Rape's annual fundraising and awareness event, Walk Against Rape. It was an amazing experience, walking through blocked off streets in San Francisco with throngs of folks who were all there for the same reasons: To raise money for SFWAR and to raise awareness of rape and rape culture. I ended up writing about it for an online version of the Washington Post, in part because it was so great to feel solidarity with such a diverse group of folks.

I'm not doing the walk this year (next year I'm hoping to get a team together), but there is an awesome feminist guy, Richard Wright, who blogs at Fem.Men.Ist, who is walking again this year; he was the one who inspired me to walk last year, and this is his 4th(!) year walking. Please go support him--even 5 or 10 bucks can get him to his goal. From his pledge page:

This is my 4th year doing the San Francisco Walk Against Rape, and i am thankful for all of the support to this cause so many of you have given. Rape impacts me through the lives of many people i love, so for me, this is an act of love, and one way i can contribute to dismantling patriarchy. Please take the time to give as generously as you can to SFWAR, the bay area's sole community based rape crisis center. Money you give will not only go towards keeping the 24-hour rape crisis hotline up, but also prevention initiatives re: workshops with youth in schools, multilingual services and more. For more information please click: http://www.sfwar.org/programs.html Thanks again! Together we can bring healing, and create a future where rape is not acceptable

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Give some support for a feminist man who is doing the right thing. And tell him Feminist Allies sent you over there!

Shall I STFU?

Or:
It's All About Me, Right?

Sometimes, I don't do well with people who are in positions of authority. It may be the case that I have a neurotic problem with authority--in part because I grew up watching my mother struggle with sexism in her workplace, with her husband, and in the larger world. I think that having "problems with authority" may be a relatively healthy reaction to an unhealthy society, where it is often the case that those in power are harming those with less power. What is an appropriate response to oppression, other than a desire to fight back? (Of course, this is oversimplifying--other responses include caretaking of self and others, compassion and empathy. But I think a desire to fight should be in there too.)

And yet, there is another aspect of my resistance-to-authority, and it is rooted in patriarchy. Men are taught The Hierarchy, and are shown over and over again, that they have a place in it--above some men, below others, above all women, etc. And generally, we are told, we should be striving to be as high up on that ladder as we can be. This is putting it very starkly, of course, but this is essentially a big part of what men are taught. So, I resist authority in part because, on some levels, I want to be higher up on that ladder of hierarchy than the men (and women, and folks of all genders) who are currently above me.

Given these two factors, and many others, my instant reaction to having bullshit called on me, and/or being told to shut the fuck up, is that my hackles go up, and all of my defenses come to the fore. (Of course, having the safety and space to be defensive, may be a reflection/product of my own privilege.) So I am sometimes left in the following position, when somebody is attempting to call me on what they see as my own bullshit: I have to decide--Are they right, in which case I need to stand down and apologize? Or are they being bullies, in which case I need to step up and perhaps take them down a notch?

And sometimes the question is very easy to answer: If I use the word "lame" and get called out for ableist language, it's pretty clear that I need to apologize and take a step back to examine my privilege in that regard. (For some reason, "lame" has been a hard habit to break for me.) If an MRA guy tries to call me out for not including his woes around child support in a post about how women make less, on average, than men, I can be pretty assured that he's a douche and a bully, and is trying to impose his opinion in a way that isn't helpful (in part because of the aforementioned privilege that makes him think he needs to/deserves to move up the ladder with every interaction). And of course, somebody can (correctly) call me on my bullshit and also be cruel and rude about it: But that doesn't make them a bully in the sense that I'm talking about. It matters who is holding privilege--women feminists being cruel to me can cause me some pain, but they (generally) aren't using their privilege to do so. Which, y'know, matters.


Sometimes, though, it really is hard to tell whether I am responding to a sincere bullshit-call-out or a bully. And in these cases, I tend to err on the side of re-examining my own privilege, because, really, who couldn't stand to do that some more? Also: I don't have to stand up to every bully myself--I am part of various communities that do social justice work, and there are lots of people ready to stand up to bullies in those communities. And this is also a situation that will always recur: Given that I live in a patriarchal society, and given that I engage with both activists and folks in the larger world, I will sometimes screw up and get called on my own bullshit, and I will sometimes run into bullies who need to be stood up to. It just will happen.

All of which is to say that I have myriad reactions when I read Twisty's words at I Blame the Patriarchy:

But really, it’s comical, the predictability with which dudes who fancy themselves feministically enlightened just can’t seem to shut the fuck up when they are found to be duding the joint up a little too hardcore.

My first reaction is that my hackles go up. (Ok, my *first* reaction is to chuckle at "duding the joint up," because that's great use of language.) But then I reflect on where that feeling I'm having is coming from (privilege!), and where the criticism is coming from (Twisty, who knows her stuff, generally)--and I have to let it go. And it's not that I can say, "Well, she's not talking about me." She *is* talking about me, and men like me, when we screw up and can't see our privilege getting in the way of our thinking and talking. It does happen, even to those of us who are trying to not let that happen. I do my best, and I will sometimes get it wrong. Nobody likes to think of themselves like a douchebag, but all of us find ourselves saying stupid stuff sometimes, getting things wrong sometimes. So, sometimes, if I'm told to STFU, it's good to do just that.

What Men Can Do Wednesday: Get Some Help with Being an Ally

There is a great discussion going on over at Creek Running North on an 'Ally 101' thread started by Theriomorph around how to be a good feminist ally, and how to keep one's privilege and racism in check as much one can. I encourage everybody who isn't already reading it to check it out.

Some of the comments are simply put, but full of good advice. From commentor Christina, of Say Nothing Charmingly, in particular sticks with me:

I really just think that listening, leavened with a touch of empathy, is what is needed. Since historically, white folks haven’t had to listen to others much, nor feel empathy for others much, it’s not as easy as it sounds to learn it.

Hat tip to BlueAlto.

What Men Can Do Wednesday: Mix It Up

Over my Xmas holiday, I spent a good deal of time watching my nephew open and enjoy some presents, but even more time sitting around with friends and chosen family, mostly eating. I had a lot of good food (but not too much, strangely--I managed to avoid that way-way-way-too-full feeling this year), all of it pretty much prepared by other people. Sure, I did some slicing and salad making, but mostly what I did was dishes. This is something that comes directly from my upbringing--my mama taught me, if you're a guest and food is made for you, you help to clean up. (Exceptions can be made at homes where guests aren't allowed to do such things, by virtue of their guest-hood, but they are few and far-between.) I have extended this to a general rule that I clean up, since I don't enjoy cooking very much at all, and I even kind of enjoy cleaning up.

It's a simple thing, but with my non-chosen family and even friends from the past, too often things play out along gender roles, with men sitting and eating (and maybe carving a bird, or doing the outdoor grilling), but women doing most of the cooking and cleaning up. Even among people who are aware of the perils of rigid traditional gender roles, such roles reassert themselves mercilessly, and one has to keep an eye out for 'em.

One of the things that I love about my group of friends and chosen family is that there is a real effort to erase gender distinctions around who prepares food and who cleans and...well, we just all do a lot of work to make sure the meals turn out good and fun and delicious for everybody involved, and that nobody is left behind when it comes to the work of the meal, or the enjoyment of it (and, for me, they are intimately related). We also tended to choose meals which aren't that labor-intensive, so that we could hang out a bit more.

The other way men can mix it up is to literally mix up the little groups that split up during gatherings--several times I noticed that we had all broken down along gender lines completely, and a couple of times I decided to mix it up a bit. I'm happy to say that my friend group doesn't as often break down along those lines (though it does at times), and that we have enough queer-ish-ness to make some of those lines blurry from the start.

So: Little things, to be sure, but worthwhile nonetheless. Mix it up a bit, guys.

What Men Can Do Wednesday: Avoid Being the Hero

I have long suffered from a tendency toward white knight syndrome, or wanting (subconsciously and consciously) to be somebody's knight in shining armor. As a feminist guy, it's actually a pretty easy default to slip into--when one is taking close looks at the world regarding how women are treated in the workplace, how much violence toward women is perpetuated by men, and the ways in which many women (and men!) are trapped, to various degrees, by rigid gender roles, it's disturbingly easy to see oneself as the Bringer of Logic and Reason, as The Hero, even as The Guy Who Gets It. Boys are taught that this is part of their job, of course, so it's not a huge surprise that this is something I have had to guard against in myself for a good deal of my life.

We all need to be rescued, from time to time. That's what friends, lovers and family are for, in part. Our social networks are also, to some degree, our rescuers, our safety nets. There's no shame in wanting to help people, or needing some help, gender be damned. However, men are trained from boyhood that they not only need to tend to their own needs, but they must rescue those women who need saving. They are also often taught that women are going to need a lot of saving, because they aren't as strong as men, or as resilient, or as brave, etc. This all sounds really heavy-handed and sort of silly, but you can see how pervasive this mindset is when you find men who identify as feminists who still have trouble not seeing themselves as saviors of a sort. (There are other ways of suffering from 'white knight' syndrome, of course, not the least of which is white folks coming into the spaces of people of color and telling them how bad they have it, and how to fix things, just as a for-instance.)

One key to overcoming this sort of behavior is to better recognize women as just as strong, independent and powerful as men. Overly simple, perhaps, but I find myself having to be reminded of it, because the training is pretty deeply-rooted, again and again. But it's not only the training; it's also the self-fulfilling nature of certain gender norms. It is a fact of the world that women get raped more than men get raped. How easy is it to go from that fact to an idea that a particular woman, or women in general, need to be protected, and protected by men? Of course, women do need to be protected--but they need to be protected as people, just as we all need some protection sometimes. Men have to be protected, too--much violence done in the world is violence against men, by men. And, of course, there are men (and boys) who need to be protected from women--this isn't always the main focus of such discussions, but that it happens warrants that we take it into account as well. So we all need some protection, sometimes. Do any of us need a knight in shining armor? Not generally. We need safety nets, we need places to heal, we need safe places to work, to love, to live. Individual white knights aren't likely to help in that regard--but men (and women, and people of all genders) who take action against violence, who create safe spaces for everybody, who recognize that independence can best happen when there are others we depend upon, and when others depend upon us; people who can recognize these things, and take action around them, are the people who we need most.

(Note: I do, on the other hand, really, really need to be rescued by Cate Blanchett riding up on a white horse wearing a suit of armor. So if you see her wandering around, send her my way. Thank you.)

What Men Can Do: Resist Gender Essentialism (with Accessories!)

(Note: Title suggests that you can take the man out of academia, but it's harder to take academia out of the man.)
Melissa over at Shakesville, as often happens, says what I wanted to say, just...better, regarding blogging during the 16 Days of Action Against Gender Violence project:

Today is the final day of the 16 Days of Action Against Gender Violence, during which I suppose I have blogged exactly as often as always about violence against women, in America and abroad. Sometimes it feels like it's all I ever write about; sometimes it feels like I can't possibly write about it enough to do the issue justice; often, those feelings exist within me simultaneously. All I ever do is try to empty the sea with this teaspoon; all I can do is keep trying to empty the sea with this teaspoon.

And it got me to thinking about one of the themes of feminism for me: Small Daily Acts of Feminism. I tend to think that (1)The 'little' things are often only seemingly little and (2)Lots of (seemingly) little things add up. Take, for instance, my little pink phone.

When I bought my current cell phone, there was a choice of cover colors. I wanted something not-plain, and my only real choices seemed to be the US flag or a pearl-ish pink. Being not-so-patriotic these days (or at least not finding an flag phone to be something on my list of wants, it was a no-brainer. Also, from time to time, I like to express my disdain for the strictness of traditional gender roles. At times that feels silly--like having a pink phone says anything to anybody about the rigidity of what 'being a man' means. It feels trite and pointless sometimes.

And yet: I've had lots of good conversations with people about gender norms that began with an offhand comment about that phone. These days, I usually respond to people who say "Nice pink phone" with "Thanks. Do you like pink too?" or some such. And then, I try to follow it up with simple questions about why pink ought to signify 'feminine' at all, why I can't have some traditionally 'feminine' likes and dislikes without it being a judgment on my worth, etc. And this is a little thing. And yet, conversations being had that wouldn't be had without this little thing make me think that, even if it's just a little thing, it's not nothing. Even if it is teaspoons emptying the ocean, it's better than no teaspoon at all.

16 Days, Day 4: What Men Can Do: Recognize Violence by Men Against Men as a Feminst Issue

I try to do a regular Wednesday thing about "What Men Can Do" as feminist allies. This week, we'll focus on something that I think men can do to engage in feminist practices around gendered violence, in the spirit of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. The subject of men's violence against men is, for me, a feminist issue, and is also something that often get overlooked, even among people working on recognizing and fighting gender violence.

Gender Violence Also Means Violence Against Men by other Men
While I think that violence against women by men is rightly the primary focus of much feminist work to be done around violence, and I don't think that claims about violence by men against women ought to be responded to by noting other ways that violence happens (men cause violence against other men, women cause violence against men, people on the transgender spectrum are also harmed,violence by women against women is too-often ignored by feminists and queer communities, etc.), I do think that all of the various kinds of violence warrant some of our attention. As men who are feminist allies, we have a responsibility to address violence committed by men, including violence against women, but also including (but not limited to) violence against other men.

Men's violence against other men often gets overlooked as some sort of grownup version of boys-will-be-boys. Men police their own gender by beating up men who are seen as less than manly (which usually means 'feminine' in some way). Men get raped by other men, and when this fact isn't overlooked, it is often treated as a joke (heard any good 'don't-drop-the-soap-in-prison jokes, lately?). And, though some may argue for or against feminists spending more or less time on this issue, it's always important to recognize that a good deal of violence by men against men has some of the same causal roots that men's violence against women has: The policing of traditional masculinity. To 'be a man' has come to mean, at many times and in many ways, dominating others--and this can include dominating people of all genders through violence. Lots of this dominating/policing takes the form of simple, brutal physical violence. To the extent that we ignore this, we risk continuing various cycles of violence by men, against people of all genders. And one of the best tools we have for rooting out this sort of policing is feminism.

What Men Can Do: Support Other Men

One of the things that has struck me as I've begun to enter middle age (I'm thirty-seven, I'm not old!) is that several of my male friends are experiencing some intense worry and stress over being the 'primary breadwinner' in their families. These are fairly socially conscious, intelligent men who are mindful enough about traditional gender roles to know that conversations must be had around who ought to be the primary breadwinner, if anybody--and they are nontraditional fathers in the sense that they are extremely conscious of being partners in raising kids in various ways.

And yet, having taken on the 'primary breadwinner' mantle, they see themselves as carrying the burden independent of the fact that they have support from their partners. They feel like they are carrying the burden alone, even though they are being supported emotionally (and financially, to some degree) by their partners--even though their partners 'have their backs'. The mortgage payment, while paid with money that both partners earn, feels to him like it's his alone; he feels that if he doesn't produce, then the entire family will fall.

Conceptions of traditional masculinity help to shape men's identities so they feel that their main contribution to any relationship is what they can provide financially. There are infinite complexities involved that I won't go into, but it's relatively clear that men's self-value is inextricably intertwined with doing work that provides financial security, not just for themselves, but for any family they are a part of. Add to this conceptions of traditional masculinity which limit the other ways that men may be important to others, which limit the ways in which men may relate emotionally to other people, and you end up with men who value having a job more than they value having the family which they think they must work to provide for.

Susan Faludi, in Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, points us to one logical conclusion of this conception of masculinity when she discusses a man who has been part of a large group of layoffs from McDonald Douglass. He spends most of his time at McDonald Douglass' 'job placement' center, with the only community he knows, that of other men who have been laid off and haven't found work. Then, one day, he gets into a car accident that he has caused, and is arrested. Thing is, he prefers prison to looking for work, as Faludi reveals when she and Don's friend Steve go to prison to visit him:

"The phones by which we were to communicate didn't work for five minutes, and so we held up signs, telling Don that he was missed at the center. He smiled and nodded serenely. For once, there were no tears behind the smile. The phones were finally switched on and I asked Don about the accident. But the accident was old news for Don; he was far more eager to tell me about his life in jail, especially his position as a prison trusty. He was working in the clinic and in the cafeteria. He wore a different-colored shirt as a trusty, a cut above the inmate masses. "The deputies say to me, 'We don't know why you're here!': They "respected" him, he said. "It's not all bad here."

I reluctantly handed the phone over to Steve Williams, who even more reluctantly took it. He peered at his friend through the smudged glass barrier. "Since you saw me last, I have not had a position," Steve began hurriedly. "In fact, I'm looking at poverty in January." Then he hastened onto the common ground of news about the center moving, about who hadn't found a job, and what changes had been made to the decor. "Were you there since they put the new wall in?" Steve asked Don. The inmate shook his head. "Yeah, well," Steve said, "It's a pretty good arrangement. It makes it more like an office.

By the time Steve finished recounting the details of the center's home improvements, our twenty minutes were up and the phone went dead. I scribbled down a last question on a piece of paper and held it up to the window. "Is going to jail worse or better than being laid off from McDonnell Douglas?" Don pointed at "better," smiled, and then vanished.

Later, Don's wife, Gayle, told me that he could have applied for release two months earlier for time served but had declined. "He wants to stay in jail, " she said, marveling."(pp100-101)

Again, there's a lot going on here--I think people in general like to work, like to feel like they are contributing to their own lives, the lives of their families and friends, and to society at large, and these desires exist across all gender lines. But I also think that men are taught that there are only certain ways that they can contribute--and financially supporting a family is one of the few. What men can do is remind ourselves, our friends, our family, and our fellow men in general that we bring a lot to the world aside from financial security.

What Men Can Do Wednesday: Armchair Feminist, Part Two

Months ago now, I wrote about the idea that men who identify as feminists or feminist allies have to watch out that they don't get caught up in too much 'armchair feminism'--that is, we have to keep in mind that we may too often slip into a detached sort of conceptualizing of feminism, in part because we don't as often or as easily find ourselves face-to-face with the harms that patriarchy and misogyny can cause.

But the more I read and think about the conceptual frameworks that help create our relationship to gender and to power, the more I think that men can gain some motivation for better understanding feminism by paying attention to the ways in which patriarchy harms boys and men. This is not to take away from how these things harm people of other genders, of course--and for many people, avoiding harm to others is a pretty powerful motivation. But for many of us, avoiding harms to ourselves is also a powerful motivator, and I think feminist men should better understand this.

Thing is, the harms that men experience as a result of rigid gender roles, rigid hierarchical societal structures, and the like, are sometimes more subtle than the harms that women often face, or harder for men to see. Some of this just has to do with the way that men are harmed by rigid gender roles, and some of it flows pretty directly from men being at the top of the dominance hierarchy--it's tough to see the water that we're swimming in.

In addition, because of the very way that masculinity is envisioned and enforced, often these harms go unclaimed by men themselves, for fear of being seen as unmanly. Rather than, for instance, feeling the immediate, visceral effects of being verbally accosted while doing something like trying to buy some gas, men have to face the stress of being thought of as, and being taught to think of themselves as, protectors and providers, even in contexts where such things are impossible (as one example). Which is not to say that women don't face subtle forms of harm, or that men don't face visceral, physical and obvious harm in part by virtue of conceptions of masculinity--but it may be that men need to more often look harder to find a harm that exists.

Part of the risk of armchair feminism for feminist men comes from not recognizing these harms--once recognized, we might better feel the passion of our ideals.

(Part one.)

Men Doing Feminist Work: Kenneth Clatterbaugh

As a person who has a BA in Philosophy and never finished his master's thesis, I still have a soft spot in my heart for professional philosophers, and when they do work on examining masculinity, all the better. And anyone who can write both Contemporary Perspectives on Masculinity: Men, Women, and Politics in Modern Society and The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy deserves success and happiness in everything he does. Also, the guy deserves a lot of thanks for hanging out with The Promise Keepers so that none of us had to.

Because much of my feminism is wrapped up in blogging, I oftentimes wonder about the notion of doing good work here, that working with ideas here is worthwhile, and I also think about how much of that eventually translates into a better world (and how much of it doesn't). In the end I think professional theorists like Clatterbaugh can and do make a difference (as, I would argue, do some bloggers), though it can be more subtle and cause changes over longer periods of time than traditional activism. Anybody who is unsure about the effects of theory on the world can look to Descartes--without him it's questionable whether we'd have traditional conceptions of the division between mind and body, for instance (and Xtians would have a different conception of the soul).

As I begin to unpack the last few decades of theory around men and masculinity, I'm starting to recognize how much work has already been done, even if so much more is still to come, regarding reshaping traditional masculinity into something better. Theorists like Clatterbaugh do a lot of that work.

He certainly is ready to ask some of the right questions. From his Contemporary Perspectives on Masculinity: Men, Women, and Politics in Modern Society:

1. What is the social reality for men in modern society?
2. What maintains or explains this social reality?
3. What would be a better social reality?
4. How can we achieve this better reality?

And, in beginning to answer these questions, I think he takes a straightforward, yet intricate, approach:

Certain masculinities are favored socially or come closer to the gender ideal. Boys are taught to adopt these social roles and ideals. Certain collections of behaviors, attitudes, and conditions (certain masculinities) are favored and rewarded, others are ignored, and stil others are punished. Masculinities may vary from subculture to subculture, but they are dominant in the sense that htey are favored and actively promoted thorughout society, and those who appear to exemplify them are most likely to be placed in positions of power and trust. Thus, there is a strong set of similarities among the powerful men who sit in boardrooms, in legislatures, and in other responsible positions. And there are strong similarities among men who are excluded from positions of power and prestige. Of course, there are exceptions and there are changes, but there are also rules of thumb that favor certain sets of behaviors, attitudes, and conditions: For example, to be articulate, loyal, heterosexual, white, and wealthy are favored characteristics of hegemonic masculinities.

Clatterbaugh ties together conceptions of masculinity, paying attention to the intersectionality of gender, class, race and sexuality. Plus, y'know, he has that book on philosophical conceptions of causality, if you feel like a bit more light reading.

For more information, check out his wikipedia entry and his site.

What Men Can Do: Build Better Boxes

I've (still) been (slowly) reading Susan Faludi's 1999 book, Stiffed, after having seen some interviews with her regarding her newest book, The Terror Dream. Again I am amazed that there really are many more resources for feminist men than I had previously thought possible, and I've been ignorant of a good deal of it. Perhaps it's just my own level of general ignorance(!), or perhaps I've bought too much into the antifeminist notion that feminism is 'all about women' for way too long.

Stiffed seems to be one long, reasoned examination (with examples!) of how traditional conceptions of masculinity and femininity may harm men, together with the threads of several interrelated questions that run through the book: Why have men not revolted, in the way that some women have, against the bogus demands of traditional gender roles? And some corollary questions: Why do so many men appear to blame feminism for the ills that feminism has gone a long way toward explaining?--Why do so many men want to kill the messenger?

So far I think Faludi gives us lots of good questions, and I'll be curious to see what her answers are. But the questions themselves, and the background of the questions she illuminates for us, are intriguing. She gives us a quick summation of one way of looking at the growth of the feminist movement:

More than a quarter century ago, women began to suspect in their own lives "a problem with no name." Even the most fortunate woman in postwar, suburban American, maneuvering her gleaming Hoovermatic across an expansive rec room, sensed that she'd been had. Eventually, this suspicious would be expressed in books--most notably Betty Friedan's The feminine Mystique--that traced this uneasiness back to its source: the cultural forces of the mass media, advertising, pop psychology, and all the other "helpful" advice industries. Women began to free themselves from the box in which they were trapped by feeling their way along its contours, figuring out how it had been constructed around them, how it was shaped and how it shaped them, how their reflections on its mirrored walls distorted who they were or might be. Women were able to take action, paradoxically, by understanding how they were acted upon. "women have been largely man-made," Eva Figes wrote in 1970 in Patriarchal Attitudes What had been made by others women themselves could unmake. Once their problems could be traced to external forces generated by a male society and culture, they could see them more clearly and so challenge them.(pp13)

As women began to recognize the social forces that shaped them, and to recognize that these social forces were more often than not both institutional and also shaped by men more than they were shaped by women, they began to form a movement. But, Faludi tells us, the ways in which men were harmed by these social forces weren't examined enough--partly because of the perception that it was men who had contributed more to the creation of said social forces:

Men feel the contours of a box, too, but they are told that box is of their own manufacture, designed to their specifications. Who are they to complain? The box is there to showcase the man, not to confine him. After all, didn't he build it--and can't he destroy it if he pleases, if he is a man? For men to say they feel boxed in is regarded not as laudable political protest but as childish and indecent whining. How dare the kings complain about their castles?(pp13)

I'm not sure that Faludi is encapsulating actual feminist thought about things here, or just giving us a psychological picture of how things were and are for some. Still, as a feminist man, I sometimes struggle with this very notion--there's no doubt (in my mind) that in some senses, I have 'more power' than many women have, by virtue of being a man--but of course this generalization doesn't immediately get me outside of the box that traditional conceptions of masculinity place me in. I didn't build the box, even if men-in-general are the main contributers to the box. No matter who built it, I still have to live within it, and I still have to find ways of breaking it up--and having some privilege as a man doesn't make that easy.

I think most feminists recognize men get ambushed by bogus conceptions of traditional gender roles, though I also think helping men understand all of this isn't on the top of most feminist to-do lists; many feminists simply have plenty of other work to do. And I don't have a problem with that: I think that men who identify as pro-feminist or feminist need to do the work involved--we need to talk with other men, we need to resist some traditional conceptions of male masculinity (and femininity), we need to listen to women and work with them. We don't need to place the problems that traditional conceptions of masculinity cause us at their feet (or worse, blame them for the problems).

And, of course, many men are doing this. This is exactly the sort of things that are being done by the men we profile on Fridays: Groups like Men Can Stop Rape and Men's Resources International are working to redefine masculinity, in part, so that this box we're in starts to go away, or at least is built differently. But it's important for us to recognize that it's too easy to 'explain away' the work that men have to do--to simply point to patriarchy and imply that men can just leave the shackles of traditional masculinity behind because in whatever sense they are the patriarchy, is to ignore the realities of the situation, the complexities of the interactions between institutional conceptions of masculinity and individual men. Faludi's book goes a long way toward reminding us of the difficulties that we, as men who are pro-feminist and feminist, have to overcome.

What Men Can Do: Work with Women

I ran across an interesting article the other day, written by Zainab Salbi, who is one of the founders of Women for Women International, an amazing organization, from first glance, that helps to connect women in their struggles in order to lift everybody up. In this article, Salbi notes that she experienced a change in her own conceptions of men while working Kabul:

I will never forget the day that two turbaned, bearded strangers approached me as I stood in the midst of a camp for internally displaced people on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. My mind instantly flooded with stereotypes of the Taliban -- whose misogynist interpretations of Islam resulted in the brutal oppression of Afghan women -- and I braced myself for the ways they could express their disapproval for the women that were gathering to enroll in Women for Women International's program. But, to my absolute surprise, the men had come to thank me for the opportunities that our organization had brought to the women, their families, and their community.

First of all, I think it's wonderful that these men expressed their feelings on the issue--I'm not saying they should get a cookie, but I do think that it's a good thing when men recognize the ways in which feminist organizations help us all.

Next, Salbi takes a step back and asks us to acknowledge some of the struggles that men face:

But, what happens to men is complex as well. While it is true that men lead violent actions in war, including the majority of the killing, raping and pillaging that occurs, not all men are part of that reality. In truth, many men are drawn into the stereotypes of the male aggressor regardless of their own beliefs, values and actions. For example, when rape and other forms of gender-based violence are used as weapons during war, afterwards many men are left struggling with the very essence of their manhood and masculinity after they witness the rape of their wife and daughters.

I applaud Salbi's recognition of the importance of changing conceptions of masculinity and where that leads men--not only do men have to deal with the guilt of being the guiding force of violence (against women, yes, but also against other men), but they also have to deal with a lack of options. Bucking traditional masculinity is dangerous to men.

Salbi continues, telling a heartbreaking story of one man's (late) realization that how he had treated women his whole life was wrong. Unfortunately, this fact that was only revealed to him upon being humiliated at the hands of the Taliban:

As we work on building peace and stability in different war torn regions, it is important that we understand the complexities of gender and recognize the struggles not only faced by women but by men as well. This complexity and struggle can be seen all over the world. An Afghan woman once told me how her father-in-law, an older man with weak hearing who worked as a hospital guard during the Taliban control of Afghanistan was slapped by a member of the Taliban when he didn't open the door immediately to the knocks he couldn't hear. When her father-in-law returned home, he complained of being sick and remained in bed for three days. On the fourth day, he left his bed, knelt in front of the women in his family, and apologized for the times he had slapped them in the past, saying that, until his encounter with the Taliban, he had never thought of the humiliation it caused. From then on in that household, women were safe from physical abuse.

What can men do? Men can learn these lessons, sure (earlier would be better, of course, and the best situation would be if such lessons were taught to men as boys), but men can also work with organizations like Women for Women International, and donate to them financially, or as a volunteer. as more and more feminists see the importance of bringing men into the picture, this should help encourage more and more men to support these feminist causes.

Be sure to read Salbi's entire article. It's full of even more insight and inspiration, especially for feminist and pro-feminist men.

What Men Can Do: Speak Up

More good stuff from Jackson Katz's The Macho Paradox

"I believe that men who are silent in the face of other men's violence--whether the silence is intentional or not--are complicit in the perpetration of that violence. We're not guilty because we're men. We're responsible--because we're men--either for speaking out or for not speaking out about other men's violence. This is hardly a new concept. Some of the proudest moments in the history of this country are grounded in the principle that members of dominant groups have a critical role to play in the struggle for equality. For example, whether motivated by secular or religious beliefs, many white abolitionists in the nineteenth century understood that they were complicit in the 'peculiar institution' of slavery unless they worked actively to end it. A similar sensibility informed the many courageous white radical college students and mainstream white liberals who played an important role in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Not coincidentally, a lot of those white people were accused by racist whites of succumbing to 'white guilt.' "(pp25)

We've all got our proud moments and our not-so-proud moments. The other day, in a group of acquaintances, one guy made a couple of 'jokes' that revolved around rape in men's prisons. I wanted to say something, but I didn't. This is a not-so-proud moment. I think that conceptions of traditional masculinity have an ace in the hole when it comes to keeping men silent: It's been set up to be 'unmanly' to talk about things like prison rape, to talk about men's violence against other men, in any other words but those of male dominance (i.e. 'those guys in prison deserve what they get'); traditional masculinity reinforces itself by silencing those of us who have (perhaps) the most power to do something about it.

What Men Can Do Wednesday: Avoid Othering, Avoid Demonizing

Choosing Conversations
Talking with people who have radically different opinions and worldviews can be difficult. It can be difficult enough that it sometimes feels like it's not worth it. And, of course, sometimes it isn't worth it--we have a finite amount of time in our lives, so we have to pick and choose our causes, and we have to make decisions about where to spend our time and energy.

So I constantly find myself wondering when it is and when it isn't worthwhile having certain discussions. When I was younger, and a more vehement atheist, usually I was making these decisions around whether or not it was worth my time to talk with 'the devout'. These days, I spend a good deal of time thinking about whether or not to respond to the online (mostly) opinions of various men who identify as "Men's Rights Activists" (or those who identify as anti-feminists).

Labels are Useful and Dangerous
Part of the reason I spend any time at all thinking about these things is that I tend to think I'm interacting with individual people, rather than members of a group--and I'm more inclined to respond to individual people who treat me as an individual person who disagrees with an idea I posted about than I am to respond to "an MRA" who is commenting because he has a problem with "feminism". Not that I have a problem with labels in general--I think as shorthand, they are useful--maybe even necessarily so. After all, I fall on the call-myself-a-feminist side of the can-men-be-feminists-or-only-allies debate; labels mean something, are important, have effects in the world. Words, to a certain degree, are power. But at the same time I think that identity, particularly political/social identity, is a sticky wicket, and that care should be taken to note that grouping people together is often going to help us miss an important part of the larger picture; responding to movements, rather than to individuals, carries a similar risk.

Defining Others
That said, when people who do identify as MRAs make what appear to me to be the same poor arguments again and again, I find myself tuning out, and overgeneralizing about "them". This is pretty much how 'othering' works. An individual with an opinion gets lumped together (or lumps himself together) with a group, the group gets a handy-dandy-not-complex label, and then the individual can become a villain.

This blog doesn't have the traffic that lots of good feminist blogs do, so all of this is coming from a guy who has had little experience as being the object of derision among the more vocal self-identified anti-feminists. (Here I'm even probably making a mistake by equivocating 'MRA' and 'anti-feminist'.) Blogs with high traffic have to moderate comments in a way that I will likely never have to do, in part because of the fringe-of-the-fringe-of-the-fringe of MRAs, who, say, make rape and death threats. So I can understand the reaction of wanting to lump MRAs into one category, and then describe that category in a way that, certainly, the MRAs are going to disagree with. I think this is what Jeff Fecke has done over at Shakesville in his post on the definition of MRA--he's presented a sort of 'MRAs for Dummies' post from a feminist point of view, and it's brought out some (in my opinion) good discussion but, unfortunately, the comments seem to be mostly not-so-helpful, on all sides. There seems to be less discussion and more cheerleading.

The Work I Want to Do
or, Here's Where I Get Into Trouble with Other Feminist Allies
And that's fine. Cheerleading has its place, I think, and can be useful and good, as part of a larger discussion. But I also think that posts that oversimplify group identity can sometimes be more trouble than they are worth, and I count Fecke's post as one of 'em. Yes, there are horrific MRAs. Yes, I think that MRAs tend to not understand some things that I think I do understand about the world. And yes, lots of MRAs, from my experience, have what I would call a misogynistic streak. But I also recognize, and think it's important to point out, that then there are some self-identified MRAs who I simply disagree with on a deep level--without having to demonize them. I think demonizing is a kind of othering, and I think it should be avoided if one can.

(Side note: One can't always get anything done from one's 'side' of things--I think, for instance, that nothing I say as an atheist will convince far-right evangelicals to back on on their stance on much of anything; moderate Xtians, however, can probably do some good there by shouting at the evangelicals. I think that more 'moderate' MRAs need to more often condemn the rape apologists and the like, for instance.)

Sometimes one has to generalize, simply because, as I noted above, we have a finite amount of time, and have to pick and choose--and this sometimes requires generalizing.

But, even while generalizing, I'd like to keep in mind that not all takes on "men's rights" are equal, and that, just like there is not one 'feminism' that all feminists partake in like some Platonic ideal, that there are self-identified MRAs who are more worth talking to as individuals, and that there are self-identified MRAs who are less worth talking to as individuals. And, though the time I spend talking to/with MRAs may vary depending on how much value I place on the conversation, and on having the conversation with that individual, painting with the broad brush that Fecke paints with as regards MRAs isn't the sort of work I want to be doing, though I see that it has its place. A definition of MRA given by a feminist ought to be the beginning of a conversation about what MRAs think, who they are, and what they want--not the end of such a conversation.

Why So Willing?
I've picked my own brain for the reason why I'm willing to give conversations with some MRAs a chance, why I'm willing to spend so much time on having what sometimes feel like the same conversations over and over again, even though we obviously disagree on a deep level about the world. One reason I find is that I have an intuition (that I can't support much, frankly--perhaps it's more of a hope?) that some MRAs think the way they do because, just like those of us men who identify as feminists or as feminist allies, they've been screwed over by traditional male masculinity--and I am interested in this one commonality. Why do I react to the shackles of traditional masculinity (in part) by embracing feminism, while some MRAs react by focusing on demonizing 'feminism', (even though, in my mind, feminism doesn't have enough of an effect on the world, as a movement, and as such seem unworthy of MRAs time) instead of focusing on how other men and traditional masculinity has screwed us all over?

I think I'm (so far) willing to have some conversations with (some) self-identified MRAs because I'm fascinated by the path they've taken, as compared to my own. And, for now at least, some of those conversations are worth having, if partly to avoid the demonizing and othering that is mostly a waste of time.

What Men Can Do, Supplemental: Resisting the Use of the Phrase "Pimp Your..."

I know I'm behind the curve on this one, but does the use of 'pimp' in popular culture bother anybody else as much as it bothers me? I visit a good little health site, Mark's Daily Apple pretty much daily (duh!) -- there are so many good tidbits there about food health and exercise that it's usually worth the visit. But then here comes an article about having a healthy brain, but instead of the title being Having a Healthy Brain, or Hacking Your Brain, the title is Pimp Your Brain.

It was a pleasant surprise that Sara, who originally posted the article, responded to my comment regarding the title. She has asked for others' opinions -- if you've got a minute and you agree that the continuing use of 'pimp' in popular culture to denote 'making something better' is worth resisting, go comment.

What Men Can Do: Responding to Worthwhile Comments

Toy Soldier recently left a comment on a post of mine that dealt with encouraging men to better recognize connections between violence by men in general and violence by men against women--my suggestion being that a strategy one might employ to get more men to better understand the role that traditional masculinity plays in men's violence against women is to better understand the role that traditional masculinity plays regarding men's violence in general. Toy Soldier thinks that the fact that I didn't talk about women's violence against men is not only worth noting, but also implies that I don't think that such violence and its victims are unimportant:

It is unfortunate that in your description of the violence committed against males you fail to mention women as aggressors. Most child abuse is committed by women. Nearly 40% of the people who rape and sexual abuse males are women. Recent studies show that women initiate and commit the same amount of domestic violence as men.

By avoiding mentioning that important aspect of violence committed against male you present an inaccurate view of male violence. Unless you consider female violence against males as inconsequential or condone it, it insulting to male victims of female violence to pretend they do not exist. -- Toy Soldier

Respond, or Point to Feminism 101?
My first impulse was to send TS to Feminism101, specifically the FAQ on FAQ: Why are you concentrating on X when Y is so much more important? But, while I think that Feminism101 serves a great purpose in this regard sometimes, there are times when another sort of response is necessary, and called for, and worth my time.

Some Common Ground
Toy Soldier and I may simply have world views which are incompatible fairly deep down. But I think that some common ground can be found. So I think a more thoughtful response than sending him to F101 must begin with a few comments detailing where I think TS gets things right. First off, I think TS's blogger etiquette (for lack of a better phrase) is right on here--he comes in, makes his point succinctly (and politely, using language like "it is unfortunate that") and then leaves the rest of his discussion to take place in his own space, rather than derailing any possible discussion over here. This type of etiquette is a big deal to me, given the ways that we, as bloggers, sometimes talk to each other in comments, and it is much appreciated. Additionally, it represents a way of talking to each other where some work can actually get done, if both 'sides' want some work to get done.

Secondly, TS is right that the violence that women commit against men is important. It is also important that male victims of the violence women commit against men are often silenced; the ways in which boys and men are silenced, we might note here, may be different in important ways than the ways in which women are silenced. Mostly, in my opinion, boys and men are silenced by the institutional nature of conceptions of traditional masculinity.

My basic agreement with TS is this: These things are important.

Point of Disagreement: What Does Choosing a Focus Imply?
My disagreement with TS stems from (at least) two places. First of all, I have some trouble with his factual claims about levels and frequency of abuse, which I discuss below. I also have a problem with TS not providing links to the studies he refers to--when making a point over here, any self-proclaimed feminist critics ought to know that the burden of proof is on them, a good deal of the time.

More importantly, though, I disagree with TS that not mentioning female violence against men every time I bring up male violence against others is "consider[ing] female violence against males as inconsequential," or that I'm "condoning it" by omission. Instead, in my opinion, I'm focusing on what I see as one aspect of a larger problem: Patriarchy and traditional masculinity help to cause men to do violence against each other and against women. Sure, patriarchy and traditional masculinity also help to cause women to do violence against men, boys, and other women, but that's not the aspect of violence-caused-by-patriarchy that I chose to focus on.

Does choosing that focus mean I don't think other types of violence are important? I don't think so. But I can see where TS might see it that way, and why. After all, if we look back to any movement, including feminist movement, there are places where the thinkers involved were taken to task for not giving enough consideration to various groups. When wealthy white women try to tell poor women of color that they should wait for their issues to be addressed (or ignore their issues completely), they should be called on it. And I can begin to frame TS's points in that light (though I don't know whether he would see it that way, of course): Perhaps by not mentioning women's violence against men every time I talk about men's violence against men and women, I'm somehow leaving out something fundamentally important.

I don't think so, and here's why: I think that these problems are big and complex enough that there is plenty of room for work on all fronts--and I think that pointing out, like TS is doing, that women do violence against men too every time somebody talks about violence men commit against men and women does less to draw attention to the violence women do to men and more to distract from the fact that men do a lot of violence against women, and against other men. So, while I think the former is important and is worthy of discussion, and I think that it should be an important goal of feminist men to deal with the violence done by parents (male and female) against boys (and girls! and people of all genders!), that doesn't mean that I think it should always be the topic of discussion, or always the most important facet of the subject of patriarchy and violence.

And, while TS seems to center his take regarding the abuse that men can suffer on feminists for various reasons (talk about killing the messenger!), he doesn't only do that. His blog, though filled in my mind with lots of rhetoric and misinformation (I'm sure he'd say the same of this blog...), is also full of good resources for men. So, while I don't agree with his general worldview, and I don't agree with the implicit argument that his site seems to make about feminists causing all the hardships men face (rather, I think it's patriarchy and traditional masculinity, often, which contributes the most to the suffering men feel), I do agree that men and boys aren't as likely to report violence done against them (especially if it's done by women), and are likely to suffer greatly because of the ways in which traditional masculinity influences how they deal with their trauma. (Plus: Many of the boys who are abused by their mothers will go on to abuse their wives, sons and daughters, in part because they aren't given good ways to voice their pain.)

And I hope all of this isn't taken as lip service. I know that questions of focus can come down to real differences in conceptual underpinnings, and that can lead to real differences in practical considerations. Again, my example from feminist movement: When feminist movement (more) ignored women of color when doing feminist work, and women of color said something about it, sometimes feminists reacted by noting that those problems would get dealt with later--and TS might well interpret my reactions to his position here as a similar move. I don't think it is. If you read this blog with any frequency, you'll see that I take the way men are harmed by patriarchy seriously, and address it quite often. (That's what the Feminism Helps Men posts are about, for instance.) If you really think that I'm condoning female-on-male violence by not mentioning it every time I mention male violence in general, then we're going to have to agree to disagree.

I'll admit that I wanted to not respond to TS at all, at first, but then I checked out his blog some more, and I see that you're genuinely interested in helping men who are victims of abuse (TS gives links to various groups that support men who are victims of abuse)--though he oftentimes focuses more heavily on women-on-men violence than I do--and that's my central point: There's plenty of room for both talk about men's violence against women (and men), and about women's violence against men--that doesn't mean that they both have to be talked about in every discussion.

Back to the Stats
TS doesn't give us specific links to his facts, but his points are worth at least some looking into--and I think that things are much more complex, at the very least, than TS is willing to admit in his comment:

Just as one 'for instance'--even if 'most child abuse' were 'committed by women', (and again, TS doesn't provide us with links to the studies he mentions) isn't it important that in single-parent homes, which account for almost a third of all families, single mothers account for 5/6ths of all of 'em? And yet, the percentage of men who abuse children is almost as high as the number of women. We should expect, if all else were equal, that women would be abusers at rates around 3 times higher than men (at least)--though it's hard to gauge because not all abuse happens in single-parent homes, of course. Instead, we find that, of people convicted of abusing children (80 percent of whom are parents), 58% were women and 42% were men. So, even though women are much more often (to the tune of 3 times as often) parents than men are parents, women who are convicted of abusing children do so at only a 10% higher rate than men who are convicted of it. This isn't even going into the societal stuff around the likelihood (in my mind) of women being convicted for it more often because male-on-male violence from father to son is more socially acceptable. Sources:
There were an estimated 11.4 million single-parents in 1994.
Women comprised
about five-sixths of all single parents.
Nearly 80 percent (79.4%) of perpetrators were parents of the victim; Approximately 58 percent (57.8%) of perpetrators were women and 42.2 percent were men.

The point is, it's much more complex than TS lets on in his comment. Basically, I have some concerns about what appears to be an oversimplification of the situation, and of the interpretation of the statistics involved.

What Men Can Do: Recognize the Connections

Geo makes a great point (one among many) in his comments on my last What Men Can Do post, the one dealing with what counts as meaningful discussion and what counts as confrontation. He says:

If/when - we can get men - "normal men" to really relate to Male Violence as a major problem (everywhere) I think it may be easier to tackle both sexism and sexist violence.

I think Geo's right on here, though (as always) I think there are complexities that we need to keep in mind. If we're concerned about men getting immediately defensive when discussing male violence against women (and that last post was about when and where we might think it's worth being concerned about), then discussing the tendency of traditional masculinity to teach men to respond with violence to various sorts of situations may be a good starting place.

Most men have been on the receiving end of male violence, or know a man who has been. Men have been drafted into wars, or tricked into enlisting with promises of achieving the ultimate in masculinity. Men have been smacked around by fathers as boys. Men have seen their mothers smacked around by their fathers. Traditional masculinity teaches men to give some violence back when in these situations, even when that is impossible (a good deal of the time), or when it would do not good anyway (a good deal of the time). Feminist critiques of traditional masculinity can help men see that traditional masculinity is a big part of the problem regarding the violence of men in general--and then we can start talking more about the everyday violence that women experience at the hands of men who have not yet learned to recognize the ways in which traditional masculinity sucks for all of those involved.

I don't think this is the only way that we can approach men about violence against women--depending on the context, I think a more direct approach on that front is sometimes warranted--we might bring men's violence against women to the fore and then later talk about men's violence in general (and heck, violence in general).

No great revelations, perhaps, but I think it's good to keep reminding ourselves of the different ways we might affect the world, of the different ways we might change some minds.

Men Doing Feminist Work: David Shepherd and Travis Price

By now y'all have probably heard about David Shepherd and Travis Price, the students in Cambrige, Nova Scotia, who didn't like that the new kid at school was bullied because he wore pink, and decided to hand out pink shirts in protest against bullying in general:

The Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who mocked him, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up. The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying. RELATED: Pink shirts legend grows "It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something," said David. They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one.

I applaud these guys, although they stop a bit short of what I would have wanted them to articulate. They point out that nobody should be made fun of for what they're wearing, but they don't, in any article I could find, even really mention that it's not about what somebody was wearing, really, but about homophobia. Their sentiment seems to be 'people should be able to wear what they want', when the sentiment really should be (and probably is, underneath), that people shouldn't be bullied for being gay. I think it's interesting that even these two brave students (because it was brave--the social pressures to go along with bullies are strong, especially in high school) haven't yet quite connected all of dots: It's not the pinkness, it's teh gay.

Still, ya gotta start somewhere, and these guys are way, way, way ahead of where I was when I was their age. And, as far as activism goes, they're way, way ahead of me now.

What Men Can Do: On Meaningful Discussions and Confrontations

I'm still reading Katz' The Macho Paradox, and it's still got me thinking. Early on, Katz addresses the fact that many men feel immediately, personally, defensive when people point out the amount of violence men perpetrate against women. Katz sees this defensiveness as one of the biggest hurdles standing in the way of getting more men to comprehend and embrace feminist ideals:

“When I work with men, I try to address the concepts of guilt and responsibility up front because I know from long experience—and a lot of trial and error—that if the goal is to inspire more men to engage in transformative action, we need to do more than simply tell them to stop behaving badly. That is sure to provoke a defensive reaction. Defensiveness, in fact, is one of the greatest obstacles to men's involvement in meaningful discussions about gender violence. Simply stated, a surprising number of non-violent men cannot hear about the bad things some men do to women without feeling blamed themselves.”--pp25

There's a lot going on here. Is our goal to inspire more men to engage in transformative action? That's one of my goals, certainly—but goals are usually only best understood in comparison with other goals. It is more important to inspire men to change themselves, and to change the world, than it is to stop men from doing violence against women? Of course I would say these two goals are inextricably intertwined, but I also understand that sometimes you just have to pick a goal, and stick to it for while. Katz is suggesting that inspiring men ought to be our primary goal.

I don't think that it ought to be the top priority for all (male) feminists all of the time. First of all, sometimes we just don't need to care about the defensiveness of men. Sometimes, defensiveness be damned, we want and need to vent. Sometimes, defensiveness be damned, we are more concerned with using the stick, rather than the carrot. Sometimes, defensiveness be damned, we need to focus on building up women and providing them safe(er) spaces, rather than coddling men. And Katz recognizes this—he does, after all, start the book out by noting that he's not writing the damn thing to coddle men. He's trying to be practical. Along those lines, he points out that lots of us feel like it's not worth the confrontation—that we do indeed pick our battles:

“In anticipation of defensive hostility, many women (and some anti-sexist men) censor themselves in discussions with men about sensitive issues like rape, sexual harassment, and abuse in relationships. They decide that it is not worth such confrontations with men in their professional or personal lives. The cost is too high in terms of ill feelings and interpersonal tensions. So a lot goes unsaid. Moreover, because defensiveness is the enemy of critical thinking, an awful lot of men who stand to greatly benefit from reading and reflecting on decades of brilliant academic and popular work on gender, power, and violence instead avoid it like the plague. So a lot goes unread.”--pp25

I think it's easy to fall into a habit of avoiding confrontation in this way—and it may be even more easy for feminist men to do so, using their privilege as a nice little safety blanket. But I also think it's necessary to recognize that it's sometimes necessary to avoid confrontation, if only to simply keep one's sanity. (And, indeed, sometimes we avoid confrontations because they are genuinely, immediately dangerous to us—the best thing to do sometimes is to just walk away.) We need to take care so as not to expect way too much of ourselves, and of our allies. We can create despair in ourselves and in our community if we're not careful, by setting impossibly high standards of behavior in terms of when we choose to stand up to the sexist asshats of the world. And there is plenty of despair to go around without us creating any more.

That said, I think we have to be equally careful to not back down from confrontations, and in this way I think I may disagree slightly with Katz. If our goal is to inspire men to create change, we may want to be careful to not first inspire defensiveness in them—but that all depends on our audience, and who is speaking to them, and when. Context is mightily important, and timing. Sometimes we might want to avoid defensiveness—but sometimes we might allow some men to get defensive, if only to allow other men to see how patently ridiculous that can be. Sometimes we might make 'em defensive on purpose. I have in mind here the sort of disparaging comedy that people like Stephen Colbert tend to do. Take the famous clip of him asking the congressperson who is trying to get the 10 Commandments installed in courtrooms in his state. When Colbert asks him to name the commandments, and the guy can name two (sort of), Colbert is humiliating the guy. There is little concern for how defensive that guy might have become, and yet a point has been made, and made well: You're posturing, you jerk. Engaging with anti-feminist men in similar ways can do a lot of work. (Amanda Marcotte is particularly good at this, in blogland.) If only I were as funny (and had the same team of writers) as Colbert. (or Marcotte!) Of course, Colbert is a pretty good feminist himself...

Other times, I fully appreciate where Katz is coming from. He goes to schools and talks about gender inequalities, espousing not only feminism, but trying to encourage a change away from the parts of culture with help to bring about men's violence against women. He goes to groups who specifically want/need/request to be talked to about sexism. I think in these places, it's probably a general good rule of thumb to do what one can to get one's point across without creating defensiveness, if possible. But of course most of us aren't doing feminist work in those spaces—we are at work, we are walking down the street, we're in bars and restaurants (ok, I'm not generally in bars, but I like me some food-other-people-have-made). In these places, it's not often clean cut, and various strategies need to be employed. And, as Katz points out, sometimes there's just no getting around the defensiveness, because many men have good reason to be defensive, because they are guilty of what is being called out:

“But not all men who react defensively are irrational. Some men actually have a troubled conscience, based on past (or present) perpetrations. No point in soft-pedaling this: there are millions of men in our society who (accurately) hear calls for men to speak out about gender violence as direct criticism of their own behavior. Many men get defensive and hostile at the mere mention of gender violence because they have reason to be defensive. The only way these men would not get defensive is if no one ever brought up the subject.”--pp25

One way to embrace them is to use feminist thinking itself to reframe just what confrontation can be, in which contexts it can and ought to happen, and what we ought to be arguing about. One great tool that I've gleaned from feminist theory is to learn to recognize false dichotomies and supposed conceptual 'binaries'-- and to call them out. "You're either with us or against us" tends to be a sort of anti-feminist way of thinking (though not always!), for instance. And I think developing a tendency to resist rigid binaries and to spot false dichotomies can help men who would be feminist allies to a great degree: We can recognize that it's not the case that we're either men or feminists, but not both, as the simplest example. We can also recognize that we can be part of a subset of humanity who causes a lot of damage while acknowledging that we, as individuals, don't have to shroud ourselves in guilt for all of the damage, even though we may still feel be responsible for it.

What Men Can Do: Guilt vs. Responsibility

I've begun reading The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women, and How All Men Can Help, by Jackson Katz. I'd like to thank whomever recommended the book to me, though I have since forgotten who did. (I seem to be acquiring good books on feminism, men and feminism, race theory and action and the like faster than I can read the damn things. But that's an embarrassment of riches, I suppose.) I'd like to first note that the subtitle seems to be unfortunate wording--to me it sounds like this is a book instructing men how to help other men hurt women. But, then, coming up with titles is a difficult sort of thing to do, so I don't fault him much for that.

So far I like Katz's writing style, and I like the fact that he isn't holding back, isn't coddling men around issues of violence against women. More importantly, though, I think it's great that he's addressing one of the things that often keeps men from doing good ally work, or from wanting to become feminist allies at all: guilt. More importantly, he addresses what I also see to be one of the main reasons that men sometimes let guilt get in the way of doing good ally work--the conflating of guilt with responsibility.

After giving us lots of statistics about the violence that men commit against women, Katz sends out a clarion call to men to become allies:

"It is long past time that men from all walks of life owned up to their part in all of this. The status quo is simply unacceptable. And while it is crucial that women and men work together to address the problem, the primary responsibility resides with men. Men, after all, are the primary perpetrators of rape, battering, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment, at least according to those radical feminists over at the FBI. So we can dispense with the idea that it is anti-male to say what everyone already knows to be true. There is an awful lot of violence against women in our society, and men commit the vast majority of it."--pp24

It probably goes without saying that I agree with Katz as far as he goes. I do think that the focus of the book, that of the violence men perpetrate against women, is too narrow for what I would want, if I could have whatever analysis I wanted (this, given that I haven't read the whole book yet)--I think that men's violence against women is one very important facet of the violence that men are taught in general; I think that an analysis of the violence men perpetrate against other men, against people of all genders, in addition to an analysis of the violence men perpetrate against women, is in order. I also recognize, however, that there is plenty to be said for the view that a good starting place to deal with this stuff is where Katz starts, given the damage men do against women.

But I digress.

Katz next lets us know that he's not going to coddle men (and the women who might help to coddle them), but neither is he going to try to use guilt to motivate:

"Is saying that unfair to men? Better yet, is telling the truth unfair to men? For those who think it is, please know that I am not going to spend a lot of time in this book catering to men's defensiveness around this subject. Or to women who feel obliged to rush to the defense of their sons and husbands. But let me be clear. I am also not going to guilt-trip twenty-first-century American men by blaming them for thousands of years of sexism and patriarchal oppression. Men shouldn't feel guilty simply for being born male. That's silly. If there is a reason to feel guilty, it should be about what they do or fail to do, not about their chance placement in one gender category."--pp24

And we do feel defensive, there's no doubt about it. Even the most adamant male feminist allies find ourselves feeling defensive about the abuses men have committed against women, and we don't just feel defensive about the abuses each of us, as individuals, have committed--we feel guilt about being men, from time to time at least. I think this is somewhat ridiculous, in some ways--but in other ways it reflects that we know that we have and do benefit from male privilege: No matter what degree we feel we participate in violence against women, we still benefit from violence that has been committed in the past, and violence that will be committed in the future, of men against women. So there will be some guilt there, and some defensiveness. But Katz hits the nail on the head when he points out the important distinction between guilt and responsibility:

"Nonetheless, when it comes to discussions about men and sexism, the concepts of guilt and responsibility are often confused. They are not the same thing. For conscientious men, especially those who are just beginning to grapple with the enormity of the problem of men's violence against women, feelings of guilt can be paralyzing, whereas feelings of responsibility at least have the potential to be energizing."--pp24

As men who would be feminist allies, we can recognize and appreciate all of our feelings, both our feelings of guilt and our feelings of responsibility. Still, we can try to use the feelings of responsibility to overcome the guilt to a degree where we can do something about the world apart from feeling defensive. I don't think this is ever easy, but it's a place from where to begin.

(As a side note: I have an intuition, one that I can't back up without some more thought, that most of the entire men's rights movement might be able to be traced back to defensiveness around feelings of guilt. Sometimes it seems as if there are two choices: Recognize the guilt and feel responsible, in the sense that Katz is talking about, or recognize the guilt and feel defensive. Allies do the former, and many MRA's do the latter. Again, not something I can fully back up just yet, just a thought.)