What about the men?

One of the most frustrating things about feminist discussion – especially online – is the reaction from some men who seem to think feminism or feminist policies are threatening or damaging to men in some way. The arguments they make can be really contradictory, because they’re so convinced by the idea that feminists hate men and want to make the world crappy for them. I wanted to break down some of those arguments and turn the perspective around on them a little.

There are lots of men who feel that feminism undermines masculinity – as if women no longer want ‘men to be men’ but at the same time women expect them to go to war to protect them or put out fires. This simply isn’t the case. Women just don’t want men to be men at the expense of women’s choices to also engage in some activities or professions previously deemed as only for men. I’m not going to pretend that all women want to join the army or the fire brigade, but some do and it’s the anti-feminist men who don’t want to let them, or don’t think it’s their place to be there. So if you don’t want women doing these roles, why argue that women won’t do them?

Access to children is a real hotbed of debate amongst anti-feminist men. Many men feel the courts treat them unfairly when it comes to cases involving parental custody. The perception is that women are the ‘usual’ carers or women are more nurturing so the children should be left with them. As a result, some men struggle for access to the children they dearly love and want to see. This is an area where I genuinely believe that feminist principles can help men – not hurt their access.

In a culture which pushes the view that women are naturally more caring or should be the ones at home looking after children, then primary custody will continue to fall more naturally with women. Feminists argue that women aren’t necessarily better suited to being the primary carer but in many cases are just as suitable as the men to being a primary earner in the household, possibly letting it fall to the fathers to take more time off when a child is born, work part-time/flexible hours or even not work at all. If this were the case, and the masculine work culture we currently have didn’t look down upon men who wanted to be more involved in childcare and take paternity leave, then men who wanted to would have more opportunity to assert themselves as fathers and level the playing field when it comes to custody. Feminists I know all want to see equality at work, which results in equality in the home. More women in senior work roles, and also more men taking improved paternity leave. It’s not just legislation which prevents men doing this, it’s also the cultural belief that men are less masculine or *shocker* a bit feminine if they want to look after their children in anything but a provider sense. This disapproval comes from men themselves, not women. It’s their own desperate clinging to a hyper-masculine, ‘men should be men’ viewpoint which does themselves the most damage.

To take an example, women were rightly horrified when Glencore Chairman, Simon Murray recently said

Women are quite as intelligent as men. They have a tendency not to be so involved quite often and they’re not so ambitious in business as men because they’ve got better things to do. Quite often they like bringing up their children and all sorts of other things,

But men need to stand up and realise that this sort of attitude is also damaging to them. If Chairmen like Murray are expecting the men in the office to have no interest in child rearing, to not take paternity leave (or shared parental leave), and to leave childcare to the women in their lives, then what hope do the men have in establishing themselves in an equal position when it comes to getting primary custody in cases of separation? Instead, they’re supposed to be ambitious, work hard and work late. Murray clearly states that he doesn’t want to employ women who may go off on maternity leave and he’s not alone (Alan Sugar has expressed similar views) so men who work for these businesses would find the culture extremely unsupportive if they were to exercise their right to shared parental leave, or even staying at home occasionally to mind ill children.

Teaching young boys that they need to be masculine above all else and that the worst thing they can be is girlie or gay is also potentially damaging. Feminists aren’t the ones who tend to insist on such structured gender roles but often anti-feminist men are. They see feminist women as such a threat they translate this into teaching their sons that they must fight it and retain their manliness. Again, this ‘toxic masculinity’ is potentially more damaging to them than it is to women or feminists. I recently wrote a post about Nadine Dorries’ proposed changes to sex education, aimed solely at girls. I made the point that there’s a potentially damaging assumption that all young boys are massively hormonal and dying to have sex. In fact, they’re not ‘real men’ unless they do. This is a cultural message young men get from their peers but also older brothers, fathers, TV and films. All teenage boys are apparently having lots of sex and the ones who aren’t are losers and probably gay. God forbid they still be a virgin at 18, 17 or even 15 or 16 years old. There’s no allowance for the fact that some of them just aren’t ready and, like girls, should be encouraged to say no until they are. Abstinence education is often aimed at girls as moral gatekeepers – they must resist those bad boys and remain pure. What does it say about those boys? That they can’t be expected to control themselves? That they need take no responsibility for their own morals or their own behaviour? It doesn’t exactly paint them in a light which allows them to have much of a sense of self-worth.

Sex education is just one example but of course hyper-masculinity is limiting for young boys in many ways. For any boys who don’t fit the mould, bullying and self-esteem issues can follow. Contrary to anti-feminist belief though, I’m not trying to argue that traditionally masculine traits or roles are bad. Some men naturally adopt those roles and behaviours and enjoy doing so, just as the women they partner love them for it. It’s just that there has to be room for boys adopt more than just those roles and for girls to embrace traditionally masculine roles or professions if they want to

For a brilliant discussion on this, I’d highly encourage you to check out Tony Porter’s TED discussion on What’s Wrong With Being a Man which captures it far more entertainingly than I ever could.

Feminists are not anti-men. They don’t want men to suffer and they don’t want women to advance at their expense. They just want a level playing field but for that to happen it’s important that men recognise this, and that it’s also in their interests to seek the same cultural changes. Feminism is really about human rights and equality, which by definition is for everyone.