How Sexism Hurts Men, Part 2: Why Do I Care?
So why do I care?
I devoted last week’s column to a silly pop-culture book, Undateable, which gives straight men snarky- but- sincere advice on how to make themselves attractive — no, strike that, tolerable — to women. I devoted the column to all the ways this book reinforces a rigid, narrow, absurdly unattainable vision of acceptable manhood, instilling men with anxiety and self-consciousness about their masculinity while at the same time exhorting them to be confident.
Today I want to answer the question: Why do I care?
Why do I care about sexism and gender normativity in ephemeral bits of pop culture fluff?
And why do I care about how sexism hurts men at all? With all the grotesque ways that sexism and gender normativity hurts women, why would I spend my time worrying about how it hurts men?
Let’s take care of the “pop culture fluff’ part first. I care about how pop culture fluff reinforces sexism because . . . well, that’s one of the primary ways that sexism gets reinforced. Pop culture is the sea we’re all swimming in. Seeing how women and men are depicted on TV, in movies, in pop songs, in advertising, in video games, yada yada yada . . . this is a huge part of how we get our messages about what it means to be a woman, and what it means to be a man, and what’s expected of us as one or the other. Sexism is diffused throughout our culture. It’s not like there’s a Central Office of Gender Propaganda we can picket. If we have problems with how gender norms enforced, we have to respond to it one piece at a time.
But why do I care at all?
Sexism, and the enforcement of gender roles, hurts women way more than it does men: from economic inequity to literal, physical abuse. Why would I devote a whole two-week mini-series to how sexism hurts men?
My first reason is my most personal, and my most visceral: I have men in my life. I have male friends. Colleagues. Family members. Members of my assorted communities. People I know on the Internet.
I care about these people. I feel compassion for them. I don’t want them to suffer. I see how this gender- normative stuff hurts the men in my life: how it makes them crazy, how it undermines their confidence, how it makes them anxious and self-conscious, how it makes their relationships harder. I don’t like it. I want it to stop. Now, please.
What’s more, I have male children in my life — and it kills me to think of them growing up with this bullshit. It kills me to think of Charlie and Tanner and Teague growing up with the barrage of rigid, nitpicky, absurdly narrow, bizarrely irrelevant, schizophrenically mixed messages about Being A Man. It’s a stupid, pointless burden, and I don’t want the male children in my life getting it piled onto their shoulders — or having to do unnecessary work unloading it. Learning to be a good person is hard enough without all that crap.
There’s an ideological reason, too. I see a tremendous amount of gender inequality and injustice in the world; I oppose it passionately, and work hard to overturn it. But I don’t want it “fixed” by making things worse for men. I don’t want to make the world more equal by making things suck as badly for men as they do for women. Yes, we live in a world where women are besieged with a ridiculously narrow, frequently contradictory vision of idealized womanhood. I don’t want to “fix” that by turning the lens on men, and forcing them into a vision of idealized manhood that’s just as unattainable. That’s not the equality and justice I’m fighting for. Fuck that noise.
And finally, I have my hard-nosed, self-centered, Machiavellian reasons for caring how sexism hurts men, and for fighting against it:
It helps women.
Partly it helps women because it makes men easier to be involved with. Not just romantically and sexually, but as friends and colleagues, family members and community partners. Men are a lot easier to get along with when they’re not constantly trying to prove how manly they are. Men are a lot easier to get along with when they don’t feel a constant need to be competitive and macho, when they’re not storing up a load of resentful silence about what they need and want, when they don’t feel threatened by powerful and intelligent women, when they don’t always feel like they have to take the lead in sex and love, when they can express their emotions, when they can ask for help. Men are a lot easier to get along with when they stop worrying so much about being men, and spend more time paying attention to just being good people.
Besides . . . well, as a friend once put on a bumper sticker on her truck, “Feminists Fuck Better.” And that’s true of both feminist women and feminist men. Men who aren’t locked into rigid gender roles are a whole lot more fun in the sack. They’re more inventive, more willing to experiment, less performance-oriented, less goal-oriented, less self-conscious, less threatened by women who are sexually knowledgeable and experienced, more playful, more expressive, more relaxed, more emotionally present, more genuinely confident (as opposed to fake, macho confident), more open to a wider range of sexual possibilities. And I hope I don’t have to explain how all of that is good for women.
And caring how sexism hurts men is good for women . . . because it advances the cause of feminism.
I passionately believe that feminism will do a whole lot better if we can get more men on board. There is a limit to how far feminism can go if we can’t convince men that there’s something in it for them. People are self-interested; our empathy and altruism and concerns for justice will only take us so far, and for most of us, there’s only so much we’re willing to sacrifice to make the world a better place.
But if we can convince more men that sexism hurts them, too — that patriarchy and rigid gender expectations are making their lives harder, that it’s screwing with their heads, that it’s screwing with their relationships, that it’s placing a burden on their shoulders that’s unfair and unnecessary, that both men and women who aren’t locked into rigid gender roles tend to be happier and more satisfied, that feminists fuck better — feminism is going to get a whole lot further.
And that’s good for all of us.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, 14 July 2010 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on Thursday, 15 July 2010 at 2:23 pm scott wrote:
You don’t have to convince me it hurts men. I’ve been saying this for years. I recall having an argument with a very smart woman who insisted that men cannot be the victims of sexism. (I think I straightened her out on that point, though.)
I hate how men on TV are stupid and juvenile. I hate all the kick-in-the-balls humor on film. I hate the cultural message that for men to groom and dress properly they need to consult women (or at least gay men). I hate that masculinity is seen largely as a negative thing.
I’ve done my best to equip my son to swim in these waters, but how effective I’ve been is anyone’s guess. I still have a hard time with a lot of it myself.
on Thursday, 15 July 2010 at 3:35 pm Hambydammit wrote:
Partly because I’ve been scared away by non-scientific idealogical feminism, I’ve always considered myself a “personist.” I want everyone, male, female, or in between, to be treated well and to have appropriate cultural expectations placed upon them. To call myself a feminist seems to imply being non-masculist (new word alert), but I am both feminist and masculist.
In the same way that I encourage gay atheists to jump on board the open atheism train, I encourage straight atheists to jump on the gay train. It seems like we’ve progressed far enough philosophically and scientifically that we can start thinking more laterally in our quest for human dignity and rights. You’re right that helping men helps women. Helping gays helps straights, too. Helping gays helps women helps minorities helps majorities helps men.
on Thursday, 15 July 2010 at 4:14 pm Petter wrote:
Here’s another potential reason:
There’s a wide perception that feminism is anti-male. I don’t care to speculate to which degree this is unjust resentment toward the proper role of feminism (i.e. attacking and eliminating sexism as it hurts women), and to which degree it is a reaction to those few but noisy people on the lunatic of feminism (“all sex is rape” and similar soundbites)—I’m sure there’s some of each—but the fact is that feminism can be scary and off-putting to men. As a man, fully recognising that anti-female sexism exists pervasively and is unlikely to be obvious to me because it does not impact me directly, reading feminist rhetoric sometimes just makes me feel guilty and uncomfortable (I expect in a way analogous to “white guilt”—a phenomenon I have not personally experienced as, though I am white, I do not come from a country with a significant history of enslaving other ethnicities).
I mean, I recognise the validity of arguments that I am presented with, that my lack of exposure blinds me to many problems, that my perspective as a man is often useless to feminist causes…but if all I am ever presented with is a sense that I am guilty qua male and cannot ever truly understand the problems and should largely shut up, then I am unlikely to ever be recruited as an active ally. Hell, it’s not even surprising that some people turn against the whole thing; I do not, but am more likely to got sit and feel guilty and wretched in a corner than I am to do anything productive or helpful.
Framing it as sexism that cuts both ways, on the other hand, changes the picture greatly. It’s no longer a picture where I am part of the oppressive ruling class, guilty of millennia of repression by association with other XY-bearers and the power inherent to my sex that I do not see, do not perceive, and do not know if or when I use; instead it’s a picture of a pervasive problem where I am as much a legitimate victim as anyone else—which is not to say that others do not have it much worse: It just changes it from “our kind is hurt by your kind” to “we are all hurt by circumstances; our kind harder than others”. It frames that inherent power as something that is done to everyone (though it hurts women more) rather than something that we men do to you women.
At the top, I said “potential reason” very deliberately. Of course women, as the people who have the worst of sexism, have every right to feel that my problems here don’t particularly matter. I can think of several blogs where the response to this would essentially be “shut up with your whiny mansplaining”. I can’t really fault them for it. They do have it worse. This is why I don’t go there to tell them that they are wrong, that they should cater to me as a potential ally…
…And yet, the fact remains that the effect of such rhetoric, however justified it may be, is to make me feel vaguely and helplessly guilty by association and avoid communicating with such writers or speakers in any way whatsoever. I don’t think reading feminist blogs has made me a better person, just an unhappier one. That doesn’t seem quite right.
on Thursday, 15 July 2010 at 5:22 pm Valhar2000 wrote:
Hambydammit, it is interesting that you bring up the comparison between this and ideas about homosexuality. Dan Savage often talks about how narrow ideas about heterosexuality hurt men (and the women who sleep with them). The obvious example is men who like o have their anuses stimulated in various ways during sex but fear that indulging this desire will “make them gay”, but there are other examples that are, in my opinion, even more pernicious, like women who fear that their boyfriends might be gay because they prefer eating pussy to fucking. For these and other reasons, Dan Savage argues that narrow ideas about homosexuality and heterosexuality hurt straight people as well.
These are games in which the only way to win is not to play.
on Thursday, 15 July 2010 at 8:16 pm John Evans wrote:
I love you, Greta.
on Friday, 16 July 2010 at 3:01 am Konradius wrote:
One obvious thing I don’t see said here is that the sexism in one gender keeps the sexism in the other gender alive.
Part of the male sexism is to go for the stereotypical female and vice versa. People who feel they cannot attain that can more or less give up.
And btw, you’re saying that men are hurt less by this? That’s male sexism right there. Men should shrug it off, right? ;)
on Friday, 16 July 2010 at 5:06 am Eshu wrote:
Greta,
I love this post. As a man I concur with Petter’s feelings. Your post shows how your feminism is a result of your desire for fairness, not simply my-side bias.
I’m not a conventional man in that I don’t care for football or cars. Curiously, I get more disapproval from men than women because of this. My wife is perhaps not conventional either as she likes computer games and slightly extreme sports. I like her like that. :)
on Friday, 16 July 2010 at 11:36 am Conrad wrote:
Much like Men don’t get that Women are sexual creatures the same as men. Women often don’t see the pressures men get from society to act Manly. My wife and I have had a few discussions to this effect.
on Friday, 16 July 2010 at 4:25 pm Spekkio wrote:
Thank you, Greta Christina - and also Petter, who is quite eloquent himself.
Not long ago, I visited a feminist blog (that shall go unnamed) and found some of the rhetoric very off-putting. I wanted to engage helpfully, but there was no space in the rhetoric for me to do so. I said as much - quite politely! - and was treated as a troll. When I said that no, I wasn’t a troll, I was told that my concerns were invalid and that if I continued to argue my point, my posts would be deleted. I was very angry, but I took a deep breath, swallowed my righteous rage, and left the site.
(For what it’s worth, the essay was about how horrible “Family Guy” is from a feminist perspective…and then asking at the end if people agreed or if they liked the show. My point was, and continues to be - you can’t say how horrible something is and then ask people if they agree - it’s too simplistic and it’s setting you up to be the “bad guy” if you admit to enjoying the show, despite its faults.)
So to bring things back on topic, ending the whole ‘gender warfare’ dynamic would go a long way towards solving problems. And as Greta points out, you don’t solve the problem by bringing everyone down to the same level, because then everyone suffers. That makes little sense. (The same argument is sometimes used re: lack of American jobs versus poor pay and standard of living for workers in other countries, like the People’s Republic of China. Can you imagine bringing the standard of living down that much in America? It would be hell!)
on Friday, 16 July 2010 at 6:13 pm Karen wrote:
I also have sons, and I worry that the typical American Man has gone from Leave it Beaver’s Dad, to Hawk-eye Pierce, to Homer Simpson.
I want my sons to have someone noble and useful to aspire to. I want them to expect the best from themselves.
Growing up I heard a LOT of feminist rhetoric that convinced me that I had to twice as good to be half as paid as any man. So I worked my ass off in school, but played the dumb blonde in social settings so that the men wouldn’t be uncomfortable around me.
I don’t see my sons getting the same message that they DO need to work their ass off. I still see the girls getting the best grades. I see that universities are 60% female now. And I see that schools are using cooperative rather than competitive tasks more often… and naturally, the girls do way better. I see that my sons are innately competitive, but I wholeheartedly agree with your statement: “Men are a lot easier to get along with when they’re not constantly trying to prove how manly they are.”
I don’t know how to solve this. Reward their natural competitive instincts, even if it makes them assholes to be around? Or try to teach them to cooperate, even though the girls will run circles around them in cooperative tasks and they’ll end up “failing”.
I worry for my boys.
on Friday, 16 July 2010 at 6:22 pm ASC wrote:
Good post, Greta… though there’s another reason why you should care that I would have like to have seen: sexism in any form is just wrong. Full stop. It doesn’t matter which group is the victim - all bias in any form is simply wrong per se. Simple? Sure. But it needs to be said often.
on Friday, 16 July 2010 at 6:36 pm scott wrote:
I see that my sons are innately competitive, but I wholeheartedly agree with your statement: “Men are a lot easier to get along with when they’re not constantly trying to prove how manly they are.”
There’s nothing wrong with competition. If men weren’t men, we’d all still be living in trees and watching most of our children die before growing up. I challenge you to take another look at your son’s innate competitive nature and find some positive aspects of it. It shouldn’t be hard if you look honestly.
And by the way, it’s not competition that makes men assholes. It’s insecurity.
on Friday, 16 July 2010 at 8:29 pm Eclectic wrote:
I’m remembering a story I read in a newspaper quite a few years ago about a lawyer who volunteered for the ACLU being given his first case: a free-speech case. It just so happened that the lawyer was black and the speech being defended was by the KKK. (Needless to say, this was all talking place in the southeastern U.S.)
This led, as you might imagine, to a certain amount of soul-searching. Offering any assistance whatsoever to the Ku Klux Klan is not something he would normally wish to do. However, in the end, he decided that civil rights only meant something if they were available to everyone, no matter how despised.
The present case is not so extreme, but the same rule applies: if rigid gender roles are bad, then they are bad for everyone.
on Saturday, 17 July 2010 at 1:39 am Demonhype wrote:
Geez, state the obvious! :)
In my college health class, the teacher had us get into unmixed groups of girls or boys, about two or three per group, and make a list of what characteristics we would look for in a potential mate (though he specified “of the opposite sex”, of course).
The girls in my group kept coming up with things about how the guy had to be funny or handsome or supportive or financially successful–standard Prince Charming kind of things–and I said the first and foremost characteristic I would look for is security. They immediately thought I was paraphrasing the “financial success” that they had listed, and I told them I meant personal security–emotional and psychological security, strong but realistic self-esteem, security in who he is without needing to “prove” anything. I explained that a man who had that particular characteristic was more likely to be supportive of you, more likely to treat you right, less likely to be emotionally, psychologically, or physically abusive.
They were completely and utterly amazed, to my own complete and utter amazement. The idea that was so obvious to me was completely unheard of to them. They loved the idea and took it to heart, and even the teacher was impressed and wanted to know who in the group had suggested the idea, but I am still astonished at how few people had considered that what should be basically obvious.
I’m also kind of put off by some of the clumsier feminism that seems to make things worse: from the feminists who need to make things worse for men and discredit anything that has a whiff of masculinity, even to the point that basic scientific reality is suspect because it was all discovered by men and is therefore evil and to be rejected in favor of magical female “intuition”, to the feminists who assert their womanhood by essentially rejecting it and embracing the equally damaging stereotypes of masculinity. I’m sure that in the early days these kinds of extremes may have played their role in advancing the ideas, but I’m really not convinced that they are really all that helpful in the long run.
I’m reminded of my animation teacher, the only female teacher in the animation department, being expected every year to do a presentation on Female Animators, and she wanted to avoid doing that. It’s true that about thirty years ago women wouldn’t even be admitted to animation schools, being seen as too stupid to be animators, and it’s good to at least keep a note of this, but my teacher stated that she’s not a Female Animator–she’s an Animator who happens to be female. To constantly over-punch the fact that she is Female with a capital F is actually demeaning to the entire human being. She is an animator. She is female. And these are simply two individual aspects of a whole person, in the same way that it would be if one were an animator and a male.
I don’t know if that sounds off-topic, but I think that’s kind of what you were shooting for–the emphasis of the individual person, with the state of being male or female as being one of many parts of an entire person rather than a Major or Single Defining Factor, and that is where we should be taking this kind of anti-sexism effort.
Which I applaud, of course.
on Tuesday, 20 July 2010 at 1:12 pm Tobi wrote:
Hah, I checked out their website and they have a youtube video promoting their book. It’s a bunch of guys on the street with arrows apparently pointing out what’s wrong with them. Some the “problem” is that they are wearing something colorful or flashy, but for a good majority of the guys I can’t figure out what the complaint is.
The funniest thing, though, is that the last couple guys in the video clip look like they might be on a date!
on Sunday, 25 July 2010 at 2:41 pm Azkyroth wrote:
I think, actually, the ease with which the word “feminism” can be etymologically misunderstood, combined with that bizarre neurotypical “first impressions” thing, may be as big a factor as either of the things you’ve mentioned. The selection of that particular word construct as a badge and label is at least a decent contender for the title of “biggest strategic error in the history of social movements.” Because a straightforward reading of the term, with little or no knowledge of its history, under the conventional rules of English etymology does indeed create the impression that it’s “about” women, and “only for,” “only concerned with,” and “only cares about” are pretty easy to read into it from there.
on Monday, 26 July 2010 at 2:08 pm Rachel Miller wrote:
Greta,
Well done and thank you for bringing attention to a topic that so often gets ignored! You’re right this problem affects all of us and as a mother I’m continually concerned about what it will do to my son as he gets older. Thanks for starting a great conversation.
on Wednesday, 28 July 2010 at 3:35 pm A Busybody wrote:
Mmm, I have found this same idea (that male-chauvinism hurts men as much as women) in other articles (and some books) on feminism. It was central to a work I read as a teenager, Le nouvelle désordre amoreux, by Alain Finkielkraut and Pascal Bruckner, which impressed me then. I don´t think now this idea is true.
As a young man I was keenly interested in judo. Gym atmosphere (at least the atmosphere of the gym I trained in) tends to breed macho types. There was a lot of that back then: pride in good shape and muscles, heavy drinking, competitive boasting about women, an uncomplicated and easy-going attitude towards life in general. I have met a lot of men outside the judo circles who more or less fit the traditional stereotypes of manliness. Some of them were happy and some others weren´t, but I think most were reasonably comfortable with the “social expectations” placed on them. The idea that under the mask of toughness men “suffer” has more to do with the redeeming obsessions of feminism than with reality.
A couple of (partially contradictory) things about “security”: a) I don´t see why insecurity should be regarded always as a character flaw; securiry can be healthy, or it can be a sign of vanity, or even stupidity (lack of understanding of your own limitations, overestimating yourself, etc.) b) Most men I have known who were secure, at least in professional matters, were rather traditional: physically powerful (that matters a lot), active, tough, agressive, moderately religious, unintellectual, slightly arrogant. Those showing a greater number of these traits were more likely to feel confident of their own competence and be successful. I don´t know how their love relationships worked (if they worked at all). In case you are thinking this is a self-portrait, I am short, overweight, lazy, depressive, have an awful sex-life and my degree of self-confidence (professional, emotional or otherwise) is close to zero, Kelvin scale. And I hate, really hate, my low-paid job. I am not a macho type (and the Spaghetti Flying Monster knows I regret it).
It is curious how much women who call themselves feminists demand security from men. Security has always been among the “social expectations” they reject. That´s why so many man try to fake it.
Of course, all this comes from my personal experience and could be due to confirmation bias at work. Cultural differences matter also, I live in Spain (the northwestern corner, arguably a more conservative place than the rest of the country).
P.S.: Sorry, someone had to do the male-chauvinist-pig part. You know, the Internet is full of them, er, of us.
Second P.D.: Sorry if the grammar is not OK. My English is becoming rusty.
on Thursday, 29 July 2010 at 8:02 pm James T. Savidge wrote:
Greetings,
“…What’s more, I have male children in my life — and it kills me to think of them growing up with this bullshit. It kills me to think of Charlie and Tanner and Teague growing up with the barrage of rigid, nitpicky, absurdly narrow, bizarrely irrelevant, schizophrenically mixed messages about Being A Man. It’s a stupid, pointless burden, and I don’t want the male children in my life getting it piled onto their shoulders — or having to do unnecessary work unloading it. Learning to be a good person is hard enough without all that crap. …”
I suggest that you tell the boys this: A real man doesn’t let someone else tell him how to be a man.
(And yes, I realize the irony of asking someone to take that advice.)
James T. Savidge, [jsavidge@texas.net], Thursday, July 29, 2010
on Monday, 2 August 2010 at 6:23 pm Keith Ealanta wrote:
Great post Greta!
I thought I’d throw in another example where men claiming equality helps women.
One of the things that interest me is dress standards and sexism (yes this does relate to the main topic)
Gradually it has become possible for women to wear what are traditionally considered mens clothes. In fact it’s reached the point that it is quite hard for a woman to cross-dress at all. Effectively the gender divide has been broken there (if I skip over all the standards and other crap). But for a guy to wear a skirt, a dress, softer fabrics, brighter fabrics etc makes him gay, sissy, effeminate or other terms used to try to attack him.
So (to return to the main point) there is an obvious aspect of sexism in the standards of what men may wear, but more importantly those sexist standards are actually anti-women.
All the attacks on men for wearing supposedly feminine clothing are based on the man being weak or inadequate as a result. They are not living up to their potential as a man - they are being “mere” women. When women started wearing trousers they were being uppity and claiming power that society was trying to deny them. When men wear dresses they are rejecting the importance of masculine power (as tokenised by our clothing) and that scares all those men who are afraid to be seen as weak.
(In case anyone has any doubts as to my position on this I do _NOT_ hold with those sentiments - I reference them to be clear about the issue)
So all these attacks on men for not being manly are about labeling the men as weak. Where weak is correlated to feminine then those attacks on men are also attacks on all women.
So any man who elects to dress in brighter colours or (for the more daring) in skirts, dresses or other traditionally female clothing; that man is stricking a blow for feminism at the same time as they claim an option for greater self expression themselves.
And no feminist man should ever accept them or anyone else being labeled as feminine if that is being used as an attack. It’s like using gay as an attack - it’s not an attack if there’s nothing wrong with it, so anyone who uses it as an attack is being sexist (or homophobic in the case of gay)
But I’ll admit I’d still be scared to go out in a skirt - there are a lot of people out there who are willing to attack men they see as weak.
on Thursday, 19 August 2010 at 2:08 am Mark wrote:
“And caring how sexism hurts men is good for women . . . because it advances the cause of feminism… that feminists fuck better — feminism is going to get a whole lot further.”
Right, so it’s really not about the men after all… it’s about what YOU want. Nice.
I’m wouldn’t disagree with some of the things you said in this article but you’re saying them for all the wrong reasons. This is why men don’t take feminism seriously. This is why we need to establish our own political/social cause that is separate - but not in direct opposition - to feminism.