Since a certain young man in US decided that the best way to deal with rejection was to go on a shooting spree, several debates about sexism and feminism have begun in a rising crescendo of angry rants and defensiveness. What I would like to share is my personal experience of revelation, about the way that I think, about women and the tawdry labyrinths of gender inequality. While thinking out this issue I have had many discussions with both men and women about their positions and ladies you will be displeased to know that it was mostly discussions with other guys that led me to my inevitable conclusions, which really says a great deal about the situation.
I like to think of myself as a good guy, I try to do right by other people and although I have flaws just like everyone else, I deal with them the best that I can and so retain a level of self-respect. Now this is exactly what is so difficult about discovering that you are not quite the ‘nice guy’ that you think you are. If, like me, you are a man who doesn’t consider himself sexist then I ask you to read and carefully consider your position, because, like me, you may still be guilty of making bad arguments and falling into traps of lazy thinking. Now at this point I may already have you grumbling, possibly steaming, but I ask you to bear with me, and listen, which is what we as men really need to do more often.
I have read many posts and opinion pieces lately surrounding this contentious and ever fought battle of the sexes. They tend to unfold as follows; woman makes statement about how sexism has affected her/other women, man makes counter argument about generalizations and ‘not all men’ statement, women (plural) make outraged statements about the point being missed, men (now also plural) start claiming that women are unreasonable. Until of course the whole thing degrades into what can be summarily described as a poo flinging match. What I have come to discover is at this point the arguments cease to hold any value toward the actual issue but rather become meta-arguments, arguments about the argument. Angry, mouth-frothing rants and personal attacks that leave any hope of reason far in their wake, and of course nobody learns a thing and nothing is achieved.
And so I come to the crux of my own revelation. I was chatting to friend about my opinions on the subject and how I had felt unfairly slandered, being lumped in with other men who treat women like objects. ‘I’ am not like that, I said, and neither are my other male friends, we don’t deserve to be compartmentalized. But what he responded with made me think and eventually reconsider my ideals. Now I am going to shamefully admit that this is probably something that has been said to me by women before and probably in the context of a heated argument hence my not having processed such a statement or even remembered it long enough to have any chance of understanding. What was said was this, ‘your hurt feelings are less important than what women deal with everyday’. I realize that this statement is bound to raise some ire, as it did with me initially, so let’s take a breath and remain objective. This is really the main point that causes us as men to lose our sense of reason, we certainly don’t like to be told that our opinions and feelings aren’t important, they are important, but realistically they pale into insignificance compared to the things that women experience simply because they are women. Let me quote a mind far greater than mine in the supremely talented writer Margaret Atwood, ‘men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them’, just ponder that for a moment, when was the last time as a man you felt physically threatened by woman. And you may respond with the common argument, ‘but not all men are like that, I am not like that’, when you examine that idea you find that what you are really doing is making the argument all about you, that the entirety of women’s experiences are invalid because you aren’t like that. If, like me, you really do want to be a ‘nice guy’, a good person, then you must admit to yourself that you are not wholly exempt from blame ,and that is OK, provided you realize that changes must be made. I have also been guilty of using the adage ‘I’m a nice guy, women only like assholes’, you may be a nice guy, but in the end women don’t owe you anything, and you don’t get points for not being a prick, sorry.
So what do we do, as men trying to do the right thing. Really the most important thing we can do is to simply shut up and listen, women may get angry sometimes; perhaps even somewhat irrationally, yes it does happen. But rather than respond re-actively and angrily perhaps just acknowledge that they probably have a reason to be upset and ask yourself, what do I really know about what women deal with. As men we live in a bubble of unshared experience, while women surround us all the time we still have little common ground when it comes to our daily concerns and fears. If you listen to the women in your life, your friends, relatives or even lovers, each and every one will have a story to tell about mistreatment at the hands of a man, at the very least you must feel empathy for the women you care about, let alone all women. From here a disturbing picture of normalized sexist behaviour becomes apparent, how often do we question how a woman was dressed when she was assaulted, or what she was doing at a certain hour on her own, or how drunk she was. Does that really excuse the guy that yelled abuse at her, or felt her up or raped her? This does not exclude that fact that sometimes men are also abused, by women or also by other men. Nor does it exclude that fact that sometimes sexist behaviour is also levelled at men, but again that is not what we are talking about here and while it is still important, the statistics are heavily slanted against women.
You may read this as a preachy rant and dismiss it entirely, and women reading may simply decide that I am just another guy with a soapbox who doesn’t get it, indeed I have already expressed that it was conversations with other guys that prompted my self-awareness rather than listening to the many women expressing the same argument. This is not because I don’t respect women, but mostly because I have been guilty of letting anger and defensiveness get the best of me when presented with said arguments and when that nasty little voice takes over all objective reasoning disappears. For us guys it is vitally important to remember that by expressing their frustration and anguish at ill treatment, women are in no way attacking masculinity, they aren’t trying to tear us down, quite the contrary, they are trying desperately to make us see that their experiences are consistently of inequality and mistreatment and that things really need to change.
Often when we haven’t observed or experienced something firsthand it is difficult to relate, we may say ‘but this is 2014, equal rights were achieved long ago’, would that this was actually the case and we hadn’t simply decided that, out of sight, out of mind meant that that reality is what we decide it to be. I worried that while writing this I may be yet again making the argument all about men and being dismissive of women, but I decided that it was worth writing simply for the fact that it is our behaviour and thought patterns that need to change and if I could prompt even one guy to be self-reflexive then it would be worth it. I also hope that in some ways we can still give women faith that many of us are at least trying to understand and that while we are often guilty of poorly chosen words and thoughts we still long for a world where equal rights and respect are simply the norm.
No More Words 