Men and Feminism

Why Men Must Contribute Towards Ending Sexism

Nov 18, 2009 Joni Chng

The fight for gender equality is not an exclusively women's issue, because no one is truly free when the other half of the world's population is oppressed.

Feminism is defined simply as, “The radical notion that women are people” in the book, A Feminist Dictionary by Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler, but in no way does it treat men as the enemy, nor are men excluded from the benefits brought on by the discourse. Its chief aim is to end all forms of social and political injustices towards women and create a world where men and women are treated equally as individuals instead of two homogenous groups.

As feminist author Betty Friedan puts it, “Men weren't really the enemy - they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.”

Why Should Men Care?

All men have women in their lives that they love and care for; mothers, sisters, daughters, nieces and female friends. Ironically, men also make up the larger portion among the perpetrators of violence and all human rights violation against women. As the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) reported, based on country data, up to 70 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime.

Men Can Stop Rape, an international organization dedicated to ending male violence through education, reasons that if men do not take action to stop mistreatment of women, “it becomes virtually impossible to distinguish men who are safe from men who are dangerous…The result is a society with its guard up, where relationships with men are approached with fear and mistrust, where intimacy is limited by the constant threat of violence, and where all men are labeled ‘potential rapists’.”

Hence, for gender inequality and gender-based violence to end, men must become women’s allies and work towards a sexist-free society. In one of the papers on ending men’s violence written by their task group, the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) is calling for men to take action against men’s violence, “What's far more important…is to make sure that we're not personally part of it, to confront it when we encounter it in other men, and to change social and legal policies so as to finally stop it. Our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, our friends, are suffering these assaults.”

Male Empowerment

A traditional model of gender roles stresses a clear division of labor: men are providers while women are the nurturers. Furthermore, the old-fashion model of masculinity sees sexual dominance and control as a validation of manhood. Such a social arrangement not only restricts the human potential of both sexes, it also adversely affects all male-female relationships and men’s friendship with other men.

Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, Dr. Joseph Pleck, wrote about how men’s privileges in a patriarchal society actually confine them, “men's social identity is defined by the power they have over women and the power they can compete for against other men. But at another level, most men have very little power over their own lives.”

He went on to explain that because the role of ‘breadwinner’ is strongly linked to masculinity, men get ‘paid’ for their jobs in feelings of manliness rather than personal fulfillment. As a result, men’s direct role in the family becomes almost non-existent, as if they were not part of the family at all. Paradoxically, men’s responsibility in the family is to increase their job productivity, “the increasing dehumanization of work” as Pleck writes, “give men only the satisfaction of fulfilling the family breadwinner role.”

When women are freed from the traditional feminine model and empowered to make choices in their lives, their liberation brings men’s empowerment. Because as women are allowed to chart their own paths in life, men are liberated from the pressures of fulfilling the traditional gender role defined for them by society.

“We persistently fail to live up to impossibly high traditional masculine ideals. Because of this, we worry about being judged by other men and women, which in turn keeps us striving for those ideals we can never fully, absolutely reach.” said Pat McGann of Men can Stop Rape about how traditional masculinity confines men from living fulfilling lives.

What Men Can Do

The steps men can take to help end sexism are simple and practical. However, as a number of feminist authors and social scientists suggested, men must first learn to be aware of women’s oppression under patriarchy and the consequences it would have on both sexes with humility; the same way white anti-racists would learn to understand the experiences of people of color.

“Above all,” according to Brian Klocke of NOMAS, “men need to engage with feminist theory and practice, letting it work on them, in order to liberate all genders and build a society constructed on justice and nourished by love.”

Roles of Men with Feminism and Feminist Theory by Brian Klocke

Understanding Patriarchy and Men’s Power by Joseph Pleck PhD.

The copyright of the article Men and Feminism in Gay/Gender Issues is owned by Joni Chng. Permission to republish Men and Feminism in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Gender Equality Benifits Men and Women