I Believe Strongly In Feminist Ideals But Would Never Call Myself a Male Feminist
Oof. What an unfortunate title!
My mother abandoned me when I was a baby, and my father has Multiple Sclerosis, so my older sister helped raise me even though she was only a year and a half older.
My older sister is my intellectual mentor. I learned pretty much everything from her. She was the source of many of my ideas and political convictions. She raised me to be a good liberal. She taught me about socialism, racism, and class, but more than anything, she taught me about feminism.
When I went to college, I took a lot of women’s studies courses, and I write about pop culture from a feminist perspective.
I believe in feminism. I have feminist ideals. Yet, I would never call myself a feminist. I particularly wouldn’t refer to myself as a male feminist.
Calling yourself a male feminist has always struck me as a smarmy combination of disingenuousness and self-aggrandizement. It’s virtue signaling, a way of telling the world that while society may be viciously sexist on both a personal and an institutional level, you’re one of the good ones. You’re one of the safe ones. You’re not like other, less evolved and less sensitive men. You’re one of those magical unicorns who somehow managed to grow up in a ferociously misogynistic society without being tainted by bigotry.
I think of self-styled male feminists as wolves in sheep’s clothing who loudly broadcast their morality and piousness publicly while behaving like typical sexist sleazeballs in private.
Another reason that I do not, and will not, refer to myself as a male feminist is because men who want the world to know that they’re not like all those awful men who are not enlightened and cling to a caveman sensibility of masculinity have an unfortunate habit of being outed as predators, parasites, abusers, and all-around creeps.
Keep my phrase out of your Twitter feed, creep.
I am speaking of men like Neil Gaiman, who for decades enjoyed a sterling reputation as the anti-J.K. Rowling, a progressive who was supposed to be as good a person as he was a writer.
Gaiman might seem odd, but what is generally accepted, even embraced, as the cost of genius. Gaiman developed an inclusive and supportive persona as a kind-hearted friend to outsiders everywhere. That shattered after a plethora of women young enough to be Gaiman’s daughters came forward with horrifying, sadly uniform allegations of abuse.
The Coraline author found himself in the unfortunate position of being the main character on the internet after a lengthy, exhaustively researched article in New York Magazine destroyed what little was left of the goodwill Gaiman engendered over decades as a beloved and prolific writer of fantasy.
Gaiman isn’t the only self-styled male feminist to run into a very public, messy controversy.
It Ends With Us actor and director Justin Baldoni built a sturdy brand as a male feminist dedicated to examining and destroying toxic masculinity and male privilege. He’s done Ted Talks, hosted a podcast, and written books challenging conventional gender roles and traditional conceptions of being a man.
That lent an ironic quality to the exemplar of new masculinity being very publicly accused of sexual harassment and emotional abuse by costar Blake Lively.
Baldoni’s persona was so well-established that Baldoni’s lawyer accused Ryan Reynolds, Lively’s husband, of basing the character of Nicepool in Deadpool & Wolverine, a man-bun sporting exemplar of wussy masculinity, on his client.
I could go on. And I will! Joss Whedon was widely seen as a fearless champion of strong women thanks to his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Then it emerged that Whedon was less a protector and champion of women than a sadist, a predator, and an opportunist who had abused his position of power.
James Franco’s spectacular fall from grace began when he was one of many male celebrities who wore “Time’s Up” pins to the 2018 Golden Globes. This inspired some of the women that Franco had abused to go public with their traumatizing experiences with the randy Rennaissance man.
These awful men, who love women in public and abuse them in private, have given male feminism a dirty name.
So, while I try my damnedest to live up to feminist ideals and teach them to my sons, I am not going to pat myself on the back for being a feminist.
I try to be a good person, but my mother abandoned me as a baby, my father got divorced three times, and I experienced the same fucked-up social conditioning that everyone else did.
Consequently, a sizable part of my adulthood involves aggressively trying to unlearn all the awful things that were instilled in me as a child and teenager.
I similarly like to think of myself as a supporter of the LGTBQ community, but I would not feel comfortable describing myself as an ally because that also seems self-congratulatory.
Everyone should be considerate and kind to women, POC, and the LGTBQ. It should be so universal that phrases like “male feminist” and “ally” aren’t necessary because sensitivity should be universal, not something that needs to be singled out for praise.
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan doesn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can! It’s Christmas, after all, the most