Photo by Flickr user intvgene. Used under a Creative Commons license.
This seems like as good a time as any to point out that men should not be into feminism because it's "the right thing to do." Men should not go into feminism "even though there's nothing in it for them." And men really, really shouldn't get into feminism in hopes they might get laid (or finally get laid.)
First of all because each of those reasons is based on totally false premises in the first place. But more importantly because stories about "should" and "ought" are just the 21st Century equivalent of men opening doors for women: more of what we're trying to get away from!
Instead from better health to longer lives to more financial independence to better sex there are plenty of staggeringly obvious reasons why men should be jumping into feminism with both feet. In fact, the supporting evidence is so obvious that one of the biggest reasons all over that just might be...
just might be...
just might be that we think we should, or that we ought to, or that it has to inconvenience us, that it's a zero-sum game, that us guys just have to fondly step aside because it's "Teh Ladies'" turn.
F'shea right. The blinders go on the horse, Galahad, not the rider.
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Quick note: When I talk about issues related to feminism I really try to talk in terms of the way men relate to it. With regards to this topic, though, the idea that men should support feminism simply because "it's the right thing to do" spans both genders. I'm not going to say that women asking men to do something "because it's the right thing to do" is playing into generations of oppressive conditioning... but I will say that when that argument is made it seems to trigger all the wrong reflexes in men.
Photo by Flickr user intvgene. Used under a Creative Commons license." class="imagecache-Normal" />
Submitted by 1715 (not verified) on Sun, 2007-10-28 15:02.
Doing something because you it seems you "ought" is unlikely to feel right for anyone, in much the same way as lies are betrayed by body language.
It can apply to all sorts of situations: if we open our minds to people as real people with frailties like our own, regardless of gender, nationality, religion, colour of skin and all the other ways we use to stereotype, our lives can be enriched in possibly unforeseen ways. A mind like a parachute, works best when open.
[Also doing something because you "ought to" can be awfully condescending, which was more the point I'm trying to make. Being a condescendingly feminist man isn't ever going to cut it. Thanks, A. --fl]
Submitted by 1715 (not verified) on Sat, 2007-10-27 03:16.
Instead from better health to longer lives to more financial independence to better sex there are plenty of staggeringly obvious reasons why men should be jumping into feminism with both feet.
Hmmm. This is a bit problematic, isn't it?
It's easy enough to apply this statement to other subjects: just replace "men" and "feminism" with, say, "people" and "transhumanism," or "free thinkers" and "LaVeyan Satanism," or "self-reliant people" and "libertarianism," or "those interested in true freedom" and "violent revolution and overthrow of the capitalist system" -- all of which I've heard, and heard justified the same way. So long as better health, longer lives, financial independence and better sex are considered worthwhile goals by a number of perspectives, this argument alone doesn't serve as a conclusively persuasive motivator for any particular one. (And if they aren't worthwhile goals, they wouldn't be motivators at all, unless we could convince people that they should be worthwhile goals, and theirs to boot. But then we'd be right back at "the right thing to do" argument, or more pointedly and insidiously, "the right thing to want." And if they're worthwhile goals for us already, we're already there. Just without a formal argument.)
So... how does this avoid reasoning like "because it's the right thing to do?" It seems like it just makes that reasoning implicit. It might replace gallant, noble sacrifice with rational self interest, but again, doesn't that resolve down to a question of whether the one or the other is the right thing to do, be, or want?
At best, this would seem to reduce the argument down to, "when it comes to getting these things, which are good things to want, feminism can do it better than the rest." (Or, depending on the theory, is the only thing that can.) Problem is, of course, that all of the groups I mentioned -- LaVeyans, transhumanists, libertarians, and fans of violent revolution and post-capitalist economies -- can say the same thing, and back it up by pointing out that the supporting evidence is obvious.
And they often do.
[There are *certainly* other things we could undertake that would have positive results that aren't called feminism. And to describe the steps necessary one can always *boil them down* to "do the right thing" but if so then that's boiling them too far. (As well as, say, transhumanism and anarcho-syndicalism one could add Christianity and the Dewey Decimal System to the pot and still eventually boil out the same admonition.) Since reading Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex, however, I'm pursuaded that feminism comes first because that's the environment that doesn't just follow us home but wakes up, fosters children, organizes the days of most people regardless of other conditions imposed on them, and then goes to bed with us. And the specific benefits I listed for feminism for men are easily and regularly measured, and, furthermore, are obtainable largely by not simply wetting one's pants about "feminazis" long enough to see what's in it for you. The Galahad/worthiness complex that tells men but, significantly not women that it's about "doing the right thing" isn't a triumph but a symptom. Thanks, Infra. --fl]