"MA'AM" - MEN ALIGNED AGAINST MISOGYNY

puckett101:

It’s difficult to think of a place to start with something like this. Simple is good, my brain reasons, so let’s start simple.

I’m a dude.

Just a random dude living somewhere in the Midwest with three cats, a totally rad girlfriend, a significant amount of fabric for quilting, somewhere in the neighborhood of half a ton of comic books, a lot of video games, and even more old records and CDs.

No, you probably don’t know me and it’s unlikely you’d know or be even vaguely familiar with anything I’ve done. If you paid really close attention to punk rock for something like the last 25 years, you might have seen my name pop up in a zine or being thanked for something in the liner notes of a record, but really, at the end of the day, I’m just a dude, getting through the hours as best as I know how.

Along the way, I stumbled into the life of a child who was just a baby when I met her. Her mom and I split up years ago, but I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to remain in the kid’s life.

She’s 11 now. And I worry.

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THANK YOU!!!

I just believe this is an impressive story. Men standing up to other men and allowing women to safely protest in Egypt at risk of physical harm.

http://womensenews.org/story/sexual-harassment/130124/egyptians-patrol-tahrir-square-mob-sex-assaults?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email

Just last weekend, Meagan Marie was called an “oversensitive feminist” for defending a group of women at a video game conference from the harassing and patently stupid questions of a male “reporter.” Ms. Marie and the women she was with are into cosplay, which - and my understanding is admittedly limited - is where you dress up like your favorite video game and/or comic characters. This happens a lot at video game and comic conventions and I can tell you that, when done well, cosplay is pretty awesome. A good friend of mine dressed up like a vault dweller from Fallout 3 at a convention a few years back and the people from Bethesda were so impressed by his work that they let him have an exclusive peak at the game and even gave him some free promotional goodies. 

The women Ms. Marie mentions in her blog post happened to be dressed like Lara Croft from the Tomb Raider games. According to the dipshit (we can swear on here, right?) reporter guy, the fact that some women dressed up like Lara Croft meant that they were “asking” to be dogged by overtly sexual questions that made them visibly uncomfortable. 

Which is bullshit.

There is no such thing as “asking for it” in any terms other than when someone explicitly asks you to have sex with them. A woman wearing clothes you think are sexy has the right to wear those clothes without you commenting on them. I can’t fucking believe we still have to talk about this. It’s 2013 and we still have far too many guys who don’t get it. 

A lot of dudes dismiss complaints of misogyny by accusing women (or feminist men) of being “too serious” or “oversensitive” which is a nifty way of protecting male dominance because it says that the problem isn’t my sexism, it’s your sensitivity. The fact is, if you say something -yes, even jokingly - and a woman (or any person, really) experiences that as humiliating, demeaning, dehumanizing, or sexual threatening, you have committed an act of violence against that person. Yes, you technically have the 1st Amendment right to say awful shit, but I also have the 1st Amendment right to call you out for it and suggest that maybe you need to write better jokes. 

Furthermore, as an oversensitive feminist, I have a duty - as do other men who share the unbelievably radical idea that women are human beings deserving of the same rights we have - to call other men out on their misogyny. Meagan Marie has challenged herself to be braver in standing up for herself against sexism and that’s a challenge that feminist men need to accept as well. 

I have never been remotely interested in proving my masculinity to anyone, in part because, even as a child, I was filled with contempt with the idea that I 

a) wasn’t allowed to wear dresses

b) wasn’t allowed to play with dolls

c) wasn’t allowed to wear tights on my head whilst indicating to all how lush and flowing my hair was.

Luckily, my parents were happy to let me do my own thing, but it didn’t stop other parents and kids expressing their feelings on the subject - even total strangers.

In my later teens, I became aware that embracing ‘feminine’ things was pretty much synonymous in everyone’s book with homosexuality, and though I doubted I’d ever be freaked out if indeed I did feeling attraction to another man, why was I not allowed to love women and the things typically associated with them? I smelled bullshit.

It came as no shock to anyone that I identified as a feminist the second I really understood the idea at university. Feminism, I quickly realised, was my way of looking at the world. If more men and women were feminists, the world would be an infinitely better place.

Frankly, if we stopped seeing every single miniscule aspect of our society as being gendered, the world would be blooming with smiley, helpful people who would no more bat an eyelid at a woman running a country than a man who always dreamed of six kid’s, his own brand of nail polish and a wife who works as a military general.

As far as I’m concerned, feminism isn’t an option, it’s something that desperately needs to happen.

Josh Martin

http://whatjoshwrote.tumblr.com/

http://tea-cigarette-go.tumblr.com/

I recently met up with a friend of mine who is an actor. We live in different cities, she and I, and sometimes we go years without speaking. This time round it had been two years since we’d last talked, so we had some significant catching up to do.

She had been doing well, generally speaking. She was writing and directing theatre under her own steam successfully and consistently, getting grants and good recognition for her stuff, but she had been struggling for acting work outside of that. Not because she wasn’t being put up for auditions, but because - almost exclusively - the parts she found herself up for involved nudity.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I know I seem ungrateful whinging about it, because there are offers of work there. I should probably just make my peace with it and do it.”

It made my heart wheeze to hear her talk that way.

I am doubly blessed not to be in her position. First of all, I have no impulse whatsoever to be an actor (something for which I give daily thanks to whichever universal force blessed me with the desire to channel my vanity into writing). But, more importantly, I will never be put in the position where I am asked to make a professional decision that hinges entirely on preparedness to strip off.

“Well,” a mocking cry rises up, “who would pay to see you take your clothes off?” Who, indeed. If there is a market for pasty, 6’3” boys who look skinny, yet somehow still wobble unattractively whenever they jog or jump up and down, I have yet to be made aware of it. But they get acting work.

I am not a prude when it comes to nudity. I’ve played countless practical jokes which have involved the use of my cock and balls. An entire calendar year went by in my late teens where there wasn’t a single photo taken of me in which I wasn’t mooning. These days I have better sense than to go about subjecting the greater public to the sight of my unclothed form, but I remain relatively comfortable with my body.

Would I go naked for a role though? I have no idea. None at all. I struggle to even imagine what that dilemma must feel like. To know that a wage was mine, that rent would get paid, if I would only agree to get my bits out. The concept is just completely alien to me.

This is not an occasional consideration for my friend. This happens constantly. So constantly that this is the sort of thing that springs to mind when she is asked the question “So what the hell’s been happening these last two years?” So much of her life is filled with this, that it comes to her lips as a topic of conversation the same way that the transport system here in London comes to me. This is what she has to deal with.

It’s one thing to have an industry which places such importance on a woman’s willingness to strip, but it’s quite another to get a woman who is a fiercely intelligent, political and strong to start questioning her correctly-held convictions just because some grubby director, or screenwriter, or playwright can’t let 90 minutes go by without a bra coming off.

I’m conscious not to be one of those “Hey ladies, I understand” sort of feminists. I don’t want to be the patronising, lap-patting sort of guy who pulls sympathetic faces whenever he hears stories of sexual injustice. I probably am though, and maybe I’m doomed to always be, but hearing my friend say the words “I know I seem ungrateful” made me so immeasurably sad I didn’t know what else to do.

Kit Lovelace @mylifeyourhands

I have been taking with my daughter, who is 12, recently about evolution. She already knows more than any creationist or IDer out there, which is a good thing.

Today I was reading Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth, which is a completely engaging and wonder evoking book about evolution. It brings the incredibly beauty of evolution to life in a way no other book I’ve read about evolution has.

I showed my daughter some pictures of the skeletons of different animals like a bat, a pterodactyl, a human, and a couple of other animals and which illustrate the wonderful similarity of all of these skeletons have to one another. Yes, some specific bones have changed, some growing, some shrinking, but it is obvious that the wing bone in a bat corresponds to little finger in a human, or the middle finger of a human corresponds to the hoof of a horse. You can see that the skull, the spine, the ribs and pelvis in all of these vertebrates all correspond to each other. It it thrilling and amazing to see.

I showed some of these to my daughter and she got visibly excited, “Oh! Are there more pictures of animals in there?!” So I showed her some more and we talked about how these different animals had changes to suit their environments, but are still very much the same from a skeletal point of view.

Later, as I was reading about Darwin’s discoveries in the Galapagos, she asked what I was reading about now. I told her about Galapagos turtles and finches. She became excited again, “Oh yeah! You mean that guy Darwin’s finches! That’s so cool!”. So we talked about how on islands only a few miles apart, different species of turtles and finches had evolved to take advantage of their environments.

It really excited me to see her so interested in evolution. She’s a smart girl and I’m doing everything I can to encourage her to study and learn about everything that interests here. I try to teach her how to think critically and how to avoid the pitfalls of logical fallacies. She still just 12 so not everything I say automatically clicks, but a lot of it does.

She’s already thinking about what she’d like to do when she grows up, with zoology being one of those things. I try to share my wonder and excitement with the beauty and breadth of life here on earth with her, hoping to encourage her to continue learning.

I have also taught her to believe in herself and it shows. She doesn’t let herself be put down or put upon. She calls out anyone who would try to treat her as anything other than an equal. I wish every father (and mother, for that matter) would do the same with their daughters.

We have come a long way since I was 12, when it was openly taught that a woman’s place was at home in the kitchen. I was just reading in The Atlantic that women now make up 60% of the workforce in the U.S. It postulated that in 10 to 20 years, woman may dominate most sectors of society and the economy as they become better educated and more literate than men.

I want my daughter to know that she can be and do anything at all, with nothing to hold her back. These trends make me hopeful that she, and other girls the world over, will be able to be all that they can be.

I privately hope she will stick with zoology or some other science. Having women in science, I think, just might lead to the break throughs that we need if we are to survive as a species. I think this because I believe that women bring perspectives and ways of thinking that just don’t exist in most men and it is these novel (to us men, anyway) ways of seeing the world that will allow insights into the deepest questions of science, and subsequently to break throughs that will dwarf almost any that have come before.

And who knows, maybe my daughter will be one of those women who will change the world. After all, a father can hope, can’t he?

James Walker http://freethinkingfordummies.com @jpwalker1960

My mom, now 83 and going strong, was raised by a single mom in NYC at a time when this was not done. She graduated from Hollins College in Roanoke VA with a BS in Chemistry and went to work for Sperry-Rand on LI working on inertial guidance systems for USAF bombers. She, and to a lesser degree my dad, raised my sisters and me to see and treat everyone equally - to see beyond apparent differences in skin tone, who one loves, abilities and of course XX/XY chromosomal differences. This was not easy in LI in the 60’s and 70’s - Archie Bunker was alive and well in West Babylon. My kids have been raised by their mom and me with the same outlook and have grown into loving, tolerant champions for the underdog. Thanks for this awesome site!

One of the most disturbing recent trends in gender relations, to my mind, is the effect that pornography, in its current ubiquity,is having on younger people. This is not to say I am against porn. Like almost any straight male, for me to make that statement would be the height of hypocrisy. What I am against is the accessibility and lack of context that teens, pre-teens, and even younger children have to kinds of footage that would make the pornographers of yesteryear blush.

My level of early exposure to pornography was on par with most men my age. The odd videotape that someone’s father had hidden poorly, the occasional magazine stolen from the convenience store while working in a group of like-minded pre-pubescent children of the 80’s. It seems pretty innocent in retrospect, and the material was awfully tame by today’s standards. All the same, I feel that that exposure, and the fire it stoked to see more of the same, stunted me in certain respects.

There were a lot of reasons behind my awkwardness with girls, but it can at least be partly blamed on the skewed way porn made me look at women. They were portrayed as lusty, wanton sexual vessels that were always turned on and ready, so when they didn’t act that way towards me, I was confused. I blamed them for not being into me when they were supposed to be, and blamed myself for not being the oily alpha-male that I saw in these films. Since I was a silly, awkward teenager, it never occurred to me that it was all only because I was a silly, awkward teenager.

If that limited exposure did that to me, I can only imagine what the current state of availability is doing to boys and girls growing up now. I don’t really have to imagine, though. It’s been well documented that teenage boys are looking at a disturbing amount of porn online, on their phones, and on TV. They look to it as instructional material for sexual relations, which leads them to pressure teenage girls to do things that retired porn actors will tell you have destructive physical consequences. Since context, or even the basic idea of sexuality being a means of expressing affection, has been removed from these acts, all these kids have to go off of is the mistaken notion that everyone else is doing it.

It may seem like I am just clutching my pearls, but what all of this portends is pretty disturbing: a generation of young men, from all backgrounds, drastically desensitized to violent, abusive sex. A generation of young women that are increasingly pressured to meet the depraved demands of their male peers. A colder world where young people are more interested in emulating what they see in blue movies than in falling in love.

Maybe that all seems melodramatic, but ask yourself this, if hardcore pornography permeated our collective consciousness this much in the twenty years since I was a pre-teen, how will our kids look and behave twenty years hence? There is no way to put the brakes on any of these degenerative attitudes with the tools available to us. It would be wrong and quite impossible to censor this material.  Parental controls are joke. Parents themselves are only too willing to let the internet and popular entertainment fill in the blanks for kids about sexuality and gender roles. Where does that leave the next generation?

Michael Brumfield
@mikeybaltimore

In college I wrote a paper that equated the death of chivalry to the rise of feminism.  I was 19 and my views of the world were naive to say the least.  My Professor, a feminist, was so amused at the ridiculousness of my essay she passed it around to her colleagues and student TA’s.  

A friend who happened to be a TA in the department informed me of my new found “fame”.  I was very confused at the humiliating response.  I was raised to open doors, pull out chairs, offer your coat, pick up the check, and to stand when a lady enters the room. I believed I was being polite.  I thought that was what women wanted.

But my beliefs about chivalry didn’t stop at being polite. In my mind yard work was for men, taking out the trash for men, even filling a car with gas for men.  In my fantasy woman were better at cleaning house, cooking dinner, and minding children.  I believed that if a man was not the main source of income for his family he is not much of a man.  

I asked my friend why women would not like being placed on a pedestal.  She replied with an answer I have never forgotten.  When you place a woman on a pedestal the only thing she can do is fall.   I took me a while to understand what that truly means.   And some days I still forget as old habits die hard.  

It is degrading to treat a human like an object.  Women are capable of doing anything I can do.  I am not obligated to lift them along in the world and it is crazy to even believe I can.  By placing women on that pedestal I no longer viewed them as a person but as an ideal that that is not real or even possible.   To believe someone could or should live up to that is ingenuous and setting yourself up for a life of disappointment.

 J.F. Michael @jfmichaels

When I was in high school, I had a job with a guy who complained to me that he had asked another coworker out and she had refused him, even though she had previously been nice to him.  I told him that I couldn’t really criticize someone from being nice to people they weren’t attracted to; that seemed like a positive thing to me.

I forget how that conversation ended exactly, but I think he decided that maybe I wasn’t a good person to talk to about that kind of thing.

He was not the last person I’ve known who took it as a personal insult when some nice person wasn’t interested in them.  But if you’ve ever found that point of view tempting, then I would encourage you to turn it around and look at it from another angle — surely there are people who are perfectly nice people, and attractive in a way that you don’t appreciate but other people do, who you wouldn’t be interested in romantically or sexually.  If you turned them down, you wouldn’t (I hope) mean it as an insult, and it wouldn’t say anything bad about either of you; so when you’re turned down, why take it as an insult, or a commentary on yourself?  I mean, it’s a disappointment and everything, but would you really want to date someone who didn’t actually want to date you too?

Going down the other path leads to dark places — look at any dating sites and you’ll see tons of guys who think that it’s a woman’s job to be attractive to them, and that there are situations where women are obligated to have sex with men, and so on, and yet describe themselves as ‘nice guys’.  These are not the views of a nice person, and, anyway, it’s not like being ‘nice’ is some great achievement; it’s the bare minimum most people expect from anyone they meet.  Stop spending so much time thinking about how nice you are; it’s just a distraction from the larger goal of being a good person instead.

Jacob Haller @jwghaller

http://jwgh.tumblr.com/

http://music.jwgh.org/

43 Ways To Say, “That’s Sexist.”

Sometimes it can be awkward to call your friends out if they say something that makes you uncomfortable. Often they’re not being malicious, just thoughtless. But remember, your friends will only change their behavior if you speak up! Here are 43 ways of letting someone know he’s being sexist. Only you can know what’s right for your specific relationship and circumstance. Feel free to mix and match, or add your own!

1. I don’t like those kinds of jokes.
2. Dude, that’s pretty sexist.
3. That actually makes me really uncomfortable.
4. (later, in private:) Hey, I just wanted to let you know that what you said earlier really upset me.
5. (later, in an email:) Hey, I didn’t want to get into a whole thing in front of everybody, but I was actually really upset by what you said, and here’s why: [YOUR REASONS HERE]
6. Come on, you’re better than that.
7. Wait, hold up, is it the 1950s? It isn’t, right? Seriously though, is it? No but seriously, is it? Is it actually the 1950s right now? I’m like 90 percent sure that it isn’t. It isn’t, right? It isn’t?
8. Psh! Sexist!
9. Don’t say that. That’s not funny.
10. Hey, remember that time just now when you said something really sexist?
11. You don’t really believe that, do you?
12. What?! I can’t believe you just said that!!! That is SOOOO SEXIST!!!
13. Seriously though, don’t say stuff like that around me.
14. Just so you know, if you keep saying things like that, people are going to think you’re a sexist.
15. (Frown and shake head disapprovingly.)
16. That’s really weird that you think that’s an okay thing to say.
17. Hey, are you LMFAO? Because THAT’S SEXIST AND YOU KNOW IT. (Then, do a little dance.)
18. Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait. WHAT did you just say?
19. Oh, I get it, you’re doing the whole “politically incorrect” thing. Cute.
20. This is not your best look.
21. Just FYI, your jokey “pretend sexism” sounds a lot like real sexism.
22. Um, sexist much?
23. Hey, knock knock. [Who’s there?] Ida. [Ida who?] Ida know why you think it’s okay to make sexist jokes in front of me.
24. Wow, that’s awkward.
25. I’m seriously going to stop being your friend if you keep saying things like that.
26. You know what you just said objectifies women, right?
27. I don’t get it. Can you explain what you meant by that? No, I don’t understand. Talk me through it step by step. How did you reach those conclusions?
28. Sharp social satire, friend! Not tired and offensive at all!
29. Gross.
30. Wow, that is some OLD SCHOOL sexism!
31. I’m just kind of over that whole ironic post-sexism sexism thing, you know?
32. Uh oh, you might be sexist! Quick, say something progressive! Five! Four! Three! Two! One! Oh no, too late, you’re a sexist!
33. That’s a great impression of something a misogynist would say!
34. I’m sorry, but I can’t pretend that’s not sexist.
35. Whoa, weird. A sexist thing just happened.
36. Boo! Boooooo! Booooooooooo!
37. Do you hear yourself?
38. Could you just try to not say stuff like that when I’m around? It really bothers me.
39. Hey, I just met you. And this is crazy. But you’re a horribly misogynist. So call me never.
40. I was totally with you until that last part when you got kind of sexist all of a sudden.
41. Why would you say something like that?
42. Stop. I can’t even deal with your sexism right now.
43. Ugh, enough.

By Raphael Bob-Waksberg

Editor’s Note:  This is reprinted from something Gloria Steinem wrote.  Men who declare themselves “feminist” (which only means that they believe in the social, political and economical equality of women) actually can benefit from the inclusion as well.  It’s win-win!

Thanks to all who have contributed to Men Against Assholes and Misogyny MA’AM

and please encourage yourself and your male friends to submit essays and videos to the website.  You can be of any race, creed, sexual identity or orientation, career, etc.  We just want to read essays or watch videos where men announce their support for women in what still continues to be a fight for equality in ways insidious and seemingly small to big ways - like not accepting so cynically that our country allies itself with nations who enslave women. 

ANYWAY - think of it as a “It Gets Better” movement - don’t feel that you can’t say anything new. It’s okay if you can’t. This movement is about QUANTITY and VOLUME. So many women write me that they love the site because they just love the sheer AMOUNT of men who make them feel less insane by reading.  Be part of the movement - you don’t have to define it or change it. Just join hands.

Here’s how to submit to MA’AM:

Ten Ways Feminism Benefits Men by Gloria Steinem

10. Through feminism, men are liberated from stereotypes, too.

9.  Women’s skills are required to raise children. But, men have them too.

8.  Men have been shortchanged by being told to marry someone who can cook rather than someone who can be a companion. “I’m sure that men who have been trained essentially to marry their housekeepers were lonely,” Steinem said.

7.  The women’s movement can increase a man’s life by an average of four years. Steinem said that if men were to eliminate causes of death typically attributed to masculine roles, including deaths from violence, speeding and tension-related disease, their life expectancy would almost equal women’s.

6.  Boys can remain close to their mothers.

5.  If men aren’t hooked on dominance and hierarchy with other men, they are saved from the self-loathing that comes from the need for control.

4.  Laughter can once again become commonplace, even in serious rituals.  “In ancient cultures like Wilma’s, seriousness and laughter are not separate,” said Steinem.

3. Men can continue discovering talents, without being divorced from them.

2. Sex and race are intertwined. You can’t uproot one without the other.   “There’s really no such thing as being a feminist without being an antiracist,” she said. 

1.  Eliminating the sexual caste system – the cult of femininity and masculinity – eliminates the root cause of almost all violence.

Originally published on The Skinny.co.uk

Comedian Michael J Dolan takes himself to task for allowing himself to write misognystic jokes.

In June this year I put out my first stand-up record. Self-released, I tried to rattle up some press but mostly I was told to shove it. In the end I managed to get two reviews on indie comedy blogs and I was grateful for those. One was lovely. Enthusiastic, positive, the kind of thing I was hoping for. The other called me a misogynist and compared me to Bernard Manning. I was a little bit fucking shocked………..

Michael J. Dolan @michaeljdolan

The Silencing of Hate

Originally published on blogs.discoverymagazine.com

[I wrote this article for my friend Amy Roth, aka SurlyAmy, who has asked leaders in the field of skepticism to write about the recent surge of anti-women rhetoric. She posted my article on the Skepchicks site, and you can find links to the whole series of articles at the bottom of that post. I’m posting my piece here on my blog as well because this is a very important topic, and I want as many people to see it as possible.]

What the hell is going on in the online community?

If you’ve been reading or paying attention at all to any of the online cultures like skepticism or general geekery (scifi, gaming, convention-going, and so on), you’ll have seen astonishing and depressing displays of sexism. That’s been true for a long time. But recently some sort of sea change has occurred, and what we’re seeing now is a marked increase in outright misogyny and thuggery…..

Continue to rest of article HERE

Phil Plait @badastronomer

I was asked the other day why I cared so much about Civil Rights and Gender Equality issues, specifically the issues faced by Black Women in the U.S.  Here is my complex yet basic reason for this concern.  I offer it without agenda and without the need for acceptance or a pat on the back.  My reasons are my own, and first and foremost, I seek justice and freedom for Women of Color and any group that feels beset by our society not only because it is right, but because it benefits me as a white man.  You see, I don’t want to benefit at the expense of other people.  That exacts its price from me as well as the person that suffers as a result of my position.  While that price is more philosophical and spiritual and is not comparable, it is nonetheless real and destructive.  

Enough preamble.

I am a son.  I am a brother. I am a husband. I am a lover. I am a cousin.  I am an Uncle. I am a friend. I am a colleague. I am all these things to various women in my life.  I love these women and want them to live full, safe lives and have at least the same opportunities, rights, and protections as I have.  This, to me, is basic.  This goes beyond laws and rights. This speaks to manners, daily interactions, and respect.  As fellow humans, they are worthy of my respect.  I have not always manifested this respect. As a man, I could pass an entire day and never have to reflect on the myriad challenges that a woman has to face from the moment she wakes up to the time she falls asleep that I simply don’t even need to think about.  This is my privilege as a man, specifically a white man, and it is a privilege that’s worth money, opportunity, safety, and, most crucially, time.  Most of us men are never encouraged to think of this and take it into consideration when we interact with women.  Why should we? Our culture, our global culture has taught us that men have more value, white men the most.  That is simply a fact.

I have had the great honor to be friend, colleague, associate, acquaintance, neighbor, family member, lover, mentor, student, teacher, and protege of many Women of Color during the course of my life.  I have not always understood or appreciated these women to the fullest, but my time in their orbits has made me who I am and shaped the course of my life. I do not claim to understand the intricacies of their personal experiences, but I try my best to empathize with their challenges and appreciate them as people. 

I don’t always succeed in this. I am a man, a flawed man.  I fail. I fall short.  But I am always eager to learn, to beg for patience, to let go. I also understand that, on some occasions, my input, presence, words, perspective, and assistance are not welcome or relevant. This is the way it is.  Everything is not for me to understand or be a part of.

I do not see these women as fetishes, as Mammy-figures, as monoliths.  They are people.  They are women.  They are people I admire, respect, enjoy, emulate. They are people I love.  I also understand that my feelings about them are simply that, my feelings.  These women don’t need my approval. What I write here is simply a personal explanation; it confers nothing.  I simply feel the need to express it.  These women don’t need anything from me.

On a more basic level, I am simply trying to put into practice how my parents raised me to live.  If someone is being mistreated, say something—DO something about it; on the micro- and the macro-levels.  Everyone has a story.  Each story is different.  All stories have common threads.  In short, be kind to everyone.

This declaration I write tonight doesn’t mean I have reached some socio-political Nirvana. I am always learning, always trying to grow, always trying to correct personal failings.  This is simply an appreciation for the women of color in my life, specifically Black women. Women have it rough, my friends.  They still do. Black women have it very rough, to put it mildly.  This makes me want to do whatever I can in whatever pathetic way I can to mitigate that difficulty, even if the best thing I can do is to shut the hell up and get the hell out of the way.

My mother Kathy and father Mike taught me to be kind to everyone I meet.  They taught me to respect everyone.  They taught me to help others. They taught me to love.  Love all.

I will keep trying my best to live up to this legacy.  I will do it because it is right.  I will do it because it makes me happy.  I will do it because it is my duty and obligation as a human being.

That’s it.  For whatever it is worth, that’s how I feel.

Adam Flowers  @adamflowers

http://songofmysong.tumblr.com/post/39465310556/aint-got-no-home-aint-got-no-shoes-aint-got

A Revolution From Within The Boys’ Club

I’ve been a feminist sympathizer throughout my life. I enjoy the benefits of male privilege, but I’ve felt the constraints that it puts on my humanity. Privilege comes with expectations of, frankly, evil behavior that I think would block my potential for a fully moral and happy life. 

Privilege is like being a member of a kids’ treehouse club. Members get benefits, like access to the treehouse and the snacks there. But in order for the club to remain beneficial it has to remain elite (or the snacks and space would run out). In order to remain elite, its members must actively exclude others. Elite cultures will tend to develop rationales for this exclusion, and expect members to reinforce them. Fancy talk for “If you’re one of us, you’ll laugh while I insult and embarrass this person not in the club. RIGHT?” 

Many people seem comfortable with this, or accept it as the way things are. But if you start to not like it, you do get punished—shamed or kicked out of the club. 

And of course, if you’re outside of the club, you might want to enjoy some of the benefits of membership and find they’re being hogged by members. 

I want a level playing field with ambitious male and female writers and performers. I want male and female bosses and coworkers who know they’ll be treated fairly. I want a country full of citizens and visitors who can bring their full talent to our collective prosperity without living in fear or censorship because they are not members of an existing club.

For now, my biggest vehicle for poking holes in this club of privilege is parenting. I hope to model the comfort and freedom that respect for all, rather than exclusion, brings to my life—and be honest about the difficulty of doing that when you’re afraid you’re breaking the rules of your club. We’re starting to talk to girls about how to look critically at the messages they get excluding them. But big change will only happen when boys — the members themselves — begin to question and ultimately reject those messages. 

I recently gave a talk at TEDxBeaconStreet about one way I notice the club sending its messages: the movies they watch. I hope you enjoy it. Keep up the fight, ladies and gentlemen!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx8RRIiP53Q

Colin Stokes @stokescolin

Hey, you were born with swingy, dangly dude parts, like me! What luck! Those things are like rabbit’s feet in our pants, except that they actually work. This anatomical fact is profoundly fortuitous, as it allows us to play this whole massively multiplayer game on easy mode (hat-tip @ John Scalzi for that metaphor). And yet it doesn’t feel like luck to us—and that causes us to be assholes about it.

The facts of our identity feel like the default, because we’ve lived with our dudeness from day one. We didn’t see the roll of the dice or the chromosomal dance that gave us our dangly parts, and we didn’t see the development of thousands of years of civilization, or even the last couple of decades, that set up the cultural atmosphere we were born into. We just saw our own life, full of trials and challenges and its own share of shitty, shitty days, and figured everyone carried the same burdens we did.

But that life came with built-in advantages. Thanks to the culture around us, you and I were lucky enough to be treated differently in school and in job interviews. We were encouraged and nurtured and preferentially selected just in virtue of our gonad configuration. We were set up to succeed, which led us to enjoy strings of achievements, which led our self-esteem to spiral virtuously. We were born fitting the culturally-accepted image of the hero, the warrior, the adventurer, the renegade iconoclast, the visionary innovator, the celebrated athlete, the renowned scholar, the knight—we were born halfway to badass.

That kind of advantage has a way of being invisible to those who enjoy it. We’re blind to the details of our sexual head-start because we can be. We can blunder our way through life with an iffy work ethic and a warped sense of social justice and a clueless approach to relationships and a crappy suite of sexist jokes—and still we reap the benefits of higher pay and lopsided representation in political office and ease of walking down dark streets at night. It’s all thanks to the good fortune of being born with the penis option. It’s not just that we get the pile of benefits that come with the equipment, either; we also get to ignore that we get them. We get to be assholes about it, and pretend that we earned all of it, and—rather than getting called out for that acute male pattern blindness—we get routinely praised and congratulated for our ambition, easygoingness, and swagger.

Because of this blind spot for our fortuitous suite of benefits, it’s easy for us to think everyone has our same advantages, our same shortcuts and opportunities—and that line of thinking is what dries up our natural empathy. Because we’ve been encouraged to take pride in our self-determination, we’re tempted to blame hardship on its sufferers. Because the doors have been open for us to get so much of what we want, we’re inclined to assume that we also deserve who we want. Because our ambition, assertiveness, and competitiveness have been regularly cultivated, nourished, praised, we’ve never trained in politeness, or learned to imagine how our behavior might be perceived by others. Because we’ve had our whims and urges catered to and our misdeeds routinely tolerated, we’ve learned that our every comment or advance is for us to make and for others to endure.

The good news is that you are not a testosterone-driven jerk-bot. You can practice, and get better at, mindfulness and courtesy. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering why women don’t just—anything—check your blind spot. If you don’t understand why women get so—anything—when you—anything—you can go looking for enlightenment in the direction of the heap of advantages that come with your lucky dangly bits. It may seem like “they’re” being unreasonable. It may seem like “they’re” complaining about nothing. It may seem like “they” have no sense of humor. All I ask is that you remember that you’re constantly supported by a dragon’s hoard of privileges that was granted to you by a photo-finish sperm race. The fact that the world is set up for you gives you more of a responsibility to be kind, not less—so be mindful of your stroke of dumb luck, evaluate your own behavior, and unlock your sense of empathy.

Your fellow men here on the MA’AM site are giving it a shot. They’re acknowledging the shitty double standards that fall in their favor, and are refusing to let their advantages enable lazy patterns of disrespect. They’re calling out their peers for sexual comments and sexist language. They’re questioning and counteracting the cultural assumptions built into choosing books and clothing and toys for their kids. They’re being selective about their mouthy celebrity role models and speaking out against ridiculous ovaryless legislators who try to limit women’s reproductive rights. They’re rejecting the casual sexism inherent in sitcom stereotypes, video game marketing, superhero comic traditions, and fantasy genre cliches. They’re learning to flip situations around and evaluate them as if they were the targets of objectification, and learning when they’re helping to enable objectification around them. They’re inspecting their own conduct, admitting past mistakes, and course-correcting in the direction of non-automatic, conscious human decency. They’re standing up as feminists—as supporters of the no-brainer principle of equality—vocally and with pride. They’re demanding something better of themselves, which can only improve the world for both men and women.

Doug Beyer   octemberfirst.tumblr.com

I have been a feminist for 21 years of my 21 year old life thanks to my wonderful mum. Sexism is apparent everywhere around us and gender roles are one of the most pushed, both subtly and obviously, in advertising, media, governmental press, signage, language and imagery. As a graphic designer I find myself bombarded as I’m sure all feminists do with sexist imagery, signage and media, I hope that through my work I can make some sort of dent in this area, not just with feminist media but simply thinking about colour and language choice and refusing to conform to a gender specific perspective. I wanted to send you a piece of work I have done recently as a comment on this subject. I hope it speaks for itself and thank you for this wonderful opportunity to be involved in something I have a lot of time and praise for.

Josh Walz

London

1dot2dot3dot4.wordpress.com

Surprise! Gay Men Can Be Misogynists Too

There are a lot of things that anger me. Homophobes, NRA gun jerks (even more so in the last week), and Misogynists are at the top of that list.  I’m lucky enough to follow @CoryByrom and his amazing wife @designisgood on twitter and saw the link to Cory’s MA’AM essay.  It prompted me to think back to my college English days when I was taking gender/feminist literature courses. What did I have to contribute to this conversation about Assholes and Misogynists?
 
Being gay, you would typically assume that I’m as far from misogynistic as you can get. After all, women have been, and continue to be, our biggest/most vocal supporters. Well, I’m here to tell you that we can be just as big, if not bigger, misogynists as our hetero counterparts.  (There is a size-queen joke in there, but I’m not going to point it out…wait…dammit).

I came to this realization one evening while relaxing with my fiance and watching some TV. I forget what we were watching but I do remember saying, in regards to a male character, “What a bitch!” I had a lightbulb moment, reviewed what I had just said, turned to my fiance and proceeded with “Oh my god, that was completely sexist.” We talked about it, and I realized I was guilty of perpetuating sexists language; much like my hetero counter parts and the homophobic language of “That’s so gay.”

The problem (I believe) stems from what we have available, regarding language, and what we have been exposed to as we age. It’s been my experience that the majority of curse words are feminine in nature, not masculine, or gender neutral. Take a look at all the curse words you know. I guarantee that the vast majority involve some version of “bitch” “cunt” “pussy” etc. Few are gender neutral and even fewer are based on the masculine. Maybe it’s part of growing up in the Southern USA, but it’s something i’m very much aware of now. I don’t know what it’s going to take, but I am making a a concerted effort to be gender neutral in my pejoratives (granted I’ve been doing it without realizing it) and start pointing out the flaws in the language choices I make.

I like to point out the idiosyncrasies of people who say “That’s so gay” by responding “That’s so straight.” I think I’m going to make an effort to replace “What a bitch” with “What an asshole”. After all, gender equality in all things, right?

Charles Gardner @GladinGardner

Tumblr: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/cggardner

I’ve always considered myself a feminist. Or an ally to women at least, as I’m sure my early idea of a feminist was a bit barbaric and way off base.

I’m not really a traditionally manly man. I realize I’ve already said something a bit sexist and that’s sort of the point. Stick with me. Growing up I wasn’t into all of the things the other guys in my class were into. I’m trying to make a list of “manly” things I didn’t like that goes beyond sports, videogames and action movies but that seems to be the whole thing. It’s a pretty thin identity. If we skip ahead a few years to high school we can add drinking beer and being an asshole to the list of things all the other guys loved to do that I wasn’t particularly into. I took cooking classes instead of gym. I couldn’t hold my own in a conversation about baseball if I had to talk about anything other than The Bad News Bears.

I felt a bit persecuted because of that, like other men were treating me like I was somehow abnormal or inferior. To be blunt, I assumed I felt like women must feel. Like the extent of the problems they faced was some schoolyard bullying and having to make some awkward small talk. I never tried to put myself into their shoes, I just figured I already had. I promise my intentions were good but growing up in a small town you don’t realize the sort of effect it’s actively having on you. Saying I wanted to get out and see the world didn’t change the fact that I never actually had. My idea of gender was a limited one. In hindsight I realize I probably sounded like Jill from Home Improvement.

“Ugh, men, am I right ladies? What’s with all of the cars and the grunting?”

The real lessons came to me gradually. I was repeatedly smacked in the face by the systematic inequalities women face all of the time. I would get into arguments about things without even really knowing my own position, figuring out what was wrong as I spoke. I got into an argument with someone over why it’s sexist that women aren’t even allowed to try out for NHL hockey. And that even aside from the existence of separate teams, it’s sexist that women’s sports don’t get the same attention. I don’t think I fully got that before I said it out loud. I got into an argument about why a list of the “sexiest” comedians that was all women and didn’t really mention their material was insulting.

“They should be glad guys think they’re attractive.”

You’re so right. What else could they possibly want?

Once, a platonic girlfriend and I were talking about walking home at night. I said I didn’t really mind it. She said the guys at night bothered her more. Not in a neurotic, agoraphobic way just in a realistic way. She was more aware that they were there, more careful if they seemed like they were staring. I worried they might ask me if I had a lighter, she was worried at the very least someone might make a drunken pass.

I guess my point is—and it should be an obvious one, but it isn’t all of the time—to remember the little things. The things that might not seem obvious. Not every problem is on the front of a pamphlet. Yes, women are making less money than they should but there is more to it than that. Yes, the government is trying to pass antiquated laws about women’s health but there is more to it than that. Most of us aren’t intentionally misogynist (if you are, you probably aren’t reading this and therefore won’t mind that I think you’re a dick), so just make sure you aren’t doing it unintentionally. Society makes that pretty easy. It’s easy to miss problems you never have to face directly but try not to. The easiest way to do that? Realize it does affect you. A misogynist system sucks for everyone, not just women.

Just as importantly, never minimize the inequality the women in your life face. When someone complains about something some asshole did or said to them, don’t tell them not to worry about it or that he was just an asshole and they should ignore it. Tell them that what he did was wrong (and that he was an asshole). Everyone gets that what he said is worth ignoring, that doesn’t change the fact that he said it.

Cass Wall @eggwhiteomelet

donrickles.tumblr.com

I’ve always considered myself a feminist, but it became clear to me last winter that being anti-misogyny didn’t mean I couldn’t unintentionally be a misogynist. In January, I posted a question to Facebook:

“Women of Facebook, help the father of a daughter: she’s tiny, but she’s already rapidly figuring out the world. I’m aware of (but maybe not always alert to) cultural biases that make women feel dumber, more dependent, less capable, and less valuable. My wife is brilliant in this regard, and ready for anything, but I’m curious to hear stories or tips: what do you think a father should do OR avoid doing? Feel free to talk to me like an idiot on this issue. I hope I’m not, but I’d rather be talked down to that be wrong.”

The responses were fantastic. About three dozen women offered their advice.  I had intended to arrange them by category, but it turns out many of my friends covered a great deal in their responses, and I’d hate to slice and dice their responses. Then I tried to simply rearrange the answers, to add some headers that indicate major topics along the way, thinking I could make it slightly-better organized than a Facebook thread. I only made it worse.

So in the end, the only edits I’ve made have been to capitalization and punctuation, and then to remove personal references, and off-topic comments. Otherwise, I’m posting responses as-is. If I cut part of your response, it’s not because I don’t appreciate it, it’s because the readers Andrea has in mind won’t know what we’re talking about, or it was a personal note to me. Even the off-topic stuff, I appreciate. When people disagreed, about say, Barbies or pushing math and science, I’ve left the disagreements in place, since I think it gives a fuller picture of the complexity of the issues.

I’ve simply numbered the responses. Some people responded more than once.

1. Avoid pink and avoid barbie. Let her do everything she sees boys doing on the playground. And when she turns 5 go to the Natick Outdoor Store and get her the XS pair of kid boxing gloves.

2. My dad did a lot of things wrong, but when he did, he would always apologize afterward. That helped me recognize that A) I am worthy of an apology, and B) it’s important to acknowledge your mistakes and try to fix them.

3. Make sure she enjoys math and science, english guy.

4. Also, when she takes her craft scissors to her hair — which she will — don’t freak out. Because if it was a boy, you wouldn’t freak out.

5. Not to get crass and all, but i suggest using the words for her anatomy that she is going to eventually use in real life.

6. I know sounds stupid, but smother her with love and never forget to tell her how strong and important she is. Never hurts to tell her she is also beautiful.

7. I have an older brother, and a super-masculine dad who was actually incredibly egalitarian without even realizing it, I think. I really admire it in retrospect. He invited me to do all the same things he would do with my brother — not in a self-conscious way, just treating us the same. I fished, I watched football, my brother and I did the same kinds of chores (yardwork, etc). He treated us the same intellectually too. He never acted like anything I wanted to achieve academically or career-wise should be any different from what my brother wanted. He didn’t make some big show of it; he just talked to us about our career goals and academic goals in the same way. He also helped me develop something I value most about myself — my sense of humor. He joked around with me ALL THE TIME, and he seemed to genuinely think I was funny too. He encouraged funniness and talked me up in public as being funny and smart. This sounds goofy, but I think being actively funny (which is a fairly masculine trait and is actually different from simply having a sense of humor) is radically feminist and very powerful/empowering.

8. Let her know that sometimes we all do things that make us feel dumb, and that it’s OK. And let her be who she is. If she likes pink and Barbies, then give her pink and Barbies. If she like Legos, give her Legos. If she wants to hack code, get her the computer she needs and books to learn from. If she likes a combination thereof, go for the Barbie laptop.

And there’s also sort of general people stuff that I think affects both women and men, but often differently. Assertive people need to know when to dial it back. More reserved people need to know when and how to stand up for themselves. It’s OK, though, for a person to be assertive or to be reserved. A woman doesn’t need to have a certain kind of personality in order to be happy. She just needs to know that who she is is OK.

Maybe what I’m taking the long way around saying is that Anna doesn’t need to be a math and science person in order to be successful as a woman and as a person in general. What she needs is the *option* to be a math or science person, or whatever kind of person she is inherently. Be supportive and encouraging, push her to give all sorts of things a try, be on the lookout for any opportunity you think might help her develop her interests, and when she finds what she likes, be happy for her.

9. My parents gave my sister and me the best lesson: to argue for what we want. That our opinions are valid enough to fight for. Note: they regretted this decision briefly during the teenage years… We had few rules, but those were to be followed. Everything else was up for negotiation.

10. Let children explore whatever interests them. At times, my sister is horrified when her daughter insists upon only wearing pink and purple dresses or asks for Barbies and nail polish for her b-day. She is a girly child. Sis knows the more she resists what her daughter wants, the more rebellion is coming in her teen years.

As strict as my parents were, they never got mad at me for taking (very expensive) things apart to see how they worked including a grandfather clock, the tv and a car.

Try to distinguish between bad behavior for any child and what is viewed as unacceptable for a girl. Curiosity, exploration and risk taking are all part of learning.

Hopefully you can teach your daughter to be confident and self-assured. Then she won’t have to pursue comedy.

11. What lovely responses. The main thing is having a support system of family that tells you you really CAN be whomever you want goes a long way. The points about allowing a woman to be funny (if that’s her schtick – sp?) – or more generally to accept any more “masculine” trait, and being worthy of an apology (no schtick required) are subtle but crucial.

12. With a two (soon-to-be three) year-old daughter, I ask myself these questions ALL the time. Right now, she’s insisting on a dinosaur blanket and a bug catcher as her gifts of choice for her Pinkalicious (also her choice) birthday. And she knows we love her to bits, so I think (*hope*) we’re striking the right sort of balance! Incidentally, I’m always asking myself similar questions about how we raise our SON! If nothing else, you’ve reminded me to find whomever let me believe that parenting is easy. They’ve got it coming.

13. Encouraging the necessary skills for financial independence is also liberating.

14. I’d recommend reading the book Delusions of Gender if you want the scientific side of the myths that are likely to come up from some of the other people around you.

15. As someone who grew up without a father, I cannot begin to tell you how much the simple fact that you are asking this means to me. My best advice is to just be there for her. Love her and never forget to show her that love so she will never have to question it. Show her that she is worth something and treasured for being exactly who she is. I suppose this goes for all children, but I truly believe that the bond between a father and daughter is special and significant and should be treated as such. I do not have children yet so I know my perspective is limited. However, I needed to put it out there that the consequences of having a father that abandoned you, a father that did not show you love and kindness, can last forever.

16. Be generous with verbal and physical affection. Treat Anna the way you want her future husband to treat her so she’ll expect respect – open doors, value her opinion, surprise her, don’t criticize, cultivate her natural talents even if they don’t interest you personally.

17. I need to chime in on the Barbie/pink thing. I was really actively discouraging it, but then I read “Cinderella Ate My Daughter” and it pointed out that if you discourage what she associates with being a girl (which society tells her is pink and Barbies) you are essentially telling her you don’t want her to be a girl. Obviously, I think being a girl is awesome and I wouldn’t want to make my daughter feel like I don’t want her to be one so I stopped pushing the boy toys on her. Luckily, my daughter seems equally drawn to cars and dolls at this age. I do feel it is important to draw a line though. Someone gave her a pack of princess dress-up toys for Xmas that came with what I would call “stripper shoes.” It caused a giant tantrum on Xmas but I wouldn’t let her play with those. I think it’s important to decide what you think is appropriate in terms of girly-culture (ie the early sexualization of our daughters) and stick with it because YOU are the one raising her. Many people I know let their 3yos wear nail polish. That’s fine for them, but I won’t being allowing that for many, many years.

18. I think encouraging Anna to follow her interests, but also letting her in to enjoy your interests with you goes a long way. I have always valued highly the times my father included me in watching sci fi, attempting the NYT crossword puzzles, wandering by foot around his neighborhood, engaging in conversations with his friends, planning and cooking dinner, and living his version of life. He still does. I love him for the simple act of letting me in and treating me respectfully.

19. Oh please. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with playing Barbie or wearing Princess dresses so long as the little girl knows she can still cure cancer or solve complex math problems while doing it. To me, telling a girl she can’t dress up or play barbie sends a message women can either be smart OR beautiful. I think that does more of a disservice to women. Celebrate her for being BOTH beautiful and smart and let her know though it is fun to play dress up…true beauty comes from how we treat others. (But really–bottom line–it’s your unconditional love that will make a difference.

20. We are now entering the twilight zone known as adolescence, and are hoping we’ve laid the groundwork well for our daughter to blossom. Tough to do in this culture, which I think is toxic to girls; if I learn anything particularly useful I’ll share. Meanwhile, just ignore the screaming coming about 4 blocks north of you; “I hate you! You’re the worst mother EVER!” is code for “thanks, mom, you’re awesome.”

21. What I would offer is have some dedicated father/daughter activities that are just for the two of you. My dad was definitely not that guy. One of my friends has a daughter and she and her dad belong to this organization called Path Finders (It sounds like a cult, but it’s not) it’s like scouts for fathers and daughters. They go on hikes, camping trips, geo-caching. So much cool stuff, and I grind my teeth in envy whenever she talks about it. I think it makes all the difference to have special experiences like that. It will serve her well in the long run and give both of you incredibly priceless memories forever!

22. Never punish her for standing up for herself, ever. It is your job to teach her best practices and to use her words, but no matter what you can’t put being lady-like and well-behaved over self-preservation because you don’t ever want her to NOT stand-up for herself or do something socially unacceptable to protect herself because the fear of reprisal is too great. I would say this to anyone who deals with children or young women and not just parents. If I had listened to their BS advice, I might not be here today.

23. Having a fun weekly activity that’s just you and your daughter is so valuable. I’d also add that helping her feel comfortable to talk with you from a very young age about her worries, fears, problems (especially when she isn’t treated well in the outside world) as she grows up is important and something that is sometimes left to mothers to take care of.

24. My parents were really good at a getting me to think of myself as simply a person, rather than my gender. I had Barbies, and legos, and a Tonka dumptruck. I learned to bake a killer pie and how to replace a fender on a 66 Fastback. The one thing that keeps coming into my mind as I’ve been reading theses posts – is a question I asked Mom when I was probably 5 or 6. I asked her why Jesus was a man and not a woman. Mom told me that people used to not take what women said seriously, but now they do – so if Jesus came today he probably would be a woman. Theology aside – this simple comment has stuck with me for 30+ years, so it must have meant something. Mom also told me when I was in the boy crazy years that the worst way to get a guy was to pretend like I was dumb. She said that a lot of girls do it, and a lot of boys fall for it but nobody ends up happy in the end. And – Dad never treated me like some delicate flower. He treated me like a smart, capable, useful person. I say – just BE present, be your wonderful self, and treat her momma with love and respect.

25. Also, don’t totally freak out when her skirts are too short. That said, i don’t know what you should do when her skirts are too short.

26. (in response to 25) Give her a “leggings-only” gift certificate at Forever 21…

27. This might be a repeat (in essence) of what’s already been said but, let her find her voice and to speak up when necessary. Girls are “taught/expected” by society to not be troublemakers. Nice in theory but in reality, I’ve never pushed for more money in jobs because I didn’t want to make a stink…even if I deserved it. Unfortunately for women (especially in the work force) there is a fine line between being strong in your convictions and being a bitch. I once had a male co-worker (higher in status) call me Sweet Pea for a week before I finally had the nerve to tell him to stop. I was just as nervous about telling a more senior level employee to stop calling me that as I was about him thinking that I was ungrateful (he was helping me on a project). Ridiculous when you step back and look at it but when you are in the moment… you don’t want to make a stink. It took my male boss at the time (who is an incredible mentor and father figure) to tell me that it was not something I should stand for, regardless of how powerful this guy was at work. The difference is in the delivery (between being seen as a bitch and strong in my convictions). There is a double standard for women in the workforce so learning how to negotiate tough situations in a reasonable manner can come from your interactions with her and the level of respect you show Anna for her ideas.

28. Tell her that putting other girls down doesn’t diminish them, but her instead, and a strong woman seeks allies, not enemies…this lesson is as important at 5 as it is 25…when most women realize it could have been that way all along. Also, it is vital to be direct- people are not good at reading other peoples feelings/ emotions or even facial expressions (though many people think they are psychic, they are not). If you are mad/upset at someone, you have to talk to them about it because they will NEVER guess otherwise.

29. When I think back to the most valuable things my dad did, some of them included teaching me how to take care of my car, and our yard, showing me that school was a priority (He always showed up for my various school concerts and conferences. He stuck my report cards on the fridge, and he grounded me for that “B-” because I was an “A” student.), making it clear what was and was not appropriate attire, behaving as a responsible adult role model (working hard, relegating activities like drinking to hours when I was asleep etc.), teaching me to cook and cooking with me, calling me “daddy’s little girl” and making me feel like I was special, but never coddling me. He had standards for my behavior. Oh, and I never wondered if he was a parent or a friend. Whether he was or not I always felt like I had an authority in the house on most topics.

30. My advice? Show up. I remember my Dad taking time to help me with my homework when I was little, and I felt so important & loved (he worked long hours at Polaroid), and I remember the field hockey games he was on the sidelines for – the best!! If your intention is love, you can’t go wrong! And I recently heard – make sure your face lights up when she (or anyone you love) walks into a room. Love that!

31.Always ask her what she means if you don’t understand her point of view on something…take time to think about your approach if you need to, just because she is a kid it doesn’t mean her problems are simple. By the time she is 7 or 8 she will be as capable as any of us at telling you what she needs from you — the problem is, she’ll be 7 or 8.

32. Show her that you are proud of her when she tries things (especially make the effort to show up to things that matter to her – sports games, recitals, etc.). To me, trying is the most mportant thing to encourage. I think that girls especially have so many fears, probably a lot to do with society’s insistance that they behave angelically and appropriately at all times, often deferring to others rather than have any attention at all upon themselves. Help her feel less fearful. I wish that my absent father had done that for me. That is what I am most envious of. I think that there lies a balance in parenting between a child feeling like they’re on their own (as I did – very scary) and too sheltered. A child should know that their parents are there for them, to help them become their best selves.

33. * Give her the toys that she wants, whether they be LEGOs or Barbies. Kids are smart enough to know that your house doesn’t look like LEGOs and that women don’t look like Barbie.

* Let her wear the clothes that she wants (within reason). Until she’s aware enough to realize what she’s doing, I wouldn’t let her wear a bikini in the snow, but don’t get worried if she wears tutus or camo pants. Or both.

* Compliment her on things that don’t involve her appearance. Let her see you give those compliments to the other women in her life too.

* Share the decision-making with Lisa, and let her see you do it. I’m sure you do this already, but you want her to know that the choices in your lives are being made by both of you. Make sure there’s nothing that she only sees men do. (Driving is a big one that comes to mind.)

* Always listen to her opinion or side of the story and consider it. Make sure she knows the difference between being rude and being confident or assertive. Never reprimand her for the latter.

34. Be sincere with her, and keep doing the things you’re doing and invite her to join along. Be honest with her about who you are. Please don’t forget that she could be totally like one of her parents, or both, or neither AT ALL. But that that’s OK too. So MANY things happen along the way from now until 20 years from now, that really, giving her Barbies or Legos, in my opinion, won’t matter much in the end. Treating her respectfully as a separate human being is worth SO much more. OH! but most importantly: have fun in whatever you guys do together.

35. Good that you’re asking. Keep asking.

36. (received by email, from a friend who was NEVER a jock growing up) My advice, believe it or not, is to encourage her to play sports or get an active hobby like running or hiking or martial arts or whatever.  Shocking, right?  I think I spent half my life being anti-jock.  But hear me out: sports (for lack of a better word) teach the rewards of hard work and, at least for me, made me appreciate and value my body in an entirely different way – for what it can do, not what it looks like. As a female, I cannot overstate what a revelation this has been. There was a recent news segment on Good Morning America – I didn’t see it, but I read about it.  Anyway, I can’t speak to the scientific bona fides of this study, but it said that over 50% of girls ages 3-6 (yes, 3-6) think that they’re fat.  And no matter how hard you try, Anna will receive those messages from society, her friends, everywhere.  When I think sometimes about all the time I wasted when I was younger fighting my body with diets, calorie counting, etc. etc., I’m incredulous.  I think that if I had played sports or had an active hobby, instead of being only a book worm, I would have saved some of that time.

So that was everybody’s advice. There are a number of things I started doing differently almost immediately, and many other things I’m keeping in mind for later years as they become immediately relevant. Most of the things I do differently relate to the kind of praise I give her. I also bite my lip about her playing in the mud and such, and have developed a habit of letting her follow me around the lawn with gardening tools. I’ve absolutely implemented the end of Item 30. Even if I am having a LOUSY day, I make it a point, before coming into the house or getting her at day care, of dropping that mood and giving her a huge smile and excited hello. It’s amazing how she responds.

David Mogolov @djmogo

www.mogolov.com

I’m Not Perfect, But I Used to Be Worse.

All my life I’ve considered myself progressive, someone who spoke up for those on the margins. In college I joined my campus’ LGBT group as a straight ally (homophobia was kind of my pet cause, since I was often called a fag by bullies in high school). I worked with the campus feminist collective, the black student coalition, and other identity groups to combat what were, even at a small liberal-arts college at the turn of the last century, some pretty shocking examples of discrimination. I was the stereotype of the Sensitive Nineties Man you might read about in an Onion article: I dated the president of the feminist collective, I took gender-studies courses, I railed against the Greek system, and wore a THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE t-shirt. (I even had a ponytail, for Christ’s sake, though that probably had more to do with the fact that it was 1997 than anything.)

As a result, for many years throughout my adult life, I considered myself above sexism, immune to any charges of it and enlightened about the myriad daily indignities women are subjected to.

But here’s the thing: I wasn’t, not entirely. As self-aware as I might have been, I had still somehow internalized some pretty despicable attitudes toward women. But because I never overtly abused women; because “some of my best friends” were feminists; because I was sure my feminist friends would let me know if I was being sexist; I assumed I was off the hook and congratulated myself for challenging the sexism I did notice, whether it was a drunk guy at the bar getting a little too handsy with a female acquaintance, or homophobic comments overheard in the dining hall, or abhorrent graffiti scrawled on a poster for a campus feminist meeting (how quaint, graffiti, in the pre-Twitter era).

I was good at condemning those instances of sexism because they were so obvious; they allowed my progressive male friends and me to draw clear lines in the sand between our own dignified, egalitarian attitudes and the brutish behavior of our misguided compatriots. But I got so good at identifying this behavior that I compartmentalized it, far away from my own more insidious brand of sexism.

For example: I was subtly shitty to the women I dated—and shittier to the ones who turned me down. I was a serial monogamist who, by dint of being young, white, handsome, and male, felt that I was somehow owed the admiration and companionship of whichever female I chose. When faced with rejection, I would lash out, emotionally manipulating my rejector into feeling ashamed for devastating me so completely. I deployed this dangerous double threat of entitlement and rage to make the women around me feel fundamentally flawed, when in truth, they had every right to dump me (or say no in the first place) without being read the riot act. (That’s not to mention the women I only interacted with in passing, but still managed to evaluate and condemn, mentally or aloud. I slut-shamed and body-snarked and mansplained long before the Internet pathologized such behavior in these terms.)

When I did win over a woman with my charms, I quickly abused the privilege. I was by no means a monster all the time, and could be very sweet and agreeable in relationships—most of the time. But I also tended to get jealous and codependent if my partner spent too much time with other people (especially men); I got competitive about her intelligence or talents or attractiveness (I wanted her to be as good as I was at stuff, but never better); and, when I inevitably got bored with the relationship, I withdrew emotionally and physically over many painful weeks before finally bringing the hammer down and dumping her, often cruelly and abruptly.

I was worse when I wasn’t dating someone. Outside the bounds of monogamy (and sometimes within them), I was an absolute cad: I became expert at hitting on women at parties and bars so subtly that they didn’t realize they were being hit on. I exploited their worst fears and strongest desires, telling them whatever they wanted to hear to win them over, and playing them against their catty friends or loser boyfriends (“she’s just jealous because I’m talking to you and not her”; “he doesn’t appreciate you like I would”). I plied them with drinks until our better judgment couldn’t follow us home from the bar. And those were the manipulations conducted when things were rosy and the night was full of inebriated promise; it got uglier once a woman somehow got on my shit list, either by rejecting me or simply losing interest in me: I would cheat on her, call her names, spread rumors about her among friends or (ugh) on my blog. I never hit a woman, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t capable of inflicting psychological damage.

And I was “one of the good ones.”

Every once in a long while, a female friend of mine would call me out—she’d have the audacity to tell me I was manipulative, or a philanderer, or even a misogynist. At the time, of course, I would vociferously deny it, enumerating the ways I couldn’t possibly be guilty of such crimes (“I intervened when that guy was hitting on you!”; “I’m dating the president of the feminist collective!”; “I took some gender-studies courses!”) until my accuser would realize she was only wasting her time, and wearily withdraw her claim.

I finally began to wise up around the time I hit thirty, which was, not coincidentally, the same point at which I stopped drinking. Alcohol had allowed me to do—and convince women to do—all kinds of misguided things. It loosened my tongue, allowing me to say horrible things to women, things I’d regret the next day. It served as the agent and excuse for any and all proclamations, castigation, and infidelities. I remain grateful to this day that it never resulted in rape or other physical violence, in any accidents, incarcerations, or any of the other all-too-common consequences of intoxication. But the damage it did do was certainly injurious enough, and extremely insidious. A drinking problem is patient, inflicting its violence so gradually you don’t even notice it until you’re looking back at years of abuse.  

I quit drinking because, in my moments of clarity, I could see the havoc, near- and long-term, that it would wreak on everyone in my life: my family, my partner, my students, my colleagues, and all the women out at bars and parties who just wanted to have a good time without being subjected to my Jekyll & Hyde routine. No one rejoiced more than my current and former girlfriends when I quit drinking, because of all the people who suffered my drunkenness, the women in my life seemed to have borne most of the brunt. I decided to relegate my drunken misbehavior, and eventually my sexist tendencies, to my twenties—the decade when such behavior is mostly excused, unfortunately—and resume the difficult business of growing up.

I’m not here to say, however, that I’m completely cured, or that just because I’m sober I’m not still capable of the same prejudice, entitlement, or boorishness that intoxication engendered in me. I’m married now, and while I consider myself a faithful, honest husband, I try to remain vigilant to the many small and subtle ways I might undermine my wife’s personhood, often without either of us realizing it. Being a respectful partner, regardless of your gender, entails infinite amounts of self-awareness, humility, and hard work. And, an awareness of one’s weaknesses: What keeps me on the straight and narrow most days, whether it’s sobriety or anti-sexism, is the knowledge that I could easily slip right back into those old habits.

Unlike the moments of clarity that often presage sobriety, there was no epiphany where I was suddenly cured of my sexism. An insidious habit calls for an equally subtle antidote. Over the course of the past few years, as I’ve worked to overcome the resentment and entitlement that heavy drinking triggered in me, I’ve also internalized that slut and bitch are never okay words to casually toss in a woman’s direction; that 99.99% of rape jokes aren’t funny (and anti-rape jokes are much funnier); that I must acknowledge the power afforded by my straight, white, cisgendered malehood, and use that power responsibly; and that, simply because I’m aware of these things, doesn’t mean I don’t still have a lot of work to do. This is not a humblebraggy dispatch from beyond the gender-equity finish line, filed by a warrior for truth and justice. It’s more like a progress report from someone who’s trying his hardest but can still be kind of clueless sometimes.

That’s part of the reason I’m sometimes wary of other progressive men taking up the mantle of gender equity, whether it’s in the academy as Gender Studies scholars, on the ground as volunteers with women’s-advocacy groups, or online as contributors to something like the Good Men Project: I fear that the subliminal message telegraphed by our membership among feminists and others who are Fighting the Good Fight is often that it gives us a pass, and enures us to any and all charges of sexism (or racism, homophobia, etc.) on our own part. Yes, it’s good that we’re trying, and yes, it’s good that we are standing up for women, but just because we’ve come so far doesn’t mean the journey is over, and ultimately, it’s not about us. Let’s not pat ourselves on our own backs so loudly that it drowns out the voices of those actually on the margins, some of whom might be asking us to please check our privilege. Ultimately, if we are being sexist, we should be grateful that someone is helping us correct it, rather than shooting the messenger. It stings a little, sure, but it’s nothing compared to whatever the target of our insensitivity has just endured. And besides, dudes: if you truly weren’t sexist, then you wouldn’t start foaming at the mouth whenever someone suggest otherwise—you’d be grateful for the opportunity to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.

Now that I’m well out of college, my days of ponytails and gender-studies classes behind me, I turn to the internet to educate myself about identity issues by reading lots of blogs and websites about discrimination and social justice. Like many of my generation, I am alternately heartened and shocked by how powerful the internet can be, whether it’s being used to enlighten people about discrimination or bully a thirteen-year-old girl into killing herself. I long ago decided I’d try not to pollute the internet with gratuitously negative sentiment, because there’s already enough of it out there. Besides, I hate conflict. But remaining silent while others are bullied does no one any favors, and rather than disengage from a misogynistic asshole on Twitter, I can spare the two seconds it takes to retweet and call that person out, as Jen asked her followers to do last week. It’s hardly heroic; it’s only about one degree clockwise from the least I can do. But it’s a start.

MA’AM takes things a little farther by asking men to examine their own ideas about women and sexism, and (I hope) offsets the the online misogynistic vitriol at least a little. MA’AM uses social media to harness and amplify a simple idea: women often get the raw end of the deal, but they deserve better, and it’s our shared responsibility to do something about it. A good first step is to drop your guard, quit loudly mansplaining at everyone who disagrees with you, and just listen for one hot second. It’s really not that hard, or that scary. Because dudes: if you’re truly not sexist, then you have nothing to worry about. And even if you are, there is hope. I’m not perfect, but I used to be worse. I got better, and you can too. You just have to try.

Jake Mohan @dependentclause

I am an amateur comic, who at one point in time thought it was commonplace to make jokes that disparaged women or made light of horrible situations that they might experience. Of course I knew that I would have the good fortune of never being in these difficult situations while I made these jokes, and that gave me the distance and comfort to get on stage and make light of abortions and miscarriage and rape.  

I spent years in comedy thinking this subject matter was okay, until I realized how many fantastic female comics I was sharing a stage with, and having them tell me how difficult it was for them to persevere through the bullshit they had to deal with on a regular basis.  For it to take the intervention of my female peers is shameful, but I’ve never met women I respect more than the women I’ve met doing comedy. 

I always meant for my jokes to be tongue-in-cheek, but I never censored myself to the point where I lacked insensitivity. As someone with zero influence, I assumed at the time that my jokes were harmless, but now I realize that I was perpetuating a culture that might have caused a brilliant and hilarious woman to opt against trying to get on stage and tell jokes.  This is what hurts me the most. I might have made someone uncomfortable enough to abandon the same dream I was chasing, just because of their gender.  I have stopped telling these jokes. 

Rich Karski @RichKarski

I wanted to submit something that  was personal to me. I mean it’s out there to the public but… serendipitous? In a way? Because with music/art/poetry/etc. it’s always left open to interpretation and what not so to get any chance to explain Vacant (the song in question) and get the full meaning out to anyone at all really feels great. 

The lyrics to this song came from a feeling that has been with me through out the years. Growing up with two women (my mother and younger sister) I was always in touch with the more “sensitive” side and a strongly rooted sense of respect for women seeing as the two people I love most in life were two women. As I was getting into my twenties I had a range of different friends and people around me with a personality that I never felt comfortable with. I guess “bro” is a loose term and I don’t want to generalize but basically It was woman as an object or number. How many could you sleep with, hook up with and all those other awful things that have grown even more disturbing as I go on. Coming out of a bad relationship where I was cheated on and again being in my mid twenties and Immersed in alcohol and confusion I ended up going back on everything I believed in and tried sleeping with a few particular woman.

From those two experiences gave me a world of clarity into myself and what I had lost. Something awful that I had become and that no woman anywhere deserves. I believe that sex in all forms is connection no matter if its a drunken hook up or your spouse of 30 years. Doesn’t matter to me at all. The degradation of a woman’s body into a drunken number or used for anything other than something you care about is wrong on all levels. Mistakes were made to get to that point and I’ve reconciled with those two women and apologized for my actions and talked it through. Because I don’t and never will want to add to the growing trend of high fiving some other “man” who’s become void of what it means to have connection with another person opposite of us who is equal on every level to us. Who we will NEVER understand so what gives us the right to assume that we are top tier.

From all that (I apologize for being long winded) bred the song Vacant. I took on that emotion and described the experience as it was happening and even in that moment how wrong it felt. How empty it felt using someone like that. How I felt like a coward. The line in the chorus “You feel the same as being alone” was a disturbing feeling as I wondered what that girl felt. If she cared about me or used me back. Even the condemning of my self (the use of other voices in the other song was used to signify the voices in my head when I was involved in the act as well as the next morning) with the line “You senseless man, why don’t you send her home?” was something that all came from the respect of women that imbedded in me from a young age trying to push forward. 

Again, this is very personal to me even though its a song that anyone can hear and that I have to sing often but no one ever asks the full meaning. Coming across your MA’AM cause and reading through it I personally wanted to reach out the only way I knew how and just wanted to support. But getting to talk about it and even typing this email has been something revealing and comforting as the same moment I wrote that.

The song its at Nevadamountains.bandcamp.com

Apathetic towards the design 
I cannot arrive 
Blacking out, and I’m speechless 
Now I’ve lost my sight 
You’ve lost your faith 

You feel the same as being alone 
And I have belief in this vacancy 

We pace this patiently 
Placed along the sheets’ divide 
These veins remain clouded, and I’ve gone back on everything 
And all those seconds ache along like hours and hours 
Spent as someone trying hard to retain 
Those faithless nights where I had to stay 

You feel the same as being alone 
And I have belief in this vacancy 

You senseless man, why don’t you send her home? 

Maybe tonight, maybe tonight 
These structures will breathe the life 
Back into my chest

Josh from Nevada Mountains @nevadamountains

Hello, dudes.

I am an unknown, unemployed and unproduced Hollywood screenwriter here to talk to you about a very important topic: the dumb things SOME men say and do. Look, I get it. Each and every one of us has times when we feel a lack of self-confidence and are awkward relating to women. But that’s no excuse to become a misogynist and/or be disrespectful.

Who knows why some of these guys talk like assholes to women? Maybe their penis is weird? Perhaps they have wedgie scars from childhood they are ashamed of? Or maybe they are Republican Senators. The point is that whatever you personally have going on that you’re embarrassed about needs to stay your thing and not be something that you take out on others, like women expressing a feminist opinion, who are an easy target for a lot of you loud-mouth pricks.

I am a pseudo-Bohemian LA-writer douche bag with A LOT of problems — many of them unsolvable but that’s a story for another website. After all, you aren’t my probation officer or my student loan administrator, hahaha. (You’re not, right?) But even with all the terrible, terrible stupid things I say and do on a daily basis, even I know misogyny is too low even for me and I write screenplays for food. I live in Los Angeles for God’s sake!

So wake the fuck up, men. Or, to quote the Mark Twain of our times “I got 99 problems but [being a misogynist] ain’t one.” So there. Maybe instead of writing hate-Tweets you should take that time to call your Mom instead. Thank her for raising your miserable dirty ass. Then move along to something more productive, like working on all your other problems — cuz if you’re a misogynist, you got some. Probably a lot.

Peace,

Ben Everhart

@beneverhart1

I get really mad about these things, about misogyny in all of its iterations: online, in person, everywhere. I get mad, but I also tend to keep irrationally quiet. Which I will state in no uncertain terms right now is wrong.

Part of this is a personal problem. I lack the type of confidence that would lead me to believe I could speak effectively or knowledgeably, that I could actually succeed in arguing down whatever type of asshole I come across, and that I could do it without speaking for the person who was silenced in the first place or getting all mainsplainy. This same thing made it so difficult for me to muster up the courage to write this thing in the first place. 

This hesitance out of a fear of inadequacy, by the way, is a) a paltry excuse that doesn’t actually manage to excuse anything and b) something that ends up being part and parcel with what I want to write about here. 

The other maybe more immediately relevant reason why I’ve hesitated to speak up when I should have in the past is because I too often immediately catalog any person spouting any sort of hateful bullshit into the same box of “not worth dealing with.” Whether they’re actually not worth dealing with or just somehow misguided, I let them slide because of this vaguely elitist (though elitist is definitely not the right word when you’re comparing yourself favorably to a regressive jackwagon) idea that they wouldn’t be convinced by reason anyhow. I live in Indiana, and not too long ago some white supremacist shitbag tried to get the KKK back together in my town. At the time I thought to myself, “Dude is obviously an idiot, ignore him and he’ll go away.” In retrospect, this was the wrong approach. 

Or, when I was in seventh grade, and a bunch of guys would throw pens on the floor, trying to trick certain girls into bending over and I didn’t do anything about it because, “they wouldn’t listen to me anyway.” 

Or when I’m out with some people I just met and this meat-head dude thinks it’s totally hilarious to talk about and ogle my friend’s boobs at great length, and I just quietly stewed. 

Or when a blogger I had previously found kind of funny starts screeching about this obscure study he found that confirms his suspicion that sperm-jacking and the concomitant “oppression” is way more widespread (or at least, to read what he writes, way more important) than anything having to do with, I don’t know, the massive under reporting of rape and sexual assault cases against women in this country, and I wordlessly write the guy off. 

That way of thinking, the one that lets things go because the asshole in question “doesn’t matter” or “isn’t worth it” is entirely counterproductive. It’s counterproductive for the so-blindingly-obvious-that-I-can’t-imagine-it-took-me-this-long-to-explicitly-state-it fact that the people who do matter in these situations are the ones who are getting oppressed/ogled/mocked/ignored. Regardless of whether or not what I say changes the mind/feelings of the person I’m calling out, I should be challenging every asshole I can, because by not challenging them I gloss over the feelings of the people not in my privileged little bubble. 

Not only that, but I also pretty firmly implicate myself in the process by which rape culture, misogyny, and their byproducts get normalized. When I let some post-Vice ironic rape joke slide I am complicit in the normalization of rhetoric that contributes to/is symptomatic of a society that victim blames like that’s its job. That thinks it’s cool to treat women like objects. That creates and then ignores an ongoing pay gap. I’m complicit in all sorts of other horrible stuff, too, probably too much for me to name.

The point here is that it’s not about arguing down misogynists in order to convince them that they’re wrong (though, I mean, if that comes about by some mystical tectonic shift in the way the Internet/people/confirmation bias/privilege works, you will obviously hear zero complaints from this guy). The actual point is this: I ought to argue misogynists down as a manifestation of empathy.

With serious empathy and a focus on other people as a starting point, the obstructions that so long kept me from talking get sorted out pretty quickly. It’s not about me so the whole “I don’t have the confidence to speak up” whine is rendered moot. It’s not about the asshole so convincing him isn’t the primary goal. It’s about whoever is the unfortunate subject of the asshole’s assholery- whether that’s a particular woman, a group of women, or women in general. With an actual good faith commitment to constantly bearing the feelings of other human beings in mind, I think the problem of drifting into the representation issues or mansplaining that I mentioned at the top also fall away. A truly empathetic approach cuts out the need to have my voice heard above anyone else’s or to be right above all else. 

None of this is to say that empathy makes it impossible for me to ever screw up. Obviously everyone screws up, especially those of us who have been swimming in a largely invisible sea of privilege from birth. I’ll most definitely screw up in the future, and I may even screw up when I think I’m doing a good thing. (I may even have screwed up in this little thing I’ve written here; I sent it to a very smart woman friend of mine before submitting it in an attempt to mitigate this). What the empathy focus does mean though is that when I do screw up, instead of getting defensive and propping up the crenellations on my little castle of bullshit, I’ll ideally be willing to accept whatever correction may come and integrate it into ongoing attempts at making a world where people are less persecuted for being whoever they are.

Of course this is crazy simple. Empathy. Caring about other people. Crazy basic stuff here. That’s the point though.  Not being a misogynistic asshole should be simple, and it should be infuriating that for so many people it seems like it’s not. 

Taylor Peters @taylor_peters

Today, we’ll be talking about women, gender politics, and video games from a male perspective.  Hardly an original topic, but hey- what can you do? There’s always something to be said about it.  I’ll try to examine the issue with as much depth as humanly possible- but no matter what, I’ll still be writing from a privileged vantage point.

I only hope that it doesn’t cause too much bias. Let’s begin, shall we? (Continued)

LINK TO PART ONE: http://doublecrit.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/women-and-gaming-from-a-male-perspective-part-one-the-history/

It’s not really any great secret- though women have made great strides in recent years, the gaming industry is, by and large, an exclusive “Boys Club.”  Last week, we looked into why we might be suffering through such a landscape- from failing to credit the first female software programmers to the social stigma about gamers that’s only now started to fade.  Now that we’ve got the historical basis, it’s time to look towards the present.

Shall we get started? (Continued)

LINK TO PART TWO: http://doublecrit.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/women-in-gaming-from-a-male-perspective-part-two-objectification-and-false-equivalency/

It’s pretty obvious by now that there’s a problem here- the question is, how do we fix it?

Well, the first step is to change our own attitude- and that’s not going to be an easy feat. The negative portrayal of women- this rampant sexism- has been an industry-wide phenomenon almost since gaming’s inception. And the trouble is, it’s not only limited to the gaming industry.  ”Damage related to media based sexism isn’t age-blind,” writes Patrick Garrett of VG247, “children are bombarded with images of sexual stereotypes from year zero…………………..(continued)

LINK TO PART THREE:  http://doublecrit.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/women-in-gaming-from-a-male-perspective-part-3-the-solution/

Nicholas Green @OmniscientSpork

The women are definitely digging it. I have twitter thanked every man who has submitted a blog and they have all, very nicely, been really glad it’s getting read. Thank you so much for doing this! It give me, as an old (50 years!) woman, hope for not only my beautiful daughter, but for her son as well.

I want to consider myself a MA’AM (a man against assholes and misogyny), but it’s wrong to call yourself anything unless you meet the right qualifications. So what are the qualifications to become a MA’AM? After giving the question some thought, I’ve crafted a few qualifications:

1. A man who actively tries to promote equality day by day through his words and actions

2. A man who sees an act of misogyny and puts a stop to it

3. A man who stands up for equality in spite of the strong voices of the opposition

I can’t say I can check these boxes off, based on my past. There have been times in my life where I have failed to do all three. I’ve made bad jokes that put down women, I’ve witnessed misogynistic acts and have not stood up, I’ve crafted arguments that have been embarrassingly old-fashioned, and thoughtless decisions I’ve made have put an end to some relationships and friendships I’ve had with some amazing women.

There was also a voice in my head telling me I’m writing this essay because I want to be a part of a cool website/movement associated with something that makes me look like an awesome guy. Given these points, I had felt my desire to contribute was shallow, self-absorbed, and, yes, ass-a-holic. Presenting points that are anti-misogyny for personal gain is incredibly misogynistic, in that it’s deceptively trying to assert one’s power and self-worth as a man better than other people.

Then again, and forgive me for straying off topic, I’m looking deep into the caverns of myself and looking at the ugly, selfish, primal, instinctive animal beneath the human man that I am currently proud to be. Fortunately, for myself, I’m not alone. Deep, deep inside, we are all ugly creatures that are driven solely towards self-gain. That’s why I believe the integrity of a person, man or woman, can be measured in how much of an effort he or she takes in conquering that selfish inner beast and emerging as a wise, patient, inquisitive, dedicated, and good-humoured person of value.

The internet, sadly, has laid out a welcome mat for the selfish inner beasts of the world. People can let loose the beast anonymously and (mostly) consequence-free on Facebook, twitter, reddit, comment threads, message boards, etc. It’s liberating, cathartic, and empowering to unleash the ugliness you keep buried inside and letting it attack the vulnerable opposition. The downside: these actions can, have, and will continue to destroy an unacceptable number of lives; indirectly, directly, figuratively and literally.

Acts of misogyny against women come with the territory for men that subscribe to the consequence-free, anonymous, id-dominating paradise of the internet. To counter the id, MA’AMs need to provide the superego. Instead of complicating the issue for myself based on my past mistakes and inner beasts, I will fight to become a “MA’AM” by doing my best to counter the actions from “AMs”.

Some tips I keep for myself: the actions of AMs are driven by negativity, so my actions as a MA’AM must be driven by positivity. AMs act first, MA’AMs must think first. AMs think selfishly, MA’AMs must think outside of the self. AMs presume what they feel and think is right no matter what, MA’AMs must think and inquire as to what seems most appropriate / inappropriate in a given situation. AMs never apologize, MA’AMs must consider the consequences of statements, past, present, and future. AMs resort to primal actions like insults and violence, MA’AMs must take the higher road first.

AMs use short, dumb language to convey their anger, MA’AMs thoughtfully present their beliefs in a more dignified format (thank you, JK, for starting this dignified format).

MA’AMs must do one thing that AMs do: act. MA’AMs must rise, speak up, match the power of the opposition, and take them down with our distinctive methods.

If it seems like being a MA’AM is less sexy than being an AM, ask a kickass woman with whom she would rather connect.

Thank you for reading.

From a MA’AM in training,

Michael Meehan

Hi. I’m Matt Rickett and I’m a MA’AM.

I’ve been called – many times – a misogynist, asshole, douche bag, jerk and other monikers that I can’t recall off the top of my head but equally as unpleasant. In fact, one of the times I was called all of those was when I wrote a satirical blog post about a woman breastfeeding on a crowded public train.

A good 90 percent of it was fiction, but that didn’t really matter.

The end result was thousands of women going up in arms against me. Denouncing my existence, my privilege to father kids and stating that I need to see a therapist for debilitating mommy issues – as if I’m Norman Bates.

But, one of my biggest fans has always been my mom. Someone who I get along quite well with as a person – not just the woman who feeds me and does my laundry. I actually took her out to dinner that same weekend I published the infamous post.

Actually, I’m kind of a momma’s boy in many senses. Not only do I care about my mother’s opinion of myself – who I am becoming and what I write/create – but also in the sense that she has been a never-ending fountain of strength, support and inspiration. My mom is, easily, the strongest person I know and it’s going to be damn hard for that view to be altered – if it changes at all.

I have nothing but love and respect for her. I owe her everything. I only get one mom and mine’s the best one in the world. You definitely can’t be a momma’s boy and hate women.

Digging deeper, another major influence on my life has been a woman. I swam in high school and college. My coach in high school was a brash, bold, outspoken, hilarious, kind and incredibly smart Canadian woman named Sharon. She coached Olympians and she coached me.

When our little podunk club team in Maine fell apart, she left her position for the sake of saving half the team – the half that was much younger than myself and below my level of training.

But, for some reason, Sharon saw something in me that I never saw in myself. So she stayed to see me through the end of my high school career in and into Division I swimming. She had a great knack for seeing the worth of someone years before they could even begin to realize what it means to worth something as a person.

For the rest of my high school career, Sharon and I carpooled to and from practice. It was just her, myself and this great, big pool full of chlorine, sweat and a little bit of my own urine.

She taught me how to fail, how to learn from failure and how to succeed through it. She was a vehement evangelist of the values of constantly expanding your comfort zone, accomplishing goals and the power of infinite optimism through calloused cynicism. She was a juggernaut of hope for a little, teenage, emo, shithead.

She also taught me how to poach an egg, drive a stick shift and talk to girls. My mom taught me how to work hard, care about the little things, dress myself and how to shrug off adversity like your Snoop Dogg and it’s just a little bit of dirt on your shoulder.

So, really, it was women who taught me how to be a man – weird how that happens.

But, after hearing of all this hoopla and ballyhoo over women’s rights and equality I was thrown aback. Are we really still stuck on this?

I’ve been fortunate enough to learn, through my own experiences with women, just how powerful, strong and wise they can be. Yet, for reasons beyond me, we continue to degrade, violate and mistreat our better halves. Let’s end this cycle and maybe we’ll all learn how to be actual men.

Matt Rickett @mrickett1 http://thisaintevenfunny.wordpress.com/

MA’AM Submission Suggestions

We’ve been amazed with how well MA’AM is going and how many different perspectives there are from great videos to essays, blogs, letters, and even cartoons have been published in just a few short days.

ANYONE can be a “MA’AM” (you just have to be a man) - you can be famous or famous to none, any color, race, religion, whatever.

I want to tell you guys that women are getting in touch EVERY DAY and saying that they LOVE seeing this website - they feel so much less alone that men are willing to speak and put their names and faces to it. So, please keep on keeping on. Tell your friends.

Some topics I was thinking I’d love to see tackled - feel free to add ANYTHING YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT ANYTHING but right now how about videos/essays/poems/letters/etc on:

• Male musicians who observe the treatment of women musicians from fans/music journalists - what can be done and what is being done about where inequality still exists?
• Men who see first hand how oppressive regimes halt the life of women in their country.
• Men in the food industry who have experience with how women are treated in the kitchen in the professional chef world.
• Men who have experience of how their female peers are treated in the military.
• Men who grew up with two moms and what they have experienced with people who tell them that they need a father for a family to be complete - or men who grew up with two men who are asked “which one is the mother?”
• Any man from any ‘minority’ race who can discuss sexism from that specific cultural lens.
• The phenomenon of “Mansplaining”

Anything else you can think of!! It’s easy to submit and ANYONE can. You don’t have to be famous or even have ever left your house. :)

Here is the site. Click on either “SUBMIT” to automatically submit a post or “WHERE TO SEND” for more info. 

http://menagainstassholesandmisogyny.tumblr.com/

Please feel free to pass around as we would love this to reach as many possible contributors as possible!
Love and hugs and all good stuff.

My journey to feminism started in my daughter Jackie’s freshman year of high school.

At a parent teacher conference, I was told by her female science teacher that Jackie would have to work harder to get into a select afterschool program because she was a girl.  WHAT? 

I asked the teacher what year it was.  She calmly replied, “2008.” I asked her if, as a woman she saw anything wrong with what she just said.  She replied that girls often dropped out of the program and the person that reviews the applications is very leery of admitting a lot of girls. To which I responded, “Your program really sucks if so many people are dropping out of it.”

Later that school year, someone called my daughter a slut.  I came home from work and she was in her room crying harder than I’d ever heard her cry before.  Of course I was angry, someone called my daughter a slut.  But what really affected me was the degree to which it hurt her.

As I research physician, I’ve worked in a very male-dominated field.  There were only five women employed in my department of exactly 100 employees.  One woman was a supervisor and everyone hated her.  In everyone’s defense, she wasn’t a very nice person.  She was very condesending to her employees, a chronic complainer, and just an overall nasty person.  At lunch one day, a co-worker referred to her as a “cunt.”  We all laughed about it.  Even me!  But then I thought about it.

I thought about Jackie crying on her bed.  I thought about how angry I got when someone called her a gender-specific slur.  But wait a minute, this women deserves it, right?  The short answer is NO!

Its not OK to call a woman a slut, cunt, bitch, whore or anything like that EVER!

I was angry that someone called my daughter one of those words.

Why is it wrong if someone calls my daughter a slut but OK if I call someone else’s daughter that?

I’d be lying to you if I said it wasn’t hard and didn’t take a while, but I no longer use those words.

Not long after that incident, I was promoted to Director and was in charge of my entire department.  I probably shouldn’t get into this much but when I left that job last June, the number of women in the department had more than tripled to 16.  Not the 50/50 I’d envisioned, but I got the ball rolling.  Surprisingly, no one ever said anything good or bad about the fact that 11 of the 12 hires I made were women. 

My logic was that if my daughter had to work harder to get into a high school afterschool program because she was female, what the hell did these women have to endure to get their resumes on my desk?  These were the type of people I wanted working with me.

50% of the world’s greatest minds are in the heads of women.  Yet when it comes to things we need; doctors and fellow scientists, engineers, mathematicians, why are we making it so difficult to get these minds into our fields where we have a direct effect on the betterment of our world?

I’ve said a lot about my daughter, but what I didn’t address is that I raised her by myself.  She was born when I was 22.  My mother and sister took care of her while I finished medical school, after that it was all me. 

As a single father of a daughter I put up with a lot of crap.  I was often made to feel inferior, that because of my gender I wasn’t capable of raising any child and especially not a little girl.  A lot of times these things were said by well-meaning people that didn’t understand that what they were saying to me was hurtful.  Also interesting is that it was always a woman saying it.

Because of this, I was very resistant to feminism for a long time.  Eventually, I realized its not an excuse.  In fact, I really needed to join this cause because I’m a man that actually does have experience in what its like to be put down, insulted, and hurt because of gender.

I’m happy I’m a feminist now.  Its a work-in-progress.  I’m still reprogramming what society made me.  I’m working on not “mansplaining” lately.  I was at a lounge with a female DJ the other night, while talking to her it took all my energy to not say that I’ve never seen a female DJ before. (And I didn’t say it!)  I also wonder if I’m a bit of a white knight.  I’ll get there.

Brian Murray

@bammurray

I’ve had some ugly personal experiences with people being offensive and even violent towards women in my life and have always tried to be very fucking loud about it, however most of the time I’ve been either the only one who sees a problem or the only one willing to actually say/do something about it. I have found this to be very depressing and confusing (to say nothing of how it made the women involved feel!), especially considering I’ve been heavily involved in my local punk scene for many years, and was surrounded by people who endlessly purported to be feminists/pc/humans with a conscience. Watching those same people turn a willfully blind eye to that kind of shit stirs up emotions in me I can’t even begin to describe.

So when I saw the type of hateful crap being spewed at women online on a daily basis, naturally I was disgusted. And once I noticed the regularity with which people were saying these things, it became emotionally exhausting to read them. Now, I don’t tweet (have an account just for reading), use Facebook, or really have much of an online presence, I just like reading rather than engaging.

I had thought that because I mostly didn’t engage in these mediums, I was exempt from having to say anything. In reality, we all live in the same world, online or off, and misogyny, bigotry and any kind of hate deserves and needs condemnation always. I’m by no means perfect and am still learning all the time, but its stuff like this blog that keeps me thinking about it, keeps it in the front of my mind, and hopefully makes me check my privilege and challenge my ideas from time to time. So I just wanted to say thanks for this site and it’s got my whole-hearted support.

Shane Gelinas

My Name is Robert Richards. I am a husband and father to 3 wonderful children, one of whom is a wonderful little girl. She is the reason I am a Feminist. 

I have worked in many different careers USAF, HVAC, oil field, handyman, etc. Many of these careers have been “Blue collar” in nature. In each job I can cite many instances of misogyny, but the one that sits most firmly in my mind was while I worked as a residential HVAC service technician.

I had been working for a company for about a year as a service tech and we were looking to hire a new technician. We put ads out in the newspaper, spoke to the local tech school and put feelers out with some temp agencies. We were getting a steady stream of applicants and had interviewed 2 or 3 qualified techs with years of experience which we would likely hire and were narrowing down our focus on some inexperienced “kids” that showed some promise.

We were sitting in the front office, which has a view of the street, when one of the managers saw a young woman walking across the street towards our shop. She was well dressed, seemed confident, carried herself well, and was holding some papers. The manager even commented that she looked “well put together” (clean, well dressed, etc..)

When the young lady came into the shop I was further encouraged to find out she spoke well as she shook our hands and began a comfortable and easy rapport. We learned that she had just finished a technical program at the Tech School in town, where she received high marks in all her classes. She even had several “glowing” letters of recommendation from teachers and former employers to vouch for her determination and competence. When she was asked about why she wanted to be in the HVAC career field she replied that it was something that she had always known she wanted to do. She enjoyed the challenges of fixing mechanical problems, and loved working outside, so it seemed a natural fit to do something like HVAC. We sent her on her way with a “thank you and we’ll call you when something opens up” (just like every other applicant).

I was impressed, and I made my opinion clear that we should hire her. The owners, our service manager, and our receptionist all looked at me like I was crazy. The owner sated that if we hire “a girl” we would lose business. The service manager, who was impressed with her, said she seemed competent but “wouldn’t fit in with our team” and the install manager didn’t want anything to do with her at all because “girls can’t lift heavy stuff” (even though we employed men with back injuries to do service work, smaller guys that could fit in tight spaces, and even the receptionist (a woman) would move motors and pumps around the shop).

It seemed like the only solid complaint they had was that they thought it was “weird” for a “girl” to want to do “our” line of work. I tried to point out that in a former job I worked doing residential and light commercial work alongside a woman, but they had made up their minds. I am tired of seeing road blocks set up because of Gender or Gender Identity.

I am a feminist because what you have between your legs does not determine your intelligence, your value, OR your employability. I am a MAAM.

Robert Richards @Bakersfieldrob

Maybe some of you “get back in the kitchen” types know just how good you have it. Thanks to the internet, you can say whatever you want, cloaked in anonymity, and not suffer immediate consequences. Maybe you feel it’s your right to say whatever you please because your last girlfriend dumped you, because your best pal’s wife treats him badly, because your sister never calls, because your mother seems perpetually disappointed.

Perhaps you can’t pinpoint when women started to diminish in your esteem, but suddenly you noticed yourself laughing at meaner jokes, getting off to harder porn, entertaining much darker perspectives. You think you’ve got all the empirical evidence you need, then, to treat all women as less-than. But, if you stop and think for just a moment, you really don’t have it so good.

There might be a time when you’re over at a buddy’s house, and your buddy will get in an argument with his girlfriend. Even you will see that your friend is getting unreasonably angry, but you don’t want to stir the pot, so you don’t get involved. Your friend’s anger reaches a crescendo as he sputters, “You fucking bitch!” You won’t want to look at the girlfriend just then, but you can’t help yourself. You see something switch off behind her eyes. You see her adopt a posture as if she’s just been hit, or as if she’s about to be. That image will be etched permanently in your brain like a scar.

There might be a time when you’re dragged to another party to celebrate the arrival of another baby to another friend who’s married another wife. Between eating a slice of stale cake and small-talking your way to the exit, someone will bring over a baby girl, just days old. You feign interest, make the typical remarks, and then her little baby eyes will fix themselves squarely on your own. Instinctively, you will bring a finger to her and she will make a fist over it with her tiny, fragile hands. Your breath will catch. Your heart will leap to your throat or drop to your guts. “This is life,” you will compute in this moment. “She is life.”

There might be a time when you have a daughter of your own. She will be the best of you and her mother. You will watch her discover the world and see it anew through her eyes. You’ll will her to stay young forever and try not listen to her mother’s talk of puberty, menstruation, changing bodies and training bras. That daughter might run home one day, her face wet with hot tears. After much cajoling, you find out that the boy who sits behind her in class snapped the strap of that training bra and something inside you will snap in turn. Arguments of “boys will be boys” won’t process themselves in your brain anymore. Your little girl has been humiliated by a little boy and nothing you can do will change what has happened to her. You feel helpless.

There might be a time when you feel helpless again. You have been betrayed by your own ageing body. Your mind can’t distinguish last week from the last decade. Suddenly a strange woman is making your food, changing your clothes, wiping your ass. You don’t know who she is, but the indignity of your dependence on her makes you angry, then ashamed, and finally afraid. You cry and cry, like a child. You want your Mom. She can fix this. Where is she? Where are you?

Maybe none of these exact events will come to pass for you, but please know that a life that denies half the population is no life at all. Guys, nothing posted on the internet is truly anonymous because the poster himself will always know what he wrote. I know that I’ve never commented on an article by or about a woman by saying, “She should get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich.” But I also know that I’ve made snarky comments about a starlet’s weight.

I know my gay friends and I call each other bitches like we’re entitled. I know I’ve stood by while those same friends playfully paw at a woman’s breasts in a dance club because, “Boobs are so fun!” As a gay guy, I can’t claim exemption to such assholery because my feminine side somehow makes me a feminist by proxy. It’s the same misogyny, just different packaging. But I know what my thoughts, words, and actions have been in the past. I know what they are now.

Reading these posts here and writing my own makes me think about how much more powerful we become with a collective vision. How support is more resonant than degradation. How sincerity will always trump snark. I owe an immeasurable amount to the women in my life and I am so thankful to stand beside them. I don’t know about you, but I know exactly how good I have it.

James Ostime

@BigCityJames

http://bigcityjames.blogspot.ca/

“COOL YOUR JETS, WHITE DUDES”

I’m a white man. I’m 29, I live in Chicago, my wife is in medical school and someday I’ll be the one taking care of our kids. Personally, I can’t wait (having a job is the pits you guys!).

More broadly, I’m interested in diplomacy, and equality, and I’m thoroughly devoted to the idea that civil rights can’t be qualified. They can’t be tempered or altered for the “times we live in.” Rights are rights are rights, and this becomes especially true when we start talking about the rights that governments aren’t interested in/capable of controlling. Rights like a woman’s right to not feel intimidated or anxious in the presence of strange men, and perhaps more importantly, the right to voice that fear without feeling embarrassed or weak.

And here’s the thing: I HATE when people discuss “white men” as though they’re some private organization scheming for their own betterment and the marginalization of everybody that’s not “white men”. I hate being included in that group. Because I’m not that way, and most of the white dudes I know aren’t that way, and isn’t broad generalization what got us here in the first place?

Well, sort of, but there’s a difference between standing on principle and standing on reality, and the reality is, we’re still white guys. It’s still substantially easier for us to do the things we want than it is for minority groups, and until we come to terms with that, at best we’re ignorant whiners, and at worst we become the assholes who truly are marginalizing everybody else.

I know this isn’t a race thing, and I’m not trying to suggest that white dudes are the only demographic capable of gender inequality. But we are the ones with the greatest opportunity to ignore it, as we are with every sort of inequality. And that’s not even to say that progress lives or dies with white men. Obviously this isn’t the case. But the notion that more equality is somehow an imposition needs to die. You don’t have to picket, or call your congressman, or even blog about it, but viewing progress only in terms of how it effects you is selfish. Equality doesn’t exist on a sliding spectrum where another’s gain is your loss, and as long as you keep thinking that way, things are going to be a lot harder for the rest of us.

Peter Wertz @WertzofWisdom

http://wertzofwisdom.tumblr.com/
http://wertzofwisdom.com/

It’s not a tricky idea to grasp. You should not be a fucking asshole. Avoiding assholery is at the core of why we use “asshole” as a pejorative: it is a smelly puckered thing designed to meter out semi-solid filth. You don’t need to aspire to be better than that. You were born better than that. Act like a human and you won’t be the answer to the riddle of the sphincter.

After polishing the thought for a few days here’s what I have to contribute: don’t be a fucking asshole. The stuff we’re talking about here is so far beyond the pale of what is acceptable human behavior, you really don’t need a finely tuned moral compass. This isn’t a dinner with three spoons. Don’t be a fucking asshole.

Don’t tell a stranger to suck your dick. 

Don’t ask to see a stranger’s tits.

Don’t tell someone whether or not you’d fuck them.

That’s not an exhaustive list, by any means, but it’s a good start. “Don’t be condescending” is another good rule. Some day you’ll be able to assume women make choices based on valid motivations much as you would with a man. That is some upper level shit in the same way that driving a car without getting your dick stuck in the exhaust is.

As an aside, I’ve had my dick sucked, seen tits, and done fucking. You never get to that point by yelling at a stranger while they are doing the virtual equivalent of waiting in line at Trader Joe’s. So if you are doing this as a means to achieve sexual contact, don’t, you’re not helping yourself, and if you are doing this to attack women as women, also don’t, because you’re being a piece of shit. 

If you need to say these things and truly cannot control yourself, go ring some doorbells. I promise you will get what you deserve (a jail sentence). 

Most men wouldn’t do that, though, because they know that is the behavior of a fucking asshole. You would straight up beat a dude’s ass if he did that to your mom. I am not a man who can beat much ass but I’d have to draw the line there. So if something you are about to say falls into the category of “damn, I would beat a dude’s ASS if he talked to my mom that way,” keep it to yourself. Or, you know, you can think of your sister, or girlfriend, or any woman you’ve ever cared about. Women, you know, are all the same, in that none of them should be treated like shit. Amirite? Fellas? Amirite??

The scary thing is that maybe there are men who have never cared about even a single woman or have come to believe it is a mistake to do so. I really don’t know how to help you. More than anyone, it’s you I want to reach. There is probably nothing I can put on this screen that will give you what you need to become a whole person. If this is you, feel free to @ me on Twitter to talk and I will follow you so we can do it in private. If that seems weird, I don’t know. Maybe try talking to a woman on the internet as nicely as you can—don’t try to be witty or snarky or in on her jokes; give her a compliment or simple statement of solidarity instead—and see what happens. They are super cool. 

That’s the one thing Christopher Hitchens gets right in his abominable essay on why women aren’t funny. As a straight man (and for all I know this applies to all genders and sexualities), there is no better feeling than making a woman laugh really hard. (A close second is when she returns the favor, which apparently poor Hitch missed out on.) It is a real treat that men get to live in a world with women. I think I’m borrowing from Louis C.K. when I point out just how much physically nicer women are than men. They are so soft and curved and not complete physical shit like me and every man I know. Sure, there are a few guys who are beautiful, but you are not one of them. There are eight of those guys and they live in pods that Donatella Versace keeps in low Earth orbit. I mean, look at your body, man I am addressing right now.  If you are like me, you look like a fucking Three Musketeers bar that got squashed into the sidewalk and a dog licked until it threw up. That is what a man looks like. The dog threw up a dead squirrel’s hairy ass by the way. 

I should qualify what I just said. The deification of women has always gone hand in hand with their denigration. You do not need to resent women for being better than you. They are not angels come to shame or enlighten you; this is not Michael, thank god, and John Travolta has no hand in it. See, that’s the cool thing. They are humans just like you and me. They are on our level even though they have all these other things that are different and wonderful. You can joke and laugh and have fun with them just like with man dudes. That’s also why it hurts them when you are a fucking asshole. So don’t be that. It’s really not difficult.

Greg

@weedguy420boner

http://wg420b.tumblr.com/

It’s funny. If you were to ask me why I’m a feminist, I’d like to be able to raise my eyebrow and say “why would I be anything else?”

But unfortunately, “liberty and justice for all” isn’t apparently as much a truism as you’d like to believe. A feminist might be considered an exception to the rule, especially when you’re a farmhand chowing down with the other guys at lunch, and someone points to a pinup calender on the wall that you’d been pointedly ignoring and going “Check out the ass on THAT one.” And when you don’t say anything, giving him something of a glare to indicate you’re not going to play along, he stares at you for a minute and says “you, uh, aren’t gay are you?”

“No,” you reply, and you wonder how your answer might have changed his behavior.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You all know the stories like that—hell, I’m sure you’ve lived through far worse than I have. And that’s one of the frustrating parts of this battle anyway. Despite how hard I argue for this sometimes, I’m stonewalled by baseball-cap wearing bros with phrases like “It’s not like you’re a woman dude—-why would you even fight for this thing?”

Wrong thing to say to a geeky kid who grew up obsessed with Superheroes, Star Wars, and The Legend of Zelda. Wronger thing to say to a kid who grew up bullied. Because when you’ve been the victim? When you were shut out from society, abused, and told to just keep quiet and “not be a victim” so that you wouldn’t catch the bully’s eye——how could you do anything but fight for someone in the same position?

That’s where I come from, really. A weird combination of do-gooderness and the pain of being the outsider. I believed in the whole “be kind to everyone” thing since I was a kid because of what my parents, teachers, and all the Redwall books taught me, but it wasn’t until recent history that I finally got vocal about it. That I realized that the pain I’d felt when I was younger hadn’t really gone away, and it flared up whenever I listened to my female, gay, or minority friends talking about their experiences being sexually or racially harassed.

I started getting vocal about it after reading an article on Kotaku.com about a gaming journalist who talked about how she’d self-censored herself as a journalist so that no one would “accuse her” of being a woman, as though that were some kind of crime. She talked about not wearing heels, not talking about the fact that she was a woman, and going so far as to agonize over sharing a photo of her new skirt because she was afraid of being called a “camwhore.” For the record, she wanted to share the photo because it reminded her of Pokemon.

Maybe it was because I’d just gotten comfortable enough with myself to start wearing my geeky clothing without fear of being picked on, but something about that skirt story flared in me. I thought about what would happen if I shared a photo of me in my Halo-themed shirt on Twitter, and the only answer I could come up with was—-nothing.

That’s when the pieces fell into place. Two people. Two articles of clothing. Two geeky twitter posts. If I wasn’t going to get harassed for being a “camwhore”—-why should she? Why should anyone? Why should anyone have to endure name-calling, harassment, and ostracization? Why should anyone have to hide who they are so they won’t get hurt? Why should anyone be okay that other people are in pain?

As a geek, it’s frustrating to see this stuff happen in my community all the time. From Fake Geek Girls to the sexual harassment on Xbox Live, I don’t just watch my fellow enthusiasts hurt other people, I watch them brush it off and pretend they aren’t doing anything wrong. If they aren’t making “go get me a sammich” jokes, they get mad at any women who try to speak out for “killing their fun.” A few still insist that video games or comics “aren’t for women,” and we shouldn’t be concerned about this behavior.

Except we should. Because I know for a fact that so many people in my community share my story. That their self-proclaimed title of nerd or geek comes too frequently with a dark backstory of being mistreated, and we should not find it acceptable at all to treat anyone else the same way. We were once the outsiders, now we have the chance to make a place that’s safe for everyone.

Because even though I raise my voice in the Geek community, I know this is part of a larger battle. I don’t know how far it goes, or how long it will be, but I know it’s the right cause, and since I can raise no sword, no blaster, no superpower to contribute to this fight, all I have is my voice. And I choose to shout it loud and clear for anyone to hear me.

I’m a Feminist, and that means I throw my support behind anyone who is harassed or told to hide who they are for fear of being attacked. And I challenge other men out there to ask why they’d do anything different.

Bryant Francis @RBryant2012

Writingronin.tumblr.com

Every man who isn’t too dumb to pay attention has to have heard all kinds of stories about women being yelled at from moving cars (my roommate gets this so often it’s almost a running theme in her life), told by strangers they’d be prettier if they smiled more (my girlfriend, just yesterday), screwed over in some way at work just for belonging to the wrong slightly-above-half of the population (more than I can reasonably recount here) or anything else you’d like to pick out of a million other situations.  Many are very similar, each is uniquely enraging.

So, so many of the men who know those stories will have the same response, enraging in its own way: some variation on “don’t feed the trolls.”  They haven’t experienced it themselves every damn day since they were children.  With very little to compare it with in their own experience, they don’t realize that women have been not feeding the trolls for generations, and the trolls take a lack of retaliation as permission.  It’s well intentioned, but it’s dumb.  They’re not as dumb as the men who don’t pay attention to these stories, and not nearly as dumb as the ones who cause the problem in the first place, just a little too dumb to get it.

One of the most dangerous things to believe in the modern world is that you’re too smart to be sexist or racist or whatever else.  The natural, understandable response to an accusation of sexism is to become furious and say “I am not.”  A lot of the men who make women’s lives difficult are just too dumb to realize they’re doing it, and silence won’t make them understand.  Calm, cool headed explanations of what they’ve done wrong might; gigantic, cacophonous anger might; deftly applied sarcasm might; what definitely won’t do a damn thing is staying quiet.

And a lot of men, aside from being dumb, are dangerous.  When women get frightening bastards from one side and timid, secretive sympathy from the other, they might end up taking the dumb advice not to feed the trolls because it feels like, if they were to speak out, they’d find themselves without allies.  If you never want the women in your life to ever have to feel that way, make it known that you’re there to speak out with them.

Listen: I’m dumb too.  I didn’t spontaneously realize that sexism was a problem, I learned about it from people who understood already.  I do my best, but I could do better.  If I wasn’t so dumb.  What I mean is, I’d want you to apply this advice to me.  If I say something dumb, please never let it slide.  Help the people in your lives to be less dumb by never staying quiet when they say or do something horrible and stupid, because whether they know it’s horrible and stupid or not, silence won’t change anything.

David Lockhart @Fortinbrawesome on twitter
http://deadcityscrolls.tumblr.com/

Women’s Rights is not a Zero Sum Game

There are plenty of posts on this site that reflect my own beliefs and I do not want to repeat extensively what others have already said. I do want to add something from my perspective and address a trend I see in the attacks by misogynist men online.

First, let me address my background. I spent four years working for a women’s rights organization. I worked in the IT department, but I worked closely with the staff and management. The organization was chock full of smart, creative, self-assured and empowered women. Most of the management team was women. Never in those four years did anyone make me feel “emasculated” or try to put me down for being a man. Not once, in any context, did I feel threatened as a man. The organization dealt with issues of rape, sexual violence and other violations predominantly perpetrated by men, but in every single discussion I was a part of, the message was clear that most men do not do this. None of the women I worked with saw me as anything other than a colleague. I was never accused of being a rapist, a criminal, a member of the patriarchy, etc. even though all of those things can be said of some men. I was seen as an individual and they valued my opinions.

Going in as in IT person, I did not have a thorough grounding in feminism. I made mistakes, I carried preconceptions and attitudes that were, in retrospect, embarrassing. Before working there, I did not often think about things like abortion, hetero-normative behavior, transgender issues or, frankly, many of the issues we dealt with. This place was full of activists, people who had very firm ideas about what they wanted to see happen in the world and I was a pretty privileged white guy with a bunch of unquestioned assumptions and a pretty big, loud mouth. Nobody ever got in my face when I said something stupid or even unintentionally hurtful.

My friends there (and I consider many people there friends) did, however, take the time to engage with me on a personal level about issues I ignored and I ultimately learned a lot. This was the most accepting and considerate workplace in which I have ever worked and when I left they gave me a spectacular going away party. I still miss my co-workers. This is all to say that when people talk about feminists as anything other than people who are enthusiastic about their cause and concerned with making the world better, I have a depth of experience that speaks counter to that. It also speaks to my point that feminists are not seeking to take rights away from men.

The concept that there is a “Men’s Rights Movement” is absurd on the face of it. Men do not need a movement because white men in the U.S. already have full rights. What the cause of equality asks of us is to surrender unearned and undeserved privilege. This is no different from the struggle for racial equal rights. White people were asked to give up a privilege to oppress someone else based on their race. Feminism demands that men give up the unearned and inhumane privilege granted to men over women. Society cannot afford to allow men to enjoy the ability to harass, assault, and rape women and get away with it because courts and the public see men in a privileged position or discount the experiences of women. Women are not second class citizens and men are not diminished by treating women as equals.

One of my friends pointed out (see, still room to learn) that there’s a name already for the second thing that bothers me, it’s the Oppression Olympics. This seems to crop up all too often among people who are inclined to support women’s rights in certain contexts, but it’s used to silence those who call for action when it strikes too close to home. It is possible to question the treatment of women in the U.S. and Europe without compromising a desire to improve women’s rights elsewhere. It is the height of imperialistic and paternalistic hubris to shout about how others should be reforming while we continue to allow misogynistic policies and behaviors at home. It also belies a sexist streak in those advancing this position, they want to tell women which rights they deserve and which they do not.

If the affront to dignity is far away and doesn’t threaten their privilege at home, they will oppose it, but will dismiss a concern about a beloved privilege they themselves enjoy. If we are not dedicated to fixing our own flaws, what right do we have to expect others to do so? Again, there’s not a fixed pool of rights or compassion that we have to dole out to only the most “deserving” cases. Women deserve fair treatment everywhere.

Feminists are not asking men to become subservient to women or to check their penises at the door. They are asking us to recognize women as fellow human beings and to stand up when they see that fundamental right being abused. This should be an easy moral decision for men to make. The only thing that could prevent it is men who feel they have nothing but their implicit domination of women to define themselves. To them I say they need to grow up and begin defining THEMSELVES as more than their sex. When I see someone name-calling and trying to bash feminism, I see weakness. It is weakness born of personal failure to define oneself. It is also fear of losing the one privilege they have, the one they never earned and don’t deserve. This is not to say I have sympathy for them, but to say that they are wrong and must change or be left behind by society.

The places where vile misogynists can speak up are becoming fewer. Unfortunately, the anonymity of the Internet makes it a haven for these people. Hateful voices cannot stop the progress of history and I really do feel that progress is inevitable. Until then, I know that men on conscience will remain vigilant.

Paul Blonsky (@paulblonsky)

http://paulblonsky.blogspot.com/

I’ve considered myself a feminist for a long time. I’m a stay-at-home dad to 3 young kids, and my wife is the sole wage-earner for the family. This isn’t a situation I was forced into or reluctantly accepted, but was how my wife and I saw our future in the earliest days of our marriage. It suits our personalities, our temperaments, and falls in line with the duties we’d taken over in the home long before kids game along. The big-picture feminism has never been an issue for me at all. I was excited to chime in and write something. I wasn’t sure exactly what the focus would be, but then I had a somewhat rude awakening.

The very same day I started thinking about writing this, I was absent-mindedly cruising around the internet when I saw a picture of Christina Aguilera from the American Music Awards a coupl’a weeks ago. It hit me like a cast-iron skillet to the skull: I’m not the feminist I thought I was. You see, I’d seen pictures of her from that night before. In fact, when I first saw them, I went as far as to post them on a web board I frequent, joking about her weight. Actually, I didn’t even joke about it. The picture was the joke I guess. So it was last Friday that I sat staring at my computer screen asking myself why I did that, or more pointedly, why did I think that was ok? Is it ok?

The thing is, I don’t generally think it’s a horrible thing to poke fun at famous people for just about any reason. As a public figure, you’re open to a certain level of mockery, and as long as the joking isn’t intentionally pushing a negative worldview, and isn’t meant to truly demean a person. In my mind at the time, joking about her weight was no different than joking about Val Kilmer’s, or joking about a cute child actor who grew up to look like a cave troll. Part of that stems from the idea that I exist in a different realm from them, realms that will never cross over. I can make fun of a celebrity to my friends resting assured that my joking is not intended to do any harm and that the celebrity in question will never know about it (or know about me for that matter). But as the internet continues to expand its reach, those realms are overlapping more than ever.

Celebs and regulars interact on twitter all the time. I’ve done my fair share of trolling celebrities, like so many comics and goofballs before me. But where do we draw the line between what’s within the bounds of decency and what strays into true asshole territory? Most people outside of Team Breezy would agree that Jenny Johnson trading barbs with Chris Brown is perfectly acceptable, because Brown has shown himself to be a pretty terrible person. We mock Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, and Glen Beck, and pretty much everyone’s on board. But what’s the purpose of mocking a female celebrity because she weighs more than she did when she was 19? The veil of anonymity, or at the least the separation from physical reactions, has been the internet’s greatest double-edged sword, and I now realize that I must do what I can to dull those edges.

What we must recognize is that there is a difference between making fun of a man’s appearance and a woman’s appearance. Women are constantly bombarded with the idea that their appearance is tied to their worth. I have a young daughter, and I see it already. There are toys marketed to girls that are so trashy I’d expect to see them in head shops rather than toy stores. My daughter’s clothes are ridiculously skimpy, to a degree that became obvious when I mistakenly put a pair of her shorts in her younger brothers drawer when he was only 6 months old. This obviously has an effect on young girls, but it’s doing a number on us men too. When women are consistently portrayed as being physical specimens above all else, men see them that way too, even when they don’t realize it. Female friends of mine have told me of strangers condescending them on the street with suggestions like “smile for me, you’ll be so much prettier” where the man in question no doubt thinks he’s being flattering. On the internet, “smile for me” becomes “show me your tits!”

The truth is, Christina Aguilera looked great at the AMAs. She had on a little too much makeup for my tastes, but that’s been her thing all along. What I must admit to myself now is that by joking about her appearance I was saying nothing more than “This woman used to be the very definition of a sex symbol, and now she no longer fits into that constraint.” And so fucking what? Adele does not fit into that classic mold, and the idea of mocking her weight would never cross my mind.

It is easy for us to fight the big picture problems. I voted for Obama both times, and the Lilly Ledbetter Act is one of the achievements that I consistently threw out there when championing his re-election. It’s easy for us to rally against obvious sexism when we see it. But the more subtle attacks, the ones that men pass off as “all in good fun” are really fucking demeaning too, and men, myself included, have to get our shit together on that front.

The internet is full of this shit. Check any woman’s Instagram and you’ll see it, constantly. If a girl posts a picture of herself, complimenting her is one thing. But really, guys, you don’t need to comment on her boobs, what you’d like to do to her, or any bizarre innuendo you’re passing off as a joke. It’s demeaning. And it effects more people than just the person the comment is directed at. So while Christina Aguilera will likely never know that I joked about her weight on the internet, other people do, and all it did was work to perpetuate the idea that it’s ok to make fun of a woman’s weight as long as I’m doing it silently, from a keyboard. But you know what? It’s not.

Cory Byrom

@cdbyrom

worddepository.tumblr.com

A Small Matter of Privilege

Last night, my writing critique group got together for our bi-weekly klatch. It’s a great group. I’ve been with them for twelve years. There’s been some comings and goings over the years, but our core group has been set for a while, and a few of us go back to the beginning

Every critique group has their process. Ours is very social, so there is lots of gabbing before we get to the critiquing. Last night, among our wide-ranging topics, we touched upon someone who is no longer with us.

It started as “I wonder whatever happened to …” and moved on to “…you know, I don’t miss that guy at all.”

Thing is, he was a bad fit. He didn’t share our goals, either in terms of writing craft or in terms of friendship. That’s fine, of course. We all gave it a try, and after a while he quit coming to our gatherings. He was probably as relieved as we were.

But an interesting point came up during the discussion. The group is currently three women and two men. One of the women said to me and the other fellow, “One thing about that guy is he kinda brought out the misogyny in you two.”

Wait, … what?

Now, at this point, a common response of the (allegedly) enlightened white male in America is to sputter and deny. “I’m not a misogynist!” We’re then supposed to list all the evidence for how we’re not misogynists: we support a woman’s right to choose, we believe in equal pay for equal work, we think Rick Santorum is a medieval douchecanoe and we think those Catholic bishops just need to STFU already. And don’t even get us started on Mitt Romney and the Republican War on Women. (*sputter*)

And we’d be full of shit.

Getting back to the moment above, to my and my fellow male’s credit, neither of us sputtered. I think I may have shown a little shock or dismay, but I didn’t try to defend myself. Because I couldn’t. Not really. The woman added, “Oh, it wasn’t that bad. I just think he made it easier for you guys. You know how privilege can be sometimes.”

That’s the thing. Privilege is insidious.

Mind you, all those defenses I listed above are true of me and of my male friend. We would both describe ourselves as feminists (admitting that the degree to which a man can be a true feminist is open to discussion and that there are those who would argue we can’t really be feminists).

I do believe women are owed the same rights as men. I think the patriarchy is profoundly damaging (for both women and men). Etc.

But the fact remains, one cannot escape one’s privilege so easily. For men, it’s there and we benefit from it whether we agree with it or not. We’re brought up in a culture infused with male privilege (and white privilege, and wealth privilege, and cis privilege, and … and … and …) so deeply that usually we can’t even see it.

But as a self-described feminist, this only makes me all the more responsible for acknowledging those times when I abuse our privilege—unconsciously or not. My friend sat across from me and pointed it out, and I needed to hear it.

And I needed to not sputter and defend myself, but to learn something. The pernicious nature of male privilege makes it all too easy to behave in ways I find appalling, even toward my friends. And if it’s that easy with those I personally know and care about, the danger is greater outside my relationship circles.

I’m glad my friend pointed about my unconscious misogyny, even if I also felt ashamed. And even more glad she felt she could. Too many self-described male feminists would only have sputtered and shut her down.

In light of the topic, I’d like to suggest some reading. Today happens to be the release day for a couple of superb books. Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris features a strong young woman fighting to save, well, everything … and time in running out. Blackbirds is Chuck Wendig’s hard-boiled tale of a strong woman who knows what’s coming next; spoiler: it’s not good news. I highly recommend both.

Bill Cameron

@bcmystery

http://www.bill-cameron.com/a-small-matter-of-privilege/