Men and Feminism

Get ready for another boring post, y'all

SO. I want men to have a piece of the gender equality pie, too. BUT. I have an issue with the way Men+Feminism gets brought up.

First off, I would like to state that making a statement- a tweet, an essay, a big ugly tumblr post- that talks about the issues faced by women and girls does not immediately imply that the poster does not care about the way gender norms and expectations affect men. I don't understand why this is, but I can't care about women in STEM fields anymore without being a horrible bigot because "what about men?" well, I don't know. Issues like women in STEM are personal to me, being a woman in STEM myself (who, thankfully, has faced almost none of those problems- so that clearly indicates progress!), so I'm more likely to care about them in a vocal way.

The issue is that this doesn't imply I don't care about men being underrepresented in other fields, like nursing or education (unless I'm backwards on those; I'm working with stereotypes here. Pls let me know if I'm wrong), but it does imply that I care about women being underrepresented in STEM fields (Altho- if I'm not wrong, it's mostly chemistry, math/stats, computer science, and physics that are missing a lot of women, while fields like psych, bio, and medical sciences are more equal at this point).

The same thing goes for caring about something like sexual assault against women or catcalls. Those are problems that women face every day, most often at the hands of men. Does this mean I think all men are evil? If you think that's what I imply by caring about those things, you've colossally missed the point.

Overall, the issue seems to be that unless your statement includes all the people in the world ever, you're apparently discriminating against someone. Heaven forbid that I should make a statement exclusively about the issues of women and girls. Heaven forbid I don't include men for 5 seconds. Really? It's ridiculous.

The same goes for those young feminists who try to use feminism as a way to give them a victim complex so that they don't have to be responsible for anything: people can talk about the issues men face re: gender equality without mentioning women. However, I've found that the opposite problem is true more often, but guess what? I'm stating this here both because it's true AND because if I fail to mention it, I'm a horrible misandrist feminazi!!

I'm not sorry for the exaggeration. I'm really getting tired of this shit.

I have also been told that western feminism focusing on western problems instead of the problems faced by women elsewhere in the world is super lame, like "oh we don't have real problems, they have real problems." For that, I offer the following:
1) I agree that the work of non-western feminist activists should be talked about, and their voices amplified. That's important work, and they deserve to be heard.
2) I am not an expert on the problems women face in other parts of the world. I don't want to pretend that I am by offering solutions or advice to people from other parts of the world.
3) It is not my place to go and "save the poor oppressed women" in other parts of the world. That makes me a white savior, and trust me, that is not a good thing. My job is to listen to the women and men there that are helping to improve the lives of women, to offer help when I am asked and when I can help, and to share their stories and activist work.
4) No matter how much I learn about what the life of women in other countries is like, I will never be an expert. It is not my place to have an opinion on how to solve problems women face elsewhere. Like I said, it is my job to support women there who are doing that work, and to pay attention to it. I do agree that in the western world, we often get blinded by what's going on here so we don't see what's happening elsewhere. I agree that that needs to change.
5) This isn't to say that all women not in North America are suffering, either. The statement of "We must make everywhere else like the western world, where women have it soooo good!" is again, indicative of the whole white savior thing.

This is why I focus on the problems faced by western women. Yes, those still exist- and not just common "people" problems, but problems based on gender.

"But don't you care that men face problems too??!??!"

Did you even read the post??? Of course I fucking do. I have lots of men in my life whom I love deeply, and I want them to get a piece of the gender equality pie, same as me.

Overall: I think the "YOU FORGOT ABOUT MEN" is a way to shut down important discussions of the problems of women and girls by accusing them of not including everyone ever in the world. Wow, sorry my statement wasn't universal enough for you.


It's like caring about one endangered species. It doesn't automatically mean that I think other endangered species aren't important, and I don't have to talk about every single endangered species in the world every single time I say something.

yer pal,
swegan