It’s Time to Destroy the Myths Men Love — For Good
As a feminist writer and content creator, I am besieged with an array of arguments from men about why women should stop speaking out on the ways in which we continue to be oppressed and brutalized. They’re all as laughable as they are enraging, to be sure. But before I begin a careful and pointed dismantling of the hypocrisy, hatred and revisionist history they peddle, I feel compelled to set the stage for why I think doing this work is of the utmost importance in the modern American context.
Since the election of Donald Trump, I’ve seen a social media space that has become increasingly hostile toward women. While Republicans have long sought to relegate women back to the domestic sphere in an attempt to maintain the sanctity of the nuclear family and traditional gender roles, Trump’s election has since served as an endorsement for a much more open and visceral hatred of women to drive the overall goal of male domination.
With the fascist movement on the rise in the U.S. and other developed nations across the world, it’s become increasingly critical to talk about fascism’s inextricable ties to the patriarchy and anti-feminism. Noted Historian Eugen Weber, who studied Western civilization and the harbingers of fascism at length, noted that fascism almost always emerges in response to the rising power of women. A strong tenent of fascist ideology is the strict enforcement of gender roles and, thus, the restriction of women’s freedom. This is driven by the notion that men leading all aspects of society is a reflection of some mythical “natural order” of things. It is no coincidence that Nazism emerged after women gained the right to vote and a vibrant gay community began to form in Berlin.
Meanwhile, in modern America, women continue to make progress in the labor market. They’re more openly rejecting child-rearing and heteronormative relationships, while gay marriage has been institutionalized. The transgender rights movement has also allowed many to question the value of the gender binary altogether. We also cannot ignore the fact that Black Americans and allies are continuing to fight against whitewashed revisionist history and ongoing systemic police brutality leveraged against black bodies. In the face of such overwhelming change and progress, it should be of little surprise that American conservatives have reacted with an absolutely venomous backlash, the tenets of which seem unnervingly familiar.
The Nazi regime of the 1930s targeted feminism, squashed the birth control movement and promoted a Gestapo-led campaign against doctors who performed abortions on Aryan women. And now, modern day Republicans aren’t just borrowing the playbook — they’re plagiarizing it. They chose a demagogue as their presidential candidate and rallied around him as he broke all political norms (and any norms of human decency, for that matter) to wage a war against one of the most powerful women in the world. This was a loud and proud move to assert an assumed patriarchal right to power.
They’ve also already lead an attack on abortion rights with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and are targeting of birth control next. Folks who aid in providing access to or perform abortions are being criminalized, while women and girls are being left to suffer and die. And worse still, the Republicans in power have been working to quell opportunities we have to fight back. According to the International Center for Nonprofit Law, 45 states have considered 230 bills criminalizing protest. 29 states have introduced laws to restrict teaching about racism and sexism in schools, and 13 states have already enacted the bans.
Any political science scholar will tell you that the key to democracy is an informed electorate. The work of restricting the information taught in schools is a tactic borrowed from the Jim Crow era to keep folks ignorant of decades of racism, sexism, violence and oppression and leave space for fascist propaganda and fear mongering to flourish. Combining these efforts with a Republican takeover of the courts bolstered by gerrymandered districts and various tactics aimed at voter suppression, and you have a combination ripe for the outright toppling of American democracy as we know it.
In other words, the stakes are too high to remain silent. As women, we must share our experiences. We must hold men accountable and take them to task. We must call out every indignity they impose, no matter the size, by whatever means we have at our disposal. Our lives and our futures depend on it.
I recently posted a TikTok video about not owing men “niceness” in our fight for gender equality, among other things. (I’ve posted on the topic on Medium as well.) The video got overwhelmingly positive feedback from fellow women and allies, and invited a conversation about all the unfortunate ways they could relate to the frequent instances of tone policing and outright misogyny they experience on a regular basis, which is especially true for those who are outspoken feminist advocates.
Of course, this also invited some interesting commentary from a few extremely pressed men, a lot of which would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad and dangerous. And I’ve decided to use their feedback as an opportunity to not only showcase the sheer idiocy of the “arguments” made — I could really just list the comments and let them speak for themselves, they’re that bad — but to set the record straight on the reality of the world in which we live, and women endure, day in and day out.
For your reading pleasure, I’ve organized the type of comments I typically receive into categories and will methodically decimate each one. Let’s begin:
Category 1 — BUT MEN DO ALL THE THINGS
“You should be thankful, men built the world you live in. Without us, you would have nothing.”
“You couldn’t do anything without us. Civilization would cease to exist.”
“If you hate men, don’t ask them to do any jobs for you.”
First of all, every woman knows that if you want a job done well, you do it yourself. Second of all, no one’s asking you to do anything but leave us the fuck alone. But anyway…
The History:
I know I’ve talked about this before, but I want to offer some additional perspective on it, especially as I continue to see dudes trying to pedal this bullshit. Foremost, we know that saying men built the world we live in purposefully ignores the reality that most women were kept from the labor force by men themselves because of patriarchal cultural norms and legal restrictions they actively pursued and enacted throughout history.
Those that did work were restricted to textiles and clothing factories, domestic work or small industries like nail and matchstick making. All of these sectors, of course, paid extremely low, and women were excluded from trade unions to bargain for better wages and safer working conditions. Until the 19th century, women were also effectively barred from higher education, so entry to professional work — like lawyering, doctoring, and civil service — were also not options for women to pursue. For much of U.S. history, work opportunities for women were scarce.
That said, the idea that all of U.S. infrastructure and our various scientific and technological accomplishments were birthed from the brilliant minds of men is simply untrue. Because of a concerted effort by men to erase women’s contributions from our history books and public education (and we are watching a renewed effort like this in real time) many folks do not know about the likes of Ada Lovelace, Eunice Foote, Alice Ball, Bessie Blount, Elinor Ostrom and others who changed not only the U.S. but the world with their various contributions in STEM and beyond.
Of course, there is a similar push to ignore the realities that our nation was built on slave labor. If anyone should get credit for building “the world” Americans live in, it’s the black men, women and children that were forced to do it. After slavery was abolished, their contributions continue to be erased. Historically, African Americans — especially women — have sustained the labor market, despite systemic racism and discrimination. As far back as the 1870s, 50% of Black women were in the labor force compared to just 16.5% of white women. The wave of women entering the workforce in the 1970's really only applied to white women. Black women have always worked.
The Logic:
Aside from the factual inaccuracy underpinning these common misogynist arguments, the logic is unsurprisingly flawed too. Men seem to like to pick and choose the things they want to take credit for. If we call out men for sexism, violence or rape, for example, they’re quick to shout #notallmen from the rooftops — but now they want to take credit for building the world when they weren’t even a thought in their dad’s nutsack when America’s first cities and institutions were being built. This is coming from dudes who cannot build a single piece of Ikea furniture without punching a hole through the wall.
The same could be said for white men specifically, who argue that they didn’t own slaves so they shouldn’t be made to “feel bad” about racism. They weren’t even alive back then, so why should they be blamed? And why should they lose out on jobs because of all that “preferential treatment minorities get” through programs like Affirmative Action? Slavery was SOOO long ago and we’re all equal now, didn’t you know?!
Which is it guys, do you want to take credit for the past or not? You don’t get to pick and choose the parts you like and leave the rest — history is not a sandwich.
The Hypothetical:
Could civilization continue to exist without men? With the recent creation of synthetic sperm, all signs point to yes. And with sperm count continuing to decline in modern men, who knows — it might very well become a reality. After all, scientists have posited that the Y chromosome may someday disappear altogether.
The idea that men can do things women simply cannot is a vestige from the dark ages. Even if we account for biological differences like strength and size, women would simply design tools, buildings and other resources to better suit their needs. It would be a vast improvement from living in a world where nearly all infrastructure has been designed with men in mind. So let’s all imagine this world for a moment. Fewer wars. A dramatic drop in the U.S. prison population. Rape and mass shootings become a near myth. Everything smells nice and no one asks you where the kitchen scissors are (did you check…the kitchen?). And most importantly, there is never a line for the bathroom…
Category 2 — WOMEN ARE MEANIES
“Maybe if women respected men like they should, men would be nicer.”
“You won’t convince men to help if you promote man-hating.
Obviously, there are lot of things wrong with these statements, not least of which is the fact that respect is earned and not given , and throughout history, men have demonstrated that they’re far from worthy of it.
I’ve also already talked at length about the audacity of the idea that women somehow owe men niceness in the face of pervasive misogyny in my piece, “Warning — This Feminism Will Hurt.” I encourage you to check it out because for the purposes of this article, I’m going to touch more deeply on a few other key points. If you don’t have time to read it, suffice it to say that the overall message is this: Feminism arose as a response to women’s systemic marginalization and brutalization. If women dying isn’t a good enough reason for you to try to understand feminist work and support us in our movement to dismantle the patriarchy, you’ll excuse me if I don’t give a flying fuck how you feel. It’s like asking a deer to be nice to a lion before he eats it. I prefer to fight back.
Men are struggling with the idea that women owe them niceness in the contemporary context because of women’s increasing independence. Women no longer need men to open bank accounts, own homes or have children. We can live successfully — and quite happily — without them. They’ve become so accustomed to being needed rather than actually wanted that they don’t have much to offer when stripped away of the material assets. They haven’t developed the emotional intelligence, communication skills and empathy women want in partners, and when they’re unsuccessful in relationships as a result, they lash out in anger. They blame man-hating feminists for changing the rules of the game.
That’s not to say that there aren’t still instances where women perform niceness as a survival tactic. We do it often, like when we encounter strange dudes on the streets or bros who won’t take no for an answer in bars. We’ve been taught to prioritize men’s feelings over our own so we can make it out of the situation alive and intact. God forbid we tell a man we’re not interested. Just say you have a boyfriend instead — if you hurt his feelings, he might kill you. The consequences of male fragility are dire, and this is precisely why we continue to need the work of feminism.
The other issue with the argument that women should deliver feminist messaging nicely is that it is tantamount to saying, you’re doing feminism wrong; let a man show you how it’s done. After all, men believe the world revolves around them, so why should this be any different?
For starters, feminist scholar and social critic bell hooks (2000) argues that “feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” This speaks to the real experiences of women who have suffered pain and injustice for no reason other than being women in a patriarchal society. In this sense, no man can really call themselves a feminist because they do not have the lived experience of a woman. Can men do the work toward achieving gender egalitarianism — absolutely — but I can assure you that will not be accomplished by tone policing or positioning yourselves as saviors who know better.
This is just another example of the paternalism that perpetuates women’s oppression in the first place. Men cannot achieve a better feminist revolution than women themselves, and this is why I often tell men to stop talking. If you’re talking, you’re not listening. Your ears will only perk up when you hear something that threatens your unearned privilege and your ego, and then the backlash ensues because men often mistake losing said privileges as losing rights. Men in positions of power also become especially threatened when women surpass them — they feel wronged in some way rather than fairly bested.
And this leads us rather nicely into our next section…
Category 3 — NO, IT’S THE WOMEN WHO ARE SEXIST!
“Women want men to be slaves to them!”
“Typical misandrist — blame men for all your problems.”
“Feminists love to make sexist generalizations about men.”
I’ve been noticing an interesting shift as of late in the ways in which men are responding to women who point out legitimate acts of sexism. Typically, men have been quick to retort things like “another woman playing the victim,” similar to how white folks might talk about “the race card.” And while this sort of reaction still occurs, there’s also been a notable shift. More and more men now are claiming to be the victims themselves of unfair, sexist biases. They’ve not only begun to co-opt the term “sexism” but they’ve also co-opted the language of feminism as well — claiming they’re being “shamed” and expressing their desire to control women as “boundaries” that they’re entitled to uphold. I’d say the audacity and hypocrisy of this shift astounds me, but this is what we, as women, have come to expect.
You might ask why men have such difficulty seeing the real gender inequality before them. To say that women have achieved equality in America takes ignoring a very glaring fact — that virtually all political, social and economic institutions are still dominated by men: legislatures, corporations, media, science and so forth. Study after study shows that the gender pay gap still exists, that the bulk of childrearing and domestic work still falls on women even while they hold full time jobs and that they are more likely to be victims of rape and domestic violence. At this point, to claim this isn’t a reality is to embrace and weaponize a willful ignorance.
Another reason men seem to be immune to the everyday sexism women face is simple — it’s because they don’t have to. Their gender is not a source of harm day in and day out, but rather, a source of privilege. As such, it’s easy for men to think society isn’t broken. And you know what they say — “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Men don’t think twice about walking alone at night or the time it’s going to take to go to the bathroom at a concert just like able-bodied folks don’t think about how they’re going to get to the second floor of a building or white folks don’t think about whether they want to wear a hoodie while jogging.
Now, this is not to say that men cannot be victims of some gender-related bias. For example, men’s sexual assault is often taken less seriously than women’s, and men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime. But these realities, while important to address, are not the same as being victims of a patriarchal system that has entrenched your marginalization into laws and institutions. Drawing an equivalency between them dehistoricizes and depoliticizes sexism, stripping it of its meaning, and as such, denies its legitimacy in the face of decades of overwhelming and measurable evidence.
Sexism or any political discrimination also necessitates that disempowered people be targets — the point of engaging in these acts is to continue to tip the scales in favor of those in power. So when men claim they are victims of sexism, they are missing the point that sexism is inherently about power dynamics that are not at play when men are the targets of women’s critique. Further, they also seem to ignore that many of the ways in which they feel slighted or attacked are, at their core, a result of the patriarchal system that they themselves created and perpetuate. Men control of the institutions that could change patterns of male disadvantaging by implementing public policies affecting cultural change, and yet, they do not — they fail to recognize the myriad of ways they are hindered by traditional conceptions of masculinity that still dominate our culture.
Category 4— ALL MEN WEAR CAPES
“Try going to war if you want equality.”
“We should have just sent you to war while we stayed at home.”
Ah yes, this is an oldie but a goodie because no matter how much time passes, it’s still dumb as fuck.
First of all, if you’re a woman who has served in the military, thank you for your service. Believe it or not, women do currently go to war. Secondly, conversations around men and women’s participation in modern day armed forces must also account for the fact that technology has now significantly altered what military duty looks like. There is far less hand-to-hand combat that these men seem to glorify, so, starting any conversation off like this is once again purposefully ignoring the reality within which we currently live.
That said, there was a time when women’s participation in the military wasn’t possible, and this seems to be the time that most of these angry male commenters are harkening back to. As such, it seems a little weird to blame us for the fact that a military controlled by men chose to enlist and draft only men. This decision was influenced by a number of factors, though primarily so by inaccurate perceptions of fitness for combat and a vested national interest in keeping women at home to ensure they would be able to childrear or be alive to childrear in the future.
This line of argument also seems to make the assumption that women just sat at home eating bon bons living their best lives while their husbands, fathers and brothers went off to war. This, of course, could not be further than the truth. Since the Revolutionary War, more than 3 million women have served, even before the military fully recognized their service. Throughout history, women have disguised themselves as men to fight for a country that didn’t acknowledge them as persons under the law. They’ve acted as nurses, radio operators, translators and other roles that often went unpaid and unrecognized as constituting active duty. Women’s participation during World War I and World War II both at home and on the front was absolutely crucial to the success of allied war efforts.
Calling the example of fighting war to mind in conversations about sexism also displays the ways in which men have internalized the idea that masculinity is about being a “warrior” — that risking life and limb is a naturally manly thing to do that is required if they are to be truly valued by society at large. But have men ever pondered the fact that if such valor and violence was biologically ingrained in them, why would societies need to put such pressure on boys to “become men” through various programs, messaging and rituals (think military service, fraternity hazing, contact sports or otherwise). Straight men often spend so much time developing their sense of self as it fits into this traditional masculine narrative that, again, they do not develop the emotional skills needed that would bring them happiness and fulfillment in loving equal partnerships with women.
Category 5: #NOTALLMEN
“Why should all men suffer when only a small percentage of us are doing bad things?”
“I didn’t choose to be a man, yet I am forced to take all the blame for men prior.”
At this point, I think the take down of the #notallmen thing has been made abundantly clear. If you still don’t get it, it’s because you don’t want to get it. For this reason, in this section, I will be brief. Also, to be candid, writing this has been absolutely exhausting and I want to be done thinking about the sad state of gender equality (and everything else) in this country for awhile.
So, TLDR: Men have a problem conflating personal behavior with bigger social problems. They feel defensive and attacked when women point out things like the gender pay gap or sexual assault and argue, in many instances, that this discomfort alone is tantamount to “suffering.” And perhaps that’s why the idea that men are fragile has become so popularized as of late — because the mere insinuation that they may contribute to a social ill, even if not through personal, pointed behavior — causes them to freak the fuck out. And hence, we’ve see an explosion in the misogynistic alpha man and incel movements on social media.
At this very moment in this country, there is an extremely important and substantive conversation going on about gender roles that has folks questioning the validity of a cultural, legal and political institutions that have been built upon a conception of gender that, quite frankly, is made up. And this poses an extreme threat to men, since the existing arrangement has worked quite well for them throughout history. But what most men don’t seem to understand is that it is not women’s desire to impoverish them, enslave them, imprison them or commit them to lead lives of social pariahs — that’s the kind of stuff men do.
We want you to acknowledge that, in the face of overwhelming evidence and data, sexism and gender inequality are real. I know it can be difficult to recognize problems when you yourself have not experienced them — that’s why women ask you simply to listen and to learn. We know not all men rape, murder or harass women, but enough of them do it while the rest either stand idly by or reinforce the norms of masculinity that have created and continue to prop up these very problems. It’s not women’s responsibility to try and fix men. You all need to fix yourselves.
And yes, this time — we mean all of you.
