If It's Not About You, Don't Make It About You: On The Unfortunate Privilege Of "Feminist Men"

I'm sure where, exactly, some dudes get off implying that being a feminist man is harder than being a woman, feminist or not. Neither am I sure, exactly, where these same dudes get off basically saying that since they're treating us way better than the rest of the dudely dudes, we should be nicer to them, regardless of whether or not we think they're treating us way better.

And that, my friends, is the key. As soon as a "feminist" starts telling you that you don't actually know how you feel, and they need to enlighten you as to how you actually do feel, that person kind of gives up some feminist street cred. And it's worse when that person is male, because, shockingly enough, kind of a big part of the advent of feminism had to do with women getting fucking sick of being told how they're supposed feel, think, and/or respond to stuff.

The thing wot has set me off can be found here; you'll have to click around a little to get the whole backstory.

Look, I appreciate feminist men. I do; I really, really do. But I'm starting to think back on a conversation I had with my boss/friend en route to New Mexico in October--the basic gist of which was his belief that there's no such thing as a "feminist man", because men will never understand what it is to be a woman, which is central to true feminism, and thus the best men can do is "feminist ally". He came to this conclusion after taking a women's studies course [sidenote: autospellcheck does not like "women's", which I'm not entirely certain of myself, but since the right-click-change options include "womenfolk's", I am so not changing it.] in college, and I'd actually never thought about it that way before, but after he explained his "There's no such thing as a feminist man", I agreed with him.

And now I think I agree even more. See, the trouble is, the patriarchy is insidious. You cannot fucking erase your privilege just because you want to, so even when you try, and align yourself with a marginalized of which you are not a part, your natural tendencies are still going to be coming from a position of privilege. Which is to say that it's incredibly easy to continue to expect women to listen to you just because you're a man, and the fact that you're aligning yourself with feminism lends more weight to your belief that you should be listened to, because you're way better than those other dudes, yo! and your natural privileged inclinations spin out of control, and it's like seven hundred times worse.

Just, like, think about it for a second. It makes me 700% more frustrated to be mansplained to about feminism by someone who claims to be a feminist than it does to be mainsplained to about how the patriarchy no longer exists by just a regular dudely dude.

And I know you are not doing it on purpose. But mansplainers never do, even the dudely dudes.

I don't have to read feminist books to understand how the oppression of women affects the world. And dudes who read every single feminist book out there will still never, ever understand that oppression in the same way I do.

I mean, go read Sady's post, but do anti-racism white people pretend to be anything other than an ally? Straight people, cisgendered people, able-bodied and neurotypical people, none of these pretend to be anything other than an ally. Why is "feminist" considered to be the one thing that you can be regardless of which side you fall on?

Seriously, you have to go read the post.

So now Freddie’s sulking that Sady Doyle is “telling everyone about how impressed with herself she is.” And I am. Because I knew that would piss him the hell off. Because I’m a woman, and I have accordingly been taught my entire life to view myself as lesser-than, to devalue my own accomplishments, to accept it when other people treat me as lesser-than and devalue me, which they (if they are men, especially) have been taught to do. And I refuse. I say no. I tell you I’m Sady fucking Doyle, and I expect you to believe it. Being a woman who likes herself, is proud of herself, is impressed with herself, in public: There might not be a more subversive act.

Maybe someday I'll have the readership that Sady does; I seriously doubt it, but she's also said she used to seriously doubt it as well, so, I don't know. If I ever do, I hope I will handle it just as she does (in my eyes, anyway): like a total fucking badass.

I'm angry.

Because shit happens.

Shit happens to me, and to you, and to your little sister, and my friends, and everybody, and sometimes it seems like there's not a whole lot I can do about it. It doesn't seem to matter how much I fight against it -- somehow I always end up feeling like if I just could have thought it out for a few more seconds, or been a little clearer, a little more concise, hit on just the right example, maybe I could have made a difference.

Except what really happens is I end up in the parking lot of a Denny's at 11pm screaming BULLSHIT in my sister's ex-boyfriend's face when he tells me that rape would end if women would stop falsely reporting it and smearing the good names of innocent men.

Mansplaining: A Few Thoughts

Mansplaining is a very specific symptom of a very general problem: our society produces men who are accustomed to being taken seriously -- simply because they are men. They are not required to back things up; their opinion automatically matters.

Now, as a man, your opinion on, say, anything to do with testicles (this is just an example; there are plenty of things men know firsthand that have little to do with testicles) is inherently valid, because you have them, so I'm not suggesting for a second that nothing men say is inherently valid.

So take the average straight, white, middle-class, able cisman. Going through one's life without ever having one's opinion questioned on the basis of one's sexual orientation, race, class, physical ability, or gender translates to behaving as though one's opinion will never be questioned -- for any reason at all. I don't know why, but somehow it seems it does. So it doesn't really matter whether or not you meant to mansplain, or whether you're deliberately being sexist, or if that's just how men are, because you don't need to have intention to mansplain.

A lot of mansplainers have intention; a lot don't. The fact remains that men exist who, whether they acknowledge it or not, have underlying hostilities toward the idea that a woman might know more than they do, or be able to do something better than they can.

Case in point: Ex-boyfriend.

1. It drove him nuts that I was more academic than he was. There's no clear reason for this, as he'd never considered himself an intellectual before I showed up, so I can only assume he just didn't want his girlfriend to be smarter than he was.
2. It drove me nuts that he constantly beat me at Scrabble. This was because I was clearly more word-minded than he was, and I played Word Scrabble, whereas he played Points Scrabble, and kept kicking my ass.

See the difference?

Incidentally, "men are just dicks" is the most mansplaining mansplanation for mansplaining one could possible think of. It's circular, and if you don't see that, I really don't know how to explain it to you.

In this particular thread, the guys who showed up to complain about "reverse sexism" and "I'm not a mansplainer, it's just the way I am" displayed absolutely classic mansplaining behavior -- most strikingly, after their initial complaint, when the women in the thread refused to engage, merely laughing at them. This, of course, just made them mad, because how dare these shrieking harpies not take them seriously?!?

And that, in a nutshell, is mansplaining. "I assume you will listen to me and take me seriously, no matter what I'm talking about, because I'm used to that, because I am a man."