Why the Pro-Women Movement Needs Men As Allies
June 24, 2010
by Sandra
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
I care about justice. I care about equality. I hold these values very dear. But they’re not the whole reason that I fight against sexism. I’m a woman. Sexism hurts me on a day-to-day basis. So why the hell shouldn’t I fight against it with everything I have and am? Simple self-interest is not the only reason I fight, but it is where I started from. I didn’t start seeing the deep injustice of sexism until I looked at things more closely.
No, I think it’s normal to initially rebel against injustice only when it first comes to your attention that it is hurting someone you care about, especially when it hurts you directly. Nothing spurs us to take action like our sense of self-preservation. Of course, for women, we’re pretty much all hurt by sexism to one degree or another. We may not be beaten or verbally abused on a daily basis, but the very concept of “woman” is.
Women are underrepresented in children’s entertainment, women are maligned in sexist jokes, women are discriminated against and sexually harassed. Furthermore, women are told to dress or look or act one way and then punished if they don’t comply, but punished in a very different way if they do. We are told over and over to be afraid for our lives and our bodies, and because of the prevalence of violence against women, we are largely right to be afraid. Confronting sexism serves our self-interest.
It also serves us in another way. We have sisters, mothers, daughters, aunts, cousins, nieces, friends, and other loved ones that we don’t want to see hurt. Fighting sexism for them is a show of our love and respect. But we also model for these girls and women what strength and persistence and justice look like in a sexist world. We teach with our actions the value of not giving up, of looking out for those who can’t look out for themselves, of being a part of a larger community. The fight against sexism has the potential to draw us together.
The men in my life who are the closest to me are the ones who share my sense of fairness, who understand that injustice must not be tolerated. These men, my husband and father and friends, fight against sexism just as I do. They love and respect strong women, and they make it known to other men that they will not tolerate sexism. They have done more to fight sexism than many women I know have. Not only do they share my ideals, they live them.
Why do they do this? Well, in each instance they were raised among strong women. But I think it’s more than that. I think that each of these men does what he does because he cares deeply about justice. They act because they care about protecting and helping women, both those that they know and love, and those that they don’t. And yes, they also act out of self-interest.
Because men are hurt by sexism, too. I’m not going to pretend for a second that men are hurt as much, or that the damage done to men by sexism should be our primary concern. But pragmatically, we need to accept that some allies need to be convinced to join the fight in terms of the concrete ways that they can be helped by the eradication of sexism. And there are plenty of examples of ways that men are hurt by sexism. So why not hand these out like candy at a parade? Why not take our allies where we can get them? Why not appreciate those allies that don’t need convincing, and court those potential allies that do?
And we Need allies. We need allies who can speak in all-male environments, to other men, from male perspectives. We need allies in high places. We need allies in low places. We need allies in every corner of our society, because this fight needs to happen Everywhere if it is going to get Anywhere.
Sandra,
Excellent article. I think the majority of women, and I’m one of them, recognize that we ABSOLUTELY MUST have men as allies, if we ever hope to reach those mysogynist men as only another man can do, in order to achieve the dream of equality and all of the opportunities that achievment would bring to women. Men aren’t used to sharing these opportunities and have a history of wanting to keep the best for themselves. That is going to be a hard nut to crack.
So, in our efforts to crack that nut, what I see is the biggest obstacle to overcom in “persuading” those men who “share your sense of fairness” and that “injustice must not be tolerated”, is that although these enlightened men will tell a woman they love these things, they are not as quick or as passionate in telling other men these same things. I’m sure it has a lot to do with their being ostracized and ridiculed (in much the same way as whites who supported the civil rights movement were treated) by mysogynistic men if they do.
My question to you is, do you think that the men who love women and believe in our obtaining equality with them, but still can’t quite take the next step of expressing the same outrage and full support for the justice in men accepting “women’s equality”, as they did for the civil rights movement is more likely based in large part on their losing the “exalted” place men are automatically given in society and, therefore, don’t want to lose that position and be forced to live under the same conditions imposed on women, by speaking out on our behalf to mainstream society?
Wow! a call for a pragmatic approach to feminism even including allies who are not idealistically pure. Now this could work!
Kathleen,
Renouncing privilege is HARD. Men who stand up for women against other men risk being considered traitors, risk being seen as not wholly male, and in some cases risk serious personal consequences, including violence or unemployment. I’m not a particularly brave person myself, so I can understand being hesitant on that front. I also know what it is to live as a non-male in a society that prefers males, and it’s not a fun thing. So I try to be understanding about men who have trouble making that final leap. In some ways, I think that some men may need to wait until they’re at certain point in their lives, with an established career and family, before they feel secure enough to engage in that kind of risk. I’m not always sure that these men understand on a visceral level that women don’t have that luxury.
That said, I think that men are freer to act from simple self-interest earlier in the process. I man isn’t a gender traitor if he says “Of course I support my wife getting equal pay- then I can retire sooner!” And as a pragmatist, I’ll certainly take that kind of self-interest for a starting point. I think that eventually men will learn that men are just as restricted (although less punished) by the gender binary as women are. But at the beginning of the process, I’ll accept glib self-interest.
So, in the interests of that, here are some glib selling points that might connect with men. Give more examples if you have them.
“Given population demographics, there’s a 52% chance that a woman will cure prostate cancer, and there’s a 1 in 6 chance that You’ll get it.”
“If your boss was a woman, you might not have to memorize inane car and sports facts to give you a way to suck up.”
“If your wife had a job that paid as much as yours, maybe you could both retire years earlier.”
“Your daughter’s natural athletic ability could mean a scholarship to the university of her choice, saving you money- or it could if there were more funding for women’s athletics.”
“Women’s free access to adequate birth control may mean less child support payments for you!”
“Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to pursue your talents and interests without worrying about whether or not it’ll make you look ‘Gay’?”
“Aren’t you sick of being assumed to be dangerous or incompetent at domestic matters? That the neighbors won’t let their kids come over to play unless your wife is home?”
BTW, I know those examples are horrifically sexist and heterosexist, but that’s sort of the realm that we’re dealing with here.
Sandra,
I bet the AA community were relieved that white men (and women) did not have the same fears and concerns when standing up for racial equality! In fact, now it’s badge of honor for a white man to speak out confidently, publicly and loudly against racism without any fear.
I suspect that men standing up for women is pretty much the same thing. I just hope we don’t spend another hundred years getting men AND women to stop excusing male hesitance to recognize that women are being discriminated against much the same way AA’s were, except on a more pervasive scale.
Injustice is injustice, whether it’s a result of racism or sexism and we will never achieve the same progress the AA’s have achieved, if we keep mothering men and their fears and simply do what the AA’s did and unite in full force in protest, in the same way and along the same scale….without reservation.
WOMEN CAN EASILY SAY WHAT DR. KING SAID THAT HOT AUGUST DAY IN D.C….”I HAVE A DREAM…” and he is honored for what he did. I say, what’s the difference when it comes to injustice against women, except the color of our skin and our gender?
Kathleen,
It’s not just the men. MANY women refuse to acknowledge sexism. Or, if they do acknowledge, they do so selectively.
I watched an interview last night of the woman who now runs WMC. She mentioned the sexism of 2008, but only Hillary Clinton. It was as if since Sarah Palin does not fit into an “acceptable” mold for this woman, the sexism directed at Palin was somehow not noteworthy?
It’s a battle on several fronts!
Kathleen,
I’m not entirely sure that I understand your point. RIGHT NOW, it is comparatively popular to speak out against racism (not in all circles, but in a great many). But do you think that was a result of the Black community simply assuming that White people were on their side? Do you think that White people just sat up one morning and said “I smell injustice!” and immediately renounced their privilege? The movement needed radicals as well as moderates. It needed people who spoke of equality and unity, as well as people who spoke of injustice and oppression. It needed to harness hope as well as fury. And it needed allies who could spread the word in other ways, in other places, and to other people. It was the ripple effect.
We talk about women coddling men in our attempts to seduce them over to our side, even at our own detriment. Do you see how we portray that in sexist terms? When Black people stand up against racism, people think of those confrontations as being frightening, and full of anger. Again, falling right into the stereotype. When queer folk stand up against homophobia, it’s cast as being strident and self-absorbed and ostentatious. Every oppressed group gets hit with the stereotype, no matter what they do, even from within. If women try to push feminism respectfully and non-confrontationally, we’re babying men. If we do it in a way that is confrontational and uncompromising we’re castrating bitches.
Here’s the simple pragmatic truth. We need allies, and it doesn’t matter HOW we get them or what names we get called along the way, so long as we get them. You can’t change the culture without a plurality.
Believe me, this topic heads to one place and one place only: “Why the Pro-Woman Movement Needs to Vet Everything It Says and Thinks by Making Sure It Doesn’t Make Liberal Men Queasy.” We’ll compare notes in ten years.
Amy and Sandra,
Amy, women are conditioned to nurture men from the day they know they are female and are taught by everything they see in society that men have pretty much all the power. So, it’s not hard to understand why so many women are inclined (albeit frustrating to the rest of us) to placate men and thinking that this kind of behavior will get them further in their careers. What they get in return in the majority of cases, is “lip service.” It’s not hard to understand why women feel inclined not to point out sexism precisely because they are not in the power position and, as we know in the legal field, when you don’t negotiate from a powerful position, you have no “negotiating power” and the men know it and exploit it to our detriment.
Sandra,
My point about racism and Dr. King is that the AA community did not wait, nor concern themselves with offending the white community and think of ways to persuade them to “come around” nor did they “mother” the white men and women in hopes of getting them to recognize the injustice of racism. They simply fought for it without apology and without reservation, BECAUSE THEY KNEW THEY WERE RIGHT. I think women need to try their strategy because our’s isn’t working. We also need to take heed to what Dr. King said and how it directly relates to the women’s movement and fight for equality…Dr. King’s message was powerful in its simplicity by saying he dreamed of a day when people were judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin.” CAN’T YOU SEE THAT THE SAME THING APPLIES TO WOMEN? The content of our character and not whether we have a vagina or a penis should be the defining factor in why men should join us for the same reason they joined Dr. King. The only difference between the civil rights movement and the women’s movement is that the civil rights movement included “men” and they were the reason white men came around.
That means we women are going to have to fight harder and make greater sacrifices than even Dr. King made in pushing for racial equality. Women have to accept that we will never persuade men to join us until we build the same kind of coalition, with the same determination and commitment as Dr. King did, except we’ll have to do it “backwards and in heels!”
Janis is right. It may be that the biggest obstacle women face is not the men, but ourselves in needing to “vet everything it says and thinks by making sure it doesn’t make liberal men queasy!” Excellent point, Janis, BTW!
I find it very telling that it is now the republican women who are sounding and acting more like feminist than the liberal women! Who would have thought!
In any event. Women’s groups better wake up and realize that those men who already believe in us are waiting for us to be as committed to achieving equality as Dr. King and the other civil rights were and not wait for approval by the men for our doing so. That’s the point I was trying to make.
One thing I forgot…Dr. King never asked “permission” for protesting against the injustice towards the AA community by the white community. And asking permission is exactly what we are doing if we are more concerned about first getting male approval before standing with conviction for what is right. Any man that already agrees with equality who doesn’t understand that, isn’t really on our side.
In fact, if we insist on taking this approach, we’ve already lost.
Kathleen – you are inserting something that TNA does not stand for. We are not asking for approval of men. We are offering them a place in our movement. There is a huge gap in what you are suggesting.
“We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half.” – Emmeline Pankhurst
I’ve always liked that quote because of course we need men as allies, of course they are harmed by the patriarchy we all live in, but still women need to focus on women because you can’t help anybody else until you help yourself.
It is like Janis says above, far too often the fight for women’s rights reverts right back to women sacrificing themselves for the greater good. We have a long history to show this, from women fighting to get black men the right to vote and not harming their chances by adding women to the equation. And here we are today, where I swear modern feminism seems to be about supporting every damn noble cause, except women’s equality, or worse, modern feminism can be all about supporting progressive men and their causes, dressing them up in teeshirts and claiming, “this is what a feminist looks like.”
In regard to the references to Dr. King and a question for the historians out there…
What was the tone of Dr. King’s movement? Did Dr. King make overarching generalizations that white people were lynchers? And that all whites were racists and loved their privileged and that hell will freeze over before they changed? Or did he set a tone for Americans who “get it” to stand together to fight racism? To fight for peace and equality?
And I like how Amy expressed this unity in her comment above. Unity does not mean submissiveness! It means being open to those who understand the goals of the movement whether or not they have an X or Y chromosome.
I like men and as individuals I trust them until they give me reason not to, which of course a small percentage do. Same with women, I start out trusting them until I find I can’t. But it is best not to generalize one persons bad or thoughtless behavior onto a whole class of people which they belong to. Many men love women and girls and they will make logical allies or participants in the pro-woman movement. My husband has been one of my daughters strongest mentors in sports and in engineering. In sports I keep telling her I think water polo is not a good sport for women every chance I get, her father says “oh big deal a few bruises and broken fingers, she will heal”.
What continues to Baffle me in this discussion is how I am repeatedly being interpreted as somehow suggesting that we need to self-censor and walk on eggshells to keep from rocking the boat or upsetting anyone. Any massive cultural change is going to upset people, and I don’t particularly CARE if it does. Am I rushing around shushing other women lest their arguments against oppression come off as too strident? No. I have simply stated that extreme arguments will not work to draw in those new to the movement. They do have a use, BTW, but it is to deepen the thinking of those already involved in the movement, and that they do very well.
I HAVE criticized some of the arguments made on this website as being fundamentally counter-productive, and I stand by that criticism. But my point in this post is that men who agree with our goals should be welcome to work with us. Men and women who do not yet agree with our goals should be exposed to them so that they might have the opportunity to agree with us and join in, but (as I have pointed out) we may wish to present our perspectives differently for different audiences. Why is THAT so hard to understand? It’s a basic facet of communication that HOW something is said affects HOW it is heard and interpreted.
According to Vygotsky, we learn what is proximal to what we already know. So if we can tap into a sense that Injustice is Bad, we can move towards teaching Sexism is Injustice, and thus Bad. And from there we can move towards we can Fight Sexism like This, and It is Your Responsibility to Fight Injustice.
Anyone who is patently against equality for women is not an ally, and I have no problems saying so. But the point being directed at me over and over again is that we should not be trying to TEACH anyone anything. We should not state our principles in accessible ways. Instead, we should simply ask “Are you with us or against us?” and whomsoever hesitates is the enemy. But an answer to that question requires a basic understanding of a comparatively sophisticated topic (not that equality is hard to grasp, but there’s so much cultural driftwood clogging up the discussion that it is NOT a simple topic). This reductionist attitude is infantile and counter-productive.
Just as we cannot assume that Republican women are by definition against us, we also cannot assume that Men are by definition against us, any more than the Queer community must assume that all Straight people are automatically against them. Nobody instinctively grasps the entirety of how women are oppressed in our society. It is ALWAYS a journey. All I’m suggesting is that we might make it easier for people to make that journey by pointing the way. Not that we should send them somewhere else entirely, to the wading pool version of feminism. But that we should not throw them in the deep end and then dismiss them as hydrophobic when they don’t respond with gratitude.
What I’m espousing is PRAGMATISM, not PASSIVITY. What You are espousing appears to be integrity and a lack of compromise. In practice, however, it works out to functionally limit the movement to those already in it. Social justice movements do not win through violent overthrow of the status quo. The status quo changes after the memetic war is won. And extreme rhetoric (when presented as the only rhetoric) loses the memetic war.
yttik,
I agree. The fight against sexism and misogyny must first and foremost be concerned with ways to help women. If that help incidentally helps men, I won’t complain, but that is not my goal, nor will it be until equality for women is achieved. And absolutely, the pro-women movement needs to stay balanced and not be distracted by fighting for the rights of everyone on earth to eat dolphin-safe tuna, or whatever the trendy cause is this week. I don’t want to support progressive men, in fact I think that most of them are deeply sexist (an opinion I formed during 2008). But if we have a few genuinely pro-woman men, I want them on our side. If we have a few potentially genuinely pro-woman men, I want them to know what we’re about, so they can decide if they’re on our side. But make no mistake, I want them to come to us.
Alison,
I’m sorry to keep going on guys, but I feel very passionately about what I am trying to say. I just can’t seem to say it in a way that you can understand my point.
First, I’ve never advocated that the women’s gender equality message should be adversarial and paint all men with the same broad brush, but that we shouldn’t fall into the trap of crafting the kind of message where it focuses more on not offending the male psyche than expressing our refusal to accept gender inequality and that the same moral imperative applies to our having gender equality as it did to AA’s wanting racial equality. I can’t imagine how that message could offend any man who truly loves and respects women and I’d love to hear how those who don’t respect women would respond to such a message as being adversarial.
Also, you missed my point about Dr. King’s methods. Dr. King and the other civil rights leaders made a strategic decision to make certain that their message was accompanied by actions and not just words. They first built the foundation to get the support within the AA community of that message. I remember what a powerful image it was seeing the determination and courage of those AA’s marching together in huge numbers protesting the injustice they were forced to live under. Because of the massivness of the protest and the consistency with the AA community not to give in to small compromises, the MSM covered them. That’s how the Americann public came to the conclusion by their actions that made this issue a “moral imperative” for the American people to eradicate racial inequality. Once that seed took root, support for change began to grow in the minds of the American people and they started joining the marches and have continued to grow since the ’60′s.
Another thing. I never recall Dr. King ever placating any hesitancy on the white community’s part in supporting racial equality because of the harrassment they would receive from white racists. I think we should follow that example too.
There is another obstacle that cannot be overlooked in crafting our message. Surely you’ve noticed that men, in general, view everything in how it affects ONLY them. For example, I’ve never heard either Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton speaking with the same passion on the MSM against the injustice of sexism, which was rampant throughout the primary and the GE. Instead, they chose to turn a blind eye and protect obama against racim. They didn’t give a hoot about the the total injustice being done to the women. Here’s the kicker: YOU WOULD THINK THAT THE BEST ALLIES FOR WOMEN OF ALL COLORS IN THE FIGHT FOR EQUIALITY WOULD BE BLACK MEN!!! What we have witnessed is that when push comes to shove, black men, just like the white, brown, red and yellow men, turn a blind eye to sexism. That kind of self-centeredness is not going to be easy to “persuade” to see things from a woman’s point-of-view.
I think it would be a big mistake to continue to make excuses for this behavior. Before we can even think of crafting an effective message, women have got to stop blaming themselves for men’s inability to accept us as equals. IMO, that’s just another way of enabling the very behavior we are trying to change in men.
Kathleen,
I know your last post was directed at Allison, but I did want to respond myself. First of all, I agree completely with your first paragraph. Thank you for clarifying this point. I suspect we’re all in complete agreement in principle, but simply draw the line between being approachable versus being emphatic about our intentions in different places.
I also think that we need to pair our words with action, and expect the same of our allies. What I was failing to understand previously was that you (correct me if I’m still misunderstanding) think we need to work to broaden the movement among women Before we deliberate work to find male allies. I had read your perspective as implying the irrelevance of male allies entirely, rather than merely during the early stages. Now, personally, I do think we’re at a point where male allies would be helpful, but that’s a far more subjective judgment.
Now, I don’t think that what I’m advocating is analogous to Dr. King having hypothetically coddled white anti-racists due to their concerns of being harassed by white racists. I do think that compassion is in order for anyone who is targeted by the enforcers of the dominant culture when they attempt to create positive change. But the important thing is that they try to make that change happen. I simply don’t think anyone turns on a dime from unquestioningly part of the problem to fully a part of the solution. I think we should speed that transition by creating an environment which is conducive to learning about the topic.
Finally, while men are certainly indoctrinated into seeing things from a supremely self-interested perspective (looking out for other men ahead of all women), women are indoctrinated into devaluing sisterhood, and into serving men at our own expense. And look at us. I believe that all of us are capable of overcoming destructive social conditioning. It’s probably harder for men, because they have more to lose, but it’s also more morally necessary for men because they do more damage through their inaction. We can’t always count on other women, and we certainly can’t always count on other men. Which is why we need to determine who are our dependable allies on a basis other than gender, like say commitment to the cause. Will it be harder to get men to be our allies? That may be broadly true, but honestly I think that depends on the man.
Finally, I do NOT believe that anyone here is blaming women for men’s inability to accept women as equals. What we are saying is that you can’t accuse someone of an inability to accept women as equals until they’ve been presented with the idea and refused it. Some people genuinely do not understand what it is that we’re after, mostly because of the deliberate campaign to twist and discredit feminism that has gone on for decades now. So let’s TELL THEM what we’re after, and then we’ll see how they respond.
I don’t think it’s the men we’re so concerned with, Sandra, I think it’s the women. Women live in a culture that teaches us that men are the center of the universe and we often wind up putting men’s needs before our own. It begins with us saying we need male allies and ends with us passing up our chance to have a female president.
This is not an argument against having men for allies, it’s an argument against that all too familiar pattern where women always seem to forget they were supposed to be advocating for women.
to the comparison with the AA movement. I am looking at the civil rights movement and the anti lynching campaign to see what we can learn from their success. Lincoln credited Harriet Beecher Stowe with her book “Uncle Tom’s cabin” to have started this great war. she sold 500000 copies of her book which humanized slaves and created empathy. whites who joined were usually from the north, where abolishing slavery did not bring huge societal changes. the proportion of AA community was minimal in northern society, whereas in the south there were numerous pockets where the AA community was in a majority. abolition here brought huge changes to society. having empathic white Northeners joining the abolition and later the anti lynching campaign without actually risking much change on a large scale is unique. if we translate this situation to the women’s movement for civil rights, it seems that many men would be effected and find themselves at the loosing end. if we point to the horrific spectacle of gang rapes with onlookers which happen in some pockets of minorities we would not get support of liberal men but possibly be charged with racism.
at some level gay men supported the women’s movement, but then there are quite some gay men who are particularly misogynist.
I vote for the pragmatic approach. Feminists have spent years going backwards. One thing that characterized the movement during the last 15 years is that feminists only talked to each other and they talked at everyone else. Web sites like NOW didn’t have a comments section and I never received one reply from them the 50 times I wrote them to tell them I was tired of going to a feminist web site to find it clogged with lesbian news, gay marriage outrage and the latest racist and environmental outrages. Yet they knew where to reach me for fund raising. We can discuss whether or not to reach out to sympathetic men forever. Meanwhile how many more generations of children are going to be raised on the toxic media images of women? When we were growing up we thought media representations of women could not get worse. We were very wrong. We now have Victoria’s Secret Xmas parade of tit and ass on network TV, only women who publicly hump poles while wearing lingerie can have singing careers and shows like “Americas Next Top Model” are considered aspirational young women’s content. Of the 30 girls in my daughters 8th grade class 8 girls were in treatment for eating disorders. Poor girls are more at risk from the images the media push because they don’t have as many entertainment options. If women’s groups could get over their need for exclusivity and purity they could have teamed up with other groups who share their concern regarding media long long ago and actually accomplished something and that would have made a huge difference in the life of the latest generation of girls and also our culture. t is long past time for women’s groups to accomplish something and provide some healthy alternatives for coming generations of girls.
Also we do not need to have only one approach which everyone agrees on. We don’t need to agree and we can do more than one approach at a time. Have a bigger web site, tab it so that people who want to discuss minutiae of feminist theory can do that, people who are into the latest feminist outrage can go to that tab. People who want to read books about real women can read book reviews, People who want to read history of women can go to that tab and hopefully there would be a place and content for young girls. Yes I know that would cost a fortune but ads are a possibility as long as they aren’t offensive, and some women and men would no doubt buy sponsorships. I think this web site is an amazing step forward because it allows and encourages discussion. But there is nothing that says only the corporate media can put up a destination site for young women on the internet. Really while we debate if possible allies are worthy of us in our war to change culture another generation of children are wallowing in sexist media.
yttik,
I understand that we want to avoid that problem (and I emphatically agree that it IS a major problem). I just want to be very clear that what you’re arguing against is not what I’m advocating. I suppose that some women who want to accept male allies are doing so because they have trouble placing the needs of women consistently first and seeing them as deserving, because in some ways they expect/want/need the movement to be co-opted. And we should absolutely be vigilant about that. But it’s not what I’m advocating. What I’m advocating is bringing as many resources to bear on placing the battle for women’s equality first as possible, because our struggle IS deserving. To my mind, that means accepting additional resources from male allies if they are genuine allies.
Sandra and Amy,
First, let me say that yttik is much better at articulating the written word than I am!
yttik said:
“This is not an argument against having men for allies, it’s an argument against that all too familiar pattern where women always seem to forget they were supposed to be advocating for women.”
In a nutshell, that’s exactly what my concerns are. We get so concerned about the men, that we forget about ourselves and men have no problem with that!
I’m all for male allies. However, we have to recognize that males do have the inclination to “take over” and build hierarchys which usually results in them being at the top. It’s how they are conditioned. I think it’s never been clear from your message “how” men will be brought in as allies and what kind roles they would play in relation to the women’s roles and if there would be any groundof rules set-up at the beginning to prevent a male co-opt of our message and the our movement.
I’ve said this before on TNA, having worked in election reform for over 7 years, what the general public doesn’t even realize that it was women from the beginning in recognizing the importance of this issue, who led the way, did the groundbreaking work and unearthed the truth about the complex election reform issue. Once our work started making it on the news with our findings, the men jumped in and wanted to take over. We were glad to have them as our allies and shared our work with them. What transpired was that they benefitted greatly from our hard work so much so, that the public assumed that they not only wrote and spoke about the findings, but thought that they had done the leg work too! In turn for our generosity, the men rarely, if ever, acknowledged that it was “our work” and not their’s. Sadly, once the women started doing less and less of the grunt work (so to speak), the men became less and less interested because all they wanted to do was go to events organized by the women and speak with authority about our work. I can’t tell you the number of times when we were planning a conference, the men always said they were “terrible with organizing things” and never got involved with that part. But they always expected to be some of the main speakers!
Once you’ve had that experience, you become very, very cautious about inviting men into a an issue where woman are the leaders. Even the enlightened men have a difficult time allowing a woman to lead. Like we’ve all said, conditioning is a very powerful influence and men have been conditioned from birth and from DNA to dominate women. Women have been conditioned to let them do so in order to keep the peace and not derail the purpose at hand! This, in itself, will be difficult to maintain control over and we haven’t even gotten to the other difficult part and that is building a coalition of unified and committed women who are willing to fight for equailty, as well as be on the same page about “who’s leading the charge” in this movement. For example, it was never a question that only AA’s would lead and craft the messasge for the civil rights movement. We need to make certain that the men accept that same condition, when it comes to the women’s movement.
Having said that, perhaps, it would be wise for women’s groups to put their collective heads together and figure out in detail first, the ground rules that are acceptable to the women for our male allies BEFORE we invite men them to join us in the cause. Like I said, we all need to be on the same page when it comes to the roles both the women and the men will play. To do this, will require our thinking outside the box and not falling into the same patterns we always do when men are involved with our projects, especially one as important as this is.
Hopefully, this clarifies my position and concerns better.
I am beginning to think much of what men accomplish is owed to the fact that they don’t have a need for everyone to agree and they automatically form power structures based on the same criteria whether those criteria relate to the problem being solved or not.
I am reminded of a time when I was room mother and there were not enough drivers for the puppet show field trip 5 minutes from school. I had to drive two loads of kids and the teacher gave me one load of 6 boys one load of 6 girls. I took the boys first figuring no one would be stupid enough to kidnap 6, 8 year old boys and most people probably couldn’t even catch them. As we walked to the car with minimal but random conversation, the kid who was twice the size of the others but couldn’t run yelled “shotgun!” and at that moment the littlest boy ran unbelievably fast and got in the front passenger seat. When we got to the car the big kid grabbed the little guy by the shirt and dumped him in the street saying “I called it”, little guy got up, didn’t whine, climbed in the far back middle seat which was the only one left and all the boys were quiet and content with the situation. It took me 5 seconds to get them in the car. They were ready to go and apparently had no bad feelings associated with how they got in the car.
Then came the girls they started discussing who should sit where the second we were out of the classroom and the discussion was still going on minutes after we were standing by the car. Seriously they were discussing who sat by whom previously and how that had made various people feel and how that was or was not fair. Finally I counted them off, counted off the car seats and said get in your numbered seat now and we were able to finally leave. There was a load of unhappiness and whispers regarding how they were placed in the car. And they attempted the same behavior when it was time to go home.
So perhaps women’s groups need sort of their own Robert’s rules of order so they don’t have to discuss the details of membership and organization and can start making some decisions and accomplishments that have a large impact on culture. Some women might want to work in an all female environment some might prefer co-ed, that’s fine. Just remember men shift gears from organizational to task accomplishment at very low RPMs and if you don’t shift they will run right over you and take over. In fact by the time the women shift out of organization mode the men will likely have accomplished the task to their liking and you can be sure we aren’t going to like the results.
Sandra,
“What continues to Baffle me in this discussion is how I am repeatedly being interpreted as somehow suggesting that we need to self-censor and walk on eggshells to keep from rocking the boat or upsetting anyone”
Great point! And wonderful post.
First. We continue to associate openess and many of our “femenine” characteristics with weakness. On the contrary, these are our strengths. I am so proud to be a woman, and to see some things different than men. I am not ashamed to be nurturing, while at the same time strong and tough. I love men too. In addition to my two daughters (and now a grand daughter) I have a husband and a son, whom I love equally with all my heart, and for whom I wish and seek equal opportunities. I am convinced they will be happier (and fortunately they agree) if women’s strengths are valued.
Second. As Amy stated, many women are sexists. We are educated to be sexist. Sometimes we don’t even realize we are sexist. The insidiousness of the sextist jokes that Sandra so opportunely mentioned, serves two purposes: they help internalize sexism as funny and cool; and they make it hard to fight sexism, because then, you are over reacting (read irrational) “you are not willing to laugh at yourself”.
Old sexists male or female don’t need to be converted as they will die. Meanwhile the young with long life spans ahead of them continue to be indoctrinated to sexism through unchanged cultural institutions because feminism has been ineffective. Pro women groups could accomplish much simply by offering a compelling alternative to the medias sexist brainwashing for young people. Much could be accomplished by offering help and encouragement to young girls and women demoralized by what they see in media and much could be gained by offering competing entertainment to developing minds. This isn’t going to happen without a huge amount of effort from women. If you want to work through the system this will require working with men since they control corporate media. The business concept corporate media are most committed to is gate-keeping new ideas out of the market. The internet offers a chance to go around corporate media. Meanwhile E! and Oxygen and MTV are considered to be “women’s content” by corporate media. Try watching them and tell me what impression they give of women, clearly offering pro woman content is an emergency situation. How would these images affect young people who don’t have support and advantages? Sadly some kids are essentially raised by TV. Feminist groups have spent enough time worrying about where we are and how we got here, pro woman groups need to look to the future and that means offer a compelling pro woman view of the world to children. Some can work with men through the media system they created others can work around the corporate media on the internet. The only reward will likely be positive changes in society.
The reason is that again, I have seen this pattern evince itself too many times. Seriously — ask yourself what was a post about “are men oppressed?” even DOING on a website that is explicitly about women?
Will you find posts about how to help the oppressed white people on the Black Agenda Report? Of course not. That is a site about BLACK PEOPLE, and they are unapologetic about it. They have the nerve to puts themselves center stage without wibbling about how it might make nice white people not feel appreciated.
I just cannot shake the feeling, having seen this too many times, that posts about the terrible oppressions suffered by men are made because we look at this site, see that it puts women center stage, and think deep in our minds, “Oh shit, the men will think we hate them!” and then rush to put up posts about male suffering in order to reassure them that we’re not totally forgetting about them just because we’re talking about ourselves. That is the kernel of motivation for this sort of post, I’m sorry. We rush to put something up that tells men they are still central to our thoughts because we fear that they will starve and wither if we don’t, and because we know damn well that (stupid) men will interpret us putting ourselves first as man-hatred. (Such men will NEVER be of value to us as allies, either, so it’s all effort down the drain. Reward junior for whining, and you just make him whine more next time.)
In their universe — and in the minds of many women — fifty solid posts celebrating nothing but women winning office is the same as expressing a desire for all men to die. Caring about women IS the same as hating men in that mindset, and so these posts about the terrible oppressions suffered by men are explicitly there to apologize.
We cannot even fathom talking about women only, whether in a celebratory or critical fashion, without (wrongly) fearing we are abandoning junior to starve in the streets. And without (rightly) fearing that junior will hate our guts for it because he sees it that way, too.
There is no reason at all for posts about the terrible suffering of men to surface on this website, any more than I should demand that the BAR put up posts about how white people “suffer” under racism. They would be within their rights to laugh in my face if I did, and none of them would be insecure enough to do it anyhow. Women are — because women want men to love them and like them in a way that black people don’t pine for the love and affection of white people.
Men who would be stupid enough to see this site and think to themselves, “Hey, they’re talking about nothing but a bunch of women winning elections and how to advance the cause of teenaged girls not getting the living shit knocked out of them! I fear for my balls now!” are not the kind of guys we need to reassure because they will never be on our side anyhow. They will just whine a little louder next time and pretty soon, the whole site is Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too.
Men who have the brains to support women who support women don’t need their asses kissed. Men who don’t won’t be our allies anyhow. Any such man who will only support common sense and fact-based logic if a woman pats him on the head and reassures him doesn’t have the spine to be a valuable ally anyhow.
That’s why those posts drive me nuts. They assume that “Another woman won elected office! Yay! Let’s celebrate!” and “How to keep teenaged girls from getting their faces broken by their dates” really are the same as “Men suck! Kill them all!” If this organization is operating from that mindset, it’s doomed right now, no matter how promising it looks.
A total absence of posts about men is what I’d like to see. And frankly, if they are suffering under the terrible burden of patriarchy, they’ve got all the money and all the power in the world. Let them bind their own wounds.
From a man’s perspective who isnt afraid of what he reads here…fairness is imperative, injustice can not be tolerated- anyone who beats up one of the women in my life had best check his life insurance first( there- the testosterone shows up)- we need parity in office and in life….if that makes me feel welcome or unwelcome here isnt the issue- liberty equality- those are the issues and for us men to truly be free women too must be free- ladies sorry to interrupt your dialgoue but I thought a man’s perspective was necessary- Janis as always interested comments
Janis,
All I can say is BRAVO!!
It’s true. Just once, I would like to see a woman’s site focus on women and figure out how to empower us. I don’t hate men, but I hate how they always want the focus to be on them or, like you said, equate our focus on ourselves as hating them! Who do men think primarily nurture and take care of their needs from the day they are borne? THEIR MOTHERS. Obviously, if women hated men as much as men would like us to think we do, we’d be doing what the Chinese do with baby girls to baby boys!
I also find it amusing that men consistently say they just don’t understand women and how they think…well, part of the problem is either women never talk about themselves because they are too busy nurturing the men or when women finally do talk about themselves, men aren’t the least bit interested!
Catch-22 is why women keep going around in circles in trying to find their center of empowerment.
The New Agenda is 100% devoted to improving the lives of women and girls. Our accomplishments (many) and media is 100% around women’s issues.
We are an inclusive movement for men and women – of all political beliefs! TNA is about supporting women and finding common ground.
For those of you that don’t feel comfortable including men as members of our org, sorry – they are here to stay. TNA, as a big tent, will never be everything that everybody wants – else we couldn’t be inclusive we would be exclusive.
We hope that folks can find enough of what we do to have it resonate with them and be part of our movement.
Amy,
Please don’t take what some of us are saying about our concerns about men and women working together for a common goal, particularly when it comes to gender equality, as a personal affront to TNA. I think the point we’ve been trying to make all along is that your inclusion of men as members has yet to indicate specifically what role they will play and to what extent.
Also, I think part of our concern stems from the fact that we haven’t heard from you how you intend to address those problems with men’s difficulty in following a woman’s lead from those who speak from personal experience. These problems do exist and to ignore them would not be wise in the long run.
I would hope that TNA would consider our concerns as relevant and worthy of your respect before deciding to minimize them by saying that we are simply “uncomfortable” with men being members. It’s much more complicated than that and I would think it would be abundantly clear by the many posts saying as much. On the contrary, we are uncomfortable with how much and to what extent the women who are leading this movement are going to allow men to have a say in what our message is and how it is to be implemented.
Janis was right in her previous post about the “Black Agenda Report” not putting up articles about the oppressed white people because their site is about black people’s issues, period. I don’t have a problem with that and I bet white men don’t either. As Janis so eloquently said, and I paraphrase here, those men who truly want to be our allies wouldn’t have a problem with the same approach being used on a woman’s site. More importantly, those men who are willing to come here for the sole purpose of learning about us and the importance and true meaning of gender equality, don’t need articles about their supposed “oppression” posted here. If that’s what they need in order to support us, then they should start a website talking about it and we’ll go there and lend our support to them. Women, historically, have been more willing to learn about and listen to men’s insecurities than they have about our’s. All we are saying is that we think it’s time for men to take the most important first step of coming here to learn about US.
I don’t care one way or another about men as members. If they want to join up, that’s peachy. It’s good to see. But I think that taking special care to reassure them that just because we think 16 year old girls shouldn’t get sent to the emergency room on prom night doesn’t mean we hate their guts is counterproductive. Good men can figure that out for themselves, and the insecure dolts who need to be reassured like that are not worth the effort — moreover, they will have learned that whining will successfully get us paying more attention to them than to ourselves.
“I don’t have a problem with that and I bet white men don’t either.”
And white people who do have a problem with it are not going to be on their side no matter how far they bend over. And they know it.
It’s another cold-turkey thing:
1) Always vote for the woman.
2) Pay no attention to men.
Once we hit that magic 30% (although I’m personally shooting for 100% — they do), we can relax. But in Step Zero, this is what has to be done. Always vote for the woman, and pay no attention to men. Don’t bother bringing them up either to hate or love them. Simply don’t even mention them. If that idea feels like hating them, or if it strikes fear in your heart, then something is going wrong.
BTW, that shooting for 100%? They do it. If they aim for our endzone and we aim for their 50 yard line, we’re not going to settle out in the middle of the field. We need to aim for the whole thing. Equality of motivation.
Sorry for four short posts instead of one long one, but I also have to talk about the whole “uncomfortable with men as members thing.”
Am I uncomfortable with men as members? Let’s look at that.
1) Am I uncomfortable with having as members the kind of men who confuse supporting women with hating men and who need us to stop and pat them on the head, and who can rely on expressing insecurity over not being central as a way to derail us? You’re damned right I am. I am HUGELY uncomfortable with having men like that as members.
2) Am I uncomfortable with having as members the kind of men who have the spine and deep love for women that allows them to stand back and watch us move forward ourselves without constantly stopping to reassure them because they are fully capable of wiping their own backside? Not one little bit. If they want to join up, more power to them.
Now how do we make sure that the first type of man steers clear of us and the second type of man is the ONLY kind who joins up? Do not do the sorts of things that attract the first type of man. No “patriarchy hurts men too” stuff, no reassurances, no head pats, no nothing. No love, no hate. It’s the perfect way to filter out the first type of dolt who will end up yowling 24/7 and monopolizing our attention and attract the second type who is happy to (unsubtle allusion here) sit in the audience at the party convention with five kids around him and smile with pride and support while his wife accepts her party’s nomination for veep. Or the kind of guy who says “you don’t have to knock a woman down to hold a man up.”
Wouldn’t we WANT to engage in behavior that weeds out the first type and attracts the second?
You all don’t need to agree. There are many different approaches that can work and all most likely will work to some extent and for some people. That is why I would make a blog that looks sort of like the Wall Street Journal with the “whats news” column. Select maybe 10 topics, women’s history, women volunteers, books movies media for women, men (a topic that interests us on many levels),politics, business women, outrages against women, children, parenting, widows, womens art, teens, college. Whatever your topics, everyone has a favorite. Then pro women people can go directly to the topic they are drawn to. The articles for these sections get updated whenever they get updated but certainly not daily. The point is to have and encourage a diverse group of people, allow them to self separate into narrower groups for discussions but to still touch bases with each other via the front page. If a compelling web magazine were set up that drew hits from demos of women advertisers would line up. If you draw eyes away from corporate media you create a powerful institution for good. Really at this point women don’t even know how to contact other women with similar interests.
“I’ve said this before on TNA, having worked in election reform for over 7 years, what the general public doesn’t even realize that it was women from the beginning in recognizing the importance of this issue, who led the way, did the groundbreaking work and unearthed the truth about the complex election reform issue. Once our work started making it on the news with our findings, the men jumped in and wanted to take over. We were glad to have them as our allies and shared our work with them. What transpired was that they benefitted greatly from our hard work so much so, that the public assumed that they not only wrote and spoke about the findings, but thought that they had done the leg work too! In turn for our generosity, the men rarely, if ever, acknowledged that it was “our work” and not their’s. Sadly, once the women started doing less and less of the grunt work (so to speak), the men became less and less interested because all they wanted to do was go to events organized by the women and speak with authority about our work. I can’t tell you the number of times when we were planning a conference, the men always said they were “terrible with organizing things” and never got involved with that part. But they always expected to be some of the main speakers!”
EXACTLY. This was so great I saved it. It’s a very well written piece on exactly how men behave in culture. The sexism we face now is the seemingly inherent one. It’s the culture that says men have invented everything, written everything, and do everything, and it’s only because men -pretend- to do things. How do we combat this pervasive mindset sexism? Certainly not by allowing men to be our voices.
If you ever work with a man on anything, it immediately becomes a battle, it becomes about power and credit, and even if you did all the work and all the thinking they still believe that they deserve credit, all of the credit, and sometimes they are delusional to the point they believe -they- did the work. There’s something very wrong with men mentally. I think they are more like AI robots than human beings. I’ve never met something more capable of deluding itself than a male.
I don’t think men will take over the message here and demand to be keynote speakers. But I do think that the danger is very real that they will engage in the sort of behavior that will prompt women to drop everything and reassure them that they are still central to us. It just happens too, too, too frequently. It’s the sort of thing that causes women to refuse to vote for a woman unless she’s perfect because curing men of being assholes is so important that every male candidate who can pick his nose with directions must be rewarded with our vote. Reforming men becomes the central part of the mission of feminism.
And let’s face it — what causes men to fear and re
Crap!
– to fear and require reassurance that we aren’t plotting to murder him in his sleep because we aren’t focused on him at the moment is sexism. Doing more of it will not solve the problem. It IS the problem.
And we cannot rely on the belief that we’re different this time to ensure that this movement will not also fall to the same axe. We are absolutely no different than any other cadre of women who have had it up to here, and our pain and outrage is no stronger than theirs was throughout the ages. We cannot say that 2008 was different. It wasn’t. We cannot say that our outrage is so powerful that it will magically leap generations to our daughters and granddaughters when the time comes to hand this shebang over to the next generation. It isn’t.
Unless we take these tendencies into account in the ground rules, this movement, no matter how promising, will fail. The founding fathers took this stuff into account and they ended up with a revolution that lasted longer than most (although it’s fucked at the moment). They didn’t create the ground rules for their new order by assuming that future generations would of course understand everything they felt and that the revolution would be so powerful that it would cause a seismic shift in the prevalence of human stupidity and greed.
They took that into account. They acknowledged out loud that they were not special and that most people were dipshits, and they made a framework that tried to take account of that. We need to do the same. We need to form a framework that takes into account the very real and unfortunate fact that women will cede power to men to soothe their fears and that men will attract and hold 100% of our attention if we let them.
It’s like the old saying that no tax is ever removed. Once it exists, it will increase. Similarly, once we set a bar for male behavior, it WILL be lowered. It’s like the second law of thermodynamics. It just happens. We need to take that into account when setting basic ground rules or else this will not last. We are not so fabulous that we will avoid the potholes that have stalled every other female attempt at gaining equality since the dawn of time. Our outrage is not so powerful and impossible to forget that future generations will feel it with the depth that we do. We need to realize that this thing’s gonna be handed off someday to people who aren’t us, and build some safeguards into it. Those safeguards are as follows:
1) Vote only for women.
2) Pay no attention to men.
If we don’t set that in stone at the outset, in ten years we WILL be voting for male total losers as long as they show a smidgen of brain activity in hopes of coddling them into not expecting coddling and refusing support to women with sterling qualifications. Again. And having given in to a man who expects women to give into him, we’ll somehow be hoping to teach him to not expect us to give in to him. Again.
I’m not asking for men to be excised from the movement, and I’m not talking about hanging them all from a gibbet. All I’m saying is stop paying them attention. If they’re shits, they’ll go away. If not, they’ll hang around and help.
Analogy:
Men are addicted to female attention and approval.
Alcoholics Anonymous doesn’t attract its customers by telling them, “Come in and we’ll give you a tiny bit of vodka and then sit you down and tell you why vodka is bad for you.” They tell drunks, “You show up here, and it’s NO BOOZE AT ALL for the rest of your life. If you aren’t ready to make that promise, come back when you are.”
Sorry for being so verbose, but this really means an incredible amount to me. This addiction to being the goddamned center of female attention that men have IS their problem. We are not going to cure them of it by giving in to it.
Janis,
I understand your outrage. I really want us to succeed this time around. What’s that saying…”those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it…”
I think we need to take a long, hard look at what caused the feminist movement to be stimied, even set back in some cases, and not repeat those same mistakes again.
We have to change our strategy and tactics in how we craft our message. I think we should follow the AA community’s example and FOCUS just like they do ONLY on those issues that keep coming up whenever it comes to women achieving true equality with men. It’s never been done before. So, why not?
The problem is men, and the backlash. It’s a problem with their eyes. We say we want equality. “Rational” men say women aren’t equal due to being physically different. And honestly, in a system based on fighting, this concept of fighting that’s not material at all, but a totally ficticious concept of the imagination, when you have something like that that allows men to claim physical inequality on the basis that they can physically harm you…Look at war. War is a game. It has rules. Men used to line up with sharp weapons and walk into eachother. Certain things like gorilla warfare are unacceptable. It’s not a real “fight”. There is no such thing as a fight, no real such thing as winning. It’s a game that is rigged so that only men can win. In law you aren’t for instance allowed to use a deadly weapon. You aren’t allowed to use deadly force. There are rules. Those rules keep men believing in inequality.
For instance, if we had a society that was matrifocal where all of the citizens together reared children, pregnancy is mysteriously not a burden. But in a patrifocal society where a woman needs a male because males are actually paid living wages..then, pregnancy becomes a burden especially considering the whole act of marriage is alienating to the woman, from her family etc, no one helps out.
But men made this society based on beating women senseless and beating eachother with sense, with rules. And quite frankly it’s ridiculous. When men look at their bodies they should see DNA that has not changed in 6000 years instead of seeing inequality. Men act like civilized individuals -when they have their way-. Otherwise they are violent and unpredictable and totally alien to the concept of human civilization. These factors of male nobility are so deeply engrained in our society that it’s subconscious. I like the efforts of groups like EVE to put women in images. Did you know that Hypatia of Alexandria, having been mauled -to death- was forbidden from being painted in form? She had to be snuck in.
But ask any man. I can name all of the women that were responsible for everything we know as cultuer today, and all of technology, but I cannot find a man who can even name a modern female feminist. He knows only men.
And this is the case with young women too. It’s such a shame. It’s a shame because it’s not reality. It’s not what actually is and what is actually happening because if it was reality the discussionw ould be much different. The discussion would be is there something wrong with men biologically that, you know, for instance, every single woman is a Shakespeare and only 1 man out of every 500 years is capable of that brilliance?
NOTE: This comes from me and only me. Nothing to do with anyone else, and in fact, I’ll understand if it gets moderated off the board.
I’m officially sick of this conversation. Here’s my final point on the matter, and then you all can say whatever the hell you want..
Either you think women should be equal or you don’t. If you care about women’s equality, then you want to accomplish that however you can. And if that means being pragmatic and worrying about MARKETING and MESSAGING and not getting to publicly call all men rapists, and having to work with male allies and the women who are willing to spend time recruiting them (and,BTW, it does), then you SUCK IT UP AND DO THAT. And if what you REALLY care about is arguing amongst yourselves and Being right rather than Doing right, then you spend your time worrying about ideological purity. It’s up to you.
I have found that one of the most powerful convincers is the things people like to believe. They like to believe, however untrue it is (we’ve had the same technology several thousand years ago) that we are progressing linearly in education and technology, and that people who don’t believe in equality are just backward in time. That’s one persuasive argument for men, because men, like women, want to be forward and not backward. Then, another powerful persuasion is truth. Unfortunately, it’s difficult for men to see the truth, when they’ve purposely blinded themselves to it and continue to do so. If men knew the truth, they would know that Feminism, women’s freedom, and matrifocal societies are more peaceful, have more fun, are more educated and have more stable economies.
Sandra,
You are entitled to your position on this obviously controversial concept and I respect it. However, if you think that these exchanges are too much dissent in responding to what you and TNA wish to do in bringing men into the fold, then you’re in for a surprise. This ain’t nothin!
No one has disagreed throughout this entire dialogue that men should not be welcomed in joining women in fighting for gender equality nor is this about “ideological purity”, it was about the degree and extent you felt women should go in persuading men to join us.
You mentioned that you are only being pragmatic…believe it or not, Gloria Steinhem has been using this same approach since the 70′s and she was constantly trying to find ways to persuade men to join the women’s movement. She sucked it up big time. But that makes sense, since this was the first real step in pushing for women’s equal rights and we were in totally new territory and had a lot to learn. It’s not a new approach, but it has had its problems and we were simply trying to point that out, so that you wouldn’t end up taking one step forward and two steps back. I would think women expressing this amount of passion is certainly worthy of some serious consideration, instead of turning to an adversarial tone. I think it speaks volumes that you are more concerned about how to persuade men to join us, but don’t seem to recognize the urgency being expressed by women on this post regarding your method of pragmatism as something you should listen to. Based on the back and forth expressed, it appears that women are still having problem communicating with each other when they disagree. It’s still viewed in a negative light, instead of a way to enlightenment and understanding.
I’m sorry that you didn’t see that. This exchange could be a good lesson in recognizing that while you’re seeking ways to craft the message in marketing to men, it would also be practical to learn how to listen to women’s differing views and not take offense and maybe being a little more willing to accept that an important point is being made. After all, how successful can a women’s movement expect to be if the women are still having difficulty communicating with each other? If this isn’t addressed and resolved, it really won’t matter how many men you persuade to join the cause.
Having read all of the comments on this post, I think the point is that women need men as allies who are already secure enough that they can align themselves with us without any concessions from us. Women are trained from birth to get what we want by coaxing and cajoling men, and playing to a male audience reinforces that we have to be given what we want from men. Many of us are ready to just take it. We’re 51% of the population. If we’re going to put time, effort, and money into marketing and messaging, let’s put it there. Use it to encourage more women to get onboard, and extend a welcoming hand to the men who come on their own.
Okay, in retrospect, I could have phrased that last comment a lot more respectfully. I’d also like to emphasize that part of the reason that I’m finding this discussion so frustrating is because I think that people are bringing up excellent points, but doing so in ways that are not conducive to respectful discourse. I do fundamentally think that the most productive thing is to simply focus on a pragmatic approach rather than to worry about the implications of every action and the potential pitfalls inherent in each, as there will never be a single perfect way to proceed. I’d also appreciate it if we could give one another the benefit of the doubt in these conversations regarding our intelligence, self-awareness, and commitment to our shared ideals.
That said, I stand by my point and I am finished with the conversation. I just wanted to apologize for the curtness of my last comment.
Amen Sandra!
Here’s what I said in my intro speech on May 6th:
The New Agenda is not anti-male; we are unapologetically pro-women.
The New Agenda is not radical; we are steadfast and professional.
The New Agenda is not angry; but we will never back down from a fight.
The New Agenda is not about blame; we are about empowerment.
The New Agenda has no rites of entry; only power through unity.
That’s what we stand for. We are about winning…and we shall!
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