John KoenigI’ll never forget the first time I ever devoted any serious thought to the concept of feminism. It was spring of 2005, and a group of four female students was discussing women in journalism in one of my classes. The information they provided was a little astonishing.
Women still weren’t making as much as men. Male journalists still outnumbered their female counterparts, except in the role of TV anchors, since looks often trump journalistic ability in that setting, and so on. No way, I thought. This is stuff from decades past, right? I’d never noticed any of it in my own experiences. And yet I couldn’t just dismiss their presentation as erroneous. The information they were presenting seemed credible.
Why, then, was it so difficult for me to accept? Something wasn’t right. Then I took a step back from the situation and
I realized the reason I was struggling.
No matter what sort of disclaimer these women provided, I felt like they were characterizing me, and others like me, as the oppressor, even though I didn’t believe I had personally done anything to suppress women’s access to fair wages, equal opportunities, simple respect or any of the other rights women sometimes have to fight for in the professional world and in society itself.
Now I can’t speak for my gender as a whole, but I do think the discomfort I experienced is fairly common among men, which accounts for the lack of proactive male support for feminism in our society. The real question is why men feel this way.
The term “feminism” encompasses a broad spectrum of thought, all of it related to closing the disparity between men and women in society – some would even argue “humanism” is a term that captures the meaning more completely, since the movement is, at its core, about overall gender equity. Maybe in some ways, the simple fact that the movement bears a name that immediately seems to exclude men is part of the problem. But the discomfort some men feel with feminism goes much deeper than its exclusive sounding moniker.
To start off with, there are a lot of misconceptions in our society about feminism that are residual effects of the 1960s.
Regardless of what we think of gender equity, it’s hard for a lot of men to refrain from picturing feminists as man-hating, bra-burning revolutionaries. I can see it right now, and believe me, I’m shuddering. But that doesn’t mean I don’t support a woman’s right to equality. It just means I’m guilty of harboring the
same sort of stereotypes that already permeate our society.
Another reason is one that I touched on earlier. Many men of the current generation feel like since they believe women are entitled to equality, the battle is over.
Though we occasionally encounter statistics documenting gender discrimination, we are, by and large, oblivious to it in our everyday lives. Most of us don’t feel like we’ve done anything of substance to oppress women and therefore don’t deserve to be inundated with evidence of all the hardship, or condemned as the source of it.
But because altering the societal constructs that produce gender discrimination takes a long time, women have to continue in their plight, which in turn makes a lot of men feel like they’re whining about inequities that no longer exist and are unfairly blaming the men of today.
I especially felt this way at one point in the presentation when I found out that many women in the upper echelons of their careers hesitate to help other women, in the hopes of minimizing the competition at the top.
Hypocrisy was the first thought that entered my mind. But to say that I wouldn’t do the same in that position would be kidding myself, since fear of losing the advantageous position we’ve secured in society is another reason we men get a little uncomfortable with feminism.
Finally, the fact is there’s definitely a vocal minority among feminists who continue to attack men vehemently, thereby perpetuating the stigma surrounding feminism. I actually noticed this last semester when a letter to the editor came into The Spectator criticizing the coverage of an event promoting gender equity. The letter brutally dissected the language used in a news story covering the event, claiming the reporter’s word choice and selection of sources demonstrated ignorance and a lack of concern for women’s rights.
Yes, a man wrote the article. And yes, maybe that man failed to consider ideas or concepts a more gender-conscious person might have. But the whole point of the article was to inform the student body of an event addressing the issue of gender equity.
When that harsh and arguably unfair criticism came down the pipe, it was hard not to view the respondent as a venomous feminist who would never be satisfied.
When it’s all said and done, I think you’d have a fairly difficult time finding a rational, educated man of our generation who doesn’t support women’s rights on the most basic level. But feminism? I don’t know if that’s the way I’d put it.
Brian Reisinger is a junior print journalism major and editorial editor of The Spectator. Reising Issues is a weekly column that appears every Thursday.
