|
The problem with male feminists
[Al Jazeera] Calling yourself a feminist is easy these days. All you have to do is declare it so. "If you stand for equality, then you're a feminist," actor Emma Watson insisted in 2015. "Sorry to tell you, you're a feminist."In recent years, anyone and everyone has been encouraged to take up the label - men included. Indeed, it is often men who are awarded the most accolades for doing so. When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced not only that he was a feminist, but that he was going to keep calling himself a feminist until it was "met with a shrug", his audience cheered. During a conversation with Melinda Gates last year, he elaborated, saying: "It is so important that we all understand ... it's not only that men can be feminists, it is that men should be feminists, as well." It might sound like progress, but there is a problem with men's proclaimed feminism, and Trudeau exemplifies it. The #MeToo movement has not only opened up the conversation about the ubiquity of sexual harassment and assault, but it has successfully held men accountable for behaviour that, for too long, had been ignored or kept secret. It also encouraged men to start speaking out publicly, in solidarity with women. But what men say in public often contradicts their personal and political actions. It is a convenient time for men to claim they oppose things like rape and groping - this is a simple way to demonstrate the feminist credentials we have been told are effortless to adopt (few, today, would argue against something as innocuous-sounding as "equality"). It is also an opportune moment for men to point the finger at others, and away from themselves, all the while enjoying praise for coming out in defence of women. Trudeau has, in some ways, walked the talk, calling out other men for sexual misconduct. In 2014, he suspended MPs Scott Andrews and Massimo Pacetti from the Liberal caucus on account of harassment complaints made by two female New Democratic Party MPs. But now, Trudeau is subject to a scandal of his own, as a story about him "groping" a female news hound during a 2000 music festival has resurfaced. At the time, Trudeau apologised for his behaviour (in a rather unapologetic way), saying, "I'm sorry. If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward." Today, his response is different. First, he claimed not to "remember any negative interactions", then, just days later, said: "I'm responsible for my side of the interaction, which certainly I don't feel was in any way untoward. But at the same time, this lesson that we are learning is, and I'll be blunt about it, often a man experiences an interaction as being benign or not inappropriate, and a woman, particularly in a professional context, can experience it differently, and we have to respect that and reflect on it." He's not wrong. Men and women do very clearly experience "interactions" differently. While many incidences reported as part of #MeToo are clear abuses of power and acts of violence - the assaults committed by Harvey Weinstein being an obvious example - others demonstrate that it is the way men learn to behave around and engage with women that is a problem. We have grown so accustomed to power imbalances between men and women, that we not only have normalised them, but romanticised and sexualised them. What women experience as intimidating, many men read as harmless, not least in part because women are socialised to avoid conflict and respond politely, even when offended or uncomfortable. When sexual harassment and flirtation are treated as one and the same, and when young men learn to be the sexual aggressors - that to coerce and pressure young women into sex is an acceptable means to a desired end - women are bound to wake up feeling uncomfortable, exploited, disturbed, or even traumatised. Posted by: Fred 2018-07-15 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=518517 |