Men’s Rights

This will probably be an inflammatory post, so if you’re not in the mood for it, keep trucking.

Gender an racial rights/privilege is one of many ongoing conversations between my husband and I. For him it began when I handed him Guy Garcia’s The Decline of Men, and for me it primarily became and issue when multiple female in my life, over a period of a few months, informed me that I’m not an empowered modern woman because I stay home with the kids. The sticking point to that is their complete ignorance of the fact that I CHOOSE to stay home with the kids because I enjoy it and because it has so far offered me the opportunity to write and to try to build the career I want, rather than the career I have to take to pay bills. Choice is the key point there, and in my opinion being an empowered modern woman is about having the opportunity and the ability to chose what I want to do, rather than being forced into a role deemed appropriate for me, which includes so called feminists and empowered women who feel I should be the one out working and make the man stay home with the kids.

I don’t consider myself a feminist because everyone I’ve met who has proudly declared themselves so have, in my opinion, mutated the idea of equal right for women to mean reversal of rights, where men are forced into the situations women have been for years and women become the powerful, the oppressors. How is this equal rights??

Now I do not mean to imply that all feminists are like this. Clearly, based on the number of wacked out defenders of Roman Polanski, and the number of people who think Chris Brown must have only hit Rhiana because she deserved it, the states where domestic abuse is considered a pre-existing condition, etc we are still in the battle for equal rights. We need women and men fighting for fairness. But fairness does not come at the suppression and discounting of the “privileged” persons.

I admit this is rant is partly inspired by a certain other rant about the “feminizing of science fiction” (which I’m not going to link to.) I don’t understand why catering to a female audience would be, in any way, minimizing the strength of a genre any more that I understand why a female doctor in a practice would weaken the skill of the male doctors in the practice. I also know that the screed in question was not written by a logical, intelligent person so I’m not sure there’s even a point to reacting to it.

But more and more, I am seeing a wave of activists who don’t understand, or seem to want the equal in equal rights. Why is the idea of men’s rigts laughable? Why is it offensive?

My own experiences with GLBTQ activism is a perfect point. I joined a group in college and while some of the members where happy to have me, some blatantly told me I wasn’t really one of them because bisexuality didn’t exist. And when I started dating my husband, he tried to get involved (because he was involved with getting Fairness passed here in Louisville) and was outright rebuked, because he was straight. This, combined with a select few who tried to convince me that dating a man was a horrible thing because they were destined to abuse me and repress me and take away who I was, led to my falling out with the local GLBTQ community. Put simply, Jason and I were not allowed to be equal to them because we weren’t gay.

How is that Fairness? How is that equal?

In many of the ensuing reactions to the SF screed people have called “Men’s rights” a joke. I don’t get that. I know we’re engaged in a fight for equality for minorities and that by the nature the “privileged” white male (remember I don’t believe privilege is universal) must give up some of that power to balance the scales. But some does not mean all.

Another primary case we use in our discussions are the Dove commercials about female body image. I adore Dove’s drive. I completely agree that women need to think they are beautiful at every size, not at the size the media says we should be. I try to compliment my daughter every day, on her physicality and on her actions. I think there are many, many girls, teens and women out there that desperately need to know they are beautiful people.

But where’s the help for boys growing up with the same problems? Where’s the Tyra of male self esteem, to tell them they don’t have to be muscle bound emotionless hard asses to be male?

And I believe these things are linked, because if men weren’t chained to a gender image of their own then gay males and transgender males also wouldn’t be suffering as much for not fitting the stodgy “male” stereotype. Self image and self esteem ARE gender issues, but they are not female, or trans or gay issues.

We all know about anorexia and bulimia, but it is considered a female problem and we focus on building up the health of the women to battle these issues. Meanwhile over a million men also suffer from these eating disorders (numbers taken directly from the National Eating Disorder website). Why is it that we ignore these men?

Well that’s because unlike the women, who are seen as suffering victims in need of help (and yes, absolutely they are) the men are seen as pussies that just need to “man up” and get over it and stop being sissies. Yet this social ideal is common, and ingrained to the point of not even being thought of. How is that equal?

I have a son and a daughter and in raising them I face a lot of the same issues. How do I built their self confidence? How do I help them not be crushed by the world around them and the hardships they must endure?

Recently, much to my rage, a woman in my life has blatantly taken a pro women side when it comes to my children. My daughter is important, and addressed, and invited places and treated as if she is valuable, and my son is completely ignored, excluded from invitations, etc. This is not someone new to my life, this is someone who changed my son’s diapers and played with him as a toddler. The blatant sexism, regardless of which sex it is against infuriates me. I would never tolerate someone excluding my daughter in this way, so why should I tolerate it toward my son?

It is this base question that I see ignored in the gender battles these days. Man hating language, derision and debasing is somehow okay because “men have all the privilege”. What kind of excuse is that? Why is it okay to belittle, ignore and yes, in cases, oppress the majority simply because they are the majority?

I don’t know about you but I’m not trying to switch gender, or racial, or classist roles. I’m trying to eliminate them. I’m not trying to “show the white male what it’s like”. I’m trying to form a world where I have the choice and the opportunity and the respect.

This line between “They’re important/privileged” and “we’re important/privileged” only exists in our heads. It is not us or them. That kind of mentality can never result in equality and respect. We aren’t fighting a battle to put the majority in their places, we’re fighting to eliminate gender, race, religion, sexual identity and preference, etc as a means to define the worthy and the not.

I want to live in a world where jobs, whether it be in a traditional workplace or the job of raising the children and maintaining the house, go to the most qualified and most able person, not to the one who is a certain gender.

In my own life I chose to be the stay at home mom. I had more schooling and a higher paying job when Jason and I began our domestic voyage. I was forced to quit my job for medical reasons during pregnancy, but afterward it would have been almost as easy for me to rejoin the job force as for him to have. But not only did I want to be at home with my kids, if (again) afforded me the time to pursue things that I find empowering, and likewise being in the workforce allowed Jason to pursue things that he finds empowering.

This is not a case of “the man” forcing “the woman” to stay home, it’s a case of partners weighing the options and deciding what is best for them and the family unit (which just so happens to have a traditional shape, but the choices weren’t right for our gender, they were right for us as people). And that’s how is should be, a world where the choice is available and the individual rules over concepts like race and gender and their ilk.

As Ursula Le Guin points out in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” as long as one person remains oppressed and marginalized there can be no freedom, and no utopia.