I want to talk about how we talk sometimes about some men who talk about feminism
(I've been back almost a week, I have internet, but I am also jetlagged so I will only be gradually be catching up with reading everything you all wrote while I was having offline adventures, and also only gradually catching up on telling you about those adventures. Also, I have book news, but I will save that for later today).
I want to take note of, and respond to, a couple of trends I have noticed online the last week or so. Of course both of them have been around longer than that by a long shot, but now is when I want to talk about them.
The first one is this. A fellow, usually someone who makes their living from something publically geeky, will write about how he was doing something with his daughter and had a feminist insight. There will be some memorializing about how the activity in question resonates with his earliest and truest experiences as a boy and young man, how he dearly wishes to share this experience with his child, the degree to which he does, his deep love and admiration for his smart, strong, interesting daughter. There will be a crushing experience--no girl characters, someone saying something terrible to his daughter: the kinds of things girls experience in a gendered way (of course, I say pre-emptively, boys have crushing experiences, and even gendered crushing experiences, but it's not symmetrical, and that's the point). The father is appalled and furious that his daughter experienced this, and wants to let you know about this. Partly he wants to make a statement that he Gets It, partly he wants to speak to other men who might not get it and say "This is why I get it, and why you should to," and sometimes there's even a bit of "what is to be done," that is, a call for specific action or discussion.
The second one is a response. There are lots of different responses out there, many of which amount to "You lovely man! I am so glad you Get It now." But there's this other one that is "I am so tired of you men who only Get It when you have a personal stake in it. Where were you ten years ago before your daughter was born? All you're doing is posing to get praise. I don't buy it. You're self-absorbed, not feminist. I excoriate you."
Of course he's self-absorbed. He is a person who is writing about intimate personal and family experiences on the internet, frequently with adorable pictures of the daughter in question and/or his own smiling self. Seriously, that's not much of an accusation. And yes, of course he wants his readers to think he's brilliant and caring and forward-thinking. Again, not much of an accusation. But to say that his insight is worthless because it came on the heels of a personal experience is odd. Is it that his referencing his own family is to ignore the rest of the world of women and girls who suffer all these and more every day? Is it that some of us don't want fellows like him to stand over here with us?
I'm going to stop here for a second and wander down a side road in my mind. The very first man I heard day that any man with a daughter has to be a feminist was the fellow I married. He told people about looking at the world from this perspective, how he couldn't stand that people would limit his daughter's passage through the world. He was an imperfect feminist, too. He said things at times that he only later realized were awful. But I wouldn't say he suddenly became a feminist because of one of those experiences he talked about. He was developing into a feminist before I met him, and unlike many women I've known, wasn't reluctant to call himself one even around his most misogynist associates. I suspect that at least a large number of these men writing about their feminist insights with their daughters were like him, and the insight did not pop out of nowhere.
But that's a side trip. It's not the important thing. We're better off if the internet is chock full of conversion moments where men who Don't Get It become men who Get It and write impassioned personal pieces about it replete with cute photos and references to beloved cultural icons. We're better off if every self-absorbed man on the internet decides he's a feminist now because he has some shocking personal experience. These men vote: they spend money: they talk to other men: they even talk to men I can't stand to be in the same room with. No, you don't need to respect them more than the woman who has spent her life fighting the good fight at every turn and getting beat for it. But why spend your bile on them? We have actual enemies in this world, and they are better organized than to attack the person who wishes to give them support.
I want to take note of, and respond to, a couple of trends I have noticed online the last week or so. Of course both of them have been around longer than that by a long shot, but now is when I want to talk about them.
The first one is this. A fellow, usually someone who makes their living from something publically geeky, will write about how he was doing something with his daughter and had a feminist insight. There will be some memorializing about how the activity in question resonates with his earliest and truest experiences as a boy and young man, how he dearly wishes to share this experience with his child, the degree to which he does, his deep love and admiration for his smart, strong, interesting daughter. There will be a crushing experience--no girl characters, someone saying something terrible to his daughter: the kinds of things girls experience in a gendered way (of course, I say pre-emptively, boys have crushing experiences, and even gendered crushing experiences, but it's not symmetrical, and that's the point). The father is appalled and furious that his daughter experienced this, and wants to let you know about this. Partly he wants to make a statement that he Gets It, partly he wants to speak to other men who might not get it and say "This is why I get it, and why you should to," and sometimes there's even a bit of "what is to be done," that is, a call for specific action or discussion.
The second one is a response. There are lots of different responses out there, many of which amount to "You lovely man! I am so glad you Get It now." But there's this other one that is "I am so tired of you men who only Get It when you have a personal stake in it. Where were you ten years ago before your daughter was born? All you're doing is posing to get praise. I don't buy it. You're self-absorbed, not feminist. I excoriate you."
Of course he's self-absorbed. He is a person who is writing about intimate personal and family experiences on the internet, frequently with adorable pictures of the daughter in question and/or his own smiling self. Seriously, that's not much of an accusation. And yes, of course he wants his readers to think he's brilliant and caring and forward-thinking. Again, not much of an accusation. But to say that his insight is worthless because it came on the heels of a personal experience is odd. Is it that his referencing his own family is to ignore the rest of the world of women and girls who suffer all these and more every day? Is it that some of us don't want fellows like him to stand over here with us?
I'm going to stop here for a second and wander down a side road in my mind. The very first man I heard day that any man with a daughter has to be a feminist was the fellow I married. He told people about looking at the world from this perspective, how he couldn't stand that people would limit his daughter's passage through the world. He was an imperfect feminist, too. He said things at times that he only later realized were awful. But I wouldn't say he suddenly became a feminist because of one of those experiences he talked about. He was developing into a feminist before I met him, and unlike many women I've known, wasn't reluctant to call himself one even around his most misogynist associates. I suspect that at least a large number of these men writing about their feminist insights with their daughters were like him, and the insight did not pop out of nowhere.
But that's a side trip. It's not the important thing. We're better off if the internet is chock full of conversion moments where men who Don't Get It become men who Get It and write impassioned personal pieces about it replete with cute photos and references to beloved cultural icons. We're better off if every self-absorbed man on the internet decides he's a feminist now because he has some shocking personal experience. These men vote: they spend money: they talk to other men: they even talk to men I can't stand to be in the same room with. No, you don't need to respect them more than the woman who has spent her life fighting the good fight at every turn and getting beat for it. But why spend your bile on them? We have actual enemies in this world, and they are better organized than to attack the person who wishes to give them support.