This is your weekly instalment of WTF is going on because, these days, a lot can happen in a week…
This is what a rapist looks like: 'normal'. He might be friendly...perhaps he is actually your friend. That is what a sexual aggressor looks like: your boss, your colleague, your friend's new partner...your new partner.
If the last week or so has reminded us all of anything, it’s this: bad men don’t look like comedy cartoon villains. In some cases, they actually present as the good guys, the nice guys – the ones you thought you were safe with.
In fact, one of the most disarming presentations of sexism and rape culture is when it is hiding behind a plaid shirt, encyclopedic knowledge of The National’s back catalogue, left-wing progressive politics and, even, a professed understanding of and interest in feminism.
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In my early 20s, my friends and I would share warning stories about the progressive chauvinist pigs we knew to keep one another safe. We’ve all met a faux male feminist, who listens to stories about your last break up for a few weeks and then promptly tries to snog you uninvited without asking whether this would be something you’d like.
He’s the guy who explained abortion rights in Northern Ireland to you at the pub, even though he didn't actually know abortion was illegal there until you started talking. He’s the guy you went on a date with that time who told you how ‘inspiring’ your ‘independence’ was and then gripped your arm so hard it bruised and told you that you were ‘frigid’ when you went back to his place for ‘one drink’. He’s the guy who shares ‘woke feminist’ click bait about rape culture and consent on his Facebook timeline but you know he once sat in your friend’s room at university, where he had been invited to watch a film in the very literal sense, and refused to leave when she rejected his advances. He’s your friend at work who messaged you to say ‘this programme really should have a women’s editor’ but, then, when you were managing him on a project went to every possible length to undermine you in front of his male colleagues by making inappropriate remarks about your anatomy.
He catches you off guard. He makes you question everything. He reminds you that you are never, ever, ever safe. Seeming to be feminist has long been a smokescreen for sexual predators and misogynists.
Take Harvey Weinstein. He was a self-styled feminist ally because it was financially expedient for him to appear so. He donated money to Hillary Clinton and, more than this, The Weinstein Company distributed the renowned campus rape documentary – Hunting Ground – yes, this is a man who was at once a proponent of and profiting from rape culture. Indeed, as if he hadn’t ticked enough ally tick boxes, earlier this year he donated $100,000 to Rutgers University towards an endowment for Gloria Steinem.
Weinstein exhibited Type A faux feminist behaviour. However, he was not the first nor will he be the last man to do so. This week has also been a bad week for men in the media, specifically Vice writers. One was fired from Vice’s feminist vertical Broadly, where he was a senior staff writer after a Buzzfeed report revealed that he had been suggesting story ideas to Milo Yiannopoulos over email and, on one occasion, implored him to abuse Lindy West online. ‘Please mock this fat feminist’ Sunderland wrote to Yiannopoulos in 2016. Another male Vice columnist, who was never actually employed by the company, will not be being commissioned by the site again after a post emerged on the Facebook page ‘monitoring the Left’s support for r pe culture’ accusing him of sexual harassment.
What do we call using a progressive platform to abuse women? How do you name the crime of taking feminism in vain? What is the term for a man who is an ally in public but an abuser or harasser in private? Is he a hypocrite? An obsequious and calculated worm? A slimeball?
None of the above. The man who performs feminism for his own ends is, simply, lazy. It’s all too easy to perform progressiveness. You can dress a certain way, work in the right place, say the right thing and know which books to quote in order to sound impressive. It’s another entirely to actually be progressive and live progressively. To do that, to truly be an ally, to actually be a feminist, a man must not only be aware of his privilege and his power but check it whenever he finds himself in a situation with a woman.
That’s what this is about: power. Power and entitlement. Whether they acknowledge it or not, all men have, at some point in their lives, benefited from our sexist and patriarchal society. Systemic inequality legitimises rape culture, the gender pay gap and sexist banter which, far from being harmless, can lead to women feeling forced out of spaces which ought to feel entitled to be in.
To be a feminist, a man must do more than use the term on Twitter. He must, asone of my male friends did in response to #metoo earlier this week, actively engage with a critique of masculinity. He must unpick what it means to be a man and question why certain behaviours occur. He must speak up when he bears witness to misconduct and he must call progressive predators what they are: scum.
And even then, a man who wishes to truly live a feminist life must acknowledge his potential to lug his privilege around with him and be given preferential treatment, even in feminist spaces. A 2008 study from the UCLA Center for the Study of Women called this ‘The Pedestal Effect’. Why does this happen? The author of the study, Tal Peretz, hypothesized that it could be because the ‘pervasive male-supremacy in the rest of society benefits men to such a significant degree that it carries over into feminist spaces’ meaning that men do not, and perhaps cannot, leave their privilege at the door. Indeed, Peretz then goes on to say that it is possible that some feminists, perhaps even unconsciously, ‘actually show preference to men within feminism’ because they are so rare, this creates a sense that ‘men who adopt feminist beliefs must be inherently "special”.’ This means that the behaviour of those men is often not properly scrutinized.
Indeed, beyond The Pedestal Effect, there’s no doubt that we’ve all come across so-called feminist men who seek out feminist women that they can date like some sort of sign of approval. By being with us, they think, their slate will be wiped clean and any sexist behaviour they might exhibit will be given a pass ‘because they go out with a brilliant feminist’.
A man is not a feminist until he truly proves himself to be one. We should not give men gold stars for effort, they ought to earn their stripes before they are praised. This is in their interest too, after all.
A true male feminist is easy to spot, far easier than a faux male feminist for he is, sadly, truly rare. He may not always appear how you would expect him to look, or work where you would expect him to work but when you meet him you just know. He respects you, understands consent on a fundamental level and is aware of the gender-imbalances in our society. He might not bang on about his feminist credentials but he will put these values into practice in everything he does.
Being an ally is not wearing a visibly displayed badge or giving yourself a culturally expedient label to get likes. It’s evident in your behaviour and it’s not always easy. Sometimes being an advocate means saying absolutely nothing and giving way for someone else to speak.
Male feminism is about ‘deeds, not words’. Those deeds are listening, developing self-awareness, giving up power and making space. Nearly a hundred years on, this Suffragette slogan is as relevant as it ever was.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.