Feminism and Gender Enforcement

I know most of you are probably expecting this to be a diatribe about how feminism has vilified and demonized male sexuality, and criticized the aggressive qualities (ambition, achievement, competitiveness, assertiveness) of masculinity that have been so useful to society since the dawn of time.

I mean, it's no secret to those in the know that feminism is all too happy to reinforce, manipulate and even codify the cultural norms surrounding maleness--in domestic violence discourse, policy and law, sexual assault discourse, policy and law, family law, etc.

But what I want to talk about is how feminism has manipulated and enforced other masculine qualities that most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about in any depth with respect to feminism. I mean, if society has been well-served by the men who were ambitious and high-achieving--the scientists, inventors, artists, leaders, etc, who inhabited the upper echelons of social status--well, for every William Shakespeare or Henry V or Sir Isaac Newton, there were a thousand or ten thousand male cogs in the machinery of society, dutifully bending their backs and making the whole thing work, often at the expense of their health, their happiness and their lives.

These men were dutiful, honorable, responsible, self-sacrificing, generous, hard-working, decent, and devoted to those in their care. "Nose to the grindstone", "get 'er done", "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do", "grow up, get a job, do something with your life."

I've often thought that there's not that much difference between a "mangina" and what has always been thought of as a "real man". Both manginas and real men are generous, thoughtful of others (especially women), and put the benefit of others (especially women) before themselves. Manginas have been accused, probably accurately, of behaving this way out of a (mostly vain) hope of being rewarded with pussy. Real men, throughout history, did this because it needed to be done, and because up until very recently, a real man's efforts and sacrifices were worth the rewards he received, even if those rewards only consisted of social acknowledgment and appreciation and the returned devotion of a woman.

A real man will help a woman move her shit, and expect a thank you. A mangina will go way out of his way to ingratiate himself by helping her, and then tolerate being treated like an asshole for it.

And "guys"? When a woman needs to lug her furniture from one apartment to another, "guys" duck her calls and let them go to voice mail. And if she wants a commitment? Forget that shit, he's got his XBox.

The collective feminist gnashing of teeth over this state of affairs has been no less frenzied than that of more traditional arms of society, as they all scratch their heads and wonder whatever happened to real men.

We've gotten so used to men's sense of duty, obligation and responsibility toward women, children and society, that we didn't even know what we had until we realized it was going extinct. And you see the anger and lamentation over men abandoning those roles nowhere more than in what many feminists have to say about "guys".

Guys--or MGTOW--are characterized by feminists and traditionalists alike as irresponsible to the point of repugnance, commitment-phobic, losers, Peter Pans, wasting their lives, and refusing to "grow up". Keep in mind, these men aren't welfare cases. They're self-sufficient, not leeching off their families or society. They don't peel up and down suburban streets at 3 AM waking up babies and kicking over mailboxes, or refuse to pay their taxes. But as Kay Hymowitz once put it, they're free to live in "pig heaven" until women get sick of it and go to a sperm bank.

But think about what this kind of criticism is actually saying about our expectations--even feminists' expectations--of men.

The complaint is not that they're a burden on others or on society, but that they refuse to take on anyone else's burdens. This is a far cry from the very occasional, heavily-qualified criticisms we hear of women--and utter condemnation of men--when they willingly take on a responsibility by, say, having children, and then fail to live up to it. No, this is all about, "You men are not doing what women want, and what women want is to be given what they want."

Women have spent the last 50 to 75 years challenging the roles they used to be stuck in, sort of negotiating and renegotiating with society as to exactly what was acceptable and what was pushing too far too fast. They've cast off their shackles, been free to define themselves as women, and to put personal fulfilment first. Until recently, for men, it's been mostly business as usual--they've worked, achieved, devoted themselves to women and children, and continued to put the good of others before themselves.

And I think women, and society, sort of figured that men would just keep doing it--working, being responsible, being dutiful and honorable, toiling and sacrificing for the betterment of society or the benefit of women, achieving, building, etc... even though a huge number of the benefits men were given in exchange for these efforts and for putting others first have been effectively removed. What used to be a well-compensated bondage is now an entirely onerous form of imprisonment. 

I mean really, how long can you expect a man to continue living up to those expectations when society stops respecting or appreciating them for it, when society only threatens to take away what he's built and what he loves, shoves its hands deeper into his pockets, and constantly tells him he's an idiot, or evil, or unnecessary, or a piece of shit?

A lot of feminist writers have been taking great pains to tell everyone for years about what giant assholes men are and have always been. And even when men do awesome things, like working around the clock digging children out of a collapsed school after a tsunami, it's just another opportunity to remind people how the chaos of the situation puts children at risk from pedophiles (who are always men, of course). When men die saving lives, they're called police officers or firefighters, but when they mow down a bunch of innocent people at a mall, they're gunmen. Hell, even the millions of men whose lives have been callously and brutally thrown away on battlefields through history--even their suffering and tragedy can be appropriated by feminists to prove to everyone who'll listen that women have always had it worse. 

Can anyone blame men for finally starting to say fuck this shit, why try to cram yourself into that mold if you're just going to be called an asshole? Some--PUAs, most notably--are even saying, "Fuck, if I have the name, I might as well have the game."

For the first time in history, men are starting to do what makes them happy, even if it doesn't benefit women or society, hell, even if it pisses women and society off. And EVERYBODY'S freaking out about it.

I'm not gonna lie, it's a tough pill for everyone to swallow, because those characteristics--duty, honor, devotion, self-sacrifice, responsibility--are the very characteristics that societies are largely built on. Without them, it's every human for him/herself, isn't it?

And feminism--which pushed women to live for their own fulfilment, to be true to themselves, to break out of the roles they were stuck in, who insist patriarchal gender norms harm everyone--should be celebrating men's increasing casting-off of their shackles, of men's smashing of patriarchy by eschewing traditional masculinity in favor of smoking pot with their buddies. But they aren't. Because feminism itself has been as dependent on those particular male roles as individual women have been throughout human history.

I mean, the entire feminist movement, and society's reaction to it (swift capitulation), boils down to the interaction of two traditional gender norms, right? Women wanted to be protected, provided for and given the things they want and need. And men have, for the most part, kept doing that, for decades, even as what women say they want and need has changed. Mostly male governments have passed laws and enacted public policy that gave women what they wanted (freedom, protection, provision, support, and opportunity) and individual men have also continued to keep giving women what they say they want and need (freedom, provision, support, understanding, accommodation).

Those are the two patriarchal gender norms that have been at work throughout the entire timeline of the feminist movement--women asking for something, and men doing it or going along with it to make women happy. So I suppose it's been something of a shock to women when men started putting their foot down and saying, "Yeah, I don't think so. Me first now. I got shit of my own to deal with." The men's rights movement has only driven this point home for feminists and women in general, and it's like two gender norms going kablooie all at once--women being indulged in their needs and desires, and men being indulgent of them.

And the most radical feminists? I kind of think of radical feminism itself as a kind of collective shit-test. Sort of a "Are you guys really gonna let us get away with this? Huh, I guess you are... Okay, how about this? We're really talking some shit about you now. You gonna let that stand? Hmmm.... Okay, well, I bet you're not gonna put up with THIS!" 

And the longer people have put up with it and let them get away with it, the higher they've escalated the test. The collective temper tantrum that's begun over men starting to put their foot down--whether it's through activism and advocacy for the equality of men, or through playing XBox and refusing to devote themselves to doing what women want them to--rivals the antics of any three-year-old denied candy in a grocery store check-out line.

And me? Do I want men to cast off those roles they've had throughout history? To be honest, no. Those roles are beneficial to society, and they get shit done that needs to get done. But do I blame men for saying, "Hells, no, I only look out for me now"? Why would they do anything different? There's no individual benefit in men living up to those standards anymore--not even appreciation--only risk, punishment and the reward of being called an asshole no matter what you do. 

Who the fuck needs that?

Woman and Black are Not the Same Thing

The other day, I had someone who identified himself as a feminist man, tell me that he is certain that women are more disadvantaged than men in our society because men hold more positions of power and influence than women.

I told him that when examining patterns of oppression, advantage, disadvantage and privilege, one cannot look only at the top. One must look downward as well (to the needless deaths, the incarcerated, the homeless, the suicides, the impoverished, etc), and frankly, men dominate the numbers there, too. They always have, and their domination of these areas has become even more lopsided relative to women as women break through the glass ceiling without concurrently breaking through the glass basement.

He replied that looking to those in power has always been a good indicator of privilege and oppression, citing apartheid South Africa and Jim Crow America as examples. Whites at the top, therefore whites are privileged. When I asked him if he did indeed feel that the experience of women throughout history was remotely comparable to the experiences of blacks during slavery, he replied "Absolutely."

I was shocked. And a little sick to my stomach. And I began to realize one of the reasons why I've been seeing more and more women of color throw up their hands and disavow mainstream feminism.

Anyone who has read my piece on Patriarchy will know that in my view, patriarchy was not a system of oppression, but a collective strategy for dealing with a world that was very different from what the world looks like now. Differences in biology that go just a little deeper than the color of one's skin, and a history of public sphere labor that more closely resembled the work portrayed on "Dirty Jobs" (only without the machinery) than "The Office" made it essentially impossible throughout most of humanity's time on this planet for women to collectively put their hands to "men's work".

The most effective team strategy humans ever stumbled on for perpetuation of the species, one that has been seen in some form or other throughout most of human history, was the pairing of a resource-gathering unit with a child-caring unit. Given the fact that until very recently, any sexually active woman was, or could have been, pregnant at any given time, that she was the sole member of the team who had the necessary equipment to provide food to a child in its infancy, and that the vast majority of public sphere work was either beyond her physical capabilities or more ably performed by the larger, stronger, faster man, it should really come as no surprise that the vast majority of societies have always arranged themselves this way. It was, up until recently, virtually impossible for men and women to swap roles on the team.

Then the nature of public sphere work began to shift dramatically with the Industrial Revolution, assembly lines, and automation, allowing women entry into jobs outside the home and giving them the tools to be able to compete with men. But even so, it wasn't until women got control over their fertility (the pill) and were provided with realistic options that eliminated their children's physical dependence on them and only them (bottles, formula, disposable diapers, regulated daycare providers), AND the workplace became dominated by service jobs rather than resource ones, that women gained some serious equality in the working world and became 50% of the workforce.

To say that this means men and women are equal is...disingenuous. Women and men are not equal and can never be, because men are still larger and stronger than women, and women are still the ones who gestate and lactate. What it does mean is that both public and private sphere work have changed in such as way as to make the biological differences between the sexes largely irrelevant. A father cannot lactate, but he can bottle-feed a baby as well as any woman can, and so can a daycare provider. A woman could never have been reasonably be expected to cut down trees with a handsaw for a living or harvest grain with a scythe, but she *can* file documents, run an office, diagnose an illness, operate a forklift, drive a taxi, enter data on a computer or work a cash register as ably as any man.

The biological differences between men and women are not even remotely the same as the skin-deep differences between black people and white people. Women's unique gendered disadvantages throughout history can ALL be traced back to those very real and significant biological differences between the sexes. Women were forced into their roles not by men, but by reality. And men's options were, realistically, not much more varied than women's.

The disadvantages blacks faced under slavery, and the ones they still struggle to overcome even now? Those disadvantages owed to nothing more than the color of their skin, and what that signified with respect to their status as persons to those in power. How on earth can the two be considered even remotely comparable?

Moreover, when we examine oppression with respect to men and women and their relative places in society through history, we see men at the top and men at the bottom. If we looked only at the top, as feminists have been, and are still, wont to do, we could say men were the privileged class and women oppressed. But if we look only at the bottom, and the expectations and obligations required of men that were not required of women, we could just as accurately and justifiably say that women were the privileged class and men the oppressed.

While there were downsides to being a woman, there were upsides to being one as well.

• She might have less freedom of movement, but she had a greater expectation of safety and protection than a man did.
• She might not be able to own property, but she had an often legally codified entitlement to financial support from men.
• She might not be able to work outside the home, but at the same time, she wasn't expected to risk life, health and limb earning money.
• She may have been "stuck" at home with the kids, but she wasn't "stuck" for 12 hours a day in a coal mine, either.
• She may have been under her husband's authority, but if she committed a crime, she wouldn't be held fully accountable for her actions.
• The upper echelons of power and influence were mostly (not completely) barred to her, but she couldn't be ordered against her will to die for her country, either.

When we examine the pattern of oppression, disadvantage and privilege with respect to black people and white people during slavery, things are rather more...uh...black and white. You looked up, and you saw all whites. You looked down to the very bottom and you saw mostly blacks. And things still very much look that way even now--the higher up you go in the strata of society, the whiter things look. And blacks still disproportionately dominate the areas of greatest disenfranchisement--the poor, the incarcerated, the uneducated. All based on a difference that is no more relevant than eye color or the size of one's nose.

And what, pray tell, were the "upsides" to being black in America during slavery? Can anyone here name a single white slave owner who ever died to save the lives of his black slaves? Who ever gave up a space in a lifeboat to his black slave and chose himself to go down with a ship? Who ever stood with a rifle between his black slaves and an enemy to defend their lives, rather than his right to own them?

Can anyone even imagine a white slave owner working 16 hours in a field while his black slaves stayed inside and kept his house tidy, then coming home and sharing the fruits of his labors with his black slaves?

Did a black woman who was the sexual partner of a white man have any expectation of respect, lifelong provision or shelter, or of sharing the benefits of his quality of life and his social status? Or was she just an object of the moment, free to be used and cast aside at will? Did a black man who was obligated to obey his owner's wife have any legal right or recourse when she turned around and pointed a finger and claimed he raped her? Or was he swinging from a tree within hours?

Can anyone imagine a reality where a white slave owner would perform physically gruelling or dangerous work his black slave was incapable of? Or would he simply set more slaves to the task, or work his slave to his death, or discard his used-up slave and buy a better one? If women were truly oppressed by men, would they have been spared the most onerous and dangerous work because they were less physically capable of it, or would men have simply assigned more women to the task?

Can anyone here name a single black person, man or woman, who rose to a state-sanctioned position of serious political power during slavery? Off the top of my head, I can name a fuck-ton of women who have been heads of state, going as far back as Ancient Egypt. The greatest and most notable black leaders emerging from Jim Crow America and apartheid South Africa rose to influence by opposing the government, not being elected to it, because they had no avenue to power within a system that oppressed them.

Women have always been less likely to be punished than men for the crimes they commit, and less severely punished. When, under slavery or Jim Crow laws, did black people enjoy this advantage? While women historically had to defer to men, in return for this disadvantage they have always been held less accountable for their actions. Black slaves, on the other hand, were under the total authority of their owners, and could be (and often were) brutally punished or executed--without trial--for crimes not their own.

Even now in these "enlightened" times, blacks are not only more likely to be convicted of crimes than whites, but their sentences are disproportionately long compared to whites. At the same time, while women no longer have to defer to men in any aspect of life in the west, they are STILL not held as accountable for their crimes as men are.

While a woman had less freedom of movement than a man, she had a socially and legally enforced expectation of safety and protection from the harshness of the world. Black slaves, on the other hand, had NO freedom of movement, and no right to any expectation of protection from those in authority over them, or from greater society.

Women had no money of "their own" (once they were married, anyway), but the most difficult, dirty, nasty, smelly, dangerous, physically arduous jobs (other than childbirth) belonged to someone else. And slaves? Do I really need to outline how it was downside all around for them in this area too?

When one wishes to identify groups which oppress and those which are oppressed, one simply cannot look only at the top of society and draw all your conclusions from who occupies those positions. In order to be oppressors, a group doesn't just have to occupy positions of power, but they have to, you know, do some oppressing. And while the biological differences between men and women could be said to be oppressive to both parties with respect to the expectations, obligations, choices, freedoms and rights afforded to each group, the oppressor responsible for patriarchy was not men, but nature.

The nature of human sex differences and the nature of the world we lived in, wherein some choices were simply not realistically open to either gender. Roles were rigidly enforced because rigid enforcement was beneficial to the stability of society. Was a man "oppressed" by women because his inability to lactate forced him into the role of provider rather than a possibly preferred role of nurturer? How then can we characterize a woman as oppressed by men because her inability to control her fertility and the limitations of her physical size and strength kept her from earning her own money working in a foundery?

The only quantifiable, material, functional and practical difference between black people and white people? Skin color. That's it. And yet it is black people, who won the right to vote before women did, who are facing a more difficult and arduous struggle for equality with whites than the women who have breezed to equal, near equal, or better than equal status with men in the space of a century. It is black people--not women--who even now inhabit an average position of lower social, educational, legal and economic status than white people in America, who are still disproportionately represented among the incarcerated, the poor, and a dozen other areas of real disenfranchisement.

And that's because the oppression of black people in America was--and is--really-and-for-true, one-way, genuine oppression that looked NOTHING like the experience of women relative to men at any point in human history.

Patriarchy was a cost/benefit partnership where men and women each bore some of the costs and reaped some of the benefits. Slavery was a cost/benefit system of oppression where all the benefits were reaped by one party and all the costs borne by the other.

To compare the experience of women--a valued, protected and provided-for class--throughout history with that of black people under slavery and apartheid is a slap in the face to every single black man who died wrongfully imprisoned in South Africa, to every single black woman who was forced onto her back by her white owner, to every single black man who was ever executed by a mob without trial, to every single black person who lived and died in bondage or in a concentration camp, and every single black person who still struggles to overcome the lingering and devastating effects of the utterly baseless, unjustifiable and man-made oppression of slavery and segregation.

So I just wanted to repeat, so we're all clear on this:

Women and Black are NOT the same thing.

No Seriously, What About teh Man-Hatrz?

Okay, I just read something kind of encouraging on No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz?

I mean, I do indeed believe it's time that the Sisterhood aimed some of its missiles at a few of the loonies who march(ed) in its ranks. It's long past time someone called out Mary Daly's misandry, transphobia and racism, her delusions of female supremacy and superiority, and her paranoid equation of Man = Oppressor.

But I'm sorry, ladies. It's too little, too late. I don't understand how you can't see this. You can't revoke anyone else's Feminism Card, and you certainly can't revoke it after their death. This is because, as I've been told time and again by feminists, Feminism is not a club with rules of membership, it's not a political party, it's not an ideological monolith with a rigid set of beliefs and ideals that are required of every member. Every single self-identifying feminist has a right to define "what feminism means to them". This is something I hear ALL THE TIME from, you guessed it, self-identified feminists.

Mary Daly was a feminist. She was a feminist because she said so. That is literally ALL it takes to be a feminist. And what's more, she had every right to label herself a feminist. And you, Doctormindbeam, have no right to take that label away from her. Neither by consensus, nor by fiat.

I mean, sure, it's a step in the right direction to try to distance a movement whose members--some of them, anyway--are in favor of gender equality, from those who are bigoted, hate-filled, intellectually dishonest and batshit fucking insane. But it's as ineffectual as the constant refrain I hear from other self-identified feminists that "not all feminists are like that!" or "no true feminist would advocate for such a thing."

The only thing that makes a feminist a feminist is an interest in women's issues and the self-applied label of feminist. A person advocating mass chemical castration of males for the protection of women is a feminist if he/she decides that's what to call him/herself. This is the way it works.

I mean, it's really nice of you gals to think about cleaning house, but, frankly, the place has turned into an episode of hoarders over the last several decades. What started out as a gorgeous mansion built on a foundation of equality, fairness and humanity, now looks more like Monster House. No matter how hard all of you work, and how many cans of Febreze you use, the place is still going to be filled with the lingering stench of the rotting corpses of dozens of bigoted, man-hating, self-labeled feminists and their cats. Mary Daly should have been evicted the first night everyone sat around the dinner table and heard her spouting her bullshit, not 40 years after she first started leaving her shit lying around and cluttering up the place with effigies of dead men. Certainly not a year after her body went cold.

Sometimes shit gets left to fall apart for so long, that the job of clean-up and repair is either impossible or not worth the investment. Sometimes the place has been left in disrepair for so long, the floorboards are rotted, the foundation is sinking, and there's nothing for it but to condemn the place and move.

And seriously, it's not as if you don't have your share of undesirable squatters sharing the house with you even now, stinking up the place with their more modern style of bigotry and misandry.

Some things feminists have been up to of late:

• Arguing to keep the gender-profiling and discrimination against male DV victims in VAWA unchanged.
• Lobbying--and succeeding--in mandating lighter sentences for female criminals in the UK.
• Lobbying for a shut-down of women's prisons in the UK.
• Asserting that Women as a group feel--and should feel--threatened by Men as a group.
• Arguing that despite women comprising 60% of university enrolment, that it's both "too soon" to do away with women-only scholarships, and sexist to consider men-only scholarships.
• Opposing the changing of retirement age for women in the UK to bring it in line with retirement age for men.
• Lobbying to lower the amount of child support arrearage that will result in jail time.
• Opposing a presumption of shared parenting after divorce, using language that demonizes men as abusers and portrays women as victims.
• Defending the practice of routine infant male genital mutilation, citing that it is NOTHING like female genital mutilation.
• Freaking right the fuck out because milk producers implied in their ads that men are the primary victims of PMS, because they have to live with PMSing women, while cheering Hillary Clinton's assertion that the wives, daughters and mothers of men who are dead, are the primary victims of war

These people can't be evicted, ladies. There's no feminist landlord to evict them, no condo association, no property management company, because feminism doesn't work like that. They get to live in Feminist House with you for as long as they choose to call themselves feminists.

When I talk about the problem of rape, I sometimes speak of the inherent value of what many perceive to be "victim-blaming".  That is, if there were decisions a woman made that led to her being easily victimized, it is not only appropriate to examine them, it's beneficial (arguably necessary) to the recovery process. And I've argued that expecting society to protect women while refusing to expect women to take some responsibility for their own safety, is a disempowerment of women. It is taking power from them as individuals, stripping them of agency. It is telling them they are objects that shit just happens to, rather than participants in their lives, and that this is the way the world should work.

I believe the way I do because if there's no other lesson life has taught me, it's that we cannot control the actions, behavior, thoughts, motivations, goals and emotions of other people--we can only control our own. And because of the nature of feminism as a self-applied, self-defined label, no individual feminist has any control over what other feminists will do in the name of feminism. You can't kick anyone else out of the club. The only membership you can revoke is your own.

I mean, how much time and energy are you people going to waste trying to sweep up after these people? How much time and energy are you willing to put into arguing amongst yourselves, trying to throw people out who won't go, tidying up their trash, running damage control, and picking their empties up from the yard so the neighbors won't think you're all a bunch of irresponsible jerks? Isn't there something more useful you could be doing?

And why the hell are you so attached to the word, anyway? Words mean things, people. And while the connotations and even denotations of words evolve over time, right now, in common parlance, feminism doesn't mean what you think it means. It has come to mean something else to a growing number of people who aren't feminists, even if they believe in equality.

By your stubborn and single-minded attachment to the label "feminism", you do more harm than you can possibly know. By refusing to abandon the house, you give every man-hating kook who lives there more legitimacy than they deserve.

Let me put it this way. Here's the Senate Judiciary Committee, listening to testimony regarding whether to change VAWA or leave its bigoted, anti-male legislation as it is. Many people are testifying as "experts" on domestic violence, and many of these people are in favor of leaving VAWA unchanged. Many of them are feminists. And they're saying, "Women must be protected. As a feminist, I implore you to keep VAWA as it is."

Then the head of the Committee looks out his metaphorical window and sees millions upon millions of other feminists crowded under a banner that says "WE ARE FEMINISTS". Unbeknownst to him, they are debating and arguing and nitpicking each other, and some of them may even be strenuously trying to convince the others that VAWA is wrongheaded and must be changed. But all he sees are millions of feminists, and some people in front of him who claim to be speaking as feminists, and all those millions of feminists on the street outside his window add weight to every single word those few feminists have said before the Committee. Even if he knows not every feminist is in agreement on every issue, their association with THESE feminists, in front of him today, add to the credibility of what they've said.

By calling yourselves the same thing that these misandric, sexist, intellectually dishonest assholes call themselves, you are giving a perception of unity of purpose with them, whether you like it or not. Every single self-identified feminist provided the ballast that a few feminist-identified nutbars needed to ram their mandatory lower sentencing for women through in the UK.

I hold a lot of beliefs that could be said to be feminist beliefs. I've written articles on women's issues that were lauded by feminists. But I see a lot of harm done in the name of feminism, too. I choose not to call myself feminist, because I don't want my presence under the banner to add any weight to the efforts of those who would do harm in feminism's name. If I call myself feminist, I throw my vote in with the defenders of VAWA, whether I want to or not.

I won't do that. Why are you?

It's time to grow up, ladies

I talk a lot about agency, though I often refer to it as "owning your shit". It's been my experience that life is a lot happier when a person has a sense of real agency, when they acknowledge the cause/effect nature of existence, and when they feel as if they directly affect what happens to them.

Some examples of peoples, both throughout history and in modern times, who lack and have lacked agency? Um...slaves. Peasants. Serfs. Plebes. Refugees. The impoverished. A lot of women in a lot of places in the world. And a lot of men, too.

Agency is important in order to feel like a self-actualized human being. Agency is what gets you all pumped up and proud when you made a sweet day trade and earned a cool $4000 in a few hours, because you are just that awesome. Agency is what also prevents you from blaming it entirely on the market, that idiot friend of yours who emailed you the stock tip, or asshole bankers if you lost money on the deal. Because dude, you're the one who bought the stocks, right? Nobody made you do it. And if you sank your life savings into it, well, the buck stops with you once your spouse finds out.

Agency is a double-edged sword. It isn't just about the right to succeed on your own merits. It's about the right to fuck up on them, too.

It requires individual liberty and individual power, as well as personal responsibility and accountability. It's not just the means to make your life kick-ass largely through your own talent and effort, it's the opportunity to fuck everything up and be stuck owning the steaming pile of crap that results. Whether it's a four-poster with tulle trim and Egyptian cotton sheets or a urine-soaked cot, you made the bed and you lie in it. Agency is being able to claim credit for your accomplishments, and agency is accepting blame for your failures. And for much of history, ordinary men didn't have it any more than women did, because for ordinary anyone, individual everything was constrained by social norms, economic reality, and very limited rights and freedoms.

Take sexual agency. This is something everyone wants, and something most of us believe men have always had, but let's examine the dynamics minutely:

1) Sexual Power--or the "goods". 

Might surprise you all to hear that this is something women have always had. In fact, for many women throughout history, it was the only power they ever had, and it's always been rooted in their ability to bear children. In both social and evolutionary terms, sperm are cheap and plentiful, and eggs are scarce and expensive. An ejaculation is worth nothing unless it can find an adequate rental space to set up operations. As with anything in real estate, it's all about location, location, location. If men wanted to procreate in any socially acceptable way and have anything to do with their offspring, they had to get married. Women could be very choosy when selecting to whom they wanted to rent their uterus, and they still can.

It might also surprise you all to hear that sexual power is and has always been the weakest aspect of male sexuality. I understand, this does not jive with our collective cultural images of Matthew McConaughey, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and George Clooney all hanging out together drinking martinis, looking sexy and suave, and tripping over all the ladies who are dying to fuck them. News flash for you, girls. Most men are not Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Most men aren't even Steve Buscemi. They're Steve Buscemi without Steve Buscemi's fame, talent or money. 

The difference between male and female sexual power is perfectly illustrated by this little clip.

2) Sexual Liberty--or the right to make decisions concerning your own sexuality. 

Up until recently, only men had this option without risk of public shame and censure, and only if they were straight. This was because female sexuality was seen as a commodity, a woman's primary asset in life, and she was not to be trusted to make sound decisions concerning it. Her hymen went to her husband, and her fidelity was paramount within marriage, because in the days before DNA testing, the only assurance a man had that the kids he was hauling coal or digging post-holes to support were his was the fidelity of his wife. And while there have always been women who exercised a similar level of the sexual liberty allowed to men, they were women of disrepute, and unsuitable for marriage. Only those with sufficient wealth and social status in their own right could get away with such behavior and still hold their heads up in polite society, let alone hope to find a man willing to put his trust in them.

A man's peccadilloes were no one's business but his own, since he could easily assure his wife that her children were, indeed, her own. Of course, most men were more like Steve Buscemi than George Clooney, and the wife and legitimate kids had first dibs on whatever resources he had. So the number of men who even had the wherewithal to stray to any degree were pretty damn few. As you can imagine, though men may have had the freedom to dip their wicks wherever they wished, the majority of them had pretty much no real opportunity to do so without forking over a spare tuppence in exchange for services rendered. The only men with any meaningful sexual freedom were the wealthy rakes of historical romance novels.

3) Personal Sexual Responsibility--or guarding the treasure.

Men, by and large, have always been sexually responsible. Not only for themselves, but for their sisters, mothers, daughters, wives and to a large degree, any respectable woman they came across. For every cad who would dare to rape a woman, there were a dozen or more who would rescue her from his evil clutches. Men were just as aware of the rules of polite society as women were. While dressing to attract sexual attention has always been de rigueur for women, men were expected to restrain themselves at all time. They did so not out of concern for themselves, because they had no sexual treasure to guard, remember? Sperm are a dime a dozen--it's the eggs and uterus that are worth a fortune. Therefor there was no shame in being a womanizing rake, if one could actually manage it. Men restrained themselves out of concern for "decent women", and what decent women were worth to society. Decent women had a treasure to guard, and it was everyone's responsibility to help guard it. Rape was the direst crime a man could commit, because it was a crime against the warp and weft of the entire social fabric--a crime against man, woman and marriage itself.

Women who were not decent, those of disrepute? They were on their own. They had sexual liberty, but in exchange for it, they gave up any semblance of a traditional life, and the protection of society. No reasonable man would go running to defend her honor, because she had none. Nor did society see much point in protecting a woman's sexual value if she herself cared nothing about it. 

Single, respectable women? Their only responsibility was to never do anything to bring their virtue into question. The circumstances under which they were permitted to interact with the world were very constrained--out of necessity--and the rules crystal clear. She need not exercise any form of personal, subjective judgment. The rules were such that no judgment was ever required, and as a result, in some cases the first moment a couple found themselves alone together was in their marriage bed. The higher social status the woman, the more valuable her virtue and the more closely it was guarded by everyone. An indiscretion could destroy a woman's prospects of marriage. A rape? Complete and utter social ruin for her, and often death by vigilante justice for the rapist. Rape was a crime against a woman's family, against her present or future husband, and against society--of all the injured parties the wronged woman was considered the least important of the aggrieved. If she and her parents were very lucky, the rapist was of reasonable social status and unattached and the rape not public knowledge, at which point they'd run him to the altar with a shotgun so that everyone in question could save face. And you thought rape victims were "punished" by society now, didn't you?

4) Sexual accountability--or "You break it, you bought it."

Ordinary men have always been stuck with it. Rich men could buy their way out of it, if need be. It wasn't that long ago in the grand scheme of things that a man who "got an unmarried girl pregnant" (as if he was the only one involved in said impregnation) was expected to step up, "do the right thing" and take responsibility for his transgression. Actual really and for true forcible rape? You know that dude is doing time, if the crime could be proved.

Because of the strict social mores that had, up until the sexual revolution, dictated, controlled and repressed sexual interactions between men and women, and because of outdated notions that a "fallen woman's" honor deserved no protection at all, women often faced an uphill legal battle if there was any indication she'd "misbehaved" in any way prior to the assault. Victim-blaming? Certainly. But a very great deal of the attitude behind it, IMO, was an outmoded thought process that still exists in many, many, many women today--that the sexual purity of a woman (at least in a traumatic situation such as rape) is a thing of great importance to her, to her future husband, and to society. And if a woman held that purity to be of no value--if she'd given it away willy nilly--there was no virtue for anyone to defend. It was not so much that a man had some right to rape a woman who dressed slutty or had slept with a lot of people, it was that the practical, real world value of her sexual purity was gone. A man who raped a slut was like a man who'd stolen the equivalent of a chocolate bar, not one who'd robbed someone of their entire life savings. Still a crime? Sure. A crime against man, woman and society? Not so much.

Women used to have sexual accountability, but it was expressed in very specific ways. And it wasn't much fun. Just think of that woman from the 1700s who'd been forced by her family to marry the man who'd raped her, and you'll get what I'm saying. The consequences she'd pay if she'd brought her dishonor on herself in any way? Absolutely life-destroying. A woman who'd put herself in a position where rape could occur was a woman whose behavior couldn't be trusted. At best, she might be foolish enough to do it again. At worst, she'd done it on purpose and her "rape" was actually consensual sex, in which case, she really couldn't be trusted. 

I used to believe men had sexual agency, and perhaps a small subset of men--those who are/were the most sexually attractive--actually did and do. But remember, agency requires four ingredients: power, liberty, responsibility and accountability. For most men before the sexual revolution, the constraints of society and practical reality prevented sexual agency. And even now...well, the power to get laid when one desires it is not one that men possess as a class. 

One of the few things that help ordinary men make up for their lack of sexual power is the healthy self-love lives they tend to unashamedly enjoy. Porn and masturbation are poor substitutes for real agency, but any port in a storm, right?

Men as a class were also missing another of the crucial ingredients: sexual liberty. 

What's this, you say? But men have ALL the sexual liberty one could want! They always have. Except they don't--because liberty is worth nothing if one cannot exercise it. Men may be technically free to make any sexual decision they wish, to be studs without shame, but practical reality is another thing altogether. And for the Steve Buscemis of the world, sexual liberty often equates to the "freedom" to be repeatedly sexually rejected and to take solace in one's right hand. This has always been the case, and may always be the case.

Responsibility, on the other hand? And accountability? Men have those in spades, even more so today, because they're now held accountable for decisions that are not even their own. In the face of completely unrestrained female sexuality, men are expected to restrain themselves, and as unfair as this burden really is, the vast majority of men do it. That reports of rape have decreased by ~90% over the last 30 years is a testament to male sexual responsibility. Still, men are considered responsible, as a class, for the existence of rape, they are considered responsible as a class for eliminating it, are considered responsible for keeping their hands to themselves, their eyes on her face, never expressing interest that might be unwanted, and for saying "no" for both parties in many situations, even if a given woman is screaming "yes!"

And men are absolutely held accountable for their sexual decisions. There are teenage boys paying child support to the teachers who raped them. Slept with a drunk woman--even if you were also drunk? You've just raped her...maybe. I think. If she decides that's what happened to her, anyway. Conversely, if he feels violated by a woman--if he wakes up next to Alice the Goon with vague memories of the unprotected sex she pressured him into while HE was plastered? He's expected to stand by his drunken "yes", no matter how long a shower he needs to feel clean again, and just pray he didn't get her knocked up, because if he did, hello 18 years of child support payments. 

Way back when, the question men asked themselves during the dance of courtship was, "Is her no really a no?" Now, he has to ask himself, "Is her yes going to stick?" There are men in prison right now for having consensual sex with their long term partners, because a woman's "yes" didn't stick when things got bumpy in the relationship. 

A man's accountability for "ruining" a woman by getting her pregnant used to be an expectation of marriage, and she was expected to go along with the plan to restore her virtue. This has gone out the window. A man's accountability today--child support--is one that does not limit a woman's sexual liberty, though when you consider how important material success is to a man's sexual attractiveness, it certainly limits his. 

If that's not sexual accountability for men, I don't know what is. He is considered the master of ceremonies, completely responsible for keeping all parties safe, happy and unregretful during sex, expected to never miss a red light even if it's actually green, and to stand by the consequences of his own "yes" even if he was coerced into sex, preyed on as an adolescent by an adult woman, or incoherently drunk.

Women, on the other hand...if anything, women have less agency now than they did before the sexual revolution. While before, they had a balance of all four aspects that was grossly restricted by the rules of society, right now, they have but two--liberty and power. The other edge of the sword is something they seem much more reluctant to embrace.

Well, ladies, I think it might be time for us as a gender to start growing up. Get some agency, because women are fortunate enough that sexual agency is actually possible for most of us, if we want it. But in order to have it, we have to acknowledge some fundamental issues we have.

Sexual liberty has always been a risky endeavor for men (just ask that Weiner dude, or Arnie, or any number of other men who've ended up fucking themselves over because of sex), and it's time for us to acknowledge that it is a risky endeavor for us, too. Sexual liberty can never be inherently "safe", because sex itself is not inherently "safe". Sex is gritty and it's intense and it's wild and it's fraught with all kinds of emotional and hormonal confusion and upheaval, before, during and after. Moreover, it has consequences, some of which we might not like, and some of which burden us more than men.

I hear all the time about how important it is for a man (never a woman, always a man) to make sure his partner is consenting. That many women don't actually have the wherewithal to say no, but that doesn't mean they're consenting. Women used to be expected to play a part in safeguarding their own virtue by following the rules of society and by saying "no" to, or resisting unwanted sex. Now? Nope. A woman who is in a man's bedroom, naked in his bed, is no longer even held responsible to tell him to stop if she wants him to stop. The onus for ensuring everyone really is into it is entirely on the man, even if it means reading her mind. And if both of them are drunk? Yup, he's still held responsible for saying no for both of them, even if she's saying yes.

Number one: some of us like drunk sex. Some of us think that a few of you girls out there are ruining it for the rest of us. There is no excuse for any man to have sex with someone who's passed out, or puking drunk, or incoherent (or for a woman to do it, either). But there's a lot of leeway between being drunk and being incapacitated, and if we expect people to drink responsibly when it comes to driving, we should at least be able to expect them--even women--to drink responsibly when it comes to sex. And if you don't think you should be held responsible for your sexual actions while drunk--that is, if your yes shouldn't be considered a yes--then WHY are men supposed to behave any more responsibly when they're drunk. We have a society that says a drunk man who rapes someone is still a rapist, but a drunk woman who said yes to sex can't be held to her "yes". Why? Because she's a woman and he's a man, so he should behave more responsibly? Are women babies now?

Number 2: ladies, please. If you do not have the sexual confidence and maturity to utter the word "stop" when you are lying naked in a man's bed after choosing to climb into it, then you had absolutely NO business climbing into it in the first place. Seriously. You've spent all evening moving from "maybe" to "I think so" to "probably" to "most likely" to "almost definitely" to "practically guaranteed" to "score!", moving out of the public eye (where you're safe) and into a private space (where I'm sorry, you're not), discarding inhibitions and bits of clothing along the way. The further along this sexual continuum you are, the more momentum has built up, and the more clear your 180 degree "no" needs to be. The closer you've come as a couple to the crease, the more definitive your save has to be if you suddenly decide you don't want the puck in the net. 

Moreover, you're an adult. You're allowed to say no.

Moreover, sex is not a one-way street. It's something people share, and the responsibility for sex and for consent, for what does and does not happen wrt sex MUST be shared, too. You're there to have sex, not to have it done to you--you are a part of the entire process. 

(Disclaimer: this does not mean that going up to a man's room means he is entitled to sex. What it means if you've repeatedly said "yes", by word or deed, all night, and you agree to go someplace private where you continue with your "yesses", you cannot rely on silence to convey a "no". I cannot stress enough, knowing a little about what turns people on and how they respond physically to stimuli--sex noises and pain noises are very similar, sex noises and pleading noises are very similar, sex faces and pain faces are very similar, women can be physically aroused and orgasm even while they're being raped, and when the momentum's been building all evening and everyone's excited and your body's signals can be so easily misinterpreted, the closer you are to "score!", the more you need to SAY SOMETHING if you've changed your mind. It is very easy to convey our "yesses" through our actions, but men AND women misinterpret those signals all the time. And if a guy misses those signals, well, no harm done, right? A "no", however, is a signal you do not want him to miss, and you have a responsibility to both of you to ensure he doesn't. Do you see how that works?)

Number 3: one of the things women absolutely MUST do is stop putting the responsibility on everyone else to safeguard our sexuality. It is not society's or men's responsibility anymore. We threw the rules that allowed society and men to safeguard our sexuality out the window, didn't we? Expecting men and society to do that job now is like expecting this guy to get this guy to the Greek. Which may be doable, but is less than fair. If we don't want unfair social restrictions put on our behavior, we need to be the primary agents in our sex lives and stop putting an unfair burden on everyone else to keep us safe from harm. Taking charge of our sex lives means taking responsibility for them, even when we don't like where our decisions lead us.

If we want people to stop judging us by the state of our sexual purity, we need to stop doing the same damn thing. Because the difference between a slut and a stud isn't just what James Jeffries so aptly put in his little bit of stand-up (sit-down?) comedy I linked to above. Another difference is that we, as women, still consider our sexuality to be sacrosanct in many ways, rather than a practical aspect of our lives and identities. This conflict of belief is no more apparent than in the insistence of women as a group that, "It's only sex. I'm not just my body, and how many men I've had sex with has nothing to do with my value as a person, and I can sleep with whomever I want because it's just sex, and how dare you shame me for being a sexual person!" because the moment a woman is raped, groped, or even stared at, we see just how deeply women as a whole truly believe their own rhetoric. 

If women want society to place no special value on a woman's sexual purity as a function of her self-worth, they need to...well, grow up and stop placing special value on it themselves in the context of unwanted sexual attention. That rape is a crime and should be treated as such, I have absolutely no problem with. But that rape is still treated as an "extra-special, super-crime against the 'sanctity' of a woman's body, the worst violation ever, and one that should be treated differently than other crimes because it brings shame and a loss of self-worth to victims"? This is backward thinking in any sexually liberated society. 

How individual victims feel after an assault varies widely, and yes, for many there are feelings of shame and devaluation as women. But right now, today, there is only one socially acceptable way for even women to feel about rape. Shame colors the entire public discourse on it. Frank discussion is routinely silenced out of a need to spare feelings, policies are in place that, while necessary to encourage victims to come forward, cannot help but reinforce the cultural notion that being raped is something a woman is supposed to feel ashamed about, and that it somehow diminishes her value as a woman.

As a matter of public and legal policy, we need to eventually pick one or the other, ladies, and stop insisting on having it both ways. Either a woman's sexuality is sacred or it's not. If having sex with a dozen men is nothing for you to be ashamed of and has nothing to do with your worth as a person, then being forced into having sex against your will--someone else's bad act, and one you had no choice in!--is really nothing for you to be ashamed of and nothing to do with your worth as a person. It's a violation of your bodily autonomy, a crime committed against you, and wrong wrong wrong. That it is often horribly traumatic and can kill a woman's trust in men and the world is perfectly understandable, for sure, just like any assault can. But an act of forced or coerced sex is nothing for YOU to feel ashamed about unless you're the one doing the forcing, and it's nothing that remotely--in any objective sense--diminishes your value as a woman and a human being. We're supposed to be more than sexual objects now, right?

There is nothing I would like more than for women as a group to reach a day when the most common reaction of a victim to being raped is: "I'm not just a body. I'm a sexual agent, not a sexual object, and my virtue and value as a person does not live between my legs. You took sex from me, but you didn't take my self-esteem or my value as a human being or a woman. You had no right to do what you did, but I'm not the one who did anything to be ashamed of, so I fucking refuse to feel ashamed. No piece of shit rapist gets to tell ME how to feel about myself. And now you get to sit in jail and think about that while I get on with my life, asshole." 

But how are we to get there if we as a group don't start to own our own sex lives--our power, our liberty, our responsibility and the consequences of what we do.

Number 4: we need to start growing up and flexing our sexual muscle responsibly. Anyone who's been to see the strippers on ladies' night vs men's night and observes the behavior of the crowd will realize that men are held to a completely different standard of sexual responsibility and restraint than women are. What on earth makes any woman feel entitled to put her hands on a man in a way she would not tolerate someone putting their hands on her? I don't care how much you've had to drink. If you expect everyone to respect your bodily and sexual autonomy, you need to start respecting that of others' to the same degree. Because at the moment, women routinely get away with sexual misconduct, sexual assault and even rape, because no one is holding them to any kind of standard of behavior when it comes to other people.

This gender dichotomy is beautifully illustrated in THIS study, that determined forced and coerced sex among heterosexual couples was almost equal for both genders. How many of us, men and woman both, would consider a woman pushing sex on her partner as "asserting her needs and getting what she wants" while at the same time deeming the men in the study to be guilty of "spousal rape"? Likewise, that a sex therapist who dares to say "I've always said women have a right to say no, but men and women should think about the impact of rejection on their partners, and some may choose to say yes a little more often,'' could spark a feminist protest characterizing her as a supporter of spousal rape is also telling.

You as women have no more right to force yourselves on men as they do on you. You have no right to yell "hubba hubba" if you're going to get up in arms about whistles or catcalls directed your way. You cannot characterize viewing porn as "empowering" for women while judging it to be "creepy" when men do the same thing. You cannot feel entitled to grope a male stripper if you're going to get all offended at the idea of being groped yourself, or insist that female strippers are exploited because men dare to look at them.

Number 5: ladies, please oh please, take some responsibility for the quality your sex lives! I was talking to a young woman at work not long ago. She'd come to me to ask if, as one of the young male employees had informed her, her boyfriend actually masturbated. 

Me: How old is he?

Her: 21.

Me: Oh yeah. He masturbates.

Her: OMG, that is so gross! No he doesn't!

Me: Sorry to burst your bubble.

Her: But we have sex every day! Why would he masturbate?

Me: Because he can, yo.

Her, making gagging noises: Ewwww! How often does he DO that?

Me: If he's like most guys his age, every day. Maybe more than once.

Her: That's so disgusting! I would NEVER do that!

Me: Why not? It's your body, you have every right to touch it any way you want. Besides, if you've never figured out how your own buttons work, how can you let your boyfriend know what you like?

Her, blinking: Well, he's just supposed to know.

Um...okay. That a young woman in today's supposedly sexually liberated society can still consider masturbating a disgusting act she would never, ever engage in, that she is still placing the entire onus for her sexual pleasure on whatever man she's with...this only illustrates how conflicted women still are about sex and their own sexual agency.

The sexual revolution means we're all playing by different rules. This is a very difficult transition we are facing as a society, and women need to take some responsibility for where it's all headed. We're the ones who tossed the old handbook out the window, and we're largely writing the new one. In doing so, we've made the rules for men contradictory, unjustly onerous and insanely confusing...and for ourselves? Well, there are no rules for us, apparently. 

We've reduced men's role in our collective sexuality to a mad scramble to get us all safely to the Greek, or else, no matter how out of control we are, and that's something that seriously needs to change.

Why I advocate for men's rights

I'm not a traditionalist woman. I'm bisexual. I'm kind of a dirty old man when it comes to my attitudes about sex, and I'm masculine enough in some ways to pull it off without ever having been burdened with the label of slut. Moreover, I write erotic fiction, much of it with bi-male and bi-female themes (and no, I'm not telling any of you all my pen name, so don't bother asking). Though I was a stay-at-home mom for the first five years of my marriage, and though I found that role fulfilling and the work intrinsically valuable, I did not feel myself again until I got back into the paid workforce. I am the last person on earth who would wish to return to the world of a hundred years ago.

I've been sexually assaulted. I was sexually harassed as a 23 year old woman to the point where I left a job I'd held for four years. I would even regard the last six years of my marriage as emotionally and psychologically abusive.

I'm divorced, have three kids, and grievances against my ex that any reasonable man or woman would likely see as entirely justified. I still struggle with my anger over things he did during our marriage, and tried to do after it was over. The fact that after two and a half years, the only money that has ever changed hands between us has been from me to him only adds insult to injury.

During my travels online through the rugged and often inhospitable landscape of the Men's Rights Movement, I have been required to "prove my credentials" as a logical and reasonable human being more times than I care to mention. I have had to "prove my credentials" as a woman who did not screw over her ex during her divorce. I have had to "prove my credentials" as not merely a traditionalist woman who wants to go back to men supporting women while women stay at home. This is an environment that is often hostile to women until they have paid their dues. And even when your dues are paid (and paid and paid, lol) you pay in other ways.

I have had to sit and grind my teeth when men in the movement complain that "That bitch got MY house. It was MY property because I paid for it while SHE stayed home," and resist the urge to remind them that unpaid domestic labor has value too, and that women's denial of that value in the early days of feminism is part of why men and women are in this mess today. That if she was the kind of wife and mother I'd been when I stayed at home, and he'd had to pay her a fair-market wage for her child-care, housekeeping and maybe even home/yard maintenance duties, her income might have been almost as high as his own during the marriage.

As the survivor of a sexual assault that I suffered as a 14-year-old virgin who hadn't had her first period yet, I've had to sit and grind my teeth time and again at the glib attitude many in the movement have toward rape. If the system has a default assumption that all accusers are telling the truth and all accused are lying pieces of shit, many in the MRM have a bias that leans too far in the opposite direction. I am a firm believer in always believing an accuser--when it comes to providing victims' services such as counselling and medical treatment. I am also a firm believer in the due process rights of the accused during police investigations and criminal trials, feel a university's involvement in a sexual assault case should be limited to dialling 911 and letting the criminal justice system take it from there, and that the identity of the accused should be withheld by authorities until he's convicted. I believe feminism's elevation of rape-victim status to a bizarre combination of almost religious idolatry and kid-glove handling harms women in very insidious ways. But at the same time, the way some in the MRM talk about rape...well, it upsets me.

I've had to wade through dozens of news pieces about female perpetrators of spousal assault, stalking, hideously violent assaults on innocent people, sexual and physical abuse of children, infanticide, premeditated murder of husbands and boyfriends, atrocities beyond counting, held vengefully aloft by the MRM as proof that women are as likely to be sociopathic, psychotic, hateful, brutal, selfish assholes as men are. Story after story after story about yet another woman's unsubstantiated claims of abuse leading to yet another man losing his kids and yet more kids losing their father, more lives destroyed by women who weren't even the ones scorned because THEY are more likely to initiate the divorce. A steady diet of misdeeds perpetrated by women on men and innocent kids, enough to turn anyone's stomach.

It gets tiresome. It gets disheartening. It gets burdensome. It even gets a little scary sometimes, when I realize just how angry some of these men are. Given that many of my personal experiences with men have been...ahh...less than wonderful, given how initially hostile the MRM can be to anyone with a vagina, and how insensitive they can seem on issues that have affected me very deeply from the opposite side of the gender divide, why do I do it? Here's why:

I used to live in a tiny, isolated town with a resource-based economy--mostly logging and sand/gravel. When the construction industry in the US went kablooie in 2008, most of the jobs in that town disappeared. I work as a server--tips are a huge portion of my income, but that portion depends on how many people eat out. In late 2008, people where I lived stopped eating out, and my income started to go down. And down. And down. 

My ex has never paid child support, and had always enjoyed unlimited access to our kids, at my expense, because my kids love their dad and have a right to see him. He exercised that access an average of one night every 6-8 weeks. My nearest family--my parents and sister--lived 2000km away in a city with a robust economy, but the few times I'd suggested moving there, my ex wouldn't hear of it. His assertion that "How do you expect me to pay child support? I can't even support myself around here. I don't even have food in my fridge," without extrapolating from that just how impossible it would be for me to support four people on my own in the same local economy, and how no food in my fridge would mean his own kids going hungry...well, the level of his tunnel-vision and selfishness was almost surreal to me. I felt like my ex had not only effectively abandoned my kids, he'd abandoned logic, reason, reality, sanity.

In February of 2010, I finally looked at my mounting debts and decided there was no way I could continue to live where I did, supporting four people on my own, and not go bankrupt. That staying solely so my kids could see their dad one night every couple of months, if and when he could be bothered, wasn't worth the price I and my kids were paying. My debts alone, not including my mortgage, had climbed to almost twice my yearly income at the time. I was paying the mortgage with my Visa card. There were no jobs to be had. And my nearest family lived 2000km away--I really was going it alone. 

I finally had to concede that my choice was either move or starve. My ex's objection to the very suggestion was well-documented in the correspondence between our lawyers, and he had repeatedly threatened to bring legal action if I tried to move, action that would cost me thousands of dollars and might take a year or more to play out. 

I was stuck between survival and my own honor. If I stayed, my family would be destroyed. If I did the honorable thing and informed him of my decision, he'd bring an action that would only force us all to stay where we were until I'd spent thousands I didn't have in legal fees just to get it on a judge's desk, which would only destroy us all the faster. 

So I packed up my house and my kids and I moved. Without asking him. Without even telling him. And then I prepared for a legal Battle Royale to prove to a judge that I was justified in what I had done, that I'd had no choice in moving, and no choice other than to do it when and how I did. That my only reasonable option was to move to the city where my parents and sister live so I and my kids would have help and support nearby--a city where the economy was healthy, but that also happens to be 2000km away from my children's father. I'd documented the ways I'd encouraged my ex to spend time with his kids, and how seldom he'd actually done it, and how his right to see them every 6-8 weeks when he felt like it should not outweigh their right to not be raised in poverty. I had a six-page affidavit prepared, with which to argue my case.

And my ex's objections to what I'd done were dismissed out of hand. I'd moved his kids 2000km away from him, without even informing him I was doing it, and I didn't even need to present my affidavit to the judge--all I had to say was that I'd moved for work. She took it as a given that she should side with me over him, and made her decision with a sanguinity and certainty that I found appalling, even as I almost wept with relief.

Shortly before I had moved, I'd re-entered the sexual marketplace. I had a brief fling with a married man. I was his first affair, and he struggled with his guilt over stepping out on his wife, even though he'd been sleeping on the couch for two years. Conversely, his wife had been cheating on him for years--remember, this is a small town where everyone knows every bit of dirt about everyone else. I don't suppose she struggled very much over her own guilt feelings, since she didn't care to hide her infidelities. He was so unhappy in his marriage I can only describe it as despair because he couldn't see any way to fix it, but he stayed because he was terrified--not worried, not scared, but terrified--of losing his children.

It wasn't until after I moved and the judge made her 8-second ruling that I realized just how justifiable his fear had been. 

I was raised by parents who told me to never only read the headlines or listen to the soundbites, but to read the entire article and think rationally about things before I formed opinions. To not only regurgitate the information I am fed, but to thoroughly digest it, apply logic and my own experiences to what I hear and read, and then decide if it makes sense. To question. To examine. To look at problems from many angles. To seek out differing points of view because, hey, you just might learn something--even if that something is that people can be full of shit. 

They taught me words like "sophistry" and what it means. They taught me that evidence is everything, and statistics can be made to say anything you want, depending on your agenda. They taught me that sometimes people lie so convincingly to themselves, that even when they're lying to you they feel like they're telling the truth. 

As a teenager, I mostly hung out with guys, because guys were more accepting of the ways I'm different. Because I'm more guy-like than girlie, they never guarded their speech around me, nor do any of my male coworkers now. And though I've been deeply wronged by a few men, I know from my other experiences with men that that the vast majority of boys and men are more good than bad. They're flawed, but they're still human. They're not women, but they're still human.

I have three children. Two sons and a daughter. And as much as I may complain about how much trouble they can be, and despite the fact that I've been known to threaten to knock their heads together when they annoy me, I love them and am as proud as fuck of them. I want them to be happy and to succeed in life, however they choose to measure their success. 

But I look at the world they are growing up in, a world where my boys will soon be facing the same problems men face are facing now, only worse. A world where my daughter also will be reaping the consequences of living in a society that values the rights of one gender over another and no one seems to give a shit. A world where everything women naturally are is seen as admirable, and everything men naturally are is seen as a pathology to be cured. A world where even women who commit the most heinous and atrocious acts are instantly assumed to have been failed by the system or somehow justified in their actions, while men who commit similar acts are instantly assumed to have done it out of jealousy, anger, a desire to control, aggression, or just...well, maleness. I don't want my sons to live in a world where no matter how good they are, they will be told they are bad--or my daughter to live in a world where she will always be able to blame someone or something else for her decisions and actions. 

I want my daughter to grow up to be a woman who owns her own shit, and my boys to grow into men who are not forced to own everyone else's shit on top of their own.

The voices that speak for feminism are millions upon millions. They are so legion, they need only whisper to be heard. The voices speaking for equality for men and boys are so few, they're drowned out by the opposition even when they scream. I don't know what I can do other than raise my kids to be able to think on their own, and add my voice to the issues I believe in that I feel are underserved. That more people advocate for, and sympathize with, animal rights than men's rights is a travesty that stymies me. I suppose if men could somehow make themselves look as cute and as helpless as a baby seal, things would be different, but they can't. Men and boys are in jeopardy--really and for true, honest, not just kinda-sorta jeopardy--and they deserve more voices speaking for them.

So that's what I'm doing.

Shut up and come back when you can ask nicely...

In an online discussion, a feminist recently asked my boyfriend (oops, partner) to tell her of some things he considered to be "female privilege". Believing she was asking in good faith (which she might have been, who knows?), he asked *me*, from my arguably less biased position as a woman, to provide a list of what I felt were privileges women benefit from.

I posted a "checklist" of 17 items similar to the one frequently used to determine male privilege, concentrating on issues where women's privilege most seriously disenfranchises men, and asked her if she could say "yes" to any of them.

Items included:

-if I physically abuse my partner, people are likely to believe my partner did something to deserve it, like hitting me first.

-if my partner physically abuses me, even if I have no physical signs of it, I will be believed by the authorities.

-if I physically abuse my partner, and they reciprocate, it is likely that they will be arrested/charged and I will not.

-if I divorce my spouse, the default assumption is that I will have primary custody of my children, even if my spouse and I shared breadwinning and child care duties during the marriage.

-if I divorce my spouse, I will be awarded child support, and if my ex-spouse does not pay they will face serious legal consequences. They will face these consequences even if they cannot pay because their financial situation has changed since the marriage.

-if I divorce my spouse, and they are granted primary custody of my children, I will rarely be ordered to pay child support, even if I can afford it. If I am ordered to pay, and I don't, it is unlikely I will face serious consequences.

Her response, after giving a couple examples of what she considered female privilege, was to call my list a "trite rehash of the MRA agenda", express her "disappoint[ment]", and actually "feel bad for [me]" that I had "bothered to type it up." Her two examples of female privilege were:

-people will assume I am a warm and empathetic person

-people will be more likely to assist me when I must accomplish a physically arduous task

Um. Okaayyyy. Way to dismiss, shame and distract. And while I agree with her examples, I'm pretty sure she suggested them because they are seemingly innocuous, in order to present female privilege as essentially a non-issue. The extrapolation of these privileges to their inevitable real-world consequences seemed beyond her.

Her first example is almost certainly a major contributing factor in the current gender bias in DV law. And it didn't occur to her that people would be more likely to assist her when she must accomplish arduous tasks that are not physical (such as, say, negotiating a custody agreement).

Weary, but not prepared to give up, I presented more examples I thought would be less apt to provoke a defensive response, some of which include:

-dress codes in the workplace are more likely to allow for me to emphasize my more attractive physical features and de-emphasize the ones I'm unhappy with (if a man looks like a pear in a suit, tough luck)

-if I work in a profession dominated by the opposite gender, I will be seen as "heroic" or an indicator of "social progress", not an indication that I'm somehow deficient (think Meet the Parents--"You're a male nurse? You must have failed the entry tests for med school.")

-if I earn less than my partner, no one will look at me funny

-if I earn less than my partner, people will not automatically expect me to contribute equally to our living expenses

Her response was this:

Do you notice that anything either of us has come up with is actually a feminist issue? Gender roles, the beauty myth, wage disparity...not a terribly successful experiment.

Sigh. Now I am not only weary, but frustrated. I feel like I am banging my head against the wall. I responded:

I know! All issues, when you really think about them, are feminist issues. Wow! I just realized: there are no men's rights issues. In every instance that a man is disenfranchised by virtue of his gender, it's actually an oppression of women.

But if feminism is, as you imply, THE ANSWER to all gender equality issues, I wonder how long men will have to wait before feminism seriously addresses the issues that concern them? And when feminism does decide to tackle them, which will they tackle first? The man who loses access to his kids because his ex's new boyfriend lives in another state and the courts don't take his rights as a father (or his children's right TO a father) seriously? Or the fact that he's expected to carry the heavier bags when it's time to bring in the groceries?

Her response?

My life has been touched by custody issues more than you can ever know. Your attempt to shame me with your personal story is inappropriate and is starting to piss me off. This isn't a sorrow and woe competition.

Re-read the article. If you want to get feminists to champion your cause, show how it is a feminist issue, don't just rage and blame. Spouting rhetoric isn't the same as engaging in dialogue.

"I'm a victim and you're not being nice to me. Shut up and go away and come back when you can ask nicely."

My reply to her:

When did I ever claim to want feminists to champion any Men's Rights cause? What I want is gender equality, and if I want that I would be ill-advised to rely on a movement that prioritizes social and legal change in areas where women are disenfranchised, no?

And please don't get me wrong. This in itself is not a criticism of feminism. It would be kind of retarded for me to expect women in the movement to feel as strongly about male disenfranchisement as they do their own--especially when I have been told by (some) feminists themselves that it is not a reasonable expectation, that feminism may ally itself with other rights movements, but it is understandably concerned with women first.

And it would be equally retarded to assume that any political movement will be as interested in taking privileges away from those it champions as it is in elevating them to an equal status. This too is only understandable--it is a both a vagary of human nature and a political reality.

What I want is for ANYONE to listen and take these issues seriously. Sometimes that means shouting and even blaming. I would advise any feminist who tells any group that if they want to be listened to they should stop shouting, that I am sure men and conservative women said the same thing to suffragettes--"Sheesh, you gals are strident and shouty. If you're nice, and you ask a certain way, maybe we'll listen." I'm also pretty sure that if suffragettes had stopped shouting (and blaming), women still would not have the vote. Telling people that their issues are not issues until and unless they present them "nicely" and politely and according to this rule or that rule or the other rule is a silencing tactic used on feminists so frequently, even now, that I am constantly amazed by their inability to recognize when they are trivializing and dismissing others' issues in the same damn way.

And oddly enough, the only issues they want people to stop being shouty about are issues that--if addressed--will negatively affect some individual women. "Gay rights are cool--hell, we'll shout with you. Equal rights for people of color or the poor are cool--don't stop shouting until they listen. Hell yeah! Equal rights for men? Shhhhhhh! No one will take you seriously unless you're pleasant." How often have strong, capable, aggressive women in the movement and the business world heard that one used against them, and how insulting is it to them?

It's disingenuous of anyone to believe that any group advocating for radical social change is going to be listened to if only they are calm and reasonable. Since the mid-80s, academics have been quietly, calmly, convincingly and reasonably publishing 159 surveys, studies and papers tabulating data on domestic violence based on community samples (general population, rather than police records or otherwise skewed or self-selecting samples) of 109 000 men and women, that quietly, calmly, reasonably and convincingly disconfirm the "patriarchal [terrorist]" paradigm of intimate partner violence. Yet who's talking about them--or rather, who's talking about the half of the data in them that disproves the notion that men are the only perpetrators and women the only victims? The criminal justice system? Nope. DV awareness and prevention groups? Nope. Feminists? Nope. These academics have been nice, calm, reasonable in their approach to these issues, imploring judicial officials, government agencies and victims' rights advocacy groups to only consider the data and adjust policies to protect all victims. It's been 25 years, and what has this calm, reasoned approach got them?

When justifiably angry early feminists were told to be "nice", to be "pleasant", to "calm down", that their justifiable and righteous anger at women's disenfranchisement was "unbecoming and unfeminine" and they "should be quiet and go home until you can be nice about it", what do YOU think their response should have been? And yet when it comes to issues where men's disenfranchisement has often been life-destroying for individuals--domestic violence and father's rights--people, not only feminists, tell them they should be more "stoic", to "suck it up" to "deal with it", that their anger is just typical "male aggression" and that they should "go away until you learn how to be nice."

What do you think their response should be? What do you think it will be?

I hope--hell, if I believed in god I would pray--that men will not be quiet. That they will not stop shouting. That they will not settle down and focus solely on compromise, calm debate and pleasant discussion prematurely. That they will not shift from a stance of anger to one of begging. The time will come for settling down, but considering the resistance of those in power--in all defiance of a mountain of empirical evidence and sometimes even their own deeply traumatic personal experiences growing up without fathers or with abusive mothers--their acceptance of a reality that doesn't conform to what is currently considered politically correct isn't coming anytime soon. 

All political movements advocating for meaningful social and political change have had to shout to be heard and taken seriously: The environmental movement, the feminist movement, the equal rights movement, the gay rights movement. There were marches, angry chants of "Hell no, we won't go!", strongly worded placards and slogans, yelling and fist-slamming in venues of political debate, and all manner of unruly, angry, righteous protest.

Contrary to what the feminist above claims, when people are accustomed to the comfort of their status quo, they need to be shouted at before they will be motivated to change it. Sometimes getting people to take you seriously is as much about making a nuisance of yourself until the powers that be finally throw up their hands and cry, "All right already! We'll give you what you want if that's what it takes to shut you guys up!" as it is about logic and evidence and reasoned arguments. Sometimes it requires extremist movements like those of Malcolm X to threaten the masses with a real shake-up before the powers that be are willing to opt for the saner option of Martin Luther King.

However this kind of change happens, it always, always requires shouting. So please, guys, don't stop shouting. Please.