The Male Feminist – First Installment

Recently President Obama in an essay for Glamour Magazine shared his perspective on women’s rights and how a man can and should be a feminist.   He wrote. “It is absolutely men’s responsibility to fight sexism too.  And as spouses and partners and boyfriends we need to work hard and be deliberate about creating truly equal relationships.”

I take no issue with the notion that men should fight sexism but question the idea that creating truly equal relationships is the appropriate or possible pathway.    My objection is equating equal relationship with equal opportunity.   The question is whether or not men can feel comfortable in their masculinity and women comfortable in their femininity without dominance or discrimination on the part of either gender?   The quick answer is, Why not?  However, the details of what masculinity and femininity  would actually look like in a world of equal opportunity is worthy of discussion.

In my blog I have attempted to begin the conversation about expressing gender roles that preserves both masculine and feminine identities while abandoning stereotypical attitudes that fostered patriarchy and marginalization of women.  The subtleties of gender role make this task difficult and at times confusing.   There are no firm distinctions, other than the obvious anatomical ones, between biology and culture to explain how gender is expressed.   Therefore trying to forge a new paradigm for masculinity becomes a difficult proposition.  As gender equality for women in the workplace and in sports has progressed it has clearly allowed women to abandon the stereotypes of femininity that placed limits on their choices and expectations.   A modern women can go to work as an attorney in business attire, go home and change for a benefit gala putting on a designer dress, high heels and do a full make up job and wake up the next morning to run a 10K competitive race.   In this scenario a women assumes the roles of professional,  fashionesta and  jock all while still embracing her female identity.

However, the masculine identity seems so much more confining.   Since many “typical” masculine roles are imbued  with  some degree of subjugation of women how can men move beyond dominance of women and still feel comfortable defining themselves as men?   For example, few things are considered more manly than providing for and protecting your family. So it’s no wonder that so many men in our country are in crisis, with technology cited as the reason for rising populism and discontent.  The way in which society defines masculinity is often tied to work and technology is changing the nature of work as we know it. Smart machines and robots can do tasks that once only humans could do. And in the sectors where this is happening fastest—like manufacturing—many of the job casualties are the kinds of jobs traditionally held by men.  As a result, In a growing number of households,  wives are out earning their husbands and more and more fathers are becoming stay at home Dads with their wives being the primary breadwinners.  One unfortunate consequence is that men who have lost their jobs or have had their income sharply reduced are more likely to commit domestic violence.

How does Mr. Male feminist reconcile his new status as secondary provider with manliness?  Some would suggest that the concept of manliness is simply inconsistent with gender equality.  They would advise men to just stop thinking of themselves as men, abandon the stereotypes of masculinity and shift to being a person even dropping  gender defining pronouns from our vocabulary.

Is this the only path forward for those of us with a Y chromosome?  I hope not.   What do you think?

One thought on “The Male Feminist – First Installment”

  1. I would suggest we change the way we think of ‘manliness’ . Your one sentence jumped out at me … few things are more manly than providing for and protecting your family’. There are new ways ‘to provide’ for your family … it may now be caring for kids, elderly, home, while your partner (male or female) is the main ‘bread-winner’. I don’t see this as inherently un-manly if it makes sense and serves the couple / family. Providing love and caring, support and structure may be way more valuable than providing a pay-check, especially if the partner is quite able to provide an even larger pay-check. The man can retain some of the other ‘traditional’ manly duties, like taking care of the house, the car, the yard … or not :-). It’s a new world where roles are negotiated and re-negotiated to better serve the couple or family, according to each partner’s strengths.

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