Oh for fuck's sake.
Emma Watson's speech at the UN.
Look, it's bliddy scary, putting your head above the pulpit, and for that I salute her. But before we crack open the Lady Grey and English muffins, Hollywood poster boys holding up homemade placards is so not the point.
We have to invite men not to be dicks now? We're extending an invitation not to be a dick? That's our plan for how to make feminism palatable?
Side note - why are we worried about feminism being palatable? More than a million women in Britain suffering domestic abuse a year isn't palatable. 400,000 (reported) sexual assaults. 85,000 (reported) rapes. These aren't numbers that slink down the throat as you swallow them whole. These are numbers that keep you up at night with fire in your belly and raging acid reflux. (Trigger warning: the metaphors are likely to get worse from here).
Why has the word feminism became an uncomfortable one? Because feminism is holding up a big shiny mirror to society and reflecting uncomfortable ideas like power and violence and oppression back at a world that would prefer to think of itself as having dealt with all that in the sixties.
And breathe.
Never mind asking men to take our hands like waifish debutantes, how about asking them to take their hands off for starters? If someone is holding me down and punching me in the face, I'm not inclined to wait for his RSVP to STOP BEING A DICK.
Yes, men are hurt by inequality between the genders, but not as much as women are.
That's how inequality works. And yes, it's uncomfortable.
Don't get me wrong - the show I keep banging on about looks at how one man's definition of being male wreaked misogynistic havoc on his sexual relationships. A feminist show about being a man - hoist me on my own petard why don't you? I couldn't agree more that confining men to stereotypes of what it is to be male forces those of us who are not male to interact with them in reductive ways. That said, Owen Jones' assertion that 'Men are being killed by our sexist society' made me want to kick things.
Again, not because he isn't right to link male suicide rates to 'oppressive expectations of manliness' which stop young men seeking help and talking about how they feel, but because there's a difference between deciding to take your own life and someone else beating you to death.
And before you hang me out to dry with the other 'old-school man-hating bra-burning feminists' of the pre-Watson era, YES, I agree that mens' 'decisions' are shaped by social and cultural forces… It's just that women also live in a world that slaps reductive gender expectations on us that instead of making it more likely that we'll kill ourselves, make it more likely we'll accept as 'normal' situations in which we're over-powered and over-ruled, paid less, sexually assaulted, punched in the face… killed.
You're right, awareness is a good thing. Projects like Everyday Sexism are a very good thing. Hell, if it helps demystify the potential for men to be feminists, then even a brand spanking new celebrity-endorsed hashtag can be a good thing.
#DontJustTweetItBeatIt
The culture has to change. That doesn't happen if you put a selfie on social media and then swan back onto a movie set where you are paid more than your female costars/outnumber females across both cast and crew/portray stories that perpetuate the stereotypes. And, lovely Emma, it doesn't change as a 'natural consequence' of men becoming 'free' of gender stereotypes. It's so much harder than that, and if you're the one giving up power, you're not going to enjoy it all the time.
Patriarchy has to start punching itself in the face, and that's going to hurt. The fuzzy feeling of doing the right thing might wear off when it means you're taking a pay cut, or having to share more unpaid domestic work, or sharing the time away from your career for child rearing or turning down work because that project/company/organisation support the misogynistic status quo.
But it's still worth doing, because we do all benefit from equality. This isn't an invitation, I'm just going to assume that if you're reading this, you're ready.
