When the Women’s Action Group (WAG) sent letters to student mailboxes, inviting each of us to submit papers to the Feminist Symposium, I noticed an inordinate number of them in the recycling, but other than that, something sure did catch my eye: written on one of the letters in pretty violent lettering was “I’m a BOY!”
So? I truly do fail to see how one’s penis would prevent him from having written a feminist paper or presenting that paper at such a venue. Is it that a male couldn’t possibly be a feminist? Perhaps a male would have no motivation for being a feminist even if he could be? Or is it, rather, that a male wouldn’t be welcome to present a feminist paper at an event sponsored by WAG?
Well, according to some radical feminists, no, a man could not be a feminist, but I’m willing to assert that such feminists are an incredibly small minority as far as that thought goes. Feminism is different for each individual, feminist or otherwise. That’s true for a great many things, like capitalism or socialism, Christianity or Buddhism. So, it’s not that a man can’t be a feminist.
To address the question of a man’s motivation for being a feminist, I’ll talk about my own. Feminism, for me, is about how gender (the shirts we wear, the games we play and the way we walk) shapes and restricts our lives. Do I propose that we just do away with gender entirely? I’m a pragmatic person who’d like to see the real lives of real people change in my time, so yes, but that’s not what I’m after. I believe that each person has a right to equality, and I don’t think that the way gender works for us makes allowances for that sort of equality. There are very specific limitations placed on us based on our sex; those are the rules of gender, and to step outside of them can sometimes have very serious ramifications imposed by society. So, for me, feminism is about breaking down the things that keep us from being closer to a more real egalitarianism, and equality serves everyone, including men; therefore, it makes good sense for a man to be a feminist if he’s interested in equal rights for people in general.
I know that WAG was interested in male presenters and had at least one, but beyond that welcome, men should be interested in participating in WAG programs for the reasons I discussed above. Promoting women in much the same way that men are promoted is not about making women better than men, it’s about making women and men equal in culture, in society and in their relationships.
We live in separate buildings when we do virtually the same things in them. We have separate bathrooms even though everything we need to accomplish in them can be done in the privacy of a stall, and it really shakes people up when you suggest that a male and a female could live in the same room together without it becoming a hedonistic sex-fest or a perfect set-up for sexual assault. These things aren’t about making women better than men, but they are, to me, feminist issues because they are simple—yet incredibly fundamental—expressions of how our genitals predicate our lives.
by Addy Free, Columnist
The Cornellian vol. 124, issue 14
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