On International Women's Day: Men as feminists
It started my freshman year of college when I enrolled in “Introduction to Feminism” – walking into a classroom of about 60 women and 3 men. You could count their numbers with one hand and I remember thinking – why are these guys here anyway? Lame attempt at picking up some dates? The trend continued with my “Feminism Literature and Theory” class my senior year of university – one male student. And he lasted one day.
Men as feminists. To this day, I still do not consider men as feminists, but in celebration of International Women’s Day, I want to pay my respects to one man who challenged this opinion.
Vacationing with some friends in the mountains of West Virginia over New Year’s, our group started having a conversation about feminism, about the potential of men to be feminists, about the concept of what constitutes feminism and who purports to be the so-called “owners” of the movement. All kinds of women are feminists and as the movement, as it were, becomes more diverse, more stratified, more complicated, less focused, less cohesive… it begs the question, why can’t men be feminists? Don’t we need all the help we can get? In the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1950s and 60s, a number of activists were not African American. These were men and women who all believed that the equality of all peoples was the message, was the desired outcome. Why can’t it be the same for feminism?
My friend’s boyfriend challenged me on all accounts, and at the heart of this discussion was his belief that he was a feminist. He truly believes in women’s rights and equality, just like me, so why couldn’t he be a feminist? So on this International Women’s Day, I want to celebrate men everywhere who genuinely support the women’s rights movements, who struggle and fight societal notions of masculinity and femininity, who challenge the status quo and believe that human rights and the inherent rights to freedom, dignity and mutual respect belong to both men and women. It is a struggle we must all fight. Men and women. Together.
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