For men: On feminism and love

My dear brothers. In this moment of cultural reckoning, I feel compelled to try to remind you of a few things.

Feminism is not just the story of why you are wrong. It’s not actually a story of why you are wrong at all. It’s definitely not a story about why you are bad! (No one thinks you are bad, truly, just, maybe, you.) But it is a story about you, about parts of you.

Feminism is the story of how and why masculinity constrains your very being and diminishes your humanity. Feminism grieves for you. Feminism weeps for you. Feminism is not condemning you, feminism is bearing witness to pain that you don’t even know you have.

Listen closer. Listen more. Listen deeper. Feminism has your best interests at heart as well. Feminism has /your/ best interests at heart as well!

I make no claims here of being a perfect or even a particularly good ally. The rubber often hits the road in our most intimate relationships if they are with a woman and I think if you ask my partner that she would honestly say, he talks a really good game, he intellectually understands things, but he’s got some really big blind spots. He is a dude, that does dude things, and says dude things, and has dude patterns of being emotionally unavailable but also needy. Etc. I am not telling you I am a better feminist than you. (I don’t need you to be better, I just need you to see better.)

What I am telling you is that every time I have been able to /hear/ where my masculinity has been getting in the way of a relationship, really hear it, I have found myself in deeper relationship. I have found myself able to love better.

You are not being cast out by feminism, you are being called back in. It’s all backwards you see, where would “they” cast “you” out to anyway, when we are all stuck here together figuring it out. (Secret level aside for those ready to hear it, feminism is also deeply concerned with how women perpetuate the patriarchy. It ain’t all about you!)

Look, you know that this power dynamic hurts you. You know that the boundaries of being a “real man” are policed with violence. You know that you have been asked to do unspeakable things to prove your manliness.

Look, last I checked feminists were not murdering men. They were not raping men. Violence does seem to flow mostly in one direction if you look at it, yeah?

Feminists are telling you that it is possible to construct an identity not rooted in violence and domination. They are asking you to remember that you can love and be loved. You want your strong masculinity, you want your recognition that for so many years and so many places it was men who had to stand guard and be willing to fight the enemy. Brothers, they see that, and now they are gently asking you who you are fighting?

Look, I know it’s hard. Feminists are telling you that you cannot be trusted /as a man/. And trust is essential to love. And they are telling you that not being able to trust you hurts them and it hurts you. They are singing the song of this hurt.

Listen deeper brothers. Feminism wants you to be loved. Feminism is weeping the tears that your father told you were for pussies. They are your tears. Take them back.

We can, one day, join in laughter. Perhaps tomorrow, even. But today, join in the tears. Many of them were yours to begin with.