-OpEd-
BOGOTÁ — Of course feminist women want men to be feminists, too. The change we want is for the whole of society, or is of very little value. Yet, many feminists show great resistance to heterosexual and cisgender men who want to be part of the movement and start calling themselves feminists or allies.
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It sounds contradictory. Isn’t that exactly what we want? For feminism to be aspirational for men, we need other men to set the example.
We all started with that illusion and then we crashed with an ugly reality: many — too many — men who claim to be allies are only allies from the outside, and even use the feminist discourse to occupy (digital and physical) spaces, steal ideas and even harass and rape women.
Men’s ability to empty feminist phrases of meaning should not be underestimated. It has happened so many times that, at this point, it is a red flag for a man to call himself a feminist or an ally.
Something to gain
In an essay I wrote in 2021, Fewer Allies, More Traitors to the Patriarchy (Menos aliados, más traidores del patriarcado), I considered the following proposition:
Being an ally comes with praise and benefits; it is easy because it can be just a performative gesture and, for that reason, it is also very tempting. What is difficult is breaking the patriarchal pact, changing one’s behavior, betraying other men and losing privileges. That is as far as good intentions go.
If a man wants to be truly feminist, he will be willing to forgo the label.
For example, a group of heterosexual, cisgender men on the Bogotá City Council adopted that very expression for their now notorious Bancada de traidores del patriarcado (“traitors of the patriarchy”) t-shirts. It was great as a photo op, but fairly useless at assuring the rights of women and dissident gender groups.
Sure enough, it was a matter of time before allegations of sexual misconduct emerged against one or more of them, which goes to confirm an established pattern among men. When they don the banner of feminism with so much fanfare, they do so to gain an advantage for themselves rather than to help build a fairer and more egalitarian world.
Lose the label
So, it’s not that we do not want men to be feminists, but we want them to stop publicizing their feminism to earn themselves brownie points.
Because in the present web of privileges and inequalities, it means winning a whole lot of benefits (especially in politics), on which they can get hooked on, and which can be put to use before engaging in a real process of mental deconstruction. If a man wants to be truly feminist, he will be willing to forgo the label and the social benefits it confers, to focus on making himself useful in the struggle to advance women’s rights.
Perhaps he can perform tasks that are rarely applauded — like home and family chores — or dare to call out other men for their sexist conduct — in public, but especially in private — knowing he could endanger his male friendships and networks. Because they are applauded for everything in our society, many men may balk at the idea of doing the difficult job of fighting the patriarchy without recognition.
Meanwhile, women, who have done anonymous work in all the social revolutions led by men, we are tired, fed up, of hearing them use our slogans and then disappoint us.
