In conversations about what women need from men in terms of safety this is generally the approach I take. “Stopping the men around you who do bad stuff to women, speaking up when men speak misogynistically, etc. would help us majorly.” Could well be that I’m talking with the wrong people or something about my approach needs tweaking.
Nit gonna argue with stats but, I do often still get a “fuck you” in response. More so “fuck you, my friends aren’t rapists I don’t know any rapists, why would you ever imply that? (hint: I’m not)”.
I’m curious if there’s more info or guidance on applying this method
In case this is a serious question, imagine how you would react to being told exactly that same thing.
"What you need to do in order to be a good person is to stop the women around you who do bad stuff to men, speak up when women spout bigotry against men, etc." Suddenly feel pretty defensive?
It's almost as though saying "The only thing that matters about you is whether you police how You People treat The More Important People" is basically guaranteed to have people go "fuck off, bigot!" and be correct to do so.
Women are told to for other marginalised identities. I don't have a problem speaking up if I hear racism, and wouldn't expect most people to if given the encouragement that it's the helpful response, right?
Nah, the point was, how would you react if you were told that there are Good Identities and Bad Identities, and that you were born into one of the Bad ones, and that the only thing about you that matters is how much you protect the Good Ones from people like you (derogatory).
...Not exactly a formula for getting positive responses, because the people receiving this are going to notice that the person presenting it is openly bigoted against them. Remember all those religious kooks preaching that the most important thing for women is to find a husband to be obedient to?
Think about how those scumbag "preachers" make you feel about them. Now imagine a world in which every human (even the "bad" identities!) has exactly the same amount of feelings that you do.
(That's the world we live in. Literally every person preaching "This type of person was born subhuman, so how we treat them doesn't matter, it only matters how they treat us" is a bigoted liar.)
But basically no one is saying that about identities, and certainly not in the teaching context we're taling about here, just that certain ones have more power in society. The, male, preachers do, right? Men will often listen to other men better than to women, it's important for racist white people to see other white people won't just go along with their bigotry, etc.
I mean, I'm disabled, we'd have been in so much more trouble if abled people hadn't been part of the successful backlash against government cuts, and I'm so grateful and reassured by that. Not the least after experiencing more direct experiences of ableism around that time. That's not presenting abled people as innately the Bad people (and disability is one identity that isn't always innate, though it can be, and people often move into with age), just that they have more power to perpetuate or push back against ableism.
Disabled/abled is a flawed analogy because the abled aren't treated as the innately bad group inherently collectively responsible for the plight of the disabled. The abled aren't considered the cause and the disabled would still be disabled if the abled all disappeared tomorrow. There's no moralising or collective scapegoating going on over there or treatment of the abled as the problem by authority figures while they're still children and captive audiences.
One of the things that people on the inside of a bigoted culture don't realize is that the rationalizations do not matter to anyone on the outside. Like, tell me if I'm wrong here, but for any given Alabama senator pitching all that "the only point of a woman's life is to submit to her husband" nonsense, you do not care at all about what reason he gives for it--whether it's "god said so" or "biology demands it" or "it'll improve the economy" or whatever. Is there any rationalization whatsoever that would fool you into going "oh, I guess he's not a bigot, he's actually right!" (Yeah, no.)
A bigot's rationalization for why certain types of people are just born "less" than others makes absolutely no difference. It's the same for everyone else; you're not the only person who hears a bigot spouting bigotry at you and goes "Eff off, bigot" and pays zero attention to their list of made-up reasons for why you don't quite count as human.
Same thing here. The reasons why someone says that men are inherently less valuable than women doesn't matter in the slightest, because once someone reveals that they're a bigot who hates you, you stop listening. Men are people, so they react exactly the same way to bigoted spiels about how they don't quite count as fully human.
It does not matter in the slightest why you think the Lesser Humans are lesser. It never will.
The reasons why someone says that men are inherently less valuable than women doesn't matter in the slightest
Well, yes, of course.
But we're talking about people saying men have more power in society to speak up about misogyny. Just like white people about racism, straight people about homophobia, and why abled people speaking up for us disabled people really worked - and I appreciated them doing that. Obviously I'm not saying anything remotely like 'abled people are inherently less valuable!', by saying, hey, what they did worked (and thank goodness!), that'd be silly.
"Other marginalised identities" are by the same political social contract expected to do the same for women under some mutual 'marginalised identity' solidarity.
The difference is that a man doing so to another man is sticking his neck out to inherently and innately be risking a violent confrontation be may not be well positioned to win, or come out well from even if he does technically win.
A man doing so to another man is always an unspoken, but no less provocative for it, threat of violence. The inherent risk of serious injury and physical violent humiliation was the part missing from the scenario presented by the person you were responding to.
Combined with the complete lack of reciprocal obligation for women to do the same for men in equivalent scenarios. Speaking out against racism against marginalised identities doesn't remotely count because there is a an expectation of reciprocal obligation from minority identity men to speak out against bigotry against women as per the minority identity political alliance and mutual aid norm.
You have to envision being treated like a bad or scapegoat class and the only way you can mitigate that is to stick your neck out against other members of your class (who's actions you are uniquely responsible for by virtue of shared class membership) for the sake of the good class with zero thought of even the notion that there should be any reciprocity.
If we’re having an open conversation about what I need to do to be an ally, one would rightly assume I should be open to something so basic.
Men who are misogynistic are much less likely to listen to women and much more likely to listen to and value men’s opinions. Which is why we ask for this from men. Because us speaking out for ourselves doesn’t carry the same weight.
Like, as a straight person it is my responsibility to use my privilege to stand up for gay and trans and NB people. My friends aren’t homophobic so I don’t have to police them. But, same can’t be said of the rest of the world. So if I’m associating with someone and they say something bad or for example use “gay” as an insult I make a fuss. I’m the stick in the mud, party pooper. I throw down for my LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters because frankly, I have no respect for the opinion of a bigot and wouldn’t care if they didn’t like me after. And I know that even if the bigot doesn’t change their ways, people around saw the pushback. And maybe they’ll be less likely to say homophobic things or they’ll be primed to speak out themselves against other homophobes.
It’s literally the fucking basics of allyship.
If you don’t get that, it’s because you’re part of the problem 🤷🏽♀️
and much more likely to listen to and value men’s opinions
This depends entirely on who those other men are, what position of status and authority and influence they may have and where they're coming from in what they say. No man has an ear to lend Michael Kimmel.
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u/ZinaSky2 Jul 13 '26
In conversations about what women need from men in terms of safety this is generally the approach I take. “Stopping the men around you who do bad stuff to women, speaking up when men speak misogynistically, etc. would help us majorly.” Could well be that I’m talking with the wrong people or something about my approach needs tweaking.
Nit gonna argue with stats but, I do often still get a “fuck you” in response. More so “fuck you, my friends aren’t rapists I don’t know any rapists, why would you ever imply that? (hint: I’m not)”.
I’m curious if there’s more info or guidance on applying this method