Sunday 27 May 2018

Beware the man who calls himself a "feminist" (Not what you think)

Being in University is not easy. It's a constant slog for meeting assignment deadlines and preparing for tests and exams. But one advantage is that you meet people of a diverse background.

But there is a kind of individual you should be careful of in academia. They can be professors, students, research scholars even a friend. This the "male feminist", within quotation marks. Hence forth shall be identified as MF.

Let's just get this out of the way. Feminism overall is a force for good. Men can be very good feminists too. I fully support feminism and it's objectives. But the problem is there is a certain species of male feminist that I often see in academia and activist groups as being quite a problematic group.

These are the men who run around calling themselves feminists but really behave nothing like one. In fact, their feminism or support of, seems to be a cover to be abusive and chauvinistic towards women. I'd go so far as to label their behaviour as gaslighting the women they befriend or meet while participating in feminist causes.

Let me explain with an example. A student I know called A has been proclaiming to be a feminist for a while now. He pays lip service to ideas of feminism and even gets invited into feminist groups and activities. However he is quite disrespectful and degrading to the women around his life. He frequently insults his female colleagues and friends with chauvinistic rhetoric and a decent conversation reveals that he holds ideas no different from chauvinism and misogyny but simply rapped up in a weird ideas of possessive protection of women. He is openly disrespectful of female guest lecturers often trying to undermine them. In his mind, women are equal to men but they aren't equal to him.

When he does get called out by the women, he simply falls back on his "credentials" as a "male feminist" to claim that he could never be a chauvinist. In fact, he actually tries to make the women believe that it's their fault for getting treated terribly by him. This in my opinion is gaslighting. Gas lighting to quickly sum up, is a deflection technique used to abusers to shift the blame onto their victim.

Such MF are quite common in academia. It is not a pleasant experience to deal with them.

These types of MF, tend to loudly proclaim their support for feminism in public while secretly or even unconsciously they are quite the opposite of what they preach.

Feminism to the MF is not some thing they believe will be beneficial to women but simply a cover to hide their own low confidence and lack of talent or abilities. They make their support to feminism as central to their character, loudly proclaiming it in public to get attention to themselves instead of using their platform to get attention to the feminist objectives. They are narcissistic to the core. They want the attention. They want people to love them and validate them. The feminist activity is secondary to their own wants.

Dealing with such people is difficult. Women feminists must be vigilant of men coming into their space. As with most human traits, the MF lives on a spectrum. Some really are feminists but their own personality is very self promoting and narcissistic, which can be either a benefit or a disadvantage and is upto the female feminist whether she wants to be associated with such a man. But at the other end of the spectrum exists the hypocrite who participates in feminism simply for self gain. These must be avoided entirely. But such men continue to plague academia and activist groups.

We have seen such men for a while now, from the likes of Harvey Weinstein to Mitchell Sunderland. They publically pay lip service to feminism but in private they do the opposite.

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