by John McMahon; this post is based on a portion of an unpublished paper entitled “John and the feminism monster: cultivating a critical liminal subjectivity for feminist men” from December 2010
What should we call feminist men? OK, so I gave away the answer in the question – bad blogger. But I want to discuss some of the issues at play in this question because I think it’s incredibly important. As I’ve discussed before, there are a lot of intricacies unique to men and feminism. I’m sure some will have the reaction that this post is merely about ‘semantics’ and thus irrelevant to ‘reality,’ etc., but given how fraught the issue is I strongly disagree. Given how fraught the issue is, I think this act of naming is of the utmost importance.
What is fraught about the question of feminist men? A couple things. Perhaps foremost in my mind is ever-present risk of men engaging with feminism, trying to a find a place in feminism, or forge a relationship with feminism signifying a desire (in all its meanings) of patriarchical colonization, in that I want to know where I am vis-à-vis feminism to appropriate it as my place. Stephen Heath, in his “Men in Feminism” essay in the brilliant Men in Feminism edited volume, argues that any search for “male feminism” necessarily performs this. I have a long argument that accepts many of Heath’s criticisms while rejecting his final analysis, but for now I’m simply going to say that I very much believe that men who are critical and self-reflexive in their feminism(s) do not automatically perform this territorialization/appropriation, and that adopting Heath’s position risks depoliticizing all kinds of feminists, among other really significant undesirable implications. If you want (a lot more) detail, let me know.
So what are some of the framings over which I prefer ‘feminist men?’ First, I argue for always framing it as ‘men’ instead of ‘male’ in order to avoid reproducing an essentialist biological understanding of two sexes. I think that using ‘men’ instead of ‘male’ gets at the sociality of my gender, and of gender broadly understood. One of the crucial tasks for (critical) feminist men – especially cisgendered men, such as myself – is to acknowledge and think about the social norms that are always already caught up with our social status as men.
I also reject the language of men in feminism. The way that it turns feminism into a space is incredibly problematic. In her Essentially Speaking, Diana Fuss argues that this construction essentializes (read: makes unchanging and simplistic) feminism and men. Patrick D. Hopkins, in his essay “How Feminism Made a Man Out of Me” in the excellent Men Doing Feminism volume, thinks that this frame creates an “image of women inside feminist and men outside,” such that only women can be the subject of feminism (p. 42). Men ‘in’ feminism thus ignores the substantial feminist literature on men, masculinity, gender, etc., and again essentializes men and feminism. One other reason to reject this construction is is quite susceptible to very territorialization that Heath argues against.
What about men doing feminism? I think this reifies feminism as some sort of tool or object to be uncritically used and potentially manipulated. I think this fetishizes feminism and feminist theory.
I’m somewhat more sympathetic to the language of ‘pro-feminist men’ (the preferred term of masculinity scholar Michael Kimmel), or men as feminist allies. My problem with these constructions is that it still places men outside feminism, constructs a barrier between men and feminism, and essentializes men and feminism. Bascially, there’s more distance between the ‘men’ and the ‘feminism’ than I would like and than I think is possible.
So after much thought (and after a 20+ page paper), I think that the best construction is ‘feminist men.’ One of the most important benefits is that this framing is amenable to the most important questions to ask about men and feminism: How do these men maintain a critical perspective of themselves and their feminism? What are the discourses and representations of self and of feminism that man relies on and/or constructs in engaging in this work? What are the implications for people of all genders, races, and sexualities in men producing feminist knowledge? These questions are more interesting, complex, and fruitful than questions of whether or not men can do feminism, be in feminism, etc.
One more note, on what it means for feminist men to be ‘critical.’ This is something I think is necessary if feminist men are going to avoid the danger of territorializing and appropriating feminism. I have a much longer spiel about this, but I’ll give a basic picture of what I mean. It is important to be engaging in consistent self-reflection. Only a sort of immanent self-criticism enables men to negotiate the internalized patriarchy we can never disentangle ourselves from or deny. But, just because we are always already caught in patriarchy does not mean we should shirk this engagement shirk this engagement or naïvely distance ourselves from it. This necessary self-reflection is likely to produce personal unsettledness and doubt. Indeed, this reflection should provoke these feelings and emotions; as Sandra Harding writes in her essay “Reinventing Ourselves as Other,” when describing her own struggles in thinking and producing antiracist knowledge and then applies to feminist men, “if these processes are not painful, I am probably not doing them right” (p. 159). This discomfort should be productive and transformative for feminist men to avoid becoming what David Kahane (in his “Male Feminism as Oxymoron essay in Men Doing Feminism) has called the “self-flaggetor” feminist man, whose deep knowledge of feminism and focus on personal guilt risks self-indulgence and paralysis. Critical feminism for men means being political and struggling for social change, and doing this with a self-reflexive perspective that is always analyzing one’s self as a man in the society in which we live.
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