Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

My friend Joel Hen­ry and I have been de­bat­ing fem­i­nism and the emerg­ing men's move­ment for a few weeks now. The de­bate start­ed on the side­walk in front of Drink! Wine Bar in Wood­brook, and then spilled over to our Face­book walls and in­box­es. We ex­change videos and mag­a­zine sto­ries with var­i­ous per­spec­tives on the roles of men and women, how those chang­ing roles have been in­flu­enced by fem­i­nism, and what have been the con­se­quences for not on­ly women, but for men. A dyed-in-the-wool fem­i­nist, I have de­fend­ed the move­ment that for the last 50 years has re­de­fined women's roles and what it means to be a woman in the West­ern world. Joel has tak­en the "man­nist" side, ar­gu­ing that bi­o­log­i­cal de­ter­min­ism means fem­i­nism has in­ter­fered with the nat­ur­al way things ought to be–with men as pro­tec­tors and providers and women as home­mak­ers and nur­tur­ers–and that fem­i­nism has ren­dered men use­less by en­cour­ag­ing women to do every­thing them­selves. Joel wrote about men's move­ment in the on­line mag­a­zine Out­lish yes­ter­day, and even he ad­mits, "It's kind of hard to take se­ri­ous­ly" the idea that men are the ones be­ing op­pressed, even while he points to "so­ci­ety's per­sis­tent de­mon­i­sa­tion of men and male­ness."

In our de­bates, I've main­tained what I con­sid­er to be a mod­er­ate po­si­tion. Un­like some fem­i­nists, I be­lieve there are bedrock psy­cho­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences be­tween boys and girls be­yond so­cial­i­sa­tion–it goes past pink for girls and blue for boys, in­to what kinds of play most boys are drawn to, what kinds of re­spons­es most girls have to phys­i­cal sit­u­a­tions, and how each gen­der ap­proach­es prob­lem solv­ing and hu­man con­nec­tion. (My un­der­stand­ing isn't based on a sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis, mind you, but on my ex­pe­ri­ence as a par­ent and a hu­man.) To some ex­tent I agree that tra­di­tion­al women's roles have been bi­o­log­i­cal­ly de­ter­mined, and that fem­i­nism has shift­ed the ax­is. If bi­o­log­i­cal de­ter­min­ism dic­tat­ed that women make the ba­bies and mind the cave, fem­i­nism gave women the op­tion to al­so go out and hunt and fend off the preda­tors prowl­ing out­side. Of course we don't live in caves any­more and there's lit­tle need for us to be­have as though we do, so my ques­tion to Joel and oth­er apol­o­gists for men's cur­rent floun­der­ing is this: since men are just as ca­pa­ble of adap­ta­tion as women, why haven't they adapt­ed? If more women are dri­ving ships of state, why can't more men rock the cra­dle? Joel ar­gues that men who re­ject or bend the old rules of mas­culin­i­ty face pas­sive or ac­tive dis­ap­pro­ba­tion not on­ly from oth­er men, but al­so from women. And I say, so what? Suf­fragettes were wide­ly scorned; and women who ask men out even in these al­leged­ly lib­er­at­ed days are judged "un­fem­i­nine" and risk re­jec­tion. Women in the US armed forces face dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly high rates of sex­u­al as­sault while in the ser­vices. If those women could and do face dis­ap­proval and penal­ties from both men and women for dar­ing to break tra­di­tion­al roles, why can't men?

I al­so ques­tion some of the as­ser­tions of the men's move­ment that Joel didn't go in­to in his Out­lish piece. There is, for ex­am­ple, the idea that the women's move­ment con­trols the world. (I'm not ex­ag­ger­at­ing; there are peo­ple who feel fem­i­nists have co-opt­ed gov­ern­ment and busi­ness world­wide, mar­gin­al­is­ing and op­press­ing men in the process.) If this were true, one in three women wouldn't be the vic­tim of in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence; an al­leged rapist wouldn't have come this close to be­ing pres­i­dent of France; and it wouldn't be news when Hi­lary Clin­ton ap­pears in pub­lic with­out make­up. Girl ba­bies in In­dia and Chi­na wouldn't be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly abort­ed, mal­nour­ished or un­der-ed­u­cat­ed; women in many parts of the world wouldn't be in­fibu­lat­ed to be thought of as "clean;" and we in T&T wouldn't just be work­ing out how to get more women in Par­lia­ment, while we strug­gle with an HIV epi­dem­ic that over­whelm­ing­ly tar­gets women 15-25 years old. A gen­der war be­tween the women's and men's move­ments would have no win­ner. In­stead of point­ing fin­gers at fem­i­nism for de­stroy­ing the world or­der that made sense to men's old roles, the men's move­ment should in­stead look at the world as it is now and find ways in which men and women can find a new bal­ance. Be­cause Joel and I agree on one thing: the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is un­ten­able, un­sus­tain­able, and un­de­sir­able. We all live in the same world, and while we bick­er over who wears the pants, that world is falling apart.