A Male Feminist What is This You Say?

I have decided to try something out. The idea came to me because I know so many wonderful feminists. About once a month I am going to interview someone. This month I went with an unlikely feminist, my dear friend Sean. Sean is not what people imagine when they hear the word "feminist" but he wears the title proudly. (We actually have match bumper stickers that say "This is What a Feminist Looks Like"). Sean is a conservative, christian male and he's heterosexual. Sean and I met in college and if I completely take credit for taking him under my feminist wing. We've gone to feminist conferences together and have done a mock rape trial. Sean and I disagree on different issues, mainly abortion, but we still both fight the good fight and proudly call ourselves feminists.

Q: How did you become a feminist? A: While attending college for my bachelor’s degree I had been taking classes that were cross-listed as women’s studies courses. This was also around the time I met my good friend Sabrina. I recognized women’s right, but did not understand that equality was something to be grasped, and I did not see how saturated our culture was with misogyny until having many of those late night “academic” pontificates with Sabrina. She basically gave me the lingo to describe what I was feeling and observing about the world around me, and the name of the movement working to change it: Feminism. Q: Do you feel it is important for men to identify as “feminists”? And why? A: Identifying as a feminist means that I acknowledge women as equals, and that I support the equal treatment of everyone. Without putting a name on it the values are more easily made fluid and able to slip away. That’s why we label things, so that we know what to call something, and how to categorize it. If I identify as a feminist and a man, then others will ask question and start to see what feminism is all about. Men will also be more held to that standard in community with other feminists. Q: Have you faced any challenges as a male feminist? If so, what? A: Yes. Mostly I deal with shock and awe of being both a man and a feminist, which follows an explanation of what feminism is, and why I am one. I haven’t faced many challenges, but my sexually has often been questioned. (Sabrina’s favorite response to that is: “He’s not gay, he’s religious,” which seems to satisfy any curiosity). In 2011, I attended an international radical feminist conference on Stop Porn Culture that was hosted by Dr. Gail Dines at Wheelock College in Boston with Sabrina. She knows exactly what I’m going to say. Feminism has prejudicially been mislabeled as a group of women who hate men and burn bras. Although I’ve never seen the bra burnings, I have experienced the man hating. I had asked a simple question in regard to men getting involved in rape prevention and this young woman from across the room interrupted and gave me the finger. Taking this at face value one might get the wrong impression of feminism. To give you the full picture, this woman had announced earlier how she was repeatedly raped in adolescence and force to make porn. This was not the case of a feminist hating men (nor is it the norm among feminists), but rather of a deeply hurt woman lashing out at anyone who might resemble or support her attackers; however some prejudice does come up when hurt people are looking for a medium by which to seek vengeance rather than restorative justice.  


Q: What does being a male feminist look like to you?

Being a man and a feminist means that I should embrace my sexual and gender identity of being a man without using that status to look down on others; men are no better than women, and I am certainly no better than anyone. Not only am I a feminist and a man, but I’m also politically conservative (meaning I prefer a smaller federal government), and a Christian. Wait a minute… What? Yes, I’m a conservative, Christian, feminist. Hear me out on this. Feminism is the movement to take back what men in predominant cultures and peoples have stripped away from the women, children, and the less fortunate throughout history. As a man my greatest role model is a carpenter from Nazareth named Jesus Christ, who ate with the beggars, tax collectors (traitors), and women (who were property in the 1st century A.D.). The best example of this comes from the gospel of John 4:1-26, when Jesus encounters a Samaritan (half Jewish, hated by the Israelites) woman at a well in the middle of the day. It’s VERY hot midday in the Middle East, so she was out when no one else would be, and the woman admits to having had 5 husbands and currently living with a man she wasn’t married too, which is a HUGE stigma. This is the equivalent of a white man in the south during the 1950s politely acknowledging the existence of a black woman in Alabama. So this event describes a man in the first century tearing down the barriers of sex, race, and social stigma. Jesus approached the woman bearing the scarlet letter with boldness and humility, and he didn’t judge her. This later continued with the early church acknowledging women as people, rather than property, and supporting widows and beggars. Ok Sean, I don’t own people, and I’m not a bigot, so what are you getting at? My point is that feminism is about restoring what the Jews referred to as shalom, or the natural peace that was meant to be found in the interwoven fabric of society. That’s what Christ came to do, and that’s what I want to be a part of.