Equal Writes

by Josh Franklin

A few weeks ago, I saw a wonderful post by Courtney Martin at The American Prospect, where she wrote about men’s gender activism and the lack of positive male role models. This quote in particular resonated with me:

Many young men, it seems, are stuck in stage one of gender consciousness. They want to prove that they are one of the “good ones” and separate themselves from all the gendered behaviors and beliefs that they now see as oppressive. That, or they wallow in guilt. (This is not unlike the stage many white kids get stuck in upon fully realizing their role in perpetuating racism.) At worst, this point of view is paralyzing. At best, it leads to burnout.

One reason that I appreciated this so much was that I think it describes well the challenge we face at Princeton in advocacy against sexual violence. This past friday, Speakout held an event called “Sexual Assault is not a Joke,” where survivors of sexual assault spoke out. The event was deeply moving, and I admire the survivors immensely for their strength. Something that bothered me, though, was a comment made at the opening of the event. One of the organizers told the story of her male friend, who thought that the event was blowing a non-issue out of proportion. Apparently, he thought that this was a case of “oh, feminists can’t take a joke,” and declared that he wouldn’t be going to the event. The conclusion to this story was that this dismissal on the part of so many members of our community is the reason we need to have this event.

Something about this struck me as contradictory. How are we reaching out if those who don’t accept the realities of sexual violence don’t even show up at the table? Friday night’s was a powerful event, but we need to realize that there is a strategy missing for creating real change. I think that Martin’s piece points to one of the key reasons why real activism is so hard–we don’t even make it to stage one of gender consciousness, because for so many men on campus, accepting the reality of sexual violence means trying and trying to prove to the women in their lives that they are good guys or, as Martin says, living in perpetual guilt. This isn’t productive, and it certainly isn’t pleasant–it’s not surprising that it’s hard to generate wide support for confronting sexual assault.

I think a key component–although, I emphatically note, not the only component–of changing this is to develop men’s spaces for gender activism. Men need to be involved in some women’s spaces, but just as women need some safe space, men need a space where they can be honest about their relationship with masculinity and work towards a shared consciousness in which sexual violence is unacceptable. What needs to be removed from the equation is the pressure to distance oneself from the perpetrator–to say that some men are like this, but I am not that kind of man–and to create a place where productive honesty is possible. We can’t grow when we constantly set up a reified categorization, when we are always “not like them”, and where we cannot confront our own participation in a culture of gender violence. We can’t truly respect ourselves and be effective feminist activists/allies unless we can see beyond the objectified categories that we put ourselves in.

To this end, I am leading the creation of a SHARE men’s discussion group on campus. And any men who want to be involved should get in touch with me. But I realize that there are problematic aspects to this kind of activism. I don’t want to disconnect myself from women’s groups. And moreover, I don’t believe in the kind of binary gender that constitutes this program–I think that binary gender is part of the problem, and it seems paradoxical that the solution would include such a clear reinforcement of the “truth” of binary gender. So my question is this: how can we engage in productive activism, while working to respect the complex nature of gender?

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