Male Guilt (Why I'm NOT an MRA)

I'm not Tiresias; the only things I know about being a woman are the things women have told me.

And the main thing I've been told is: when you're a woman, you feel it all the time. You wake up knowing you're a woman. You look in the mirror and see a woman. When you get honked at & catcalled every day on your way to work, you are reminded that you are a woman. When you arrive at work and realize you forgot to brush your hair or put on make-up, you feel the reactions throughout the day, and you are reminded that you are a woman. When you have to find a man to walk you to your car at night because you're alone, you are reminded that you are a woman.

I, on the other hand, just wake up. I look in the mirror and see...a face. When I walk to my car to go to work, the only calls I get from car windows will be, "Nice pants!" if I happen to be wearing my red corduroys. Those calls don't remind me of my gender; they remind me that my colorful clothes bring joy into the lives of strangers. If I get to work and haven't shaved, nobody will question it. The same is true if my hair is unkempt or shoes unshined. My appearance says nothing about my ability to do my job, and everyone knows it. They look at me the same way whether my face is shaven or not.

Then, at night, a woman will ask if I can walk her to her car, and that's when I'm finally reminded that I am a man...because that's the only time in my entire day that I've been forced to see gender inequality.

At the same time, though, I also wake up feeling a burden: the burden of guilt. I especially feel it when I wake up next to a woman who is smarter and better-looking than I am, but when I leave for work with a face full of black sandpaper and hairs sticking in every direction, she is still in front of a mirror, applying make-up and devoting extra attention to her hair in order to be "presentable" at her job. Then, when she gets to her job, she has to work harder than I do to make the same amount of money (or less, according to statistics). When I go for my jog around the block at 9 PM in our poorly-lit neighborhood, she will sometimes express concern that a person might attack me & steal my iPod, and I'm reminded of how different our experiences are being outside at night in a bad neighborhood. The fact that, for me, the worst thing that could happen is my iPod getting stolen says a lot about the male experience vs. the female. As I'm going for my run, I remember this, and even if it's not something I've caused, I still feel guilty that I benefit from it every day, often times without even realizing it.

An MRA (Men's Rights Activist) would never feel guilty about any of this. An MRA is someone who wakes up constantly feeling resentful of the fact he's a man...as thoughthat's the thing holding him back in life. The reason for his resentment can vary: sometimes he's angry at Feminism for challenging his sense of entitlement; other times he's angry at something about himself (he's short, he has a high voice, he's too artistic and not good at any sports, etc.) and he constantly remembers how, if he were a woman, his height & vocal pitch would be considered "normal," and his lack of athleticism wouldn't get him socially ostracized. He never stops to consider how a tall or deep-voiced woman might face many of the same problems he does. When his sexual orientation is questioned (and attacked) because he prefers theater, dance, and painting over basketball & baseball, he fails to see that women who play those sports deal with the exact same thing in reverse. He only sees the hard time he is having. He feels that if he were a woman with the same physical attributes and cultural interests that make him so insecure, he would no longer have those problems, and that's all he cares about.

I've definitely had my ignorant moments, but that's not me, and that's never been me.

We talk a lot in this country about White Guilt. It's real, and I'm glad it exists, even it's started to become a punching bag for the far right. Race affects many aspects of American life, and if a little bit of guilt motivates white people to initiate change, I don't think that's a bad thing. Nor should it be a bad thing if men support gender equality out of guilt. Weshould feel guilty.

I have a degree in Classical Literature, and one of the most common themes in Classical Literature is the scapegoating of women for all the problems in the world. What if, however, all those stories originated not from men who maliciously wanted to oppress women, but from men who saw the pain of childbirth and felt compelled to explain the biological injustice of it as a way of coping with their own male guilt? 

So I'm not an MRA. An MRA would never say, do, or think any of the things that I described above. I started this blog to make it clear what I am, and to show the world I was determined to change, but the more I wrote, the clearer it came to me that I never was the person I thought I was. It doesn't mean I'm perfect or that I shouldn't seek to improve, but it does mean I'm part of the solution, not part of the problem, and that's a huge relief.