Feminist propaganda to men

A friend of mine, a cis woman I admire, posted this meme image.

With all due respect, its caption is a crock of shit.

Forgive me for sounding harsh. But … c’mon.

Men are rewarded, not punished, for violating gendered behavior norms? Really?

All men could do what a handsome movie star with professional-grade dance training & talent did? Really?

I live my life joyfully violating “traditional” masculinity in numerous ways. I strongly advocate other fellas doing the same, both for the world’s sake and their own. But that has had costs. I have experienced how belief in dogma is far from the only thing holding men back. I have experienced how that dogma itself is far from fragile.

My friend knows she lacks direct lived experience of how people assigned male at birth experience The Patriarchy, but I know for a fact that she has significant indirect experience of how vigorously The Patriarchy enforces gendered norms on us. I think that if she had reflected for a moment, she would have realized that the meme was saying something absurd. But feminist-informed social justice advocacy culture is irresponsibly sloppy in the way we talk about this stuff.

(I say “we” because I myself am guilty of this all too often.)

When we say these kinds of things to men, all too often this discredits our entire movements. Consider how commentary like that meme lands for the very men we should most try to address, fellas chafing against the masculine norms projected by The Patriarchy without language to describe their frustrations. Not only don’t we know what the heck we are talking about, our misunderstanding is so perversely wrong that we implicitly cast blame on individual men for responding to the pressures of The Patriarchy. We assert that men are delusional about those pressures!

It is doubly galling for women to make these claims about mens’ experiences and conditions. Feminist women should know better than to make that mistake.

We must keep in mind that men bear moral responsibility to overthrow The Patriarchy without women having to lift a finger. But pragmatically, we know that men need help. Too often feminist culture does the opposite. Fergawdsake let’s stop shooting ourselves in the foot.

And let’s not deny Mr. Holland credit for doing something gutsy and difficult.