If some ‘women’s issues’ are really all about making men feel guilty for being men, Lisa Hickey wonders, how will we move forward?
I’d been talking to Tom Matlack about running a section here on The Good Men Project about “Male Guilt” and asked him to explain more what he was thinking. “You know,” he said, “sometimes I am made to feel guilty just for being a man.”
Well, yes, I do know. Which may be surprising, given that I am a woman. And I can’t remember ever once in my life having a sense of guilt over being a woman.
But if I am being completely honest with myself, there are probably times I’ve tried to make men feel guilty for being men.
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It’s a funny thing, this thing called privilege. Almost like the word entitlement, two concepts I hadn’t really paid much attention to until recently. But I was reading yet another Malcolm Gladwell book where he talked about the difference in those who tend to succeed in life and those who don’t.
And one thing that happens in different socioeconomic classes is that those on the higher end of the spectrum are taught to have a sense of entitlement that those on the lower end of the spectrum simply aren’t taught. And that “sense of entitlement” is what gives you an attitude that makes you better suited to succeeding in the world.
This was an “aha” to me. I didn’t grow up with a sense of entitlement. I’d watch other people who had been brought up that way, and even early on, at age 14, 15, 16—I’d think to myself—“where did they get that instruction manual for life that no one ever handed to me?” And it never occurred to me until I read Gladwell’s book—oh, about 3 days ago—that maybe my lack of a sense of entitlement was because of the way I was brought up.
According to Gladwell, it has to do with a certain amount of “practical intelligence,” a term coined by Robert Sternberg. Practical intelligence includes “knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.”
Nobody had given me the memo explaining that to me. For a long time, life baffled me because I didn’t get that. Any of it. For years, I didn’t actually talk much because it I simply didn’t know—I didn’t know what to say to whom, when to say it, or how to say it for maximum effect. Eventually, I was able to figure much of that out. But what is a coping strategy when you are frustrated and don’t know how to cope because you can’t even articulate what the problem is?
You try to make the other person feel guilty.
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I was in a relationship with a guy that was going fairly well. It was after my husband and I had split up, when I was actively seeing more self-awareness and ways of figuring out how to better navigate this world that had scared me so much. And this guy and I talked about a lot of things, developed a true “intellectual intimacy,” and I was honest with him in ways I hadn’t been before. But at some point in the relationship, he was also completely honest with me, and I couldn’t handle it. I become emotionally manipulative (warning: don’t try this at home), and the relationship fell apart.
And long after it was too late, I realized that there were a whole bunch of feelings that came out in our relationship—love, anger, sadness, poignancy, confusion, heartbreak, joy. All of those we could work our way though, becoming closer in the process.
But the minute I tried to make him feel guilty, he turned his back and walked away.
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Two weeks after I met Tom Matlack, I said to him “You work harder than anyone I’ve ever met in my life.” He scoffed at that notion, said something like, “Ahh, c’mon, that can’t be true.” But it was—he not only worked harder than anyone I had ever met, he worked much, much harder. Ten-times harder. Fifteen. And yes, Tom had that ability that includes “knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.” But Tom had that practical knowledge because he worked at it. Not because of a privileged youth in the sense we think about it. Not because he is wealthy, which he is. But his sense of entitlement came because he knew that if he worked hard at things, he could make them happen. His “sense of entitlement” was earned, not given to him.
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I was talking to a Good Men Project contributor the other day about the commenters on our site. Our commenters are a lot of things—at any given moment in time they are loud, articulate, passionate, thoughtful, angry, shill, funny, nonsensical, logical, or off-the-wall. And this contributor had been the brunt of some of the not-so-easy-to-deal-with commenters. She was asking me what to do about it—what are the strategies for coping when people engaged in behaviors that felt like name-calling, critical, taunting, or just rude.
And I looked back over the comments on the thread, and one in particular—written by a man—jumped out at me:
“Women’s Issues” are virtually always framed as male-caused, even when this doesn’t make sense.
And what I discussed with the contributor—a woman—was, “What if that is the truth?”
Because if that is the case, then what we are doing is making men feel guilty for being men. And given everything, that doesn’t seem like the best way of operating in this world.
In fact, I can see it happen in real time. When feminists yell and scream and shout and do everything they can to make men feel guilty, I think there is a tendency for men to do the only thing that makes sense to them. They turn their back and walk away from the relationship.
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I get back around to this idea: “the problems of the world are not all the fault of men.” There should be no need for collective guilt of men. And, as women, making men feel guilty for being men serves very little purpose. Instead, what I would hope would happen is that together we gain increasing levels of awareness about how to navigate our way through a world that is changing faster than we can even imagine. And how to help each other in the process.
About Lisa Hickey
Vocalyze
“Gender relations is no different than anything else. It’s not complicated. Just treat everyone – man, woman, or child, black, white, red, yellow, or brown, young or old, with respect, kindness, and dignity – and you won’t have a problem with any group of people. I guarantee it.”-Eric M.
“My observation is that most of the ills are caused by a person, group or groups attempting to gain more power over another or others.”- Terre S.
I agree with both of these statements.
That’s why I became a Buddhist in 2009.
Y’all take care.
As a man. I’m not sure that the “…problems of the world being the fault of men” is necessarily wrong. Like it or not, men have been the prime movers in much of human history, and even today it’s mostly men behind the big events and developments in the world. As the old saying goes, if you want to make a cake, you have to break some eggs. As women are becoming more involved in politics and industry, they are quickly learning that it’s practically impossible to accomplish anything without p*ssing somebody off, offending some group, or giving someone the short end of the stick. To sum it up most generally, the universal truth that life is not fair still applies, no matter how hard we try to legislate fairness.
With regards to female anger and male guilt, the more accurate statement would be that those women assert that “…the problems of WOMEN are the fault of men.” That’s the message I get loud and clear from the angry feminist camp, primarily because they are overwhelmingly concerned with “women’s” issues as opposed to issues that affect humanity in general.
“That’s the message I get loud and clear from the angry feminist camp, primarily because they are overwhelmingly concerned with “women’s” issues as opposed to issues that affect humanity in general.”
You must understand that they are convinced that they are one and the same. If feminist issues are addressed to their satisfaction, all will be well, from their standpoint. They frankly don’t care about anything or one else.
Yes men have issues, but I think what is being addressed in this article is the collective responsibility placed on all men when much of what people are often the most upset about are the actions of individual men. When I realized that I should stop appologizing for how I was born, white, heterosexual, male, I was able to more fully embrass the experiences of my brothers and sisters of different back grounds because it stopped being about me and started being about the people I was connecting with.
Wow lisa, you write better for men than any of the men at this site. Do you realize how good it feels to actually have men’s experiences validated rather than diminished/ignored?
I suggest talking to the vast majority of men living on the streets and ask them if they feel responsible for the worlds problems.
Blaming everything on men is one of the primary tools you women have. I cannot believe that you will ever give it up. It is much too useful to you; it enables you to manipulate and hurt us wioth ease.
The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. Mor and more men are becoming indifferent to women. You made it clear in the last 40 years: you need us like a fish needs a bicycle. Now we are coming to accept that, and that we need you like a bicycle needs a fish. More men learn this every day. Women do not need us, do not want us, as human beings, only as walking ATM’s and sperm generators and maybe a life support system for a warm dildo. That’s it. that’s all we are to you.
Enjoy the world that feminism has made for us all, that you, Lisa, helped to build in your own, small, way.
PS to Capt. Kirk: you should do a search on the term “apex fallacy”. You have been brainwashed with the femist lie. Here is the clue: it may be true that all CEO’s are men, but not all men are CEO’s.
The average man has no power over anyone else. Certainly none over women. Apex fallacy. Learn it.
That’s a point that came up in Quiet Riot Grrl’s article, too: Yes, men have all the power in our society–but those are OTHER MEN. A vanishingly tiny fraction, the notorious “1%.” They are not us. We’re down here in the cubicle-trenches with you women.
Here’s the thing.
The only thing 99% of men get from sharing an outie with the 1% in charge (well, maybe, personally I think TPTB are sexless reptillians) is guilt and shame. And excuses why their problems are irrelevant.
Bra-fucking-vo
As a man, I wanne make love to you and carry your children
no homo
Pretty interesting topic for an article. I think it got a touch muddled when you tried to juggle two separate ideas (breeding entitlement and the collective guilt of men). You never really linked them together in a satisfactory way. Are you saying that women should have more entitlement? That men have more entitlement and thus cause women to pile guilt on them? That people without entitlement use guilt as a back up? This last one you seemed to state a little more clearly at one point, but the fact that you never connected the two ideas made me feel like the article wasn’t going anywhere and really took the punch out of what would otherwise have been a more powerful article.
That was nice to hear.
I fear that it is excactly those attempts to cause male guilt, that
made many men resent feminism. They hear feminist ideas, specificly sex- positve ones
and instantly feel attact, even when it really isnt the case. And that’s how they react, defensive.
I’ve been there.
And the sad part is feminists really didn’t create male guilt, its just that some of them won’t look a gift horse in the mouth when male guilt plays out in their favor.
big disagreement here.
Just look at people like Gail Dines, or Diana Boston.
Guilt and slutshaming is most of what those people are about.
Neither gender can have it both ways. You can’t say that men are totally responsible for the state of the world AND say that women have not gotten enough attention for their contribution to the world. You can’t say that women’s hard work is the basic foundation of society and then only blame men for the way society turns out. You can’t say that behind every great man is a great woman and then blame only great men for the evils of the world. By the same token, you can’t say men should get all the credit for running the world and then ignore all the bad things in the world. You can’t say women and children need men’s strength to protect them and that’s why it’s necessary for men to bomb women and children sometimes. (In the case of World War II, using bombs and bombers assembled by women getting fat paychecks to build them. You can’t praise women’s enormous contribution to a war effort and then lay all the moral judgment on men.)
A lot of wisdom in this article. I’ve read it several times. That part about not getting the guidebook on practical intelligence really resonated with me, but I’m coming from the opposite side.
In my own life I took that idea of practical intelligence too far. Since I was a little kid I got really good at figuring out the best thing to say to a particular person in any circumstance, the thing that person most wanted to hear, no matter what I really thought or felt, no matter if what I said was true or not. After a few decades of that, I felt very hollow inside, like I was living my life as a fictional character, wondering when my point of view would ever really matter. Total Midlife Crisis™ meltdown. (Talk about “don’t try this at home”….) I’m still working on a much more fulfilling ethical code in which I don’t say anything that’s not true, but one that takes the situation and person’s feelings into account. I totally get what many feminists say about women being socialized to “be nice” and not express their opinions because someone might not like it.
This Gladwell stuff sounds a lot like being a good little boy, don’t ever rock the boat, don’t disagree with authority, do everything you can to fit in, never do anything that could challenge anyone, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, etc. Classic Baby Boom era worship of social conformity. Don’t go overboard with that practical intelligence stuff or you’ll lose your soul. I’ve become a big fan of the little boy in the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” who tells everyone that, in fact, the emperor has no clothes, so why is everyone lying? How many of the world’s problems today boil down to a situation where everyone knew it was bad but no one wanted to be a “troublemaker.” Sometimes the emperor is naked, and someone needs to stop it before he freezes to death.
Female insecurity and inability to deal with men make them, throw guilt at men. Lisa it right men just turn their back to these women.
Men are missing the point here women die every day at the hands of men.
Prostitution and porn is without doubt another form of hate against women where women ar beaten and shot in the legs if they don’t comply .come on we need change in mens attitude to women
Lisa, you need to read Allan G. Johnson’s “The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy.” Johnson explains how privilege works much better than the writers at The Good Men Project. He explains it in such a way that people do not feel guilty.
I appreciate your writing Lisa, it does appear you try very hard to be equitable.
Here’s my POV.
Men did not create the presumption that all men are pedophiles.
Men did not create the presumption all men are rapists or potential rapists.
Men did not create the presumption that men
are somehow looking to victimize women in any way.
This was all done by women seeking supremacy over men.They have succeeded as the courts no longer give due process to men.
Women of good conscience need to reverse these actions as they apparently have the power in this matters.
Then we can begin to call them feminists,instead of supremacists.
Most men are “good” right out of the box, they do not need fixing nor counseling of any sort.
We keep getting beaten about the head by the false rape and DV hysteria claims, it is beyond getting old,it’s now sickening and angering.
Bad enough to be violated in the courts on false charges,but to see it in society and in print is salt in the wound.
Time to put a stop to the lies and demonization of men.
Sigh, so much of the world’s problems are because people can’t take responsibility for their actions and try to blame everything on other people. Thank god someone recognizes it. While I think feminists are more culpable because their ideas are more accepted, many MRAs are also equally guilty of blaming far too much on women.
Devil’s advocate here.
Okay, let’s say all the problems in the world are all the fault of men. I will hereby stipulate that’s true. So, the way forward is clear and simple. Women need to take over the world. How should they plan on doing that, exactly? What would that look like, exactly?
It would have to mean an end to elections, because that clearly makes no difference. All those women voting and holding office gave women absolutely no power over the outcome whatsoever. Those thousands, millions of women who fought for women’s rights, marched for legal equality, got thrown in jail for trying to vote, all those feminist pioneers must have completely wasted their time, if women have had absolutely no impact on current events. Ouch. That must be incredibly disillusioning….