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Here are some easy things we can JUST NOT do, as men, to be good feminists. It’s just stuff we can avoid doing. It’s easy.
10. Not make cheap shots against people like Ann Coulter focusing on their appearance or perceived “Manliness.” It’s not our job to decide who is feminine enough and certainly not our job to assign value to people because of it. If we can focus on the very real absurdity in her ideas, we can make more sensible comments.
9. For that matter, we can not make trans jokes at all demeaning trans women. Trans women are women. Trans women that look really feminine are females and you would never be able to tell. Those are women. Trans women who have no interest in “passing” and being extremely feminine? Those are women, too.
8. We can not speak approvingly of prison rape just because someone we don’t like is going to jail. Prison rape is rape and we are either against it or we aren’t. I know it sounds odd but when you joke about a man being raped in prison that’s actually anti-feminist.
7. We can avoid body shaming the women around us. I’m not a big fan of body shaming at all, but we have to recognize that women have been trained to think that their value comes from their cultural approved level of attractiveness. This oppresses people. This includes very veery tall girls, large ones, short ones. And even ones that we find extremely sexually exciting- not treating them like they MUST be bimbos.
6. We can avoid slutshaming the women around us. Even the more subtle slutshaming of considering women who are sexually experienced to not be “wife” or “girlfriend” material. All of it reinforces the idea that women are diminished through the sex act but men are empowered.
5. We can avoid shaming sex workers. We don’t get to be cruel to large groups of women, ignore their unique problems, and still call ourselves feminist.
4. Not treat everything as business as usual. If you just were about to make the joke that you can’t make any jokes at all anymore if you can’t do any of what’s above, you might want to consider for a second that you might have a problem. If that is your whole repertoire of jokes…
3. We can not listen when we hear other men speaking disrespectfully about women. We can walk away. Or go to sleep.
2. We can watch out for how we treat women who are knowledgeable about issues when we talk about those issues and not unintentionally exclude them. I made the mistake once of having a conversation about something with a friend’s boyfriend (who hated me) because I wanted to find something to talk to him about. In reality, his girlfriend was most knowledgable about the issue. I should have just given up on him and waited for her. Let him hate me.
1. We can not randomly touch people when talking with them, hair, tattoos, etc. It’s easy for men to act unknowingly like they have ownership of the women around them. It’s worth watching out for.
You can actually sleep through all of these things. You can eat lunch and not do these things. It will cost us nothing to not do these things.
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