people are what feminists look like: speaking loudly should not mean shouting

My friends are, for the most part, very reasonable people. That’s at least partly why I’m friends with them. Yet many of them – people otherwise capable of, and enthused about, civil, rational debate about a wide range of topics – will simply roll their eyes (or worse) whenever I raise the topic of feminism with them.

I’m a man, but I should note that the reactions get even worse when any of my female friends dare broach the subject with these aforementioned reasonable people.

It is an age old problem, certainly – one that confronted the suffragettes and those before them. This concern that feminists are, and feminism is, composed entirely of one-dimensional caricatures; that in fact the group is homogenous, closed, and full only of angry women who would rather decry all men than engage in a civil or constructive debate.

The reality of course is much different. If you’re reading this column, it is likely you are already aware of this – Lip Magazine is one of the many places, online and elsewhere, where such civility, rationality, and dialogue (as opposed to monologue) is the norm and not the exception.

Immediately, then, many questions arise. Why, for instance, does the stereotype persist, in the face of widespread evidence to the contrary? Is there something deficient in the very model of civil dialogue? (After all, Albert Einstein famously declared that the definition of insanity was ’doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results’.) And, regardless of what the fundamental problem(s) is (are), what can those concerned with equality do to prevent the seemingly perpetually negative images of feminism and feminists that seem to pervade more mainstream media coverage?

One needs only turn to such mainstream fora – from the letters page of Melbourne’s Herald Sun (an easy target, perhaps) to the outpourings of Twitter-based vitriol that tend to greet the appearance of feminists on ostensibly left-wing bastions such as the ABC’s Q & A – to realise that feminism is still seen by most of society as something that exists on the outer fringes; to most, feminism has as little to do with ‘equality’ as veganism has to do with killing animals for food.

I am hardly the first to pose these questions, and I will hardly be the first to note that a large extent of the vitriol aimed at whatever it is that people view feminism as is the result of those with the most radical views typically having the loudest voices. Just as the Australian Greens continues to be plagued by accusations of ‘hippy extremism’, despite the thoughtful views expressed by the majority of their representatives, feminists are plagued by the cliche that they are man-haters.

But I would like to throw a further spanner in the works – do ‘mainstream’ feminists have any right to be aggrieved by those who voice these more radical views with gusto?

Honestly, I don’t think so. Each of us occupies a particular position on the spectrum of political and social views (one that will hopefully shift and develop with time and experience), and it seems unhelpful, to me, to demonise those who simply sit at the other end, or at a different point along that spectrum from ourselves.

Rather, if radical feminists speak loudest, perhaps it is more responsible for the moderates to simply speak as loudly.

Crucially, though, speaking loudly should not be synonymous with shouting. Let us speak vociferously, but let us respect one another’s views. Let us continue to spread the idea – as publications like Lip already do – that feminists occupy all parts of the spectrum. We are radical, we are moderate, we are women, we are men. We are simply human beings, each of us with our own views.

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This is my first column for Lip, and, I hope, the first of many.

These issues are complex and I do not intend this post to cover all my thoughts on the matters presented here – I doubt I could do so in 100 posts. But let me set this as a roadmap to my future presence here: I will be exploring the ways in which civility might overcome the stereotypical image of the ‘angry feminist’. But I also hope to acknowledge that there are many legitimate reasons for feminists to be angry.

I want to ask questions that explore these complexities, but I want these to be relevant to all sides of the discussion. What are the repercussions of these complexities? Who should feminism target? Is feminism just ‘for’ women? Questions like these will animate my discussions here.

I am a man who cares about the ways in which men can have positive influences and engagements with feminism and its surrounding debates – with how men can respect women in all the ways that respect should be expected by any individual, woman or man.

I hope that I can keep myself from shouting. And I hope that it helps.

(Image credit: 1.)