When I was invited to write a chapter on men in feminism for a scholarly book, I told the editors that I would have to include discussion of my writing on the radical feminist critiques of pornography and transgender ideology, which are controversial subjects in academic feminism. They assured me that wouldn’t be a problem, but I submitted a draft early because I’ve had editors reject such writing at the last minute. Their response did not surprise me: “The editorial team has met and decided the article does not fit with our mission for the book.”
Rather than abandon the project, I reached out to the UK feminist activist/author Julie Bindel, who generously offered to run the essay on her Substack in five segments. I’ve compiled those installments in a PDF that is available on my website.
Here is my introduction to the series.
Members of dominant classes have uneasy standing in movements that challenge their class power and privilege. Can we contribute to intellectual debates and political change without replicating a dominance dynamic? Why should anyone trust us? Should we trust ourselves?
As a white man born in the United States who has worked in professional jobs during a period of economic expansion, I have considerable first-hand experience with this quandary. As a friend once told me, “Jensen, if you had been born good looking, you would have had it all.” What guidelines should someone with my advantages follow?
During my time in feminist scholarship and activism, one of the commandments for men has been “accept the leadership of women,” reminding us that we have no claim to authority and don’t automatically know best. Like most platitudes, however, it’s sketchy.
The obvious question: Which women? Working in scholarly or political arenas as a pro-feminist man means working with feminists and rejecting or ignoring most of the claims of anti-feminist and non-feminist women. But another equally obvious question: Which feminists? There has never been a single, unified approach to any intellectual/political movement, including feminism. Liberal, radical, socialist, Marxist, cultural, psychoanalytic—the list of feminist theories goes on and on. I can’t accept the leadership of all feminist women when they disagree among themselves. Making choices is inevitable, as others have pointed out.
Many men avoid those conflicts by describing themselves as “male allies” engaged in “allyship” on “male allyship journeys,” terms that not only don’t help navigate conflicting feminisms but sideline men’s self-interest in embracing feminist principles as active participants with a stake in the struggle. Pro-feminist men, like all people, have mixed motives. (One of my favorite aphorisms is “I’ve never met a motive that wasn’t mixed,” though I haven’t been able to track down its origins.) I have yet to meet a saint in academia or political organizing who acts with no concern for self-interest. We do things for complex reasons involving not only our sense of justice and also our psychological and social needs.
In this essay, I confront these tensions, rejecting the duck-and-cover strategy some men use. Men must balance the need for humility with the inevitability of making intellectual and political judgments, taking responsibility for how we analyze the sex/gender system and challenge patriarchy. We should explain why we follow the leadership of particular women, endorse particular analyses, and support particular policies to challenge institutionalized male dominance. If we avoid those decisions, we almost always by default “choose” the conventional wisdom in our social circles. I offer as examples the radical feminist critiques of pornography and transgender ideology, cases in which men too often step back to avoid conflict and end up endorsing (explicitly or implicitly by their silence) the dominant liberal/postmodern position. What should guide pro-feminist men in our intellectual and political decisions? To quote a friend, we must not only pursue justice but be in this struggle “to save our own lives.”
I will begin with a summary of my career, explaining why I embrace radical feminist analyses and critique not just “toxic masculinity” but the culture’s obsession with masculinity/femininity. I will apply those analyses to pornography and transgender ideology, concluding with an account of how arguments from justice and self-interest don’t conflict.
For the whole essay, go to my website.