When it comes to gender stuff, sometimes there aren’t simple solutions, and we have to be okay with that.
A fun way to start an article is to cite an anecdote from a post on the internet that probably isn’t real. Right? Good.
Imagine you’re a 21-year-old college student. You take your girlfriend to a party at the frat where you pledge and stay sober-ish while your girlfriend gets drunk.
It comes time to leave and she is too blitzed to take care of herself, so you are presented with human-sized challenge. As you’re trying to load your girlfriend into your car, two young women at the party physically prevent you from doing so, demand you identify yourself, and try to literally pry her off of you.
Eventually, a brother runs interference and you get outta there.
That sucked, right? All you want to do is get your drunkass girlfriend home to some Gatorade and these strangers (they don’t even know her) decided to impose their own set of rules on you. Frustrating! They shouldn’t do that!
…well, let’s not jump in with two feet here. Because every woman reading this story knows the context to this interaction: those girls activated Sisterhood Mode. They didn’t know Girlfriend, but they definitely didn’t know Frat Bro, and they very definitely did not trust that big sober man with that drunk girl. So they took action in what they perceived was a dangerous situation.
It wasn’t dangerous. In reality! Girlfriend was totally safe with Frat Bro.
But how many assaults prevented makes it “worth” those young women intervening and Frat Bro being annoyed? One assault stopped in a thousand interventions? One in a million? A billion?
(one in a trillion is too many and implies there’s some kind of feminist panopticon situation going on.)
Frat Bro is entitled to his feelings, and those feelings really do hurt when this kind of stuff happens. It’s dehumanizing to be identified as a threat first and Paul second. It feels bad that I carry the weight of men who treat women like garbage. It’s unpleasant.
But I’ll hold those feelings like a baby in a sling if it meant that one extra woman doesn’t get targeted by bad men, and if you ask yourself in a quiet moment, you probably will too.
There’re no good individualized solutions here. Those girls didn’t want to throw the Sisterhood switch, either, but in that moment they had no choice. It is simply the way we live until we build a better future.
This applies more broadly to interactions between men and women and to a lot of the pain that I’ve seen expressed by men.
In my first-ever post here, I twice mentioned the creeping isolation that teen boys feel as the adults around them start treating them like Men. If you are a young Black boy, this starts happening as early as ten.
(yes, that link is imperfect, but I assume you get my meaning: their maleness combines with outright racism to produce a cold, isolating world that’s very difficult to adjust to.)
As an adult man, the fact that women sometimes treat you as a pipe bomb packed too tight is a simple fact of life. You, the person, a man named Paul — you didn’t do anything wrong and wouldn’t harm a soul, but you’re categorized and sorted because people who look like you cause mayhem.
To put a fine point on it: if you’re a woman reading this, please believe that this is a real feeling and it feels awful. When you read or hear a guy saying “men never get compliments!” he’s really listening to his soul say “I walk through life feeling like my forehead has a visibly malfunctioning digital-clock-bomb countdown tattooed on it.”
But if you’re a man, would you advise women to drop that guard? Well yeah, maybe, because “women” is impersonal for you. Would you tell your sister or daughter or niece not to take strong personal safety precautions in public? Of course you wouldn’t.
Because there’s no good solution. You, personally, live in a society where women fear for their safety. Women will continue to value that safety above your right not to feel bad about existing as a man in public.
Fine, I’ll touch on some weird psychosexual stuff, because there’s usually something there. Have you ever noticed that the very first thing a lot of dudes complain about is why do I always have to approach women? Why can’t they make a move? I’m always pursuing!
Validate those feelings. It really is frustrating, especially because the first hurdle you have to clear is “I swear that I am not a creepy weirdo”. A couple years of this starts to wear on an average young dude and it feels like women are enforcing this gender role. Why are they doing this to me?
Well, because women well-know that initiating a date or paying for it sends signals that they might not want to send. They have almost certainly been accused of leading men on by asking a guy on a date and not putting out. Go ask a woman how many times she’s been called easy for the crime of showing interest in a guy!
Of course, you would never do that. You would be flattered and respectful. It’s just not about you. As cute as Olivia from third-period Spanish thinks you are, she is working within a set of gendered constraints that most boys and men frankly never even consider.
As always, the only durable solution is to contribute your tiny voice and your bit of labor to creating a just society. You may not live to see the day that arrives, and you are not required to finish your work, yet neither are you permitted to desist from it.
