Men Need Feminism, and Here’s Why.

The following is adapted from I Took Her Name by Shu Matsuo Post.

First, let me introduce myself. I am a tall, athletic Japanese man with a husky voice. I lift weights and play sports with my friends. I’m attracted to feminine women.

I am a manly man. I belong to the man’s club.

Well, that’s how I used to position myself as a man.

Due to the limited view I grew up with, I didn’t even give feminism a chance. But as I became more aware of the subject and went through my name-changing process, my perspective started to change drastically.

I want to tell you a story about a twenty-three-year-old nonconformist who avoided conflict with others at all costs. He was probably the last person on earth you would ever look to for advice on how to break societal rules.

Which is why he is the perfect place to start.

This young man was living and working in Tokyo in 2009. One humid summer day, he worked a late shift. When the shift ended, he decided to go for drinks with his coworkers. In Japan, many workers go out for dinner and drinks after work, even on weekdays. “Work hard, play hard,” they say.

When the man realized it was 11 p.m., he quickly excused himself from the group to make his way back home. He got off a subway train to catch a transitioning one. He only had a few stops to go, but the train he wanted to catch was still ten minutes away. More people smelling like alcohol were walking up to the platform. Although it was late, many people were trying to rush home before the last train, which left around midnight.

When the train arrived at the station, the car the young man wanted to board was jam-packed. Even though he was used to being packed like a sardine in a can on his journey to work every day, he preferred to avoid that indignity on his journey home.

Eager to escape the crush, the young man quickly moved to the next car and jumped on as the train doors closed. This car isn’t even full, he thought to himself. I could listen to my iPod and skip songs. As he swerved between other passengers, he put his hands in his pockets.

That’s when a strange incident occurred.

The man leaned against a door, looking at his iPod screen as he chose a playlist. He was tired from working all day, and the couple of drinks at dinner were making him sleepy. As he closed his eyes and let himself enjoy the soothing music, he felt a vigorous tap on his shoulder.

“Hey, you!” a middle-aged woman yelled at him. “What are you doing here? Get out of here!”

Shocked, he looked up and realized that the woman’s eyebrows were shaped like an angry cartoon character. Confused, he looked around the train car. He saw other passengers staring at him like he was a criminal. They were all women — he was the only man in the car. From the looks on their faces, he imagined they were silently accusing him of being a pervert.

He had blundered into a women-only car.

“Sumimasen!” Embarrassed, the young man apologized loudly enough for the passengers around him to hear and ran to the next car. This second car was full of men, who looked up from their Manga magazines long enough to shoot him a glance that meant “poor idiot.”

The young man was deeply ashamed. Accidentally, he had broken a deeply embedded rule. The thought that others might mistake him for someone who would make others sexually uncomfortable was horrifying. Admittedly, he was a little bit tipsy from the alcohol, but he still had enough of his wits about him to know he hadn’t wandered into an imaginary matriarchal world where women had more social power than men and wrote the rules.

The sad, underlying truth of this story is that women-only train cars serve an important function in Japan. Men groping women on packed train cars is still a major social issue in this country.

Oh, and the guy I mentioned earlier?

That was me.

Welcome to the world of gender inequality.

To learn more about what feminism really looks like and how it can help you see the world in a different way, you can find I Took Her Name on Amazon.

Shu Matsuo Post is a feminism and zero-waste advocate, a plant-based endurance athlete, and a real estate investor. He lives in Tokyo, Japan, with his wife and their son.