Examining the Women’s March: Its Successes and Needs for Improvement
White feminist practices and exclusion of men in the “Women’s March”
“Women’s March,” the name itself is evident that men are not being encouraged to participate alongside women in the struggle to end oppressive systems.
Bell hooks explains that the practice of disincluding men in feminist struggles ultimately reinforces the very systems of oppression that white feminists are attempting to combat. During the first-wave feminists movements, white feminists rhetoric was an anti-male stance, because they believed that ALL men were responsible for women’s oppression. This creates the belief that men cannot fight for women because they are the enemy, it puts the blame on men and therefore makes it a women’s issue to overcome the systems alone. However, this rhetoric simply creates a never-ending cycle of oppression between the sexes; white feminists are doing exaclty what they are fighting to end.
Although the rhetoric of the anti-male stance has been declining in modern feminist theory, it is evident that in 2017, the anti-male stance is still a powerful belief for many. For example, in Sarah Lerner’s piece, she similarly is misleading in her title, “Men: Don’t Rain on our Women’s March Parade.” In her piece, she implies that certain men should not be included within the women’s march or in women’s issues at all because they will never understand the dedication and labor that women put into their resistance movements. She then goes on to explain her gratitude for the support that she witnessed of the men who did participate in the women’s march and that more support is needed from men, as listeners. Although Lerner is on the right track that resistance struggles need the support of both men and women, her ideology is still embedded in that of early white feminism beliefs, by picking and choosing what type of men she wants to see support from. To overcome this, Lerner should instead want all men to support the resistance of oppressive systems. By disincluding certain men, it reinforces that certain individuals do not deserve to be heard and thus, reinforces men to not want to engage because of the anti-male rhetoric; certain men might feel alienated from women’s issues and see no need to be engaged when they are not wanted in the first place. It is important to convince ALL men that they too are affected by oppressive systems of domination.
From the perspective of a man who did not attend the women’s march, Tyler Hendrick implies that often, himself included, we do nothing, we pretend that these issues are not happening and we become ever so involved in our own interests that we forget or do not even acknowledge the larger societal issues. He explains how he was aware of the issues surrounding the women’s march but he just decided not to attend. He explains how much he regretted not going because afterward, through social media posts, he saw that the march brought about much hope and people, men and women included (although much more women) stood in solidarity with one another. The world needs more people like Hendrick and those men who were at the women’s march, and those men who fight alongside women, who want to become engaged in destroying oppressive systems. But it first starts with the inclusion of both men and women, and realizing that two is better than one.
