Men are changing. Please be kind.
It is hard to look in the mirror and say: I’ve done bad things. It’s hard to even say: I belong to a group that has done bad things. And over the last years, women have been more and more boldly shoving that mirror in men’s faces: Look at who you are! Is this really who you want to be?!
Some guys have responded by turning away and doubling down on how they were, pining for the good old days when men were men and women were women, and nobody called them out on their shit. Some swallow pills of various colours.
But many men did have a very painful look in that mirror after all. They may have recalled the times when they were a bit too pushy, when their ‘innocent teasing’ has made a woman feel unsafe, when they unthinkingly reinforced harmful gender stereotypes because it was convenient to them. Maybe even the times when they wanted sex so bad they disregarded a ‘no’, however strongly or weakly it was expressed.
‘Is this really who I want to be?!’
No, of course not.
But it takes a great deal of character to admit you’ve done things wrong and start to change. You want to deny it. You want to just be left alone. And as much as you intellectually detest a system of unfair priviledge, it is damn hard to say no when that system hands you things you’d really like to have.
