Well the word "Humanism" was already taken...

This is a blog post in honour of International Women’s Day 2014. The UN theme for this year is “Equality for Women is Progress for All”, and that got me thinking about what feminism can do for men. Yes I know; it seems wrong to spend Women’s Day wondering how we can help out the already privileged, but hear me out. We need male feminists. And ones who are really on board, not the kind you too often meet who are just claiming feminism to be politically correct, or who think it’s important in a “let’s help the poor dears out because they obviously can’t do it alone” sort of way.

We need to inform both men and women that feminism is a movement that is all about equality. It is not about women being in charge because “the men have had a go, now it’s our turn”, or because our magical feminine intuition (whatever the hell that is supposed to be) makes us better suited to leadership roles. It is not about pretending that discrimination and violence based on sex and gender never happen to men, or that it’s somehow less bad when it does than when the victims are female. It’s not even really about blaming the patriarchy – women perpetuate sexism too because we were raised in a sexist society.

Feminism is called “feminism” because, historically and today, women have borne the brunt of certain kinds of oppression. But really it isn’t just about women; it’s about all of us. Both women and men should be free from oppression, violence and discrimination based on their gender. So, apart from the absence of obvious violence and discrimination, what would such freedom entail?

First, our ideas of what it is to be a man or a woman would be a lot less rigid. Phrases like “man up”, “be a man”, “real woman”, “all woman” etc. wouldn’t mean very much any more, because we would all know that people are just people: We’re all basically the same, and also all unique. There would be no stigma attached to a man being a nurse or a ballerina, just as there would be no stigma attached to a woman being an engineer or a C.E.O.

They say that employers, particularly in the sciences and big businesses have too long undervalued the “soft skills” typically possessed by women. If feminism had its way, no-one would say things like that any more. The very phrase “soft skills” makes them sound like weaknesses – “you may not be able to do anything of practical use, but don’t worry dear, because you’re very good at embroidery and smiling prettily”. In reality, the term is applied to skills like communication, teamwork and conflict resolution. These are important skills possessed by plenty of men, so if the skills are being undervalued, these men are also losing out. And worse, to add insult to injury, they are losing out for being “too feminine”. Not only should “feminine” not be an insult to anybody, we shouldn’t even be categorising skills in this way. Even if, statistically, more women than men tend to possess a certain skill. There are just people who are better at that thing, and people who are worse at it, and there is no need for gender to enter the picture.

How would this affect our workplaces? Well we might have more equal numbers of men and women in all sectors. However, we might not. Because it really might be that, statistically, more men than women tend to be good at or prefer certain tasks, and therefore end up in certain roles. And vice versa. The ultimate goal is for that not to matter. If a job is typically done by one gender, but a good candidate of the opposite gender comes along, they should be hired without anyone having to have a conversation about discrimination, negative or positive.

To anyone who works in an industry dominated by one gender – do you find yourself calculating gender ratios any time you walk into a new environment like a conference, or a meeting with a new work-group? Wouldn’t it be great to not even have to notice because, if there was an imbalance, you could be confident that it wasn’t the result of discrimination?

So much for work. What else?

Well, we could all wear whatever we wanted. If a man wanted to wear pink, or a skirt, then he could. He wouldn’t even have to be gay. Imagine! But equally there would be no pressure to wear those things. They wouldn’t be better because they were feminine, because that wouldn’t be a loaded term any more. Not good or bad, just different, and available for all.

Men could cry in public, or talk about their feelings. If they wanted to. But no-one would try to force them to. It wouldn’t be better or worse than keeping a stiff upper lip, or if it was, it would only be so because of how it made you feel and allowed you to cope, not because it was the sort of thing that women do. It would just be the way some people are, and not the way others are. Acceptance would be the rule, not the exception.

Relationships would almost certainly still be a battlefield – nothing is going to change that – but to those of you in heterosexual couples especially, think about how much better things could be if you weren’t always fighting to either conform to or defy those tired old stereotypes. For example, in a heterosexual couple, if the man was better at the DIY, he wouldn’t have to watch the woman insist on doing it all herself, just to prove she’s a “capable modern woman”. If the woman was better at DIY, the man would be able to let her do it without feeling that her doing so made him less of a man. There are endless further trivial examples which add up to something quite significant.

We could all concentrate on being the human beings we want to be first and foremost. That’s a freedom worth fighting for. So should men want to live in the world of the post-feminist revolution? Of course! Share your old privileges with women, and we will share our new privileges with you. Deal?