Q: Why do feminist organizations hate men? A: They don’t!

I have been working alongside feminist anti-violence organizations for many years. Most of these groups have no men on their staff, no men on their boards of directors, and do not have a way for men to become equally involved in their volunteer opportunities. Some outsiders call these practices “discrimination.” But I call them justified. And I call them smart.

There are many good reasons for limiting the role of men in these organizations, reasons that are both practical and philosophical.

One practical aspect is that if you are a woman who has survived a sexual assault, and you call a help line, and a strange man answers the phone, are you going to want to talk to him? Probably not. (This same pattern of wanting to talk to a woman tends to hold true for many men who are assaulted as well – regardless of whether their attacker was a male or – much more rarely – a female. We men are often just not very supportive when we hear that another man has been sexually assaulted.)

A second practical issue involved here is that we men are deeply steeped in the practices and postures of patriarchy. Even some men who disagree with sexist practices will still behave in dominating ways: interrupting women, staring at women’s body parts during meetings, using sexist language, getting loud to get their point across. These behaviours are not acceptable in any environment, but they are even more outrageous in a feminist anti-violence context. The women in these organizations are already working hard to resist sexist oppression. They should not have to deal with it within their own organizations.

The philosophical reason for reserving positions of authority for women is that violence against women is forever wedded to male supremacy. The incidence of physical and sexual assault of women in any culture is directly linked to women’s social position in that culture. Feminist anti-violence organizations are some of the only places in North America where women’s leadership is actively cultivated and enacted.

Allegations of discrimination (and worse). In our current social context of patriarchal paranoia, few things raise eyebrows (and ire) more quickly than women getting together on their own and doing things to enhance their social position. Feminist endeavours become immediately suspect. The conservative U.S. evangelist Pat Roberston once infamously observed: “Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

While his words are ridiculous and extreme, his suspicions seem to me to be rather widely-shared: What are those women doing? They say that they are working to end violence against women. But I think their agenda is far worse! They are man-hating feminists who just want to bash men! Castrate men! And they certainly don’t ever help men!

It would take me a year’s worth of blog postings to refute all of the falsehoods contained in that previous paragraph. But I would like to take the time here to address one of the most hurtful ones: that feminist anti-violence organizations don’t help men. I have seen this allegation levelled repeatedly at feminist anti-violence organizations from coast to coast.

But in my years of experience working alongside feminist anti-violence agencies in both the western USA and in eastern Canada, I have found that most feminist anti-violence organizations actually do in fact help men. When men call seeking help they do in fact receive support, guidance and referrals. While these organizations are mission-driven to help women, they still are willing talk to men – even though they well know that sometimes the man on the other end of the phone is calling with a misogynist or obscene agenda.

What these organizations typically will not do is offer to men the full array of services available to women. Again, there are good reasons for this:

Most of these organizations began as volunteer, grass-roots efforts born of a desire to engage in feminist social change. They were built with the resources, hard work, and the tears of their founding mothers to help women and children who were being hurt by (for the most part) men. Violence against women is still an immense social problem, and most of these organizations have managed to keep their feminist social change focus.

But what about men who are hurting? There is no question that there are a lot of men out there who are hurting. Men who were physically abused as children. Men who were sexually abused as children. Men who are in abusive relationships right now. Men whose partners or sisters were raped. Men who were themselves raped. Men who as boys were sexually exploited by older women. These guys are all around us. And some of them could probably really use a hand.

 

And the people who normally bring this issue up to me are.... the very women who work in these feminist anti-violence agencies! In my experience these women care very, very deeply about men who have been hurt. They want something to be done. But...

 

(and here’s the thing that everyone gets mad at them for)

 

.... they refuse to do it for men. It’s not their mission. It’s not their area of expertise. And it should not be their role as women to also be expected to heal men!

 

What these groups continually have offered to do is provide training, technical assistance, and support to people who want to help heal men. They have put the challenge back to us:

 

What about the men?

 

You women’s organizations should help them.

 

You mean we have to do it for ourselves?

Well, we did it for ourselves. You should try it.

But I don’t know how.

 

So I have to take on the responsibility for healing men myself?

 

And you really won’t do it for me?

 

So it’s not that you don’t care?

 

But at the end of the day, if I think men need programs for healing, it’s up to me to get together with other men and set them up?