Dilemmas of a Feminist Male

I’m the kind of twenty-something guy you would expect to work in a coffee shop. I play guitar and cello in an experimental punk band and have some cool downloads on MySpace. I’m tall and lean, with an explosive mess of dark hair that makes me look like the love child of Edward Scissorhands and Blacula. Most people correctly guess that I’m artistic and a bit to the political left. What they may not realize is that I am a self-defined male feminist. Being a feminist is mighty powerful stuff because staying true to ideals about equality and justice involves consciously altering the way I behave. The bottom line is that I try to reject personal acts of subjugation, and I do my best to combat the systems that enable others to be oppressive. As the saying goes, the personal is political.

My brand of feminism is all about not imposing patriarchal power on the women in my life, and hoping to set an example for the boys and men I meet. From the time I was seven and too short to play ball with big kids, to the time I was 13 and too sensitive to party with the cool kids, to now when I struggle with masculinist ideology, I have always felt that the dominant culture only truly benefits a select few. So I do my best to reject it. I do it for me. I do it for my partner, and for every man who feels alienated by the expectations that culture places on guys who do not quite fit the “man’s man” mold. I do it for anyone who feels constrained by the music videos on MTV because they see both women and men reduced to sexual commodities. But the question remains, how do I do my feminism? And, more important, how am I a male feminist?

It’s tricky. And the truth is that a lot of the time I feel friction between being a man and being a feminist. Problems come up when I want more than anything to take feminist action — to act in defense of someone who is being victimized by patriarchal power — but my aid is unwelcome or inappropriate or potentially does more political harm than good.

Allow me to illustrate: I work at Starbucks. I spend roughly 20 hours each week serving coffee to strangers, sometimes as many as several hundred each day. And you better believe I see it all. Customers reveal all kinds of personal details. So do my coworkers. I put up with a lot from them: sexist and racist jokes, routine descriptions of masculinist sexploitation, flat-out ridicule for my feminist views. And at the end of the day when my feet feel like they’re ready to fall off and my entire body reeks of espresso grinds, I think back and try to make sense of it.

One day a customer comes in and begins telling us about this scheme he has to buy a wife. What he really wants to do is hire a housekeeper, but he thinks it’s funnier if he tells us that he’s “wife shopping” today. He complains about doing housework, saying he’d pay a cute, young girl 20 bucks an hour to do his chores for him rather than do them himself, or worse, get remarried to have yet another woman sit at home all day, take his money, and bitch at him when gets home from work. He keeps saying there is nothing worse than married life, to which the guys I’m working with chuckle in agreement. The only girl working at the time, Joy, is offended. She tells the customer that marriage won’t be bad at all for her husband — she will do all the housework and more (wink, wink). For free. Joy wants to be a housewife, and she gives me a hard time for being feminist. The customer tells Joy that she’s sweet but that she won’t be sweet forever. He’s expecting his purchased “wife” to be totally obedient and pleasant every hour of every day. Then, as an afterthought, he mentions that he has no problem getting his “nondomestic” (wink, wink) needs met elsewhere for not much more than it’s going to cost him to buy this wife of his.

Later, my girlfriend, Ana, decides to come by and do some homework, keeping me company as I work. She is sitting alone in a far corner, completely engrossed in her studies. A man with slicked-back silver hair, white guy, probably in his fifties, and appearing to be quite wealthy (gold jewelry, designer golf shirt, the works) steps into line and begins staring at Ana. He makes no effort to hide this, and gets out of line to walk around behind her and get a better look. Then he gets back into line and cranes his neck to see down her shirt and up her dress. I see all of this, and I’m simultaneously disgusted and pissed off. He’s such trash. I would love to call him out, or lay him out right then and there, but I risk losing my job if I’m rude to the customers. So I bite my tongue. It gets to be his turn in line and he still won’t stop staring at her, not even to place his order. He’s holding up the line, people behind him are starting to get flustered, and I lose it.

“What’s so interesting over there, sir? You seem to be looking very intently at something,” I ask as innocently as I possibly can. “That girl in the corner,” he says like he’s ready to eat her. He doesn’t take his eyes off Ana once. “Oh yeah, what do you think?” I’m trying now to sound as sleazy as I possibly can in an attempt to lead him to believe that I’m going along with the shameless objectification of Ana. “I think she’s a real pretty girl in that little dress of hers.” He licks his ugly thin lips and makes a face that screams “pervert.” I’ve caught him red-handed at his patriarchal bullshit, and at this point, I’m done: “Well, I think she’s a friend of mine, and I think she’d feel violated if she knew you were staring at her like that.” I say it low and threateningly beneath my breath so as not to cause a scene. “I think she should get used to it,” he replies. There is no hint of apology in his tone. It’s like I’m wrong for telling him not to lech at a girl who could be his fucking granddaughter! I glare at him like I want to burn a hole in his face with my eyes and growl, “I think you need to learn a little respect.” He leaves. I’m shaking.

I go to Ana and ask her if she saw what just transpired. She says no, that she was completely unaware. When I tell her what happened she is visibly upset. She thanks me for sticking up for her and waits for me to finish my shift without returning to her homework. The woman in line behind the silver-haired man approaches me before leaving and wishes me goodnight, smiling at me in a way that I could only interpret as solidarity.

That night I had nightmares about the silver-haired man. He was so ruthless in how he visually dismembered Ana that he put me in touch with a very distinct fear. No one had ever made me so mad, or provoked such a reaction from me. But was it even my place to step in on Ana’s behalf? Was I being overprotective?

Despite Ana’s appreciation for my fast action, I still could not get this encounter out of my mind. The silver-haired man obviously saw nothing wrong with what he did. I even had a coworker poke fun at me for bothering that “poor old man.” The woman in line behind the silver-haired man was my best assurance — as iffy as it was — that speaking up was the right thing to do. Yet I could not help but feel unsettled about how I chose to respond. After all, I don’t doubt that if Ana looked up at the right time, she would have reacted more strongly and defended herself far better than I. And if Ana had been the one to terminate the encounter, perhaps she would have a stronger feeling of closure or justice. I had to wonder what it meant that I defended Ana instead of simply bringing her attention to what was happening. Did my chivalrous feminism reflect some duty I feel to protect her? And if so, does that mean that on some level I think she is incapable of protecting herself? Even worse, what if my actions actually revealed a sense of possession or ownership over Ana? And what about that burst of anger I felt? How stereotypically masculine to feel angry in light of something another man did to my girlfriend.

This encounter with the silver-haired man raises so many diffi cult questions for me about whether profeminist men ought to step in to help women or instead focus our efforts on enabling women to protect themselves. On the night of the scuffle in Starbucks, Ana happened to be wearing a gorgeous dress that was short, with a very low neckline. She has gotten upset in the past over men leering at her when she wears this dress. Sometimes I think about gently suggesting to Ana that she shelve the dress, but I don’t think it’s my place to say so. I do not want Ana to continue feeling violated by these tactless creeps but, at the same time, I do not want her to compromise her own sense of beauty, self-expression, and sexuality. I also don’t want to be perceived as controlling or paternalistic. It is not Ana’s fault that some men feel it’s their right to stare crudely at young women. But still, it upsets Ana, and it happens less when she does not wear this particular dress. It is clear who is at fault. It’s the voyeurs like that silver-haired man at Starbucks. But if men like that deny responsibility, and if women have the right to wear whatever they damn well please, and if I happen to see what’s going on, then shouldn’t I step in and speak my mind?

I’ve run into a dilemma: It’s true that men can defl ect unwanted attention,but in doing so we risk offending or patronizing women who are capable of protecting themselves, or insulting women who like this sort of thing. I know that some women rely on the male gaze to feel attractive and some may dress in ways to get attention on purpose. Women have the right to express themselves through their clothes and demeanor in any way they see fit. But I risk sounding sexist if I advise a woman not to go to certain parts of the city looking a certain way, and I risk feeling guilty knowing someone could get hurt if I don't speak up.

The problem lies in knowing when it’s okay to intervene; in knowing when to act on my personal feminist beliefs, and knowing when to hold back. Mastering this discretion is something I grapple with each day. Sometimes I get to thinking that I’m setting myself up for an unconquerable task by trying to live the life of an active male feminist. Sometimes it feels so daunting that I consider giving up. But then I remember what got me here in the first place, and it gives me hope. Feminism is something I embrace because it helps me think more clearly about who I am and how I behave as a man in this society. When I keep this in mind, I understand that I’m not about to defeat the patriarchy overnight, but that I can feel a little better knowing I’m not letting it defeat me little by little, each and every day.

VGreg Bortnichak will soon graduate from college and put his barista days behind him. He plays guitar and cello in his band, The Sparta Philharmonic. This article originally appeared in Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power, ed. Shira Tarrant (Routledge, 2008). Used by permission.