Since 1919

The Prairie News

Since 1919

The Prairie News

Since 1919

The Prairie News

Analyzing feminism through men’s eyes

Woman Power logo. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, used under Creative Commons liscense.
Woman Power logo. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, used under Creative Commons liscense.
For the last year, I’ve been researching the positive correlation between Playboy magazine and feminism. I’m afraid that most of my professors think I’m pushing the women’s movement back a few decades, but I need to clarify that I’m not interested in the male perspective of feminism because I don’t like women or don’t like being a woman. I’m interested in the male perspective because it’s one we haven’t asked to be heard in quite some time.

Feminism has become one of the dirtiest words in the language of any given social group. A lot of people think that, in order to be a feminist, you have to believe that men are inherently evil. But as a feminist and as a human being, I know I can only become the best version of myself by honoring and respecting my sexual counterpart of the human species.

I am unable to become this version when I look at television shows and romantic comedies which depict unhappy women grumpily calling men “pigs,” just as men were ultimately the ones who were found wanting in past decades when women were only valued as domestic appliances.

Just as I don’t believe that women are only useful for sex or washing the dishes, I don’t believe that men are pigs. In fact, when I think of the men in my life, of friends and colleagues, I see an interesting thread stitching them together.

All of these men seem silently desperate to love women. Yes, I have come across the chauvinist, the disrespectful “pig,” but most of the men I know are dying to be kind, eager to be strong. But sometimes they sacrifice their kindness in favor of the masculine perception of strength.

When women are bruised, we tend to cry about it. Most women respond to hurt with open communication. But when men bruise, they steel up. They become silent. And the only way for them to tolerate a wound is to become indifferent to it. But indifference can only take you so far.

I would never try to deny that women haven’t been subjugated, that they haven’t been hurt and disparaged by men by no fault of their own. But somewhere in our process of giving women voice to their pain and frustration, we made it impossible for men to substantiate theirs. So instead of expressing this pain, we become unkind to one other.

Only the strongest people in the world have what it takes to truly be kind. It takes incredible courage, sometimes, to be kind to ourselves. And that’s really the most important observation I’ve made this year in my research: it all starts with us. If we don’t stop disrespecting ourselves we’ll never be strong enough to be kind to the men and women in our lives. And if we can’t get along with each other, if we can’t coexist in harmony and respect with the opposite sex, then that could literally lead to the end of the world.  Seems kind of important to try to understand both perspectives, don’t you think?

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