Sex Offender Week: Feminism for Young Dudes

by Matt Ealer

This week, we’ll be running an essay a day about the state of being men and women. Welcome to Sex Offender Week-it’s just like Shark Week, but without sharks and with angry blog comments!

Hey man. Got a question for you. Have you ever, as a red-blooded hetero dude, had sex before? Yeah? Pretty boss, right?! Well, you should hug a feminist! If you happen to be dating one, this should be pretty easy. (Unless you’ve been a dumbass to her recently; and hey, we’ve all been there.)
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Now, if you’re thinking, feminist? Hey fuck that noise, I ain’t huggin’ any hairy-legged broad for nothing, my main man, then you should probably stop reading right now, as there is no hope for you. But I would wager you are not thinking this.

You probably even voted for Obama! Or, if you voted McCain (and do you regret it if you did?) you did so from a principled, Libertarian-leaning concern for the “free market” and on social issues you are “pretty chill.” In fact, you are probably thinking, har har, nobody actually thinks that feminism is about burning bras and smashing the superstructure of male, white, corporate oppression any more. Get real, man. (Though believe it-those bros do still exist.)
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No, see, the person I’m talking to here has a separate problem. One that he probably doesn’t even particularly know (or would even think) about. It’s a thing that most of us probably learned from a muppet or a preschool teacher or our mothers and grandmothers or fathers and grandfathers. It’s that thing about having your cake and eating it too.
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Because really, for our purposes? You love feminism! You do! You think that it’s great that a woman can still be a proper lady without making some bullshit feints to “chastity” and “purity” before marriage. You surely think that the (molester-enabling Nazi) Pope should stay out of your bedroom. You don’t think that sex is purely for procreation. (You are in fact often scared shitless about procreation!) You’re even probably pretty happy that women aren’t chained to the home anymore, that they can go out and, like, make money and have lives.
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But still. While you’re happy about the freedom that men and women our age have to “hook-up” in as many possible configurations as there are imaginations and willing participants, there’s something a bit off. You are missing something, something coherent with a certain fundamental part of the thing that allows us this freedom. Now don’t worry! I’m not gonna make you read Andrea Dworkin or nothing! This isn’t gonna be some women’s studies/psychology/sociology seminar that you’re gonna wanna sleep through. It’s just a blog post on some hipster handbook. If you can make it through some dude telling you who to pick on your “fantasy team,” you can make it through this.
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The crux of the matter is that while you are out there enjoying all this freedom, you’re not really — if you be completely honest with yourself — affording the same to the ladies out there. You do things like convince yourself that every time you sleep with a girl, it’s her first time. I’m not going to go into some long diatribe about Christianity and the fetishization of the virgin, but you know what I mean. It just sits weird if you know or think about her being with another dude. You put it out of your head.
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Now this is a pretty tame example, because it gets worse. Like, take a dude who’s dating a girl but it “hasn’t gotten serious yet.” They’re “just talking” and “have hooked up a few times.” Dude is free as a bird, right? He’s sleeping with an ex, flirting with some ladies at the bar, just hanging out, being a dude. But introduce to him even the idea, the unsubstantiated, perhaps wholly illusory idea that this girl he’s just talking to is sleeping with someone else. His stomach turns. He gets visibly, perhaps violently, perhaps morosely upset. The word “whore” may start to crop up in bar stool conversations.
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Okay, so I am maybe being pretty hard on Theoretical Dude. Who am I to sit up on my high horse and create this guy just to harsh on him so? Fair enough. And you’re right — I shouldn’t just focus on these types of situations, because it’s more pernicious than this. So, I’ll give you an example from my own often sordid, usually mundane, mostly idiotic experience with being a dude who is into chicks.
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Freshman year of college, I think first semester, the autumn leaves and the rugby shirts and all that bullshit. And these guys start canvassing Newark, trying to come up with some warm bodies for this group they just started. I take a flier, as I have this thing about taking fliers from being a rock bro and “trying to support the scene, man.” The group is called M.A.R.S. — the Men Against Rape Society. And stupid little emo-listening 18-year-old me is incensed. Why, I think, if they have this group, and name it this, they are setting up some false equivalency [or some other term from my intro Philosophy classes that I was horribly misusing]. It’s like saying that any guy who doesn’t join this group is a rapist!! Plus, they are probably just doing this to pick up chicks, anyway.
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Now, some of you may think that idiot 18-year-old me is on to something here. Weren’t they calling all other dudes rapists? The problem here is the Tea Parties. You know, those silly bumpkins with their hand-scrawled signs about Obama being a socialist space alien. Remember how, when these people got accused of racism, they claimed that the accusers were really just obsessed with race? That race had nothing to do with it? That they were being victimized and defamed? George Bush was a uniter, not a divider. Rush Limbaugh often claims to be beyond race, unable to see color. (While he’s saying Donovan McNabb can’t play quarterback because he’s black, LOL.)
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What 18-year-old me was doing was saying was I can’t possibly be a misogynist, a rapist. In fact, in [not actually at all, and if so, very subtly and subtextually] calling me such, you have actually wronged me. This is what I thought, and this playing at some reverse-victimization was actually doing pretty much what the teabaggers are doing. I was saying that I couldn’t possibly be sexist or misogynist because I just didn’t think in those terms. I was pure.
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Oh course, I was an idiot. I was raised Irish/German Catholic in the United States of America. How could I not have been some weird sexist and/or possible rapist? And talking to you here, bro, I am not making some claim to ultimate, enlightened gender-issue purity of thought. I still have weird feelings sometimes. It’s ingrained. But the thing I had to do was admit it to myself. After that, all you can do is recognize when you are not thinking correctly (because you are not!) and work on it. Every day, you have to work on it.

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Luckily, there are some great, easy ways to start! Is there a girl you know who regularly has consensual, healthy sex with other unattached and willing participants — with no “drama,” nobody hurting anybody or “dicking anyone around”? Do you sometimes think of this girl as a “whore” or a “slut,” even while thinking that the men she’s sleeping with are just “getting lucky” and “hey, good for them”? You should really stop this. You should stop thinking it, and you should especially stop saying it to other people.
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In fact-and this is for the white boys in the audience, mostly, but I trust you’ll all get the point-you should think about it in the same way you do “the n-word.” Look at that! I can’t even write it out, as I am theoretically talking about it! And this is a good thing. Mainly, what I am saying here, is that maybe one day, you will think of these words as the “w-word” and the “s-word” and you’ll be uncomfortable ever using them at all. You’ve just got to work at it.
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Now look, I am not saying that it will be easy. And if you go down this road, you may in fact end up being something of a different bro than you were when you started. (This is actually kind of the point.) Another example, I recently tossed off a post on my idiot tumblr in which I originally linked “Ain’t No Fun” and talked about my proclivity for performing the thing while drunk as a high schooler. And this caused me to listen to and start singing the thing again — maybe the smoothest and most deft Nate Dogg has ever sung! — and I actually got uncomfortable having it up on my personal internet web page. (I changed it to “Lodi Dodi,” which is only marginally better, but sort of better).
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This must sound crazy to you, bro! You are thinking, No way! I am never gonna stop rocking forever! But I’m not saying that you have to forget all those lyrics, never play the song, never laugh at its over-the-top ridiculous. However. You may think twice and stop yourself before posting the thing on the public Internet, just out of decorum. And the thing is, if you put some work into it, you’ll find that you don’t want to. Which is actually kind of freeing, in its way.
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Okay, so now you and 18-year-old me are seeing eye-to-eye completely. Oh Christ, you’re thinking, this kid cannot be for real. He is obviously just doing this to pick up some chicks! And I would say to you, well. First I would say, No, I’m actually pretty well satisfied in that department of late, thank you. But mainly I would say, Really man, I would genuinely like to live in a world where the lady I am dating and my friends and my sister (oh that’s right, I know you don’t want to think about it, and it may in fact fill you with rage and make you want to “kick the ass of” the poor dude she is seeing who is probably a total sweetheart just trying to do right by her, but your sister is having sex. Sorry, dude!) can have and talk about having healthy, adult, consensual sex and feel good about it. And not fear they’re gonna be called a “slut” or a “whore” for feeling and acting upon the feelings that the vast majority of the populace, no matter the orientation, just has.
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What I would like is for you to stop thinking about women with an 18th-century disposition while you chill on your iPad in the future.
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Okay, since the things I write here are usually about music, I would like to leave you with some music. One of the things that’s great about trying to become a dude who digs chicks but also has at least an appreciation for and tries to stand in solidarity with the feminist struggle is it opens you to some great music. Don’t worry! I’m not gonna make you listen to Bikini Kill. (Although, you probably just should.) But one artist that has always been a great help to me in dealing with these issues, in just trying to see things from the other perspective, is Liz Phair. You should listen to her unimpeachable first three albums (“studio LPs,” shut up nerd) if you would like an intelligent, witty, honest but not always brutal, mainly just painfully, beautifully human elucidation of some of the issues you will be dealing with.
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You should also try and maybe crib a couple bromodels. Remember how the Beastie Boys started out talking about whiffleball bats and such? Funny, right? You have shotgunned a beer or two to these tracks, you certainly have! And you may have thought when they reversed this, started denouncing the misogyny and homophobia and idiot cartoonish racist violence-play of License to Ill and Paul’s Boutique, you may have thought, Man. What a bunch of sell-outs, man! But I would ask you to listen to “Sure Shot” and really listen to Adam Yauch’s verse about the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends. Because it might sound maudlin or stupid now, there may be a time where you’d like to offer your love and respect to the end too. It will be long overdue!
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Also, this one dude who was like the lord god bro amongst bros at one point, waaaaay before any of our times, put it pretty succinctly too. After he married a strong, brilliant woman but a bit before he got pilloried for it until some other dude totally shot him.
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Matt Ealer thinks you look just fine in that jean jacket.