The Misguided Logic behind ‘Meninism’

It’s easy to become disillusioned with feminism. It’s easy to shrug the entire ideal off with a nonchalant, self confident roll of the eyes which articulates your belief that it just shouldn’t be a thing anymore. It’s easy to sigh that it just isn’t needed. I mean, we’re not hurling ourselves under horses anymore or being force fed through a drip in violent protest, are we? However, if the recent surge of girls taking their disillusionment to social media in support for Twitter accounts like ‘Meninist’ are anything to go by, feminism’s work is not over. If this is how feminism is understood by some women (and men) today – as simply ‘shaming’ the opposite sex – then it seems what we need is an entire overhaul of what we even mean by the very word.

Emma Watson phrased it perfectly in her speech to the UN for the HeForShe campaign in 2014:

‘I have realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating… this has to stop,’ she said.

Although not a novel idea, Watson’s social standing as a culturally significant icon means that her words are propelled to a level where everyone stops and listens. Too often some men find themselves reeling back in the face of feminism, figuring an attack on them personally as a man or generally as a member of the male sex. If the media says women find themselves victims of systematic, institutionalised prejudice, says the man, then I must be the cause.

The reaction for many? Bitterness. An indignant cry of ‘hey, I’ve been the victim of prejudice too… at your hands!’

Recently my Twitter feed has been peppered with accounts decrying women who have said things along the lines of ‘boys over 6’0 are so important’  or ‘short boys are unattractive’.  Men everywhere are furious; why should they be vilified for judging women by their bodies when women so clearly do the same?

The answer is relatively simple: sexism is historic, institutional and all pervasive… and there is no system of oppression that actively works to subjugate men.

Let’s tackle the battle cry of ‘men are objectified too’. To these men, I would say if you’ve been judged by your weight, height or social standing, I’m really sorry that happened to you. If you’ve ever had your arse grabbed by a randy woman in a club, that’s really wrong and you certainly shouldn’t have to put up with such objectification.  However, a girl leering at a half-naked Abercrombie & Fitch model adorning a paper bag just doesn’t pack the same punch.

I’m not saying these aren’t cases of sexism if you were to refer to a dictionary. But the problem with dictionaries (however great they are when we want to prove an outraged Scrabble opponent wrong) is that they have no gravity.  They’re simplistic, shallow. They tell you that sexism is ‘prejudice, stereotyping or discrimination on the basis of sex’ (all things that men can also fall victim to) but this isn’t all it is – it’s a form of oppression.

Being oppressed isn’t about that time a woman rejected you for being too short, or you read about a black police officer pulling over a white guy – it’s not personal. It is a whole other level entirely; it seeps into every level or our society and is embedded so deeply in us that we act on it without even knowing. Sure, men can experience stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination and all of that’s wrong. But history doesn’t carve them as victims of this in a way that’s institutionalised and systematic.

Because to be truly oppressed, you need to be lacking in two things: privilege and power… and it’s clear that men aren’t. In Western society, men have always had a structural and social advantage. Even now, women occupy just 4.6% of CEO positions at S&P 500 companies. Men have always had the upper hand when it comes to power, the ability to (with society’s backing) enforce. It’s not a novel idea that the media shapes and moulds human consciousness, and women occupy just 27% of the leading managerial jobs in this arena.

It’s worth noting that a lot of these ‘Meninist’ Twitter accounts are parodic. Many are very obviously so. However, a lot of people out there don’t get that. Many are rallying behind it and it doesn’t make sense. Even language itself is male-centric; every step that encompassed the making of the dictionary was achieved by a white man. From the start, men have defined what it even means to be a woman – in De Beauvoir’s eyes, defined only via her relationship to a man. So if language itself is male-centric, how can we possibly dissect the conception of oppression using a resource created by an oppressive force?

As the internet grows bigger and louder every day, it seems important to tackle these issues. Accusations of reverse sexism seem to be (to me at least) at large and while it’s never okay to discriminate against anyone, there is a difference between this and systematic oppression that makes the concept of ‘Meninism’ somewhat invalid.