10 Ways Men Can Be Less Sexist

Not being sexist is about more than not beating or raping women.

If you’re a man, you have internalized sexist values. That’s especially true if you think you haven’t. In fact, the more adamant you are that you’re not sexist, the less time you spend reflecting on your own choices and behavior. And that means the more likely you are to behave in reflexive, unthinking, sexist ways.

These tips are not necessarily the only ways to be less sexist, or even the most important. But they are the behaviors I consistently see men overlook. So if you’re serious about treating women better in a world that abuses them, here’s what I think you should try.

Stop being sexist at home

I don’t care how many feminist t-shirts you own, how much you rant about white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, or how many marches you have been in.

Feminism begins at home. We have the deepest impact on the people closest to us. If you treat the women in your life like garbage, you are a sexist. Some important points to consider:

• If you are not equitably dividing household labor, then you are stealing your partner’s time and life, literally devaluing their entire existence every day.

• If you are not actively participating in the challenging daily labor of parenting, then you are not actually a good dad because you are treating your partner like a child-minding servant.

• If you are not actively empathetic and loving with your partner, then you are harming them.

• If you treat sex as an entitlement, demand it as a favor in return for doing chores, or insist that it is being withheld if your partner doesn’t want it when you do, then you are sexually abusing your partner.

• If you don’t do more than half of the domestic labor after your partner gives birth to your child, then she is better off without you.

Get real about the impact of sexism on your relationships

Sexism affects every relationship with every woman you have.

When you raise your voice to your wife, you may think you’re expressing anger. She’s thinking of all the men who have killed women when they became inconvenient.

When you pressure your partner to have sex with you, she’s wondering whether next time you’ll rape her—or maybe reliving a rape she has already experienced.

When your partner goes out into the world, she has to worry about catcalls and rape threats and unsolicited male comments on her body. She has to consider things you do not.

Rather than dismissing women’s reactions as crazy because you do not understand them, consider how sexism looms over every interaction with men they must ever have.

Understand how much grace the women in your life have already given you

Men are dangerous to women.

Even good men. That’s because our entire society supports men when they behave badly. Abuse is normalized. Recognizing this is a necessary prerequisite to being less sexist.

Even if you are an equal and kind partner to your partner, you could stop doing that. And then she would be stuck.

Even if you are not abusive, you could become abusive. Men can and do. Some even kill their partners.

Seemingly nice men rape their partners.

Seemingly nice men kill their partners, or stalk women, or sexually harass colleagues.

When women choose to have relationships with you, whether as friends, lovers, or colleagues, they are taking a huge gamble. They are showing you grace.

Think about this next time you want to “not all men” a woman in your life. She knows that. She’s chosen to have a relationship with you, even though she knows you could hurt her, knows you could turn on her, and knows that she lives in a society that would give her few options for safety if you began abusing her.

Women who choose to have relationships with men are the most hopeful, forgiving people in the world.

Treat women as experts

From birth, men are raised to view themselves as intelligent experts, and to treat women as incompetent. Most men immediately bristle at this claim, yet all of the data show that when men picture experts, they picture other men, and that when men interact with women, they assume those women know less than they do.

This is why it’s so common for a man to condescend to a woman about her own area of expertise. Doing this isn’t just sexist; it makes you look foolish, and means you lose out on opportunities to learn.

Every time you interact with a woman, assume she is an expert on something. Endeavor to find out what it is so you can learn from her. This will override the tendency to talk over and too much, and help you maybe nurture a real relationship.

Don’t undermine your partner (or any other woman)

Don’t mock your partner to your friends, your family, or anyone else.

Don’t mock women period.

If this feels hard to you, consider why mocking women is such an important aspect of your life.

Assume women are right about their experiences

Being less sexist begins with seeing how pervasive sexism is. That requires believing women about their experiences without trying to explain them away. If you have never lived as a woman, then you have literally no idea what it is like.

Next time you want to say that you’ve never seen a man catcall a woman, or never had a friend be violent with a woman, or you want to tell a woman that maybe she misinterpreted a man’s behavior, or you insist that none of the women you know have been abused, shut the hell up instead. The fact that you have never seen or noticed something indicates that you are not looking, or not sufficiently observant to notice. Rape, abuse, catcalling, harassment, and violence are widespread, scientifically documented phenomena. A person who can’t even bother to notice is definitely not a more reliable source than the women experiencing these issues. And if women aren’t telling you about their experiences of abuse, it’s because they don’t trust you enough to share.

Stop defending men

Women are not stupid. They know that it’s not literally all men hitting women, profiting off of women’s domestic labor, or defending rape. So your not all men/don’t blame me/I’m not your enemy commentary adds nothing to the discussion. Instead, it centers your feelings.

Good men care about sexism. When you shriek about how it’s not all men, you are defending a hypothetical man and a theoretical notion of masculinity against a real human woman who is expressing pain. This behavior makes clear that you care more about men than women, and is simple misogyny. So shut the fuck up. The Not All Men Hotline can help you control these impulses.

Assume women know more about sexism than you do

Have you spent your life as a woman?

Are you a world-renowned scholar of gender, or a sexual violence researcher?

If you answer no to either, then you do not know more about sexism than the women who live with it, or the researchers who study it.

Your advice to your partner on how to manage sexism comes from a place of less knowledge than she has.

Your advice about how to stay safe is condescending and inaccurate.

Your belief that women should not fear men is ignorant.

You are not the expert. You do not have anything to contribute to the conversation. Listen and learn and encourage other men to do the same.

Stop asking women to congratulate you for doing the bare minimum

Learning how women’s bodies work so you can have decent sex with them, not buying your free time with your partner’s labor and exhaustion, not assaulting your partner, learning how to be a competent parent to your children, and not forcing your family to live in filth because you’re too lazy to clean are the absolute bare minimum.

You do not deserve thanks or congratulations for doing these things.

They are not sufficient to be a decent person, or a feminist. It’s just that if you don’t do these basic things, you’re not a decent person or a feminist.

While we’re on the topic of gratitude, how often do you show gratitude to the women in your life? If you want thanks and acknowledgment, make sure you’re giving proportional quantities of each. So for example, if you want your partner to thank you every time you wash the dishes, you need to make damn sure you thank her for every single chore she does.

Dispense with the notion of women as hysterical and excessively emotional

There’s only one gender who is, in large and widespread numbers, killing partners who leave them, raping women who won’t have sex with them, and shooting up schools and workplaces.

It’s not women who can’t control their emotions. It’s men. Men have long used the trope of the hysterical, crazy woman to dismiss women and their concerns. If the only way you can weasel your way out of something is by telling a woman to stop being emotional and “crazy,” then odds are good you are the one reacting irrationally—not her.

Also, some personal updates…

A few small updates for my subscribers! I got temporarily banned from Facebook again. This time, it was because, in a post I made three years ago, I said my dog was muddy. I shared the post as a memory, with an additional funny anecdote about said dog, and an “RIP” because he died two years ago.

This, apparently, constitutes threats of criminal violence. So I got banned for a day, and Facebook told me it would be pushing my posts lower in the newsfeed. This directly impacts my ability to reach subscribers. Yet the men who harass my followers face no consequences.

I am confident this will continue. Facebook and other social media sites are determined to punish feminist creators. Subscribing here helps. There’s a weird algorithm thing almost everywhere: the more people view your posts, the more visible they become to everyone else. So viewing, sharing, commenting, etc. are all helpful on Substack for widening my audience. And widening my audience means fueling the feminist resistance, and mainstreaming the idea that, oh shit, mothers actually are people who matter.

Update the second: If you’ve followed me long enough, you likely know that writing is my full-time job. But not writing here, or about household inequality. I’m a science/medicine/politics writer, and I work for a number of clients. In recent months, I’ve realized I don’t really want to work for other people forever, and I think I can do more useful work by expanding my feminist writing. To do that, though, I have to earn more money. This work takes time. That time takes time away from my paid work, and time is money.

This week, I fired one of my biggest clients because I was sick of their bullshit. It’s a huge leap of faith, and I intend to use the time to expand the content here, publishing a podcast, and offering more support to the women and mothers who need it.

It would sure help me feel a little more confident about this decision if I could get some more paid subscribers. So if you’re financially able, feel free to push that subscribe button. Subscribers also get access to a private support group, and to lots of additional content. Oh, and BTW, if you truly can’t afford a paid subscription but you still need some help in the support group, just email me at zawn.villines@gmail.com, and I’ll give you a fee waiver. The rest of you, though: I hope you’ll consider subscribing, and sharing my work!