10 ways men can be less sexist
10 ways men can be less sexist
Want to be less abusive and a better ally? Start here.
Note: This holiday week, I’m republishing some older pieces. This is one of them—in a slightly edited and updated form, so should still be a fun and new-feeling read even if you’ve read it before!
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
It is incredibly easy to read a few feminist books, prattle on about how you love women writers, and give lip service to the cause of feminism.
Feminism doesn’t need you to like it. It needs you to live its values in your own life. Feminism is meant to challenge men, and if you’re not feeling challenged to live up to your feminist values, you’re not actually doing anything at all of value for the cause.
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.
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. So stop dismissing their concerns, and start considering the myriad of ways they have forgiven and listened to you when they didn’t have to.
Treat women as experts
You do not know more about feminism than women.
You do not know more about your partner’s experiences than she does.
Your interpretation of an interaction your partner deems sexist is almost certainly inaccurate.
You have a cognitive bias in favor of seeing your contributions as more valuable than they really are, trivializing your partner’s needs, and not being able to see the reality of your relationship for what it really is.
Patriarchy affects your ability to think critically and clearly. And even as it does, it tricks you into believing that your inaccurate, sexist, highly emotional thinking is logical and objective. If you don’t believe this, then you don’t actually believe patriarchy is a real system, nor understand how it works—and that makes you antifeminist.
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.
So well put! Thank you!