Feminist Advice Friday: Can I be a nice person and still be a feminist?

A reader wants to be a "carebear," and worries that being a feminist means she has to be mean and angry.

This is an update of an older letter, while I am on vacation. I’ve added to and edited my advice, so even if you have seen it before, I hope you get something new out of it! As always, please share your own wisdom in the comments. Submit your own Feminist Advice Friday question to zawn@zawn.net.

A reader asks…

Can I still be a nice person AND a feminist?

My whole identity seems to be wrapped around that I'm kind and caring. My favourite show as a child was Care Bears and I believe I internalised that somehow and always tried to be a Care Bear

I don't want to be angry. But somehow it seems like I need to be angry and hate the world to be a feminist? I'd like to keep my identity as kind and caring (I'm also Buddhist, so believe the best in everybody and forgive everyone), but add feminist. Is that possible and how do I do that?

My answer

There’s…a lot here. The short answer is that you cannot be a nice person without also being a feminist, and that feminism is the antidote to anger about injustice, not the cause of it.

You’ve made some strange assumptions:

1. That feminism, which definitionally involves supporting a juster, nicer world, means that a person must be mean.

2. That feminists must necessarily be angrier than other people.

3. That being angry is bad.

4. That feminists hate the world.

These are all very strange, ignorant assumptions. They are also exactly what patriarchy wants you to think, because these beliefs keep you silent in the face of oppression.

The longer answer:

So let me start by saying that everyone is nice to some people. Nazis, warmongers, violent abusers, serial killers are all nice sometimes. The racists who spit at Ruby Bridges and the sexists who brutalize women and the homophobic monsters who want to abuse LGBTQ children are all nice sometimes. And they all probably think of themselves as nice people.

Nice doesn’t mean anything. What matters is when and to whom you are nice.

And too often, nice really means not rocking the boat. It means accepting the status quo. It means prioritizing being liked, obsessing over how you are perceived. A story might help illustrate:

During the first months of our relationship, my husband and I received an alarmist flier on our mailbox implying that “the mentally ill” would be living in our neighborhood thanks to a peer support and respite center that had opened nearby. This center provided vital, life-saving help to people experiencing mental health crises. My neighbors were determined to get rid of it.

We showed up to a neighborhood meeting where a bunch of “nice” people were “nicely” bullying the director of the center.

My husband and I were the only ones who spoke out in favor of the center, and who intervened to stop the bullying. My neighbors couldn’t believe how mean and rude I was being.

They didn’t think I was very nice.

But I ultimately didn’t care, because months of activism by my husband, me, and others we organized meant that the center ultimately got to stay. And I want justice over niceness and being liked all day, every day.

Standing up against injustice necessarily means not being “nice” to people who want to commit acts of injustice.

The alternative of not standing up against injustice also involves not being nice. It requires bullying, ignoring, and demeaning the people others would oppress. It involves contributing to a progressively crueler world.

You have to choose a side. And to not choose means choosing the side of the oppressor. No matter what side you choose, someone is going to think you are not nice.

You cannot, will not, be perceived as nice by everyone. And in trying to be perceived as such, you will almost certainly ignore acts of injustice in favor of being nice. I bet there was at least one other “nice” person in that meeting with my husband and me who didn’t speak out because they didn’t want to be not-nice. And what would be the effect of that action? They’d be perceived as nice by their neighbors, but at what cost?

People whose primary goal is niceness to everyone are necessarily complicit in oppression.

Is that really what and who you want to be? Fighting oppression means that you sometimes have to make oppressors feel bad.

Feminism has nothing whatsoever to do with being an unkind person. In fact, you cannot be a kind person and not be a feminist because kind people care about sexism and other forms of oppression. If you don’t, then you’re not a nice person. You’re just sitting passively by and letting oppression happen.

The Carebears existed in a land free of oppression, so it was easy for them to be nice. But you know what I remember about that show? I remember there was bullying and unkindness. And the Carebears didn’t say, “Oh gee, I want to be a nice person and I don’t want to be angry, so I better not say anything.”

They spoke out.

We also need to talk about your desire to be nice, and how you have made that core to your identity.

Women are socialized to be nice to keep us complicit and compliant.

“Nice” is an empty concept that basically means not offending anyone powerful and not disrupting the status quo. It requires aspiring to neutrality, and never speaking out against injustice.

Millions of nice women think that their terrible circumstances are the result of their personal failings rather than the political injustices visited on them. And their desire to be perceived as nice stops them from fighting back and demanding real change. As a result, another generation of women gets to live under an oppressive patriarchy.

Among white women, niceness is particularly problematic because niceness enables racism. White women are afraid to rock the boat and be perceived as not nice, and so they’ll tolerate all manner of cruelty perpetrated against Black women. Because part of nice white lady culture is the view that Black people aren’t fully human, and that being nice to them doesn’t matter very much.

I know very little about Buddhism, but I do know a lot of activist Buddhists. They seem to believe that you cannot be a compassionate, kind being without speaking out against injustice. I hope you’ll consider whether you have adopted an interpretation of Buddhism that does not challenge you to challenge others, and that keeps you complicit in injustice.

Finally, let’s talk about being angry.

The world is an unjust place. If you’re not occasionally angry, it is because you have numbed yourself to this injustice.

Feminism, to me, is an antidote to anger because it gives you something to do with that anger. My feminism compels me to take action rather than stew in misery. Being a feminist is, to me, an act of hope.

I urge you to sit with why being nice seems more important to you than everything else, and how this niceness might be weaponized into ignoring harm, accepting abuse, and cowering rather than standing up in the face of injustice.

The world will be what it is regardless of the emotions you have about it. The only important question to me is: Are you doing anything to make the world better?

Unthinking niceness doesn’t make the world better—and often makes it worse.

Standing up to injustice improves the world and offers hope for a better tomorrow.

Let’s move beyond nice, though. Because I think what you’re really wondering is if feminism means you have to be unhappy. We have this notion that being happy means being nice, and that being anything other than nice means you’re unhappy. I think this is why men so often weaponize anger against feminists; if they can prove that we are irrationally angry, then they can prove that feminism makes us less happy. This undermines the entire feminist project.

Awakening to the sexism in the world can be a deeply painful thing, especially when you become aware that there are certain things about which you can do nothing, and that individual choices will not help you escape oppression.

After you get past the initial pain, though, I do not think there is any credible argument at all that feminism makes women (or men, for that matter) less happy. Think of it this way: Would you rather think that the problems in your marriage are your fault, and spend endless time beating yourself up when nothing you do works? Or would you rather understand and identify the role of the patriarchy in your relationship and life? Would you rather believe you are an inferior worker, or know that there is an entire system in place that will make things harder for you?

Acknowledging and knowing about the barriers you face can ultimately help you surmount them. Because rather than blaming and berating yourself, you become empowered to tear down the system that oppresses you.

That, to me, is a recipe for greater happiness. And I’ve never met a woman who is less happy after discovering feminism. Feminism brings us more joy—and helps us build a world in which women’s joy actually matters.