What the men who contact me have shown me about sexism in marriage (paid subscriber bonus)
Men have started contacting me for "advice." And they all seem to believe that a feminist writer is going to take their side against their wife.
Over the past year, a strange thing began happening. Men now regularly contact me for advice with their marriages.
I suppose this could be a good thing if their emails took accountability for a series of bad behaviors, then sought input on how to make amends to their spouse.
Nope.
These emails all seemed designed to escape accountability, and to convince me that wifey is the crazy one—perhaps even the abusive one.
The men who contact me come from all walks of life and educational levels. And they share two things in common: They are familiar with my work and they identify as feminists (or at least not as sexists). Yet each email contains numerous enraging lines implying their partner is crazy, unreasonable, stupid, or even abusive—often for engaging in the very same behaviors the man engages in.
I’ve written before that it often seems like men are using the same scripts. And they are. Patriarchy is essentially a brain disease that erodes men’s ability to empathize, think critically, or objectively evaluate their own behavior. The women interacting with these men are not interacting with fully rational, actualized human beings; they’re interacting with patriarchy bots who are doing and saying what a broken culture tells them.
I think that, for men to move beyond this propaganda, they first have to recognize all the ways it makes them illogical and cruel.
The men who contact me haven’t done that. They want to be viewed as good guys, but they don’t want to put in the work necessary to actually be good guys.
No wonder their wives are so fed up.
I think looking at the themes I see in these letters may offer some insight into patriarchal thinking in men—and may help the women stuck in marriages with these men better understand what’s happening