Feminism: Sometimes I worry about you.
I have always been a feminist and a strong advocate for equal rights for men and women. And we have come a long way in the past decade or so. But nowadays — again and again — I fear our younger generations are slip-sliding backwards, and embracing pre-1968 gender roles.
I remember the first time I actively identified as a feminist, in my mind. I was a student at university, and I was still uncertain what subjects I should study. I was in an Art History class ( a subject I didn’t end up studying), and during a break, the professor made what I assume (and hope) was a joke, speaking to a group of us. He said something like “Ach, women who study medicine or law… they’re only doing it to find a doctor or lawyer to marry.” This was in the late 1980s, but even then this was a pretty stupid thing to say.
I remember that this made me very angry. For context, my then-girlfriend’s mother was studying to be a medical doctor (her second career), and she was exhausted, but ploughing on and on, because this is what she wanted. She wanted to help others. To heal. To make things better. As a relatively fresh divorcee, the last thing she was looking for was a doctor to marry. I remember thinking how unfair and how ignorant that statement was. I think something clicked in my mind then, and it had nothing to do with Art History.
I have always had a strong sense of fairness and have always been strongly against inequality and unfair behaviour. But before that moment, I wasn’t so actively conscious of feminism. Or perhaps better: I was conscious and aware of feminism, but didn’t really consider it something that directly affected me. That moment, I think, crystallised something. It hammered home that exactly thins sort of unacceptable behaviour, this “ho ho ho, we’re good ol’ boys” type of humour, was one of many factors that cemented sexism. And that our and my behaviour as a man was very, very relevant indeed to feminism and to equal rights.
Throughout university I remained actively on the lookout for cases of sexual discrimination and even wrote papers about communicative differences between men and women, illustrated by discourse analysis. The way we communicate with one another, not just men with women, but that also, slipped into the centre of my interest, and I ended up studying English and German Linguistics. And again and again, the issue of women being treated unfairly, being objectified, being treated as somehow “less” than men… again and again I came across such cases. In advertising, in politics here in Switzerland, out and about on the streets of Zurich… And when I started working in a Swiss Bank, I managed to negotiate a full day every week to devote to the work of the commission for equal rights, of which I had become a member. The only male person on the commission.
You might wonder why I would want to be on such a commission. I wouldn’t blame you for wondering. Many people asked me why I was doing that. Feminism and equal rights is a women’s topic, they told me. I wasn’t a woman, they helpfully pointed out (well, duh). And I recall wondering what they were thinking. Yes, the term “feminism” does indeed contain “femina” (i.e. woman in Latin). But to me, feminism was and has always been about equal rights and about fairness. Not exclusively about women. But it certainly is about removing sexism directed at women.
“So what did you do for men?” you might ask. Well, back in the days at he bank, we introduced part-time work all the way up to and including senior management, and actually had a number of senior (male) managers reduce their working time (and salary) down to 80%- “Big deal”, you might say. But back then, it was unheard of as a man to request part-time work, unless you were ill. When our son was born, I actually requested to be allowed to work part-time, and I was laughed out of HR with comments such as “What’s wrong with your wife, then?” What was “wrong” with her is that she was studying full time to get her degree. And I wanted to spend more time with my baby son. Yes, a few years later, this option became policy for guys also. And parental leave for fathers was tripled…
“Not cool, Seriously.”
Even decades later, when I was working in uniformed Security, there would be jokes and sexist remarks when out on patrol. Many of the younger officers considered such talk funny. I usually told them “Not cool. Seriously. That’s a colleague you’re reducing to a pair of tits and an ass. That’s pathetic. You’re making yourself look like a twat.”
So yes, I have always been a feminist and an ally to those fighting gender inequality. This extends to LGBTQ rights, which I firmly support also.
As I mentioned in the lead text, we have come a long way. It is no longer unusual to see a father out and about with a toddler child. Nappy changing facilities are no longer only in the women’s public toilets, like they were (mostly) twenty years ago. Men are not automatically paedophile suspects if they are spending time with their small child and down on their knees in the sand building a sand-castle with them. Oh goodness… the number of times mums gathered up their kids and fled when I turned up at the local playground with my toddler son in a push-chair… Because… Man… alone with small child… Alarm!
But nowadays I worry. I really do. I write a great deal on quora.com, and one of the (admittedly rather numerous) topics I write about is relationships and sadly also about abuse in relationships. And I am struck by how many young women and men seem to have very odd ideas about feminism. And this includes my 19-year-old son, who gets most of his information on feminism from Facebook (or Fakebook, as I like to call it). My wife and I, as his parents, have always led a relationship on an equal footing. I am not the “boss of the family”. Neither is she. We are a team, and always have been. We both cook, clean, changed his nappies when he was a baby, we both put him to bed, read him stories, spent time with him. The only thing my wife does that I seldom do is the laundry, but that is because the way I fold the laundry drives her nuts.
When he was 15, my son started working full time. For those of you unfamiliar with Germanic European culture, he worked as an apprentice, going to school one day per week and working the rest of the time, learning the ropes of his profession (restaurant cook). This is a perfectly valid and respected career path here. I recall a conversation I had with him regarding equal pay for men and women, once adjusted for working time, experience, qualifications, etc. Basically I said that I refused to accept that a woman should be paid less than a man ONLY because she is a woman. This had apparently been a topic of conversation at work, and he disagreed. He insisted that a woman was physically incapable of working as productively as a man. That was one of our first very heated arguments about the topic.
It’s weird, and I find it disturbing
On quora.com, and in real life discussions with young people, I am struck by how many young women clearly seem to see themselves as “subsidiary” to their male partners. And how many young men consider their female partners to be theirs to order about. It’s weird. And I find it disturbing.
I do have an inkling of what might be at least one reason why this is happening: Gender roles were clear in the 1950s, say. Women were home-makers and men were the bread-winners. Men were the head of the family and women were not their equal. Things were clear. Nobody wondered what it meant to “be a man”. You wore a hat, smoked a pipe and your wife brought you your slippers. Women were supposed to be demure, pretty, but intelligence wasn’t high on the list of attractive traits in a woman. Yes, I know there were many notable exceptions. But roles were clear.
Today this is no longer the case. What is a “good man” or a “good woman” nowadays? What should young men and women aspire to? Specifically, what gender characteristics are important? Now that both men and women can be strong, nurturing, intelligent, creative, fierce, home-builders, truck drivers, fighter pilots?
Perhaps this is one reason why “traditional” roles, in western society, outside a religious fundamentalist context, appear to be on the rise? Whatever the reason(s), this worries me. I truly believe that society as a whole would benefit from having gender equality in the sense that men and women have an equal chance at being happy and leading fulfilling lives. By equality, I do not mean the erasure of genders or of sexes. First of all, I am happy that they exist and the world would be horribly boring. I also truly and honestly believe that if a woman chooses to be a stay at home mother, then that is a perfectly valid choice. But I believe men should not be ridiculed if they make that choice also. And I very strongly believe that society, peer pressure, or any other force should never, ever force a man or a woman into a role in which they are not comfortable and which is not their choice.
We are some way away from stay at home fathers and full-time, earning mums not at least raising a few eyebrows, but we are in the 21st century, for goodness’ sake. In rich countries such as Switzerland… there really is no excuse for sexism or sexual discrimination in any form. Did you know that it is still the norm here to have the kids come home for lunch every day from school (especially primary school)? Because “mummy’s sure to be home and can cook for them and then take them back to school an hour and a half later. How is a woman supposed to work in a normal job if she has to go home for two hours over lunch? This is ridiculous.
If we don’t call out sexism and sexual discrimination, who will?
But enough of the rant (I could go on and on…). My point today is that we older generations need to make an extra effort to call out sexism and sexual discrimination when and where we see it, we need to not only be role models for our younger generation. We need to strengthen their self-confidence and their self-image and help guide them towards fair, equal and mutually-supportive, positive relationships. Because if we don’t do it, who will? We can’t rely on Fakebook (sic) and Co. They are part of the problem. I know there are moderate, positive voices on such platforms also, but they tend to be drowned out by the cacophony of anti-feminism, incel crap and sexist nonsense, which appears to me to dominate by sheer volume.
