I’m Not Anti-male. I Have A Son
By: Elle Beau
Tags: Essay, Men, Equality, Motherhood, Life

And I want him to live in a world that supports his wellbeing and happiness

Photo by Teodor Drobota on Unsplash

I suppose it’s possible to be anti-male and be the parent of a boy child, but in truth, very few women are truly anti-male, whether they have boys or not. Most of what looks like misandry is actually emotional fatigue around the pervasive negative experiences that so many women have had their entire lives starting at a young age. They aren’t mad at all men, but they are fed up with the ones who continually abuse, harass, and dismiss them, as well as the ones who turn a blind eye and allow that to happen.

It’s always much harder to be anti-anything when you care about someone in that demographic, which is why so many anti-discrimination initiatives aim to allow people of different backgrounds to really get to know each other. It’s hard to hate up close. Not only do I love my son with the ferocity of a mama bear, but I’ve got a couple of other males in my life whose happiness and well-being I am highly invested in as well.

When I point out to some guy who is trying to paint me as anti-men that I have a son, that really ought to count for more than it often does with them. If it doesn’t, perhaps it’s because they themselves don’t have children. I’m very devoted to my son’s wellbeing and demonizing men would be inconsistent with that desire. It also wouldn’t do much to enhance the relationship I have with the other men in my life. That doesn’t mean that I don’t still believe there is a lot of room for men as a dominant and privileged category of people to do better but it also leaves some room for individuality.

In a recent discussion about discrimination, the guy I was talking to was trying to hedge a bit by saying that he mocks all kinds of people. I pointed out that a white man mocking other white men doesn’t have the same kind of impact as a white man mocking some other demographic with less institutional power. The person I was talking to had just gotten himself into a fair amount of hot water for doing just that, mocking someone from a marginalized group. And although this guy was ostensibly contrite, there was still a lot of backpedaling going on around full responsibility.

He wanted to keep talking about it all, hoping I think that I would admit that what he’d done really wasn’t so bad because “he hadn’t intended any harm.” And so in the face of that amnesia, I reminded him of his privileged white male yucking at what he himself had characterized as slurs. All of a sudden I was the one who was behaving in a discriminatory manner. Now I was “anti-men.”

While including some of the other ways that this was not remotely true, I mentioned that I have two male partners, another male lover, and a son.

“I have a male son and two male partners” is just another “I have a black friend,” he said.

But this is not even close to being the same thing, particularly as relates to my son. Here’s why:

A single or token friend of a different ethnicity does not necessarily give you great insight into their life or experiences. That’s one of the main reasons why saying, “I have A (single) black friend” doesn’t automatically speak to your understanding of black experiences or your potential participation in racism. It’s wonderful to have friends of different backgrounds and ethnicities and it certainly can help give a broader perspective, but even if you have made an effort to try to walk in that one friend’s shoes for a while and to listen to them speak about their experiences; even if you care about them a lot, you probably aren’t as invested in their life and wellbeing as you are a member of your immediate family. You probably don’t care about them in the same way that you care about your child.

“My one black friend” is considerably different than talking about the person I carried in my body for nine months. I love my partners and care deeply about my other lovers. I want them all to have lives that are happy and fulfilling and that affords them the kinds of opportunities that will lead to that, but I want those things for my son in spades and I’m highly invested in helping that to be available to him.

Perhaps someone who has never been a parent can’t truly understand this, but I would fight a mountain lion with my bare hands if I thought it would protect my child. He may now be 22, but that maternal instinct doesn’t really diminish, and when your son has special needs, as mine does, it truly never abates. I know his father would do the same, so it’s not a mother vs. father thing, it’s a parent thing. I’m only pointing out that the fact that he is a young man (rather than a woman like me) does not impact the fierceness of my love for him in any way.

But even more than being willing to put myself in harm's way for his benefit, I am working to create the kind of world that will nourish and support my son (as well as other boys and men). I’ve written extensively about how patriarchy harms men as well and although some of that is a bit academic, in many ways, it’s also very personal. I don’t want my son to live in a world that tells him who he is supposed to be or how he is supposed to act in order to be a “real man.” I don’t want anyone, including women, to look down on him for not being afraid to cry or for not being embarrassed to hold a male friend’s hand.

A dominance-based hierarchy, which is what patriarchy is — not just a historic power imbalance between men and women — it’s a whole system of stratification that is detrimental to nearly everyone, even those who are successful in it and who sit near the apex of the pyramid of power. They pay a high price to get there and stay there because it’s hard to have real friendship, love, or intimacy when you are always evaluating the other person to see who is the one-up and who is the one-down in the zero-sum dynamic. Communication tends to get focused on the maintenance of the hierarchy rather than on finding ways for it to work for everybody, which is what more partnership-oriented organizational and relational structures are centered in.

So, laughing over jokes that you have already identified as inappropriate and that you have advised others not to pass on is a subtle and potentially inadvertent way to maintain the social hierarchy. This hierarchy is comprised not just of gender and sexuality, but of race, class, education level, wealth, immigration status, and other things. It’s a way to put yourself in the one-up position and the other in the one-down one — which is what we’ve all been taught is the way to solidify and maintain our place on the pyramid of power. It’s what is behind all kinds of bullying, from the playground to the halls of government.

For most people, this is primarily unconsciously done, which is why implicit bias counts for the vast majority of racism, sexism, and homophobia. These underlying attitudes and stereotypes that people unconsciously attribute to another person or group of people affect how they understand and engage with them. Conscious thought only accounts for 2% of our thinking. The rest is drawing on cultural narratives, prior experiences, and things like representation in the media.

The reason that I used the words white and male when describing this person’s actions is that I felt very strongly that his self-admittedly inappropriate comments and slurs were for the purposes of maintaining the one-up position — a place that is primarily held by men and whites in our society. The fact that these constructs probably never entered his conscious thoughts is immaterial. That’s what implicit bias is all about. When you yuck it up about how some other marginalized group behaves because you find it inherently funny, that’s what is going on.

Those two words are doubly appropriate because even if you have friends in that marginalized demographic, you’ve clearly never tried to walk in their shoes or to understand their experiences, or you wouldn’t have attempted a “comedy bit” that trivializes them in a general setting where no friendly intimacy is present. And that is one of the advantages of being from a demographic that does hold so much social and institutional power. You’ve never had to really think about that stuff in a deep way because it doesn’t impact you directly. If you had, you wouldn’t have said that stuff.

So no, me saying that I am not anti-men and that in fact, my life is deeply intertwined with a couple of men, including my son, is not remotely like saying, “I’m not racist because I have a black friend.” I’m highly invested in their lives, futures, and happiness and actively working to help create a world that supports and nourishes them too, not just today because it’s convenient to say so, but every day.

Do I also have unconscious or implicit biases? I’m sure I do, but as Carl Jung so famously said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” For that reason, I spend a lot of time taking a look at what I do and say and exploring what is really going on behind the scenes. Where are my sore spots being triggered? Where is my shadow self potentially in play? Who does this person remind me of from my past? It’s not perfect or infallible, but it’s a damned-sight better than avoiding responsibility for one’s words and actions by deflecting onto someone else that they are the one who is truly discriminatory because they are refusing to give you a pass for your behavior.

Having one son impacts my life much differently than someone who has one black friend. And if that doesn’t make complete and total sense to you, you’re probably willfully misunderstanding the difference for your own purposes.