Maleness and the Feminist Worldview, Part III: Conclusion

The final point which needs to be addressed in examining male gender identity is understanding how social privilege has come to favor men in nearly all arenas. Men have been dominating politics, economics, and religion since before the time of Hammurabi. Ostensibly, the convential wisdom is that men are more suited to the aggressive dictates of managing society. However, if male identity is stripped of the ideas that men are physically or sexually dominant, such an axiom becomes absurd. Any emasculationist ranting by anti-feminism males simply becomes petty carping about the loss of social privilege.

Any rational human being can see it: For thousands of years now, men have had it pretty good. We get to go out every day, exert ourselves in a variety of arenas; drink and fuck ourselves silly, and then at the end of the day still come home and have our women--be they our mothers, sisters, friends, lovers, or spouses--waiting for us to clean up the mess. Women have been doing society's dirty work for nearly all of recorded history. But since recorded language has only been around since after male ascension, we have completely forgotten how to imagine society as anything BUT a male-dominated machine. Naturally, any attempts to combat that millennia-old social programming is going to meet with heavy resistance from conservatives. How can it be otherwise? This flawed social mechanism is all they know. But having examined male identity, and the way that said identity shapes modern society, this author has concluded that male identity as we view it is meaningless. It's a chromosome; a piece of tissue; a difference in perception of ourselves aesthetically. Maleness is not some ideal that modern feminism threatens to kill. Rather, it is an essential variation in the palette of shades that make up human existence and experience.

It is absolutely necessary for women in our society to continue fighting against gender-biased injustice. But for the walls of injustice to completely come crashing down, men need to do some of the work too. No, men cannot expect credit for such efforts to this end. Nor should they. But the point remains, we as men need to look in the mirror and seriously ask ourselves what being male actually means. This author believes that its meaning lies within a lack of meaning. Being male is whatever we want it to be. So instead of men and women criticizing each other for subte differences, we as men need to rise above our assumptions. We need to realize that whatever we do--serve in combat, work as secretaries, work construction, or raise children as stay-at-home fathers--we will ALWAYS be male. And granting rights to the women we have abused for so long will never threaten that. If anything, it will make us greater, not as males, but as human beings.

Are maleness and feminism incompatible? Absolutely not. But while we as men must be willing to let go of our previous assumptions, we must also willingly accept that shedding such assumptions will not merit us any exemptions or credit. We must simply accept that the Era of Male Privilege is ending, and start focusing on what really makes us so special--our shared Humanity.

Destroy gender barriers. Look in a mirror.