Nov 22 JDN 2459176

November 19 is International Men’s Day, so this week seemed an appropriate time for this post.

It’s obvious that a less sexist world would benefit women. But there are many ways in which it would benefit men as well.

First, there is the overwhelming pressure of conforming to norms of masculinity. I don’t think most women realize just how oppressive this is, how nearly every moment of our lives we are struggling to conform to a particular narrow vision of what it is to be a man, from which even small deviations can be severely punished. A less sexist world would mean a world where these pressures are greatly reduced.

Second, there is the fact that men are subjected to far more violence than women. Men are three times as likely to be murdered as women. This violence has many causes—indeed, the fact that men are much more likely to be both victims and perpetrators of violence nearly everywhere in the world suggests genetic causes—but a less sexist world could be a world with less violence in general, and men would benefit most from that.

Third, a less sexist world is a world where men and women feel more equal and more comfortable with one another, a world in which relationships between men and women can be deeper and more authentic. Another part of the male experience that most women don’t seem to understand is how incredibly painful it is to be treated as “Schrodinger’s Rapist”, where you are considered a potential predator by default and have to constantly signal that you are not threatening. To be clear, the problem isn’t that women are trying to protect themselves from harm; it’s that their risk of being harmed is high enough that they have to do this. I’m not saying women should stop trying to play it safe around men; I’m saying that we should be trying to find ways to greatly reduce the risk of harm that they face—and that doing so would benefit both women, who would be safer, and men, who wouldn’t have to be treated as potential predators at all times.

Feminists have actually done a lot of things that directly benefit men, including removing numerous laws that discriminate against men.

Are there some men who stand to be harmed by a less sexist society? Sure. Rapists clearly stand to be harmed. Extremely misogynist men will be pressured to change, which could be harmful to them. And, to be clear, it won’t all be benefits even for the rest of us. We will have to learn new things, change how we behave, challenge some of our most deep-seated norms and attitudes. But overall, I think that most men are already better off because of feminism, and would continue to be even better off still if the world became more feminist.

Why does this matter? Wouldn’t the benefits to women be a sufficient reason to make a less sexist world, even if it did end up harming most men?

Well, yes and no: It actually depends on how much it would harm men. If those harms were actually large enough, they would present a compelling reason not to make a more feminist world. That is clearly not the case, and this should be obvious to just about anyone; but it’s not a logical impossibility. Indeed, even knowing that the harms are not enough to justify abandoning the entire project, they could still be large enough to justify slowing it down or seeking other approaches to solving the problems feminism was intended to solve.

But yes, clearly feminism would be worth doing even if it had no net benefit to men. Yet, the fact that it does have a net benefit to most men is useful information.

First, it tells us that the world is nonzero-sum, that we can make some people better off without making others equally worse off. This is a deep and important insight that I think far too few people have really internalized.

Second, it provides numerous strategic benefits for recruiting men to the cause. Consider the following two potential sales pitches for feminism:

“You benefit from this system, but women are harmed by it. You should help us change it, even though that would harm you! If you don’t, you’re a bad person!”

“Women are harmed most by this system, but you are harmed by it too. You can help us change it, and we’ll make almost everyone better off, including you!”

Which of those two sales pitches seems more likely to convince someone who is on the fence?

Consider in particular men who aren’t particularly well-off themselves. If you are an unemployed, poor Black man, you probably find that the phrase “male privilege” rings a little hollow. Yes, perhaps you would be even worse off if you were a woman, but you’re not doing great right now, and you probably aren’t thrilled with the idea of risking being made even worse off, even by changes that you would otherwise agree are beneficial to society as a whole.

Similar reasoning applies to other “privileged” groups: Poor White men dying from treatable diseases because they can’t afford healthcare probably aren’t terribly moved by the phrase “White privilege”. Emphasizing the ways that your social movement will harm people seems like a really awful way of recruiting support, doesn’t it?

Yes, sometimes things that are overall good will harm some people, and we have to accept that. But the world is not always this way, and in fact some of the greatest progress in human civilization has been of the sort that benefits nearly everyone. Indeed, perhaps we should focus our efforts on the things that will benefit the most people, and then maybe come back later for things that benefit some at the expense of others?