Tag Archives: men

Feminism and Men

Posted on by Rachel A. Hanson

Ever since I joined WordPress I have really enjoyed seeing what search terms bring people to my little corner of the internet.  A surprising amount of people also have a lady crush on Ramona Flowers. Some people have found me through the massive amount I’ve written about SlutWalk.  Others still have found me through searching for my family members.

But yesterday someone found me by searching “what do feminists think of men.”  I thought that was an interesting question.  More importantly, one that is important to talk/write about.  What do feminists think of men?

Pondering this question made me think a question that I have heard often, both in my personal life and in the media.  Perhaps people have asked you this question too.  It is, “What do you people want?”  ’You people’ meaning women. This question is usually asked by men who are frustrated at their failures of connecting with women.  Asking one individual what an entire group wants seems pretty ridiculous.

So, back to the original question, “what do feminists think of men?” I will say that every woman I know is a feminist in some way, shape, or form. They all have different opinions about almost everything.  A feminist is simply someone (doesn’t have to be a woman) who believes that everyone should be treated equally regardless of their sex. Other than that, it’s pretty open for discussion.

While I would never presume to speak for all feminists, I will say that I certainly like men.  I like one particular man so much that I married him (and even took his last name!)  However, I can understand why some women who identify as feminists do not like men.  Particularly middle-class white men.  So, if you want to know what feminists think of men, ask a feminist in your life.  Don’t presume that everyone in the group has the same opinion because that’s presuming that everyone has the exact same life experiences and the exact same brain.  And ultimately, that’s just plain ridiculous.

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The best marriage advice I ever recieved

Posted on by Rachel A. Hanson

Well, gentle readers, it would been that when it rains it pours.  I haven’t had anything to say for days and now I’m finding that I have a lot to say.  I guess that’s how it goes sometimes.

I was raised to think, from the time I was quite young, that I would get married to a man someday.  In the LDS (aka, Mormon) church there are different organizations you belong to as you grow up.  Ages 1 1/2 – 3 go to Nursery.  Ages 3-12 go to Primary.  Ages 12-18 go to Young Men’s or Young Women’s (depending on your sex).  Ages 18-death go to Relief Society (for women) or Priesthood (for men.) 

From the time I was 12 I have been making lists enumerating the qualities that a potential mate would have.  My top two were that the man had to hold the priesthood (for more information on that click here) and he had to be college educated. I picked those things because all my friends were picking those things and because I believed they were important. 

However, I had no idea exactly what I was looking for.  Just as an example, let’s say I went Brigham Young University (BYU, it’s owned by the LDS church.)  There would be over 14,000 men that fit the criteria of being priesthood holders and college educated.  That’s a big pool to swim in! 

One day in my mid-teens I was bemoaning the difficulty of finding decent guys and trying to figure out how I’d know who to marry, my mom gave me some valuable insight.  She told me that if I was dating someone that fit my criteria but I wasn’t sure if he was “the one” I should ask myself one question.  Does this man make me want to be better?  And not in a controling way where my significant other is telling me that I need to hurry up and finish my degree, or that I need to lose weight, or that I need to improve myself.  This man should appreciate me for who I am, but also want me to develop my talents and grow as a person.

Armed with this piece of advice I went out into the world.  I found many males (not all of them were men.)  Almost none of them made me want to be better than I was today.  Following being in an abusive relationship I will admit that the priesthood criteria dropped off.  Now it was (and is) important to me to find someone that will accept the part of me that has been hurt by that other guy, along with everything else. 

I am so pleased to be able to say that I have found that person in my sweet husband.  His presence and example makes me want to be better than I am.  Every day is a new adventure.  I may not improve every day, but the desire is there.  He makes me want to be better each and every day.

Why should we be talking about the bathroom?

Posted on by Rachel A. Hanson

Every week there is a student presentation in my class, “Theories & Methodologies of Gender Studies.”  (Yes the title is pretty daunting. The class is also pretty daunting.) Last night it was my turn to give a presentation.  In my other Gender Studies classes I’ve also had to give presentations, but they were on a topic of my choice.  I could pick anything that I wanted.  Not the case in this class.  I had to give a presentation on “Texts, Bodies, and Identity.”

I did have one decision.  What is a cultural application to how texts help us to identify ourselves and how we percieve our bodies? That’s a fairly big question, especially when my textbook defines a “text” as anything that exists out in society that influences us.  It could literally be anything.  I finally decided on bathroom doors.  Bathrooms can be pretty charged spaces, even if you don’t actually realize it.  If a man walks into the women’s bathroom (or visa versa) it’s a really big deal.  You also get fairly defensive if you can’t tell the sex of the person that’s walking into your bathroom.  Finally, in most public spaces there are only two choices.  You can go in the mens bathroom or the womens bathroom.  The binary of bathrooms contributes a lot to our notion of a gender binary. If there are only two bathroom choices there can only been two types of people, right?  Wrong, actually.  Even if you’re only looking at it in terms of biology there are people that have a myriad of different types of chromosomal compositions.  Some people are only born with an X chromosome (it’s called Turner’s Syndrome). Some people have XXY.  And there’s any number of other combinations that people are walking around with.  There are individuals known as intersexed, which means that while they may have been born with a specific sets of chromosomes (XX, for example) they may not have genitals that conform to the widely accepted ideas of what that chromosome combination should look like.

Not so easy now, is it?  So talking about bathrooms, while seemingly trivial, can be kind of a big deal. 

My conclusion, restrooms are just places where we eliminate body waste.  Maybe making it a gendered space isn’t necessarily the best idea.