By Kien-Ling Liem, Editor, Trinity College Student
Unfortunately, in this day and age, feminism has been distorted into a man-hating movement, stopping many men from supporting women’s rights. But what they don’t realise is that feminism can do so much more for them than the patriarchy, which is the system we’re currently living in.
First, let’s define feminism. According to Oxford Languages, it is ‘the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes’. Key word: equality. We're trying to push the notion that we are all equal. Currently, we are all living in a largely patriarchal society, in which the degree of patriarchy that is enforced depends on each culture. The patriarchy, according to the same source, is ‘a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it’. This system can be seen throughout all cultures: for those of us who learnt about natural law and Greek culture in HOI, we can see that women are not included in any research because there simply just wasn’t any information about them. They were always seen as lesser than men, and this way of thinking dates back to the very beginning of humanity – to disentangle the complicated and treacherous web of the patriarchy, we must unlearn misogyny. However, we all know that it harms women, but what isn’t always obvious is how the patriarchy harms men.
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Patriarchal standards force men to act a certain way that can be seen throughout all of time and various cultures, especially colonised countries. In correspondence to the patriarchy, men have to be the front of the home, hence the phrase ‘man of the house’, and financially take care of their family members. It's the little phrases and idioms that often reveal the most about how society sees men. We often tell them to ‘be a man’, which we all know means to be strong both mentally and physically all the time – what's dangerous about this is obviously how one cannot be strong constantly, but also that the phrase is always seen positively. Society puts so much pressure on them to act powerful even when they’re not, and this is a large contributor of the plummeting situation of men’s mental health. We tell men that showing weakness such as crying, expressing emotion or doing anything vaguely ‘feminine’ is seen as shameful (which is ultimately rooted in misogyny, but that’s a conversation for another day). This results in them learning to not show any emotion at all and not learning how to process their mental health. They find avoidance techniques to not feel or comprehend things which can often lead to depression, which I unfortunately see really often in my own male friends.
A large issue related to this is that the patriarchy also enforces toxic masculinity, and it’s so embedded into us that other men shame each other. According to Oxford Languages, toxic masculinity is ‘a set of attitudes and ways of behaving stereotypically associated with or expected of men, regarded as having a negative impact on men and on society as a whole’. For example, it includes the idea that men have to be violent to establish the ‘alpha male’ status e.g., punching holes in walls when they’re upset. A really good example of this I see around my own male friends is that they rarely talk about their feelings because they think it’s shameful or embarrassing and that their friends will make fun of them for doing so. This results in them not having an outlet to talk about things that affect them, and they bottle these emotions up until they can’t handle it anymore. The bottle overflows, heating everything up, and the whole process just starts again: the ramifications of this is incredibly damaging.
Now that we’ve talked about how the patriarchy damages men, let’s see how feminism can actually benefit them. Of course, there’s a lot of different types of feminism, but the one I strictly believe in is intersectionality; to give a brief overview, intersectionality is a term coined by Kimberly Crenshaw, and it means ‘the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage’. In other words, it’s where race, gender, socio-economic status and others intersect and create a unique experience for everyone. This specific brand of feminism can help men because it doesn’t just focus on women: it spotlights everyone’s problems with the patriarchy. It works on demolishing the patriarchy altogether, not just for the benefit of women, but also men, LGBTQ+ individuals and people of colour. Intersectionality uplifts men and disentangles toxic masculinity, allowing them to properly express and comprehend their emotions. It allows them to be masculine without being toxic. Real feminism doesn’t shame men for showing vulnerability – real women don’t shame men for crying, looking a certain way, or doing anything that isn’t traditionally seen as ‘masculine’.
Men's mental health is something that feminism has no hesitation to uplift, but we can only do that if other men show they want to help as well, and that’s perhaps the largest weakness to this: the lack of awareness. We can only move forward if other men are willing to open up and spread awareness about this. It's also one of the reason the women’s rights has so much credibility – women actually want to talk about it and aren’t ashamed. Obviously, there are social barriers to this regarding men showing weakness, but we must be brave in order to create any sort of change.
It’s obvious that the patriarchy doesn’t actually want to help men, but feminism does. And it may not seem like much now, but with more awareness and more people willing to open up, soon we can dismantle the patriarchy and give men the help they need.
Don't be afraid to speak out.