HeForShe

    

So Brett was asked to speak at the University's HeForShe promotion this week. This is what he said:

I am a happily married man.  I am happy because my wife makes me a better person, and I like to think that I make her a better person as well.  We do this by not only working together to meet the challenges of life but by not limiting each other to narrowly defined roles of what it means to be a man and a woman or a husband and a wife.

Unequal or oppressive relationships harm everyone involved, not only those who are oppressed.  

I believe that when we encourage strength for all instead of forcing assumptions of weakness on some groups in society, we all benefit.  But when we allow narrow and inaccurate definitions of strength and weakness, we all become truly weak.

Cultural constructions of what it means to be a man or a woman vary, but commonly the social expectations of male and female are constructed as categorically related.  By defining one, we indirectly define the other.   

Though there are many aspects to gender constructions, a common theme includes using particular actions to define masculinity and femininity through ideas of strength and weakness.  Men are strong, or at least they are told they are supposed to be.  But because a man is supposed to be strong, by indirect definition a woman is supposed to be weak.  This is why many men see a strong woman as a threat to their own masculinity.

Because strength is associated with masculinity, it encourages men to demonstrate their strength by not being like the other category, which is femininity.  Additionally, and even more problematic, this demonstration of strength can lead to a need to demonstrate strength as masculinity over femininity.  In this categorical relationship, oppression is born by one group defining itself by its dominance over the other group.

This oppressive relationship occurs for two reasons: one, that we have categorized male and female as relationally dependent, even opposites.  And two, in this relationship strength has been defined as domination over the other group. This is why feminism is seen as a “man-hating” ideology, because making women stronger must mean you have to make men weaker.  To take the chains off of women, you must have to put them on men.  But this is simply not true, and I would challenge any version of feminism that supports this mindset.

This oppressive relationship between gender categories not only is a disservice to women who are predominantly found on the lower end, but it is also a disservice to men.  The more we narrowly define what it means to be a man, the more fragile and weak we make it to be a man.  We make excuses for men because they are supposed to be strong, but this makes them weaker.  We make excuses by saying that because they are men they can’t control themselves.  They are men so they can’t take care of themselves.  We teach them that their basic needs like food and clothing are women’s work which makes them completely dependent and helpless.  Is that strength?  Then we blame women for men’s weaknesses in men’s rationalized and justified animalistic and childlike behavior.  Is that strength?.  By being born women, we make them feel like they are already less, already guilty of something.  So they learn to silence themselves, eliminate their desires and dreams, their true strengths.  Likewise men do the same because of this narrow and incorrect definition of strength. .

True strength is not found in the abuse, domination, or oppression of someone else.  And it is certainly not found in false entitlements and unearned privileges that create dependency and helplessness.

True strength is endurance.  It is perseverance in the face of adversity.  True strength is unity, it is facing competition fairly and doing your best, it is courage to stand for what is right, to continue on when you feel like giving up, to stand apart from what you are being told you have to be when you know it is not right, when you know it is harmful to you and those around you.

The answer to these categorical and definitional problems is simple.  Dissolve the categories.  Change the definition of strength.  The answer is simple but the action to do it is difficult.  It starts with each one of us, but for many of us this means denying favoritism or privilege when it contradicts a true meaning of strength.  But by doing this we will become stronger, truly strong, and so will those around us.

These gender categories prescribe how we should be rather than how we are.  But we can be freer if we can be our real selves, our strong selves.  Those around us will benefit from us when we are able to be our true selves.  We will be better at what we do because we will be who we are.  

My wife is happy, I believe, not only because I want her to be her true self but because I am allowed to be my true self as well.  And together we are strong.

This is why I believe that at the heart of HeforShe is also, and just as importantly, HeforHe.  Treating women as less simply because they are women not only harms women, it harms men.  And it is not strength, it is weakness in the most despicable sense of the word.  True strength includes courage.  Do we have the courage to change this?

Well said, Love.


If you have some time check out this Ted talk by

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie "We should all be feminists". She is so cool I just might name our next child after her. :)