MEN ARE THE MOST INFLUENTIAL FEMINISTS OF MY GENERATION

this post was originally created in April 2013 but I'm reissuing it 3 years later to celebrate International Women's Day. x
 

Without a doubt, men of my generation have advanced the feminist cause further than women in the last decade.

The feminist argument often takes two threads. One: Women demand equality in terms of treatment as compared to men - this takes the form of 'equal pay' 'equal rights to representation' 'equal access to the corridors of power' etc. It is the feminism that applauds Lady Thatcher, Karren Brady, Marissa Mayer. It's about access to a patriarchal society and the fair and equal representation of women in it. This often has much to do with removing the oppression of women still experienced by many throughout the world.

But the other branch takes a broader view. it focuses on the emergence of neither a matriarchal or patriarchal world, but the resurgence of a feminine culture and paradigm, with feminine in this sense standing for the opposite of aggressive dominance and competition. This branch often ties itself in knots before a conversation can even begin over the meaning of 'feminine' and 'masculine'. It is harder to express as it deals with a more eastern philosophical notion of 'aspects' than a hard, quantifiable notion of 'male' or 'female'. But lets try.

Women, understandably, have been tightly focussed on removing the oppression and gaining a voice and standing in the existing social structures we have today. There have been many many successes and there is still much work to be done. It's not my intention to undermine or undervalue any of the achievements here.

But, while we (the women) have been rumbling along fighting (see - fighting!) for equality, there has been a quieter revolution among the men. Stop and listen to the men in your community (well in my community anyway) and you'll realise something delightfully surprising. Men have been establishing a world order that is feminine, breaking down barriers - not for our sake, but for their own - around work, aspiration, health, and family structure. And they have been very successful.

Many fathers, for example, cherish and relish being and active parent while their children are young, and their demands for flexible working hours (remember, as they are the power-holders, when they demand things they get them) have resulted in flexible hours and home-working policies becoming the norm.

Technology to support this has come hand in hand with the flexibility. Men and women have been developing this, to be sure, but as men outweigh women heavily in the tech field, we've got to give them credit. Skype, laptops, smart-phones, wifi technology, internet banking. All of these things are driving a society in which the arguments levelled against women maintaining their hard-won status in society and the workplace when moving into that previously uniquely female role of ‘parental care giver’ are becoming more and more ridiculous.

Were is not for the men in tech who wanted the right for themselves to go home and spend time with their children, who wanted what the women in their lives had, I would never have had the opportunities I currently enjoy. And as women last longer and go further in the public domain as a result of the shifts the public domain benefits from an increase in compassionate, holistic view points that were previously hidden in the home.

Home life too benefits from the influence of the kind of focused and practical approach to task completion that we typically attribute to men (remember we are being ‘eastern’ in our philosophy here and accept that there gender traits are a gray not black and white affair) and we see the influence of emotionally-manipulative marketing strategies for consumption and goal setting that has been heaped on the women of the western world fall away to be replaced by a more self-oriented society that recognises the importance of looking after yourself as well as your family.

So thank you to the men - I doubt that you did it with the advancement of women in mind, and in most cases it was likely a self-indulgent desire to get away with doing less that motivated the change if anything, but Hoorah! all the same :) Equality is a constantly shifting balance between all the components in society. It is equilibrium.

Now we can roar <3 <3 <3