I bought Beyoncé’s Lemonade album eight days ago. That I have listened to it a mere seven times through is only a reflection of the amount of time I have to listen to music, and not at all of my feelings about the music. Because this album is a masterpiece, and I love it. I love how musically adventurous it is. I love the naked emotion, both the roar in “Don’t Hurt Yourself” and the sigh in “Pray You Catch Me.” I love the confidence and the vulnerability, both. I love how it makes me feel. As much as I understand about Lemonade, though, I know too that there are parts I do not understand, that I may never fully understand. I love it, but it wasn’t made for me.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: art that isn’t for me. I thought about it when Prince died, of course, because on some level music so brilliant and so explicitly about freedom and limitlessness is for everyone. But, of course, there are parts of Prince’s music that I can’t access, which the life I’ve lived simply hasn’t given me the experiences to be able to know.

Is there a way to talk about this that isn’t appropriative? That isn’t trying to make it about me? Maybe not. Maybe I wouldn’t be thinking about this so much if I didn’t feel a sense of entitlement. The question that stays in my mind isn’t so much what I’m allowed to love or what I can say I relate to. Rather, I wonder about participation, and about how my presence affects the rest of the audience.

Years ago I saw a feature on Lenscratch of photographs from a young artist named Natalie Krick; I was drawn in by the wit and intellect apparent in the images. She had something to say about femininity, about feminism, about youth and age, about parents and children, about our image-saturated culture. Much later I discovered she was on Instagram, and I loved the way that even her casual studio and process snaps had both a boldness and a sense of play, and an assuredness that I have certainly never felt about either my art or my body. But it’s clear, too, that that play is with and for the young women who are her peers and friends, and not at all for some dude out in the suburbs who has three kids and is pushing forty. I love her work and I think it deserves to be celebrated, but I wonder sometimes whether I am intruding.

Back in March, Jenny Zhang—whose poetry and essays I adore—tweeted a link to an interview between her and fellow writer Charlotte Shane, titled “There’s no spectrum of nuance for why people might expose themselves.” I had just recently read Zhang’s essay “On Blonde Girls in Cheongsams” and had been thinking a lot about how erased I have felt at times in my life, how I have not felt entitled to access the Asian culture into which I was supposedly born. And I loved her for putting that feeling into words and then again for putting those words into the world. I felt seen. At the same time, I knew that much of what she wrote in that essay was something I’d only really understand if I’d grown up as a girl. In the interview with Charlotte Shane, she asked

I’d be interested to know what you think the gender breakdown of your readership is, and then within the men who read your work, do you ever feel like they are judgy or creepy or perhaps looking for evidence of a womanís brokenness or fucked-ness, and what percentage are just open, curious, voracious for your stories and your ideas?

It’s a thing I’ve wondered, too, because Zhang’s writing is so often about her sexuality, her body, and it must attract all manner of creepers. And, indeed, both she and Shane talked about that. I can imagine how frustrating, how infuriating it must be to get that kind of reaction from men who you were not talking to, who you were never thinking about when you were writing your own truths, but who still feel allowed to do whatever they want with your writing. I can imagine it, but I can’t really know how it feels because it’s not something that has happened to me.

And this is the crux of it: this work represents a phenomenon which I have never and probably will never experience, but which millions of women live every day. It is speaking to them, not to me. And if I go into this space, no matter how much I love the work, nor what my intention may be, it is true that my presence may make one of these women feel uncomfortable or even unsafe. Here some dude will pound the table and shout “Not All Men!” but this is entirely missing the point. (Also, he is an asshole.) The point is that the work is by a woman, speaking to other women, and if my being there makes one of these women—who may connect more deeply with the work than I ever will—unable to enjoy and connect with the art or the artist, then that is me interfering with the purpose of the art.

I know that if art is put out into the world for the public to view, it is not wrong for me to view it. I know that if I see some part of myself reflected in someone else’s art, I can experience that connection and feel good about it. But what the boundaries of participation and engagement with a piece or with the artist are—or should be—I don’t know. I’m sure it varies from piece to piece and artist to artist, from situation to situation. I want to be respectful. I want not to cause harm. I don’t know if there’s an answer and I know there isn’t a rulebook, but I hope that there could be a conversation.

Twitter brought me a Jezebel article this afternoon called “Damn, You’re Not Reading Any Books by White Men This Year? That’s So Freakin Brave and Cool”, by Jia Tolentino. The gist of it is that reading more diversely is good, even necessary, but that writing thinkpieces about doing so is just another way of othering underrepresented writers and making diversity about yourself. It’s an interesting perspective, and based on who I saw retweeting the link it’s certainly one that seems to resonate with a lot of minority writers. Still, it doesn’t really sit right with me.

Now, I imagine that the easiest, quickest negative response would be something along the lines of “Can’t win for trying.” And I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t briefly go there myself, especially given the goals I recently set myself. The thing is, though, in her larger point about majority engagement with capital-D diversity, I agree with Tolentino. “If only it were possible to do something good and rewarding without publicly prioritizing what effect that act has on you,” she says. Moreover, like so often seems to happen with corporate diversity initiatives, there’s a real danger of people assuming that simply having some sort of diversity policy is the same as solving the actual problem. It reduces normalizing diversity in literature to something like a fad—here today, forgotten tomorrow.

Still, as much as I agree with Tolentino on one level, I’m much more ambivalent on another. The problem for me, I think, is summed up in the last few lines of the piece:

If you were a queer writer, or a woman of color writer, would you want someone to read you because they thought they were doing something dutiful about power structures? Or because they gravitated to you, not out of any sense that you would teach them something about diversity that they could then write about in a year-end essay—but that they just read you because you were good?

How similar does that sound to some of the arguments against affirmative action, ones I especially tend to hear from more privileged minority groups? “I don’t want to feel like I got a job just because someone was trying to fill a quota.” But just as with the affirmative action, it presents a bit of a false dilemma. The choice here isn’t necessarily between being read because of your talent and being read because of your gender or color or sexuality. In the real world, the choice can often be between being read because of a diversity mission and not being read at all.

In a perfect world, women writers, writers of color, queer writers would rise to the top and gain a following on the strength of their writing in much the same way that we imagine straight white men do. But we are just not at that point yet. If diverse writers are seeing any uptick in readership and stature in the industry, if there is any push right now toward a more inclusive mainstream, it’s only because the need to actively seek out diverse books is being called out so loudly, and that that call is being repeated widely enough to gain momentum.

Of course it would be great for underrepresented writers and artists to be sought out solely on the basis of their talent. But at this point, without an active effort to bring those writers more attention (and therefore more sales, the only signal with any meaning to the publishers and retailers who determine what actually gets onto shelves) then it’s difficult to imagine the status quo ever changing.

What is the appropriate role of a father? To what extent does the answer depend on the gender of the child? What is the appropriate balance between actively instructing children and passively allowing them to come to their own conclusions?

What is my responsibility to continue seeking information from sources who make me unhappy, if their criticisms of me and people like me are correct? What is the appropriate balance between cultivating one’s own happiness and well-being and trying to be a better person, in cases where these two conflict?

What is my responsibility to speak up for less privileged people, and what is my responsibility to remain silent in order to allow less privileged people to empower themselves? How much does the answer depend on the degree of privilege I benefit from?

To what extent is it acceptable to express disagreement with unprivileged people in a discussion about that privilege? How much does the answer depend on the relative privilege between the people who disagree? How much does the answer depend on the nature of the disagreement?

In cases of double standards, to what extent is the problem due to the inequality of the application of the standard, and to what extent is the problem the standard itself? Put another way, should the priority be to give “privilege” to everyone, or should it be to remove it from everyone? Is the answer the same for every type of double standard or privilege?

With respect to pornography and sex work, how can one reconcile the goal of ending the objectification of women with the goal of allowing women the freedom to choose to participate in pornography and sex work without a social stigma (e.g. "slut shaming")? If these two goals are incompatible, which is the better goal to achieve? Can pornography be consumed in such a way that does not objectify its participants? If not, to what extent are the participants culpable for perpetuating the objectification of themselves and others?

To what extent is it possible to separate a work of art from the artist who produced it? To what extent is it acceptable to try to do so? If the artist's racism, sexism, or other prejudices are not present in the work itself, how does this affect the question? If racism, sexism, or other prejudices are present in the work, how should this affect how we understand or value the work as a whole? To what extent do the time period and contemporary cultural context of the artist affect this calculus?

To what extent is it acceptable to appreciate or enjoy the privilege I benefit from? To what extent does maintaining my lifestyle harm or oppress other people? If I am aware that change is required and have the ability to affect that change, to what extent am I complicit in oppression if I do not actively work toward that change? How much is the answer affected by the difficulty of the change?

Assuming that it is impossible to perfectly rid myself of bias and to always speak and behave perfectly appropriately, at what point am I doing “good enough”? At what point is it reasonable to consider myself a good person? How does the answer change if it is not impossible, but merely very difficult?

-----

I have spent a lot of time pondering both these generalized questions and the more specific scenarios that led to them, but I haven't been able to come to any conclusions. I can't figure out the general principles, I can't figure out the specific applications, and I can't figure out if it even makes sense to try to reduce the specifics to general principles. It's possible that there are no definitive answers.

I recognize that some of these questions may be problematic. Some or all of them may be fundamentally based on biased assumptions or on ignorance. Some or all of them may be offensive, or ridiculous, or self-pitying. If that's the case, I'd like to know about it.

If you do have thoughts or opinions on any of these questions, please leave a comment. I have just one request: you don't have to be nice to me, but please do be nice to each other.

(In case it's not clear from the title, I'm going to talk about pornography and sex work in this post. As such, it may not be appropriate for all readers or all reading environments.)

Recently, a friend of mine from high school posted a link to his Facebook feed to an essay from a Duke University freshman talking about her experience as a pornographic actress, and the negative reaction she received when her classmates found out about it. I bring this up because in the piece, the woman defends her sex work on feminist grounds, and this touches on some issues I've been struggling with for the past few years.

Now, before I say anything else, I just want to make it clear that it is not my intention here to say that women should or shouldn't do porn, that porn should or shouldn't exist, or, in general, that my thoughts on the matter ought to be important to anyone but myself. I recognize that while being a man does not disqualify me from holding opinions about feminist issues, it is not my place to say what feminism ought to mean to a woman—nor to anyone else, for that matter. All I'm trying to do here is ask some questions, to try to help me identify my own biases and figure out my own beliefs.

In the course of her article, the Duke student in question expressed a number of opinions, but the passage that has stuck in my mind is this one:

One of the facts Internet commenters have gotten very wrong is accusing me of participating in "rape fantasy porn." This is a horrifying accusation, but I absolutely understand where people are coming from. The site in question that I shot for is a rough sex website. That is how I perceived it at the time. I was not coerced or harmed in any way during the filming of the scene. Everything I did was consensual. I also stand by and defend the right of adult performers to engage in rough sex porn.

Everyone has their kinks and we should not shame anyone for enjoying something that is perfectly legal and consensual for all parties involved.

Again, just to be clear, it's not my intention to criticize this woman for either her sex work or the thoughts she expressed in her writing. This passage just happens to highlight a particular dichotomy within feminist thinking that I've been trying to reconcile, and that is basically the dichotomy between radical feminism and sex-positive feminism and how the two camps view pornography—and, by extension, many other aspects of female sexuality and the female image.

Broadly speaking—and this is likely broad to the point of inutility—radical feminism tends to see pornography as exploitative and oppressive to women, whereas sex-positive feminism tends to see it as potentially empowering, and to see attempts to stigmatize or criminalize pornography and sex work as being oppressive to women. The problem for me in trying to reconcile these two schools of thought is that both offer convincing arguments. Radical feminists argue that by explicitly depicting women as sex objects, pornography and sex work marginalize women, and reinforce and encourage patriarchal attitudes. Sex-positive feminists argue that stigmatizing pornography and sex work reinforces Victorian double-standards about female vs. male sexuality, and that women should be allowed to make their own choices about their sexuality and careers. And both of those arguments make sense to me.

It seems to me that ultimately the difference between the two camps boils down to the degree to which a person ought to be responsible for how his or her actions are perceived by other people.

In passage I quoted above, the woman talks about "rough sex porn." For those of you who are unclear what that might mean, "rough sex" pornography typically depicts sex between a physically aggressive man and a passive or submissive woman. The world of pornography is wide and varied, so there are, of course, plenty of other configurations, but by and large, this is what we're talking about. It's distinct from "rape fantasy porn" in that it's usually clear that the acts depicted are mutually consensual—though in some cases it's more vague—but nevertheless the woman takes a lot of what might otherwise be called abuse: she might be slapped, choked, gagged, spit on, physically restrained, or verbally abused, among other things. Little to no attention is paid to the woman's sexual satisfaction; she is typically only there to be used by the man for his own satisfaction.

Now, whether or not it is degrading for a woman to want to be spit on or choked during sex is not something I feel comfortable passing judgment on. It's not the sort of thing that I would want to participate in, but all I can really say is that it's none of my business what two consenting adults do in private. And insofar as the actors in a porn film are consenting adults, I agree that they should be able to choose to engage in those activities.

Where it becomes problematic for me is that pornography is not merely an act between the people being filmed, but also a product that will be used by other people, and one that depicts human sexuality and relationships in a particular way. Regardless of what the real relationship between the actors may be, there is a power dynamic being portrayed in the film, and that is going to be seen and understood by the viewers. Verbal abuse, physical violence, and spitting are actions that exist in the context of our society at large. They have existing connotations. All of those things have happened to me in my life (in a non-sexual context) and they were all manifestations of prejudice and exercises of power. I'm not saying that it is impossible for these actions to have other meanings for some people, but I think that it's naive to think that they will not be interpreted as degrading and abusive to most viewers, or, indeed, that a desire to degrade and abuse women is not the primary attraction to this type of pornography. (I have no data to support this assertion, and I recognize that I may simply be projecting my own biases, but I don't believe that's the case.) From the perspective of radical feminism, this type of pornography is bad because it encourages men to objectify and abuse women. In fact, its very existence may work to normalize that behavior—in essence saying, "See? You're not weird for wanting this."

But from the perspective of sex-positive feminism, the radical feminist argument is essentially victim-blaming. It is not a woman's responsibility to act in such a way that men will treat her (and other women) as a person, it is a man's responsibility to treat a woman like a person no matter how she looks, dresses, or expresses her sexuality. By putting that burden on the sex worker, all that's really being accomplished is taking more freedom away from women.

As far as I can tell, neither side is wrong. It is a man's responsibility to treat women like people, no matter what. But from a practical standpoint, that kind of porn does encourage anti-woman behavior.

Further complicating things is the fact that in the passage above, the woman draws a distinction between "rough sex porn," which is legal and consensual, and "rape fantasy porn," which is horrifying. But if we are truly to claim that pornography shouldn't be blamed for the attitudes of the men who watch it, and that everyone has their kinks, then why shouldn't "rape fantasies" be OK? Conversely, if we are to say that it is bad to fantasize about raping a woman, then why should it be acceptable to fantasize about slapping a woman and spitting on her?

It's difficult for me to separate my own biases—and, admittedly, my own squeamishness about the alt sex scene—from legitimate concerns about the objectification of women. I am deeply uncomfortable with pornography in general, and particularly with porn that depicts this sort of treatment, but I also can't deny that the sex-positive argument has some legitimate points, which leaves me with an unreconcilable feeling of ambivalence.

As I said, I'm here to have my assumptions challenged and my biases exposed, so if you find a flaw in my reasoning, please leave a comment and let me know. I can't promise that I will come away agreeing with you completely, but I will do my very best to keep an open mind and weigh your argument without prejudgment.

So have you heard about this #safetytipsforladies hashtag? For those of you who haven't, it's basically a whole bunch of ironic and increasingly absurd "tips" for how not to be raped. For example: "Tell your attacker you're all out of rape and offer him a package of Ramen Noodles instead" and "Most rapes happen inside or outside. Avoid these places". If you haven't already done so, it's worth a bit of your time to go check it out because 1.) they're very funny, and, 2.) they're quite on the nose.

It's profoundly backwards that we spend so much effort in our society telling girls how not to get raped rather than telling boys how not to rape. As writer Zerlina Maxwell told Sean Hannity when she went on his show a few weeks ago:

"I think that the entire conversation is wrong. I don’t want anybody to be telling women anything. I don’t want men to be telling me what to wear and how to act, not to drink. And I don’t, honestly, want you to tell me that I needed a gun in order to prevent my rape. In my case, don’t tell me if I’d only had a gun, I wouldn’t have been raped. Don’t put it on me to prevent the rape."

That the responses to Maxwell's statements included rape threats is telling, if unfortunately not so surprising.

I get why talking about this stuff makes people feel defensive. Most men have never raped anyone, nor will they, and are rightfully horrified by the thought it it. And so it's natural to think of rape as the kind of thing that only crazy, monstrous, aberrant people do. It's easy to look at the boys who were convicted in the Steubenville trial and say "That is not normal behavior. Those boys are terrible people, and it's right that they're going to jail, but they're outliers." But as Maxwell, herself, pointed out in a follow-up piece she wrote: "The young men in Steubenville aren’t monsters.  They did something monstrous and criminal but perhaps we should begin to stop repeating the notion that “criminals” are the ones raping 1 in 5 women."

And the thing is, it's simply not the case that a woman can always prevent her own rape. Because rape happens even to women who are sober, dressed modestly, armed, and in "safe" neighborhoods. Maxwell is absolutely right that stopping rape is something that has to start with teaching boys how to see girls and women as people. Lots of parents already do this, and that's great. If you're such a parent, good on you. Sadly, many aren't.

Now, as you may recall, I'm in the process of investigating my own attitudes and trying to examine if or how I'm sexist. And here's where things become tricky for me. Far be it from me to want to sound like Sean Hannity, but while I don't think that rape is solely the province of obvious monsters and criminals, I do think that no matter how good a job we do at raising our sons and eliminating rape culture, there will always be some rapists, just as there will always be murderers and thieves. And even if at some point in the future we are able to live in a society that doesn't have a pervasive thread of blaming victims and excusing rapists, we don't live in that society now. As a practical matter, it seems like a reasonable thing to both insist that the ultimate responsibility for preventing rape lies with men, while also trying to give my daughter some tools to help recognize and avoid dangerous situations.

Several years ago, when I was on vacation in a foreign country, my rental car was broken into and several bags were stolen, including the ones that held my wife's and my passports. Now, clearly the blame for this crime lay entirely with the criminals who committed it, and that's not mitigated by the fact that we left our bags in the back seat of an unattended car, in full view of anyone who might have walked by. Ever since then, though, I've been careful to only leave things in my car if they are out of sight (in the glove compartment or trunk) or to simply take them with me, and no one has stolen anything out of my car since.

Now, let me be clear: my car getting burglarized is not at all the same thing as rape. It was not even remotely as traumatic, nor did anyone blame me for what happened. And the precautions I now take are both much simpler and far more effective than the kinds of things women are told to do to avoid being raped. It's not the same.

Furthermore, I am doing everything I know how to do to instill in both of my children the values and empathy that would keep them from being thieves or rapists, or any other sort of criminal, for that matter.

I still can't help feeling that it's not enough for me to raise good kids. And that even though preventing rape is not something that ought to be my daughter's responsibility, and that it may not even be possible, and that putting any of that burden on her might be sexist, I can't help but feel like I want to tip the odds as much in her favor as I reasonably can. And if that means telling her not to get falling-down drunk (really, something I would rather neither of my children did, for reasons that have nothing to do with rape), or to keep an eye on her drinks, or not to go out alone at night in sketchy parts of town, I have trouble feeling like that's wrong of me. And, for that matter, I don't know why I wouldn't tell my son the same things.

As a parent, I feel like my job is to teach my children how to be good people, and also to give them the skills to survive in a difficult and dangerous world. Neither is more important than the other, and both are obviously a lot broader than just preventing rape. And I think that it's possible to do these things without being sexist, and without putting the responsibility or blame on victims. But, as always, I may be missing something, so if you can see it, let me know.

A little context, first. Slate ran an article last week about dress codes. Also, a few days ago, a friend of mine reblogged this Tumblr post, which is, as things are usually defined, NSFW. (Whether or not such images ought to be considered safe for the workplace is a topic for another day.) These two items don't directly relate to one another, but both have to do with the concept of enforced modesty.

In case it is not clear from the title of this post, I do not support enforced modesty.

Here are some things that I believe that ought to be fairly non-controversial from a feminist standpoint:

• A woman is entitled to wear whatever she wants. There is some wiggle here with respect to the legality of public nudity, but at the very least, women ought to be allowed to be as clothed or unclothed as men are allowed to be.
  
• Regardless of what a woman is wearing, it is my obligation to be respectful and treat her like a human being in any and all interactions I have with her, not like a sex object.
• Regardless of what a woman is wearing, my actions are my own responsibility. As a man, I am, frankly, offended by the notion that men are incapable of controlling themselves around an unclothed woman.
  
• No one facet of a person's appearance or behavior can give a complete picture about that person, and it is very easy to be wrong when ascribing motivations to other people. Thus, no solid conclusions can be drawn about the amount of self-respect a particular woman has based solely on the way she dresses.

However, I also know that we live in a society that consistently broadcasts the message that the sole or most important qualities a woman has are her appearance and sexuality. You can see this in the kinds of stories we tell in our mass media. You can see it in the way advertising markets to both men and women. You can see it in the way we talk about our celebrities. You can see it in the kinds of articles that fill major women's magazines.

(For whatever reason, the publisher of Self magazine sent us a free copy last month. Flipping through it, it might as well be called "Your Only Purposes In Life Are to Be Pretty and Attract a Man" magazine. That it's actually called "Self" magazine was deeply troubling to me. I asked Juliette if we could please not keep magazines like that around the house when Eva is old enough to read or recognize what's going on in the pictures.)

Given how pervasive and powerful this message is, I think that most women who dress in certain particular styles are doing so in order to attract a certain type of male attention and, further, that the reason they are trying to attract that male attention is because they feel that beauty and sexuality are their most important qualities. This isn't based on any study that I've read. I don't have any numbers to back this up. It is, if we're being generous, an educated guess.

I'm very ambivalent about what this all means, though. In general, I don't treat a woman differently if she is dressed provocatively. I neither ogle nor chide. But I also don't really approve.

Of course, my approval is neither here nor there for most of the women of the world, and furthermore, I'd be way out of line for me to say anything on the matter. When it comes to my daughter, though, I'm not sure.

I wrote a piece last year about the mental struggle I have with this idea, and in responses online and off, I had women of many different sociopolitical viewpoints tell me that I should quit worrying about it, and that it's OK for me to set standards for both of my kids. Nevertheless, I worry both about the morality of telling a girl what she can wear and the practical effects of paying too much attention to her appearance.

What I've settled on—albeit uncomfortably—is that I will continue to tell my daughter that she's cute and pretty, but that I'll also tell her that she's smart, strong, funny, helpful, kind, honest, or any other adjective that applies. And that I can set reasonable standards for her dress that neither require her to wear a burqa but might, for example, require that her skirts cover her entire bottom, at least until she's an adult—once she goes off to college, if she wants to, say, go to a Pimps 'n Hoes Ball (that is actually a thing) then it'll be up to her to figure out what that means to her. And it'll be on me to make her know that she can make her own choices without changing my opinion of her.

That seems like a perfectly reasonable and non-sexist stance to take, to me. But I still can't help feeling like there's something wrong with a man telling a woman or girl how she can dress.

I've been thinking a lot over the past few days about what it means to be a good man, whether that is something I can legitimately call myself, and who gets to decide.

Juliette thinks I'm being ridiculous. "You're so good," she said to me, "and it's crazy that you're letting this get to you so much."

The "this" that she's referring to is that someone told me over the weekend that I'm sexist. It turned out that this person's opinion of me was based in large part (though perhaps not entirely) on a misunderstanding we'd had several years ago, one which was my fault. I apologized and tried to explain better, and as far as I know we've now reconciled and have agreed to let bygones be bygones. Still, it's been eating at me ever since.

A man protesting that he's not sexist after an accusation of such always sounds to me a lot like my son when we tell him that he's acting like he's tired—no matter how strenuous his objections, it's usually not long before he nods off. He's sincere and honest in his objection, but he just doesn't have the perspective to know. I don't believe that I'm sexist, and I do believe that I'm a good man. I don't know how to prove that to someone who claims I'm not, though, and I suspect that the reason it bothers me so much is because I worry that they're right.

I was raised by a single mother, who is one of the strongest and most hard-working people I've ever known, and who is, more than any other single person, responsible for who I am today. I'm the husband of an amazing and intelligent woman who, among other things, has more academic honors and advanced degrees than I'm likely to ever have. I'm the father of a daughter who I want to grow up to be an empowered and confident woman, who I never want to be kept from accomplishing something because of her gender. I'm also the father of a son who I want to grow up to be a respectful and fair-minded man. It's important to me that I live up to my responsibilities to them all.

I think about sexism a lot, both in the context of society at large and my own behaviors and attitudes. There are a lot of things about the treatment of women about which I am outraged and offended. I know for certain that I am not a pig—that if I am sexist, it is not obvious. But it doesn't have to be obvious. I find that I don't always agree with the conclusions of feminist analyses that I read, or that I come away with more questions than answers. I tell myself that being a man doesn't invalidate my perspective, that it's good to be balanced, that I do not believe in intellectual orthodoxy, or in limiting the rights of people to hold opinions or engage in discussions. But maybe I only think that because, as a man, I'm used to a certain privilege. Maybe I am, underneath a veneer of enlightened manhood, actually the kind of asshole that I want not to be.

So I'd like to take the opportunity to use this space to explore some of my attitudes and beliefs about women, feminism, and sexism. Over the next few weeks or months I'm going to take a look at the subtleties and details, the things that aren't obvious. I'll try to explain my point of view, and ask the questions that I can't resolve for myself. You can feel free to join in via the comments—ask your own questions, give your answers to mine, express your support, or tell me how and why I'm wrong. All I ask is that we keep it civil.

This might be a terrible idea, and I'm more than a little nervous about what I might find out about myself. But I think it's important for me to do this, because I want to be a good man, and if I'm not, I need to know.

"Raising Respectful Sons: A Father's Reaction to the 'Slampigs' Scandal":

Back in the early stages of my wife’s pregnancy, before we knew we would be having a son, people often asked me whether I wanted a boy or a girl. My response usually went something like this: “Well, I’d be happy either way, I think, and I don’t have a preference, really. I don’t want one more than the other. Honestly, though, the idea of having a daughter kind of terrifies me.” That’s the thought that occurred to me again Monday morning when I ran across this article in fellow Life As A Human author Schmutzie’s Twitter feed.