I don't want men to uplift my work; I want them to listen to me

What the rise of male feminist influencers teaches us about misogyny

I recently read Rebecca Solnit’s collection The Mother of All Questions, some of which unfortunately aged like milk on a hot summer day. When one essay opened with a line about what Louis C.K., Aziz Ansari and the Prime Minister of India had in common — I assumed it was the start to a very dark feminist joke. But the book, written prior to the revival of Tarana Burke’s #metoo movement, was unironically praising the arrival of these men to the feminist movement. They were “uplifting” women’s issues and speaking out against rape culture. Finally, the men had come around and were here to help.

To be clear, I don’t blame Solnit for her lack of foresight. The essay (and collection) feels indicative of its time. Written in 2014, this particular essay titled Feminism: The Men Arrive reflects a wildly optimistic feminism that felt alive with forward momentum. The arrival of the feminist good guy seemed like a beacon of hope guiding us to safe harbor after years spent amidst a dark sea of bad actors. Instead they dashed us against the rocks once again.

As you may well remember, the feminist front put up by C.K. and Ansari both fell apart following sexual misconduct allegations. In fact this “good feminist guy” shtick has imploded in front of our eyes many times over (see most recently Justin Baldoni). And still, we seem to place an outsize hope in male feminist saviors. We lionize men who “take up the cause,” quickly assuming good intent and trustworthiness. We praise men for using their mighty male power to speak up on behalf of feminism.

We do so even as they drown out the voices of the women they are supposedly supporting.

The Miss Triggs Problem

I am not saying that feminism doesn’t need men or that it shouldn’t support men —because it inherently does; it is a movement of collective liberation. But does it need male feminist celebrities? Need men centered in every conversation? Need men who profit off their self-styled feminism while women are sidelined? Not by a long shot.

As an author who writes on the mental load, emotional labor and Christian patriarchy, I am often met with worries that my work is not palatable enough for men. These are vital topics for men to understand, but how to get them to listen? That’s the real question, right? To suggest that men listen to ME, a woman, feels preposterous — especially when my work does not pander to men. (We’ll set aside for a moment that my first book, Fed Up did indeed pander to men). We want feminist issues viewed through a male lens by male authorities — even when they are simply regurgitating what women have been saying for years.

In the years since my book and many others on the mental load have published, male mental load influencers have also emerged from the woodwork. These are “good feminist guys,” purportedly educating other men using the work of feminist writers and thinkers. They aren’t stealing that work, per se, but they also don’t need to. Because when men “uplift” women’s voices — they inevitably end up eclipsing them.

We venerate men’s voices and hold them up as the ultimate authorities. We do this to such a degree that it does not matter if they are parroting and even citing the work of women, because those original sources become invisible behind their maleness. We invest more trust in men than the women they quote. We lavish praise on men when they speak up on behalf of women — as if women do not have their voices with which to speak.

Voices which men should probably listen to rather than “uplift.”

Public male feminists garner attention, money, praise, and influence — building their soapboxes out of women’s words and ideas, while profiting off the misogyny that says women aren’t worth listening to. And while I do want these ideas to reach men, using the misogynist logic that “men can only listen to other men” does not, cannot, move us forward in a meaningful way.

Because when we demand a man’s voice to legitimize women’s issues, we are still not giving women authority over their own areas of expertise. We are still not listening to women, and I hate to break it to the “good feminist guys,” but that isn’t a problem that can be solved by men speaking up and speaking over us.

And it’s not for nothing that it isn’t primarily men who follow these male mental load influencers (or feminist exvangelical pastors or positive masculinity professionals — take your pick). It is women who make up the bulk of male feminists’ audiences. So are these men really changing the cultural narrative? Or just crowding out the women that would otherwise be platformed in their place?

To be fair, it’s hard to say. The algorithm pushes men to the top of the heap and increases their visibility by virtue of their maleness.¹ We are all primed by culture to trust and elevate male voices — and I’d like to think most of these men stumble into their large feminist platforms not necessarily intending to step on the feminist educators who formed them. I want and try to give them the benefit of the doubt. But as

Zawn Villines

so elegantly puts it in The problem with male professional feminists:

It’s not that I don’t believe men can be feminists. It’s that men who aim to make a living off of feminism—or who in any way use their feminist credentials to elevate their status—are profiting off of misogyny, and therefore inherently untrustworthy.

We collectively fawn over men who seem to stand on our side — who proudly claim the title of feminist when so many others view it as a dirty word or an opportunity to change the subject. But when we allow men to ascend using the work of women, we do feminism a disservice by reinforcing patriarchy and misogyny.

Men are not the primary source of feminist ideas and we should not treat them as such.

We need to make the conscious effort to seek out the work of women, especially in regard to feminist topics like the mental load or the harm done by Christian patriarchy or the impact of rape culture. We do not need to reframe these topics to center men, or bring in male thought leaders to make our points for us. We don’t need men to “uplift” our work to gain ground over us.

We need men who are actually willing to listen to women, without using that work for their own personal gain. Men who know when to step aside, to move out of the spotlight intentionally, so that women’s work can actually shine.

1. When I worked as a social media manager for my climbing gym, reels with our male setters would regularly get hundreds of thousands of views — similar ones featuring female climbers would get crickets.