FEMINISM OR MENIMISM??

                        FEMINISM OR MENIMISM??

There are two strategies of feminists fight for gender equality. The first one is to give women the things men have in equal measure:  economically, participation, and reproductively. Another one is to give men some of things that women have. Obviously first one is more important to do but the second one is funnier and viral.  It’s cathartic for the women who have been complaining about the big stuff for years, fighting for incremental change while continuing to cope with the small stuff too. It’s called menimism (or meninism), a hash tag with which men can testify to injustices such as having to pay for dates, being asked their height on dating sites, and having to live up to an impossible beauty standard.

                  

          The earnest feminist response to minimise would be that patriarchy hurts men, too. Dating and sex will get a lot more fun for men once women no longer vacillate between needing them and fearing them. I’m more inclined to roll my eyes. Most women I know consider letting men pay for their drinks a small act of redistribution for the pay gap. Body-image issues pale in comparison to the impact of restrictions on reproductive and LGBT rights. And most feminist attempts at equal-opportunity debasement are more interested in proving a point than harming actual men. Still, the menimist backlash does suggest that turning the tables of sexism, even rhetorically, won’t make all men more sympathetic to feminist causes. 

But that’s only true if we believe that all men and women should be measured by the same, traditionally male, definition of power. Feminists aren’t coming to seize men’s jobs. They want to solve the problems that mean women aren’t even considered for men’s jobs, and that the jobs women already do aren’t considered jobs. That includes big, structural issues, like the inflexibility of workplaces for those of us with baby-making parts. It also includes small problems, like the constant objectification that leads to distracting, crippling self-doubt. To be a menimist — and to complain about sharing women’s small problems while continuing to benefit from women’s big problems — is to say that you’re not up to the challenge of competing with women on a level playing field. To which I can only suggest, for lack of a better term, manning up.