No, I’m not a men’s rights activist now. In fact, none of my ideals about social justice have changed from a few years ago when I was more frequently writing about feminism on this blog and elsewhere. However, after having a few conversations with women and reflecting on this, there are a few reasons why I no longer want to call myself a feminist.

There are many women who feel like men calling themselves a feminist is analogous to someone calling themselves a social justice ally. The “ally” title is one that people outside the marginalized group shouldn’t give themselves. So for me to call myself a feminist seems like I’m giving myself cookies before I’ve done anything. Irmin Carmon writes in this article how there are plenty men who talk loudly about equality, but their actions are not consistent with their words. So by calling myself a “feminist” I’m essentially stating that I’m an ally to women’s rights, but that’s not for me to decide.

However, it’s more than just the label. It’s the behavior that goes along with that label.

As I’ve written about before, I used to be an overzealous, male feminist. When I burst on to the activist scene in my early 20s, I was told to “use my privilege for good by speaking about these issues as a man” and started writing and speaking about feminism fairly regularly. However, I’ve learned that it gets more complicated than that. There is a tricky balance of speaking out against inequality, but not over women. In many liberal communities, a white male talking about feminism honestly just takes up space and takes away attention from women doing much of the work. Men definitely get a lot of praise for meeting the basic standards of human decency like saying sexism is bad. So instead of potentially taking away attention from women, an easy trick for men can be to simply amplify the voices of women doing social justice work. Again, I admit I didn’t always do a great job of this. But if you look at my social media now, I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at sharing the words of women talking about feminism instead of interjecting my own voice on the matter.

Additionally, it’s important to note that my own words can be useful in certain groups. Men should try to make non-feminist spaces more feminist. So when I’m with a group of guys and someone says something sexist, I can talk to them about the problems I had with what they said. I share the same approach as David Perry where he will strategically call himself a feminist if he’s in a male dominated space where they may not know a lot about feminism.

However, for diverse spaces like my Facebook page or this blog, I can simply share the words of women.

Speaking of feminist activists, there are so many of them!

Here is a post I wrote about some awesome atheist women you should follow.

Libby Anne is another awesome atheist woman who writes on this website!

bell hooks is one of my favorite feminist authors.

Jessica Valenti is another great feminist author.

So is Ijeoma Oluo

And Julia Serano

And here are 20 more feminist activists!

Hopefully, you get the point that there are many feminist activists doing incredible work. If you want to spread feminist viewpoints, there are plenty of feminist activists you can choose from. As I mentioned above, sometimes it helps for men to listen to other men about feminism. So by sharing the work of a woman on your social media, it’s both coming from you and you are amplifying their voice as well!

Speaking of activism, I really am not involved with activism as much I used to be. I would spend a lot of time volunteering with my local rape crisis center, Planned Parenthood, and other social justice organizations. And again, I would write and speak about social justice a lot. But I really don’t do that anymore as my attention has shifted to focusing on my scientific research and outreach. So for me personally, calling myself a feminist just adds to the idea that I’m in the trenches doing social justice work, when I’m really not anymore. So it’s just another reason why I don’t feel comfortable calling myself a feminist.

So for these reasons, I no longer call myself a feminist. Again, I still care about social justice as much as ever, but I’ve learned that I can help out more by amplifying instead of speaking most of the time. And again, I personally am not as involved with activism as much as I used to. So by just sharing other’s voices, I can still keep up with progressive activism, but hopefully in a less intrusive way.

I understand not everyone will read this blog post and I’m sure I’ll still be called a male feminist sometimes. But I wanted to at least explicitly address my feelings about it. Hopefully, this clears up my thoughts on the matter and maybe it can help some other men realize that they can focus more on amplifying voices if they consider themselves a feminist.

EDIT: As you can see in my comment below, I realized there is one last point I’d like to make:

I’m not going to police anyone who calls themselves a feminist. There are plenty of women who think men can call themselves feminists. And as I said, I still will call myself a feminist and speak about feminism if I find myself in a male dominated, non-feminist space.

My main point is that men should be mindful of how much space they are taking up in certain communities. Are we helping this space become more feminist or are we taking up space ourselves? The actual label we use isn’t nearly as important as our behavior.

PS: I now have a Patreon if you’d like to support my writing and podcasting.