By Tal Peretz

I had never heard the word feminism until my first semester of college. I signed up for a required class with gender studies professor Marla Jaksch, and that’s when my life began making sense in a way it never had. Learning about feminism didn’t just illuminate sexism, it explained television and bullying and sports and economics and my family and countless other things I’d been uncomfortable or confused about.

This was my first lesson in feminism: Using a feminist lens to analyze and understand your life is one of the most powerful things you can do. This is what led me to realize that sexual violence and domestic abuse; inequality in pay, education, and politics; biased media representation; gender stereotypes; and beauty norms aren’t women’s issues, they are social issues that shape everyone’s life. Understanding how men are gendered beings — yes, including you — can be transformational.[1]

[1 - What follows is from my own experience, and may not fully represent the experiences of trans* and nonbinary pro-feminists; it also does not detail the many ways that the current gender order hurts men or the many gendered ways that men hurt each other​.]

When I saw how gender inequality is implicated in every part of my life, I began to wonder how I got this far without understanding this basic, fundamental truth about the world around me. Thankfully, feminist analysis also had an answer for that: male privilege. This was my second lesson: having privilege means you usually don’t see how gender inequality impacts your life, because instead of putting you at risk, it benefits you.

Recognizing your privilege is the crucial first step in becoming an ally (a member of a privileged social group who supports marginalized people’s liberation efforts). Receiving privilege doesn’t make you a bad person, but it does shape your life and affect your work. At your best, you can use privilege to help people who don’t benefit from it. At your worst, you can use privilege in ways that harm the people you are trying to help. When this happens (and it will happen — everyone makes mistakes), be open to hearing critiques, try to fix what you can, learn from your mistakes, and try to do better next time.

After my initial class with Jaksch, I attended a feminist theory class with Professor Brian Jara. For me, having a class taught by a man was important. It showed me there was a place for me in the feminist movement if I held myself accountable. Jara pulled me aside after class one day, thanked me for all of my excited, thoughtful, and intelligent contributions to the class — and then told me, kindly, to shut up.

To be fair, he said it much more compassionately. The important thing, though, was that he made it clear that this space was not about me. He reminded me that anytime I am speaking, someone else in the class (most likely a woman) is not speaking.

Lesson three, then, is to be aware of your communication behaviors.

Interrupting women, overpowering them using the volume or tone of your voice, taking up more than your share of speaking time, questioning or doubting women’s statements about their own life experiences, speaking for women who haven’t asked you to, taking credit for women’s ideas,[2] and mansplaining all reinforce sexism, silence women, and make you a bad ally. Tell people around you, especially but not only women, that this is something you’re working on and, if they are willing (because it is extra work you are asking them to do, and it is not their job), to please let you know when they notice such things.

[2 - Some of these ideas are mine, but a lot of them I’ve learned from women. I’m writing this article because you might hear these things better coming from me, but that in and of itself is indicative of my male privilege. Good articles by women about how to be a male feminist are here and here.​]

Lesson four was to take it slow. I was so excited by my newfound way of being a better person that I wanted to solve every aspect of sexism all at once, on my first day in Jara’s class. Here’s the thing, though: If sexism could be defeated easily in a few days, the women who have been doing this work for decades would have done it already.

Suffrage parade in New York City on May 6, 1912/ Public Domain via Wiki Commons

An important feminist sociological concept called standpoint theory explains that who you are in society (man, woman, trans*, genderqueer, black, Latina, Native American, white, wealthy, working class, etc.) shapes your social experiences and how people treat you, and this in turn shapes how you see the world. This explains why in the United States most white people think of police as safe, helpful, and trustworthy, while most black people see police as corrupt, suspect, and dangerous. Whites’ and blacks’ views of police are different because their communities have been treated differently by police over time.[3]

[3 - The oppression of women, racial minorities, or other marginalized populations are not separate issues. The concept of intersectionality explains that social categories such as race, class, gender, and sexuality overlap and interact in shaping society and individual lives.]

Standpoint theory also explains why a lot of men struggle to understand and to believe women’s experiences around gender: If you do not face daily microaggressions, if you don’t have to constantly consider the risk of gender-based violence, if you haven’t been facing this scary and dangerous reality since you were eight years old, it can be hard to believe that this is the lived-reality for other people.

Standpoint theory is why lesson five is important. Men are treated so differently from women in our society that it can be difficult to see the world from their perspective, their standpoint — and that makes it difficult to understand how to be an effective and accountable antisexist man. Lesson five, then, is to listen to women. Listening means believing women and respecting that their reality is just as valid as yours. (So don’t call women crazy, or emotional, or PMS-ing. Just don’t, ever. And don’t let others do it. The reason for this kind of language is almost always to avoid actually listening to women.) Seek out places to hear women talking about their experiences; Take Back the Night, The Vagina Monologues, YouTube channels, and blogs are good places to start.

A Take Back the Night march on Kadena Air Base, Japan on May 1, 2015/ Public Domain via Wiki Commons PHOTOGRAPHY BY SENIOR AIRMAN OMARI BERNARD

Listening to women is especially important in sexual and romantic relationships. In your dating life ask verbally, specifically, and directly when you want to engage in any kind of physical touch, even kissing (yeah, it sounded weird to me at first too, but the grateful responses I’ve received have me convinced). Outside of dating, you can also build trust by telling the people you care about that if they have had any nonconsensual sexual experiences, you will be there to listen and support them. If you become a person who women are willing to talk to openly, at some point you’ll feel like all your female friends are coming to you with their stories of violence and harassment. This is an honor, but it is also depressing. Remember, it’s not about you.

Lesson six: Remember you are not alone. The history of men advocating for women’s rights goes back at least as far as Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Dubois at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, and you are joining that history. In your daily life, talk with boys and men about feminism and gender equality. They’ll listen to you, and you’ll feel more connected. If you can, get some friends together and make a formal or informal men’s group, where you can help each other work on your own personal change while also working externally on social change.[4]

[4 - I regularly post how-to guides of anti-sexist projects a small group of men can accomplish on masculinities101.com]

I joined a group called Men Against Violence, worked with the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, and volunteered at a local domestic violence shelter. It wasn’t always easy; I wasn’t always welcome. Which brings me to lesson seven: Some women will not want to have you around. That is their right. They are dealing with sexism every day, and you may remind them of someone who traumatized them. They are healing, and your job is to make that easier for them however you can.

I still make mistakes and try to learn from them. In that respect, it’s best to think of “ally” as a verb, not a noun. You have to return your ally card each night and earn it back the next day. It never stops, and as the saying goes, “It never gets easier, you just get better.”

That leads to the final lesson: Don’t declare yourself an ally. Show it in your actions, and let others decide what to call it.

Tal Peretz has engaged in and studied men’s antisexist and antiviolence activism for more than a decade. He is a professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Auburn University, and is the author of “Some Men: Male Allies and the Movement to End Violence Against Women” (Oxford University Press), co-written with Michael Messner and Max Greenberg.