To All the Good Men

How this feminist is trying to find her way

There have been many times in my life when I have experienced repeated encounters with men that make me wonder who I can trust. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not the kind of person who will lump an entire group of people together and write them off. You’ll never hear me saying that all men are pigs, men aren’t worth my time, men can’t be trusted…

I might have argued for the right to speak in generalizations about the systems of this world and how they affect large groups of people, but that doesn’t mean I engage in personal generalizations. I know better.

There are a lot of good men in this world. I am blessed by their presence. My best friend, Frank. My brothers. My dad. Some of my cousins. My beloved Peter. My darling nephews.

Every time I feel disillusioned, I think of them and it buoys my heart.

But writing about feminism, sexual liberation, and social justice has been a hard lesson in reality. This past year has exposed me to violence, vitriol, and misogyny that made me wonder if we’ve moved forward at all, in this country. It made me question people. It made me far more careful about how I conduct myself with men.

I don’t know if I can ever put on my rose-colored glasses again. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like it’s truly safe for me to let down my guard. I’m much more cautious now — and maybe I always will be.

But over the past two weeks, I’ve seen something new. Even in the toxic sea of social media where it’s so easy for some men to spew misogyny without consequence, I’ve seen women call it out and then witnessed men rushing in to uplift them.

When I revealed my fear and weariness over what I’ve experienced these past few months, with no expectation or need for a response, I was flooded with messages from men who unselfishly reached out to give me strength and encouragement. Not a single one of them appeared to have any motive other than to empower me — no one seemed to be looking for sexual attention from me, no one appeared to want to press me into a deeper intimacy, and none would’ve gained any social clout for their emails of support that only I would see.

Where did this come from? Is this a new thing?

I don’t know — but dammit, I am grateful.

Have you ever seen The Good Place? If so, then you’ll know exactly what I mean when I say I’m Chidi. I feel guilty about the ethical ramifications of using almond milk. I literally make myself sick by trying to figure out how to be a genuinely good person.

I think a lot about feminism through this ouroboros of ethical exploration that goes on in my mind every second of every day.

I ask myself the same questions again and again:

How am I affecting change?

What am I actually doing with my life to make this world a better, safer, more just place? How is my life, as I am living it, helping others, if at all?

I have noticed in the past ten years that the work we used to do in the world to make things better has devolved into social media rants, bombing people with criticism, and sharing woke memes.

None of that is true action. What about writing to our senators, engaging in our communities, changing people’s lives through face-to-face interactions?

It’s always been important to me that my work reflects my values. That’s why I’ve never made more than $37K a year so I could work with kids and minorities through education and nonprofits.

As an artist and freelancer, my values have not changed — I still want my work to be helpful to the world. But…

Are my methods effective?

Are my words essentially just memes that don’t really help anything but only add noise to an already noisy world?

I am writing about a system that was made by people and continues to be fortified and protected by those people. Because of that, there’s no way for me to speak about this in its totality without using some level of generalization. I try very hard to employ exclusionary indicators in appropriate places, but does that help enough? Am I simply adding fuel to the fire? Am I exhausting men? Or empowering them? Am I antagonizing them? Or inspiring them?

And of course…in typical Chidi fashion, I eventually realize that I cannot answer these questions because men are like all humans: wildly different from one another. I could write an article celebrating everything about them and some would still find it objectionable, still call me a liberal feminist bitch, still feel antagonized.

So I move on to the next question…

How do I proceed?

Of course, this question only leads to more ouroboros-style questions:

• Should I continue writing about the issues that are important to me or should I focus on my photography and art, which could express a message without words that could be misunderstood and therefore divisive?
• How do I heal the rift between men and women?
• Why should I be responsible for healing the rift between men and women?
• How can I take up space and express my voice as a woman?
• If I take up space and express my voice as a woman, am I distracting from other people who need that space and who should be heard more than me?
• Does my self-expression uplift? Or disempower?
• Am I helping to lift up men through my work?
• Do I really need to focus more on men when a) the focus is already on them and b) I’m not one, so who am I to dive too deeply into the ways the patriarchy hurts men?
• If I want to stand strongly against misogyny (and I do), is it more effective to call it out plainly or am I just contributing to more noise, anger, and chaos?

And on and on I go…

As you can see, I have no answers. All I know is: I want to do right by men as much as I want to do right by everyone.

There is never a moment when I forget that, though I confess, I sometimes want to wash my hands of it. The effort of it can feel overwhelming.

But every time I am reminded that truly good men exist in large numbers — yes, Virginia! — I want to take more notice of them. Does that mean I should write less about sexism and misogyny? I don’t know. I don’t think so.

But I have recently added a few notes at the end of my articles and social media posts to acknowledge these men and thank them. I have been surprised by the grateful responses of men who are so relieved that I see them.

This pulls me further into my explorations around this topic.

I must admit, part of me feels like I should not have to do this. And men reading this, please understand why: I have spent my life orienting myself around male feelings, male authority, male egos. So much of my self-expression has had to pass through the filter of: How will the men around me respond to this? How will it affect them?

In all honesty, and I say this with no intention to be callous or cruel, I am tired. I long to not have to center men within my own experience. I long to not have to spend my precious time calling out every exception to the general perpetration of sexism and misogyny, to not have to worry how the good men out there will perceive what I say (when I’m already worrying about how the not-so-good men will perceive it), to not have to leave a little note at the end of everything I write saying, in effect, #notallmen.

But…I also strongly believe that the focus of this work should be to build one another up. To focus on individuals, not causes, political parties, religions, or other ideologies. I strongly believe in polite behavior, in thank yous, in the power of extending love and grace to another person. And I believe that the most effective change we can make comes when we look one another in the eye and say, “I see you. I hear you. I care about you.”

And back in circles I go

So I will continue my soul-searching on this topic, which might, I suspect, continue for the rest of my life.

I have a platform on which to speak and an audience that listens to me — sometimes only dropping in once and leaving, sometimes sticking around for the long haul. That is a responsibility I don’t take lightly.

I don’t want my words, photographs, or art to create more chaos and dissension. I do want to challenge people’s thinking, but ultimately, I want to spread love and beauty. And more than anything, I want to empower others.

How I go about that is still a little unclear to me, but I hope that at least some good comes of giving people some transparency into what’s going on behind my words.

Because I do see you. I do hear you.

I am so grateful to the men here who have lifted me up. I am overwhelmed by those who reached out to me over the past two weeks with selfless words of encouragement, wanting nothing from me. I can hardly begin to describe what a gift that was — to be handed so much evidence of the “nourishing masculine” in a moment when my trust in men felt so broken.

Thank you. Thank you for seeing me. For hearing me. For caring about me. For caring about women.

I will continue to question the work I do in this world, the impact it is making, and to strive for more effective ways to show my care for all of you.

Because to me, that is all that matters — that we take care of one another.

© Yael Wolfe 2020

More love for the good men out there: