Why I Won’t Include Disclaimers on My Feminist Essays
I shouldn’t have to make room for men — the world should be making room for women
Something happens to me every time I write an article about feminism. When I get to the end, I feel compelled to write a disclaimer. Yes, every single time.
The disclaimer is always a little different, but basically, it boils down to the same theme: #notallmen.
If I write about sexual assault, I know people — even women — will criticize me for not fully addressing the ways in which men have been the victims of sexual violence. Some will call out the absence of that part of the story as a deliberate act of misandry.
If I write about the orgasm gap, I know there will be pushback from readers who assume (despite my copious use of exclusionary qualifiers) I’m talking about all men — and worse, blaming men for this phenomenon. People will criticize me for not telling men’s side of the story, or sharing the sexual inequities they experience.
When I write about women, I’m not trying to exclude men. I’m not trying to blame them for the power imbalances in our world. I know they have problems, too. I know living in a white supremacist patriarchy takes from everyone — even those at the top of the food chain.
So of course, I want to acknowledge that with a little disclaimer. Just a note to assure people — particularly men — that yes, I understand there are issues all around.
But I made a decision this year: No more adding male-oriented disclaimers to every article about feminism except under very specific circumstances.
I finally realized that I don’t owe the world that effort. And no, I don’t think that’s too harsh.
Here’s why:
I’m a writer
Maybe all of this can be mastered with this one simple argument. I’m a writer. My perspective as a writer is informed by aspects of my identity and how that identity has experienced the world. I’m a writer who has walked through this world as a woman.
Who I am as an artist and a professional should not have to be diluted, contorted, or abbreviated in order to fit into the gender identity and experience I happen to have just because I’m not a man. I shouldn’t be held to a higher standard than writers who are male, nor should my identity as a woman be used as a tool to criticize me when I don’t meet that unjust higher standard.
I’m not a man
This one should be pretty obvious, right? I’m not a dude. I’m a cisgender woman. Yes, I’m excitedly exploring my masculine side and challenging gender norms, but ultimately, my experience in this world has been as a woman.
It never ceases to astound me the amount of people who expect me to use my platform to write about an experience I cannot possibly understand: that of being a man in this world. The evidence of male privilege in that expectation is overwhelmingly damning, wouldn’t you say? Because being male is the “default setting” in our patriarchal world, everyone is supposed to not only know what it’s like to be a man, but make sure every story is centered on manhood — even those written by and about women?
I can’t imagine that most men would actually be happy with anything I wrote about the experience of manhood. What the hell would I know about it beyond what I’ve observed as a woman? I’m really supposed to speak with authority about sexual violence against men? I’m really supposed to lay out all the details about the emotional and physical vulnerabilities involved in male sexuality? And if I tried, those men would really be happy with what I came up with, as someone who has no idea what it’s like to be a man in this world?
I know why this expectations exists, but I don’t understand why more people don’t see through it for the sham that it is.
Regardless, I’ve already made my peace with it. I’ll bring up what feels important to acknowledge in specific instances, but I have no business inserting myself as a teller of men’s stories when I am not a man.
It’s not my responsibility
While it’s important to acknowledge the perspectives I bring to a story — like, for instance, my gender identity and experience — it feels even more important to acknowledge what labor belongs to me, and what does not.
You see, it is not my responsibility to champion men’s causes. Not because it doesn’t matter. Not because I’m an angry, misandrous, feminist bitch.
It’s because our responsibilities are to protect who is below us — not above us.
Men exist a rung above me on the hierarchy of power in our white supremacist, patriarchal culture. They already have more power than I do. And in fact, white men have the power to change the entire system if enough of them decide to make a go of it.
It should not be my responsibility as someone with less power to help those with more power. It’s their responsibility to help me.
As a white woman, I am still pretty high in the hierarchy. I do have some power, some influence. Morally speaking, though, it doesn’t make any sense to me that I would use that power to help those with more power.
Instead, it should be my responsibility to help those who fall lower than I do in the hierarchy. My eyes and ears need to be attuned to Indigenous women, Brown women, Black women. The labor I do must be of benefit to them. My efforts must go from the bottom up, in order to lift those with less power. Not lift those who already have the most power.
This doesn’t mean that I have no concerns for the issues that men face today. It doesn’t mean that I don’t feel compassion for men, or would refuse to help them at all.
It simply means that I must decide how to best spend my energy and efforts. Doing work from the bottom up is the only ethical, logical solution here. The advancement of those at the bottom of the hierarchy benefits all of us — including men.
It’s okay for women to take up space
We have told men’s stories for a very long time. Men have been the default, and therefore, their stories have been, too.
If I tell stories about women, making them the center, does that take away from men’s stories? Will that diminish a man’s place in the world or make it harder to solve the issues they face?
I think the answer to those questions is obvious, and yet there still seems to be so much fear that we women and our stories are just taking up too much space. It seems that the price I am supposed to pay for speaking up for myself and other women is that I have to include men in my story, too.
But do I?
I have come to feel that adding a disclaimer at the end of my feminist essays is basically the equivalent of apologizing for taking up too much space in a male-dominated world.
And I refuse to do that.
My story can be told. I can tell stories that help other women feel heard. And this does nothing to diminish men’s stories or the ways the patriarchy damages them.
We’ve been telling men’s stories since the days of Adam — and we always will. Do I really have to apologize via a disclaimer just because I wanted to take a moment to “interrupt” the narrative with a story or two about women?
No.
Men’s stories are important. I have no argument there.
But there is room for every story.
I, as a woman, am not an asterisk. An addendum. A footnote. And as such, I don’t need to add a disclaimer as a way to apologize for telling a woman’s story without also including all the ways men might be affected by the issue at hand.
I’m not going to apologize for taking up space in the world to tell women’s stories.
And I won’t take responsibility for telling the stories of those who have more space, voice, and power than I do. That is not my work to do.
I’m also not a man and cannot speak for them. When they are struggling with issues created by the patriarchy and want to speak up about them, they can do so — and mostly without incident, thanks to their position in the hierarchy. If they want to be heard, I’m listening. If they ask for help, I’m here.
But they’re going to have to trust me in that even though I choose to set myself free from adding a disclaimer to every feminist article I write.
I have stories to tell, too. And they don’t have to fit into or around a man’s world. They get to exist in their own right.
© Yael Wolfe 2021
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