In a world where women get rape and death threats just for being on twitter, black men get shot dead just for having a phone, and gay men get beaten up just for holding hands, it seems silly to focus on the problems of straight white men. Their only worry should be to fail at life despite having every privilege imaginable handed to them from the very start. So why is it worth writing about white male guilt anyway?
I remember in 2014 how Emma Watson launched the HeForShe campaign, inviting men to the discussion about feminism and gender inequality. Despite it’s somewhat awkward name (HeForShe might conjure up an image of a white knight saving the damsel in distress), I liked the idea of inviting men to actively take part in the struggle against gender inequality. Even though I had been interested in feminism before, I felt awkward about calling myself a feminist simply because it had always been a movement by and for women. Until HeForShe, men generally played one of two roles in the feminist struggle: either they were actively, violently opposing it, or they were simply not being part of the problem.
I think men can and should play a larger role. Men cannot declare neutrality when there are so many among them who commit violence against women. But as it turns out, simply inviting men to join the struggle is not enough. HeForShe’s goal was to get 1 million men and boys around the world to commit to end gender inequality, but got stuck just above 200.000. Because to make men join the fight against gender inequality, they first have to be convinced that this inequality exists. And for them to acknowledge this inequality exists, they have to deal with the question of their Guilt.
How guilty is a man for being a man in a sexist world? Is it ok to not invite that female colleague when informally discussing business, because the atmosphere is just more relaxed when it’s just the guys? Is it ok to compliment a woman on the street on how she looks? Is it ok to look at porn? An important part of the feminist struggle is to show how societally accepted behaviours like these stem from the same attitudes towards women as those that drive men to rape and kill.
So how would you feel if one day you’re an upstanding citizen, and the next day you’re a criminal, because someone changed the law overnight? Would you accept your guilt and vow to change, or would you long back for the times when you never did anything wrong? This is the impulse that men have to fight today.
Maarten Schumacher 