Many of the relational gender issues we face today are to do with lack of understanding, fear, stereotyping, bias and/or a sense of superiority over people who are different. Despite all our very human similarities, in many ways male and female experience in our gendered world is made to be different: we inhabit different bodies, see the world through a different gendered lens and are treated differently.
So how can we bridge the gender divide and what might the benefits of crossing the bridge be?
One of the most interesting outcomes of the #MeToo movement was that ‘nice guys’ realised that #notallmen are always ‘nice guys’ like them and that their experience of the world is genuinely different to women. It was not that they suddenly converted to feminism in swathes - many of them already thought they believed in equality, perhaps theoretically, perhaps passively - but many finally realised the need for their supportive actions and voices, alongside the voices and actions of women. We need men as active and vocal allies, prepared to stand up for women and greater gender equality as a whole; we need men to courageously challenge expectations of masculinity and its many protective and destructive masks; we need men to challenge damaging assumptions about categories and qualities; and we need men to be self-reflective about their own emotions and roles.
As an English teacher, I am a great believer in the power of stories. This is something that makes Laura Bates' 'Everyday Sexism Project' (https://everydaysexism.com)
so successful (people from around the world post stories of sexism that they might otherwise never have shared). But to be told a story is less powerful than soliciting one; questions, asked with genuine curiosity, and the answers listened to with compassion and engagement, must be the greatest means of understanding. An interesting activity is to get boys and men to write down questions about female experience. It always strikes me as sad that in a world where words are shared so easily, so frequently, so few important questions are asked or the answers really heard. Boys particularly are taught the value of action, of bold statements, banter and bravado; instead, think of the benefits of teaching them to feel their feelings and name them, to be curious about others’ positions, insights and feelings. Empathy, compassion and self-awareness should be the building blocks of all education. Boys - and men - need to ask questions about period pains and what it feels like to be leered at on the tube by a stranger or whether they’ve ever felt pressured into intimate relations, and listen to the answers wholeheartedly. And girls and women need to do the same: we cannot expect men to be allies if we do not afford them the same courtesy. Women cannot be scared or critical of men crying or admitting vulnerability or failure, even if our unconscious bias or need for safety tells us to.
Perhaps if we can genuinely speak and listen to one another, then we will gain the respect needed for a more equal, safe and productive society (and world).
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