But can we men who have tried to understand this issue just sit around and either feel bad that we are reluctant oppressors, or else congratulate ourselves on limiting our sexism to the extent we can? Just sit and sulk, or sit and smirk? What should we be doing that is active?

I decided that the least I could do was speak out to men, and share some of my insights to others on how I felt it might work, and what some of the more obvious problems could be.

The majority of men will remain willfully ignorant of the female experience for the foreseeable future at least. But many good men are ready to understand the ways that our culture has deluded them about their roles. I feel an immense burden lifted from me when I imagine myself living in a world where sexism isn’t required of us in order to lead our lives.

I will try to focus on moving men from sheer sexist bullshit to some kind of understanding, even though three hundred years has only got us to this point.

That background was what helped me when I read I Blame the Patriarchy. That, and taking Twisty’s mantra of “It’s not all about you.” really seriously. That’s something guys need to learn before anything else, maybe. That it’s not all about them. It’s not all about how males feel, and it’s not all about their, personal, feelings. If they’re offended by what Twisty says about ‘men’, then they need to consider if it’s them she’s talking about, or the culture they’re raised in. If it sounds like something they’d do, then that requires reflection, too.

Reading I Blame the Patriarchy is a lesson in the school of hard knocks. It’s one I’m glad is there. I don’t post there because I feel that it’s best while I’m there to shut up and listen, and learn. I post here because it feels a little more like ‘men and women talking about the feminisms that influence them, and the reaction of a patriarchy to feminisms.’ You’ve got the voices of the patriarchy here, so I feel like it’s a place to engage them, and that’s something I can do even if I’m a man.

(In fact, it seems like an obligation when talking about society as a whole. Men should work to change things, too. Laying it all at women’s feet and just saying ‘good luck’ seems like it just propagates the issue.)

I don’t think that finding ways to shift the perception of feminism in men from a personal problem to a problem created by our culture is exactly taking care of men’s emotional needs. It’s not exactly a need that men feel, understanding women’s problems and how they create and promote them through their own sexism. The only need it fills is the need to get across a little common sense in the sex that has this huge culturally-engrained fear of seeing anything at all from the perspective of a woman, because being like a woman is the worst thing a man can be.

It’s not about men and women so much as it is about oppressed and oppressing. Without the oppression, there would be nearly nothing to distinguish between the sexes outside of some small organs.

Any way anyone can find to strip away the denial and confusion that men feel about sex roles is a good thing for all of us. Many a man isn’t worth the trouble, though.