What Men Can Do...

Here is an essay written by Julian Real, a gay white man, with support from Jennifer McLune, a feminist woman of colour, called "What Men Can Do To Help End Male Domination of Women and Children", which is posted on Stan Goff's site.

Real can sometimes come across as a bit self-congratulatory when it comes to his own pro-feminist credentials, and sometimes as a bit pompous in his writing. Or so it seems to me, at any rate. And there are certainly items on this list that different feminist women that I know and care about would have a range of different responses to. As well, I think men dealing with the emotional and psychological damage done to us by socialization into masculinity in a racist, patriarchal, capitalist, heterosexist society is a pretty big thing that this list doesn't really talk about (and which is discussed in a wonderful post I linked to ages ago on the now blog-departed Darkdaughta's site). So I'm not claiming this article has all the answers, and I welcome comments both supportive and critical, and encourage people to read the extensive comments on the original post and add to them if they wish.

But I'm not so foolish as to think I have nothing to learn from this posting, nothing to be challenged about, nothing to be reminded of. And I suspect that would be true of most men who struggle to be pro-feminist.