Feminism and The Schwyzer Situation

I’ve not been closely following the fight that’s unfolded between internet feminists* and Hugo Schwyzer over the last several weeks. I didn’t even know who Schwyzer was until I stumbled upon his column at Jezebel last month about the redemptive aspects of the ‘facial,’ – which is admittedly not the best way to be introduced to a male feminist’s (or any feminist’s) writing.

So what happened? Schwyzer, a gender studies professor and prolific feminist writer, did an interview with Feministe that drew attention to his spotty past, which includes several relationships with students and a drug-addled, attempted murder-suicide of an ex-girlfriend. Several internet feminists responded with demands to know why a man with an abusive past was allowed such a prominent platform in the feminist movement. Schwyzer has since been banned from/erased by several feminist blogs. Around the same time, he left the Good Men Project over philosophical differences with its founder regarding the essential natures of men and women.

The fight over Schwyzer has become something of a proxy battle in the ongoing fight over the role of (hetero) men in the feminist movement. Many feminists do not allow the openly male-identified to participate in their blog communities. They argue that they want to create a “safe space” for women, or that they have no time for moderating comments that threaten rape and violence, or the “mansplainers” who think they can tell women how the world works and *poof* the problems of feminism will be solved. And some well-meaning men grow frustrated with the frequent “priv-checking” levied toward them in communities that do allow their participation. If feminism is about liberating women from male oppression, gender roles, gender-based expectations (whether legal or cultural), and more broadly about liberating people from these constructs, then clearly there is a place for men in the broader movement. It also suggests that a reasonable condition for participation is that men, along with all people higher on the privilege chain, better be prepared to spend more time and effort deconstructing and examining how privilege and power work.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown recently had some choice words on the matter:

I mean, I say, the more men the merrier! Let’s all talk about birth control and blow jobs and the difference between domestic violence and rape fantasies. Gender issues, marriage equality and the contradictions inherent in trying to be good men and good women in a culture with completely schizophrenic ideas about femininity and masculinity. These are problems for all us.

As for Schwyzer, from the little bit that I’ve read, I kinda dig his shtick. I will support any guy’s attempt to dismantle the hierarchic, dominance-based social structure that too many men grow up with, and replace it with one based on self-knowledge, empathy, and treating women like dignified human beings and not “keepers of the sex resource/baby machines.” The mainstream feminist movement (which I suppose is something like Beltway libertarians or the liberal/conservative elite) has been accused in the past of silencing people with whom they disagree. I do not contend that this is a problem with feminists, so much as it is a problem with human beings who ascend to positions of power or high social status.

Libertarians can tell you a thing or two about making the perfect the enemy of the good. When it comes to Schwyzer and feminism, my outlook is similar to Bryan Caplan’s when Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize: “The world’s most famous left-wing economist… Publicly and articulately advocates free trade” and “Identifies anti-globalization activists as the enemies of the world’s poor.” The number of popular male feminist writers who actively court men’s attention is similar to the number of popular pundits who advocate for globalization: not large.

*For the record, I’m not part of the “internet feminist” school, though much of my writing over the last couple of years has reflected my feminist views. There are a few feminist writers that I follow, including Twisty Faster, Kate Clancy, and Sady Doyle (before she left TigerBeatdown in the hands of a bunch of B-stringers), but it’s not a community I engage heavily with, in large part because of its overlap with progressive politics. Instead, I am an internet bloviator who holds feminist views, as well as libertarian views, agnostic/atheist views, artistic views, Bokononist views, etc.