Our alma mater offered a course on gender, for instance, but I wondered why it focused almost exclusively on women, as if men didn’t matter. The answer is the same as the answer to questions why there are things like a Black History Month: because all the other stuff already (implicitly) focuses on men. It’s the default.
If you grow up as a boy, you don’t really see that. It’s a thing that sits there in the background. What you do notice, is the steady portrayal of men as dumb savages or bumbling dads. You notice that men can be negatively portrayed in ways that women cannot be portrayed without drawing ire from various groups. You don’t really know why that is, but you start assuming it’s because of feminism. After all, you think, women have gotten the right to vote, have access to contraception and there are whole segments of the media and retail world devoted almost exclusively to them. Female-on-male violence, for instance, is also often played for laughs. You feel that that just isn’t okay.
Fortunately, as I grew older and started burrowing deeper into the world of gender and social justice, not only did I discover the true reason behind forces like this, but I also gained perspective. While the ‘savage caveman’ caricature may be offensive, it was not created by women. Some women may believe it, but it was there long before they gained a voice in the media. Commercial industries that focus on women tend to do so in ways that reinforce gender stereotypes, and almost all of those focus on beauty or romance, not self-actualisation or intellectual development. Guess who leads those industries? I don’t think I need to tell you that. Oh and when a woman slaps a man on television, it’s because men by and large think men should be strong enough to take it, lest they be thought of as… a woman.
