Whatever real problems "White Knight Syndrome" might create pale in comparison to the damage it serves as a tool for silencing male voices who speak out against rape culture, sexism, misogyny, and male privilege. Most male feminists aren't speaking out to "rescue" women or curry sexual favor. Most of us speak out because we recognize that men have a stake in this, too. It would be easier for men to retreat to our privilege and let this be someone else's problems but I think its important that we step up and try to be a part of the solution. Misogyny should offend men. Rape culture should horrify men. We have a responsibility to bring our voices into the discussion. Not because women need us, but because it is the right thing to do. "White Knight" accusations are always about protecting male privilege, but this isn't something men are obligated to do. There is NO necessity that we defend male privilege or fall silent in the face of violence and hatred against women. I believe male privilege is unsupportable. Aside from issues of fairness, I would still fight sexism for purely self-interested reasons. Other men treating women poorly damages ALL men and men suffer from the damage a misogynistic culture does to gender relations and our own identities. That its wrong should be enough, but I firmly believe it does serve my interests to combat male privilege.More at the link.
This dude's, er, groping for something, anything, to latch on to. Wouldn't want to jeopardize those progressive creds with the likes of Sady Doyle. (Though it's likely that women like that just hate men, period, and no amount of male combat against male privilege is really gonna matter. These women are neo-Stalinist.)
In my 30+ years as a card carrying feminist, it has been my experience that men-haters like Sady Doyle usually work for the US government. For some reason, it doesn't occur to people that the FBI infiltrated the feminist movement, just as the infiltrated the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement and the student movement. In fact the US intelligence role played America's feminist poster girl Gloria Steinem is still largely invisible. In 1976 Steinem blocked Random House from publishing details about her CIA past (see http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg02217.html).
ReplyDeleteSteinem went on to infiltrate the National Organization for Women (which co-founder Betty Friedan publicly confronted her for). She also used Ms Magazine (which was funded by CIA-front foundations) very effectively to create massive divisions between professional and working class feminists and between feminists and progressive men.
More recently evidence has surfaced about an FBI operation she ran to plant so-called "black feminists" in grassroots African American groups to break them up (see http://rah.posterous.com/black-feminism-the-cia-and-gloria-steinem-fwd). I ran across some of these nasties in Seattle, while working to set up an African American Museum. I write about it in my recent memoir: THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE (www.stuartbramhall.com). I currently live in exile in New Zealand.