Kaufman Michael - The Guys Guide to Feminism

The Guys Guide to Feminism — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Guys Guide to Feminism" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...29

Table of Contents

To the millions of feminist women around the worldand the men who support them.

And to Amy and Betty, because the political is also personal.

INTRODUCTION

Both of us, both Michael Ks, have had the same conversation over and over with the men we meet. Happens when we visit university campuses. Happens when were speaking in a community. Damn, it happens with our own sons.

A guy stands up. Says, I believe in equality and all that. But its been years since women needed feminism. Another jumps in, I mean, who actually calls themselves a feminist anymore? A third says, And even if they did, weve gone beyond all that women battling men thing, havent we?

Weve each written a bunch of books and we each speak to a ton of men and women every year. But we figured it was high time that we actually answered those questions.

We believe that, whatever any of us think about the label, the ideas of feminism are still relevant.

More than that, we figure that these ideas are relevant not only to women, but very much to men.

And in a good way. One of the things we want to show is that in spite of all the garbage jokes and media stereotypes, feminism is also an amazing gift to us guys. Even if bits of it might make us uneasy, it holds out the promise of better relationships, better lives for the women we love, and better lives for ourselves.

Strange but true.

So, here it is, laid out from A to Z.

Read it. Cheer. Hiss. Laugh. Cry. Cheer again.... And then let us and others know what you think by visiting our site: www.GuysGuideToFeminism.com; or Facebook page: www.GuysGuidetoFeminism/Facebook.

ALLY

verb(-,a-)

1. to unite or form a connection

2. to enter into an alliance

ALLY

Men as allies of women (men az a- v wimin)

1. not an act of collective guilt, collective shame, or collective blame

2. an act of collective love for the women in our lives

3. strengthening our connection with women

4. seeing that we have a common cause

5. because we believe in the goodness of men

6. what this book is all about

ANGER

A minister, a rabbi, and an imam were having a coffee.

The imam said, This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

The minister said, Were all the children of Abraham.

The rabbi said, Yes, but which of his wives?

The imam said, Is that why feminists are so angry?

The minister said, What do you mean?

The imam said, Theyre angry at us for several millennia of bad things that men have done.

The minister said, I like to tell my flock that women arent angry. Theyre just insistent.

The rabbi said, Whats so wrong about a little anger? Imagine the world from their perspective.

At that moment another friend, a Buddhist monk, arrived. They told him what they were talking about. The monk said, See the world from womens perspective? Well, let me start: How would you feel if every time you went out on a date, you worry you could join the one in four women whod been sexually assaulted?

The rabbi said, Or what if there were people who wanted to make it illegal for you to have control over your own reproductive system?

The imam said, Or if you earned less for doing the same work as a man?

The minister said, If half the human race felt it was entitled to stare at your body or make comments about your breasts.

And then, if you get angry, they accuse you of being a lesbian

as if that were a crime

or say how pretty you are when youre angry.

The four men thought about this for a moment.

And it gets worse, said the minister. Imagine that you start speaking out against these daily injustices and people start telling you to lighten up. Stop taking things so seriously. Its only a joke.

The rabbi said, I wouldnt just be angry. Id be ballistic.

It was Friday, and the imam soon went off to Friday prayers. Anger, he said to the worshippers, is a rational response to injustice. Anger can be a healthy emotion to feel, an expression that something is wrong.

The next morning at Sabbath services, the rabbi said, Anger can be a motivating force, an impulse to get up off your heinie and do something, to at least say this inequality is not okay.

That afternoon, the monk said to those he had meditated with, The problem isnt anger, its finding appropriate ways to express it. Perhaps only by expressing it, can we ever let it go.

The next morning in his sermon, the minister told his congregants, Anger can also be coupled with a desire to change things. It can carry a belief that things can change for the better. Resigned despair is what happens when you dont think you can change things. Anger can mean hope.

On Monday, the four men got together again for a coffee. They were joined by another friend, a Hindu priest.

The priest said, But youre not saying that anger is the main thing that these feminists feel.

Now, this coffee shop had a waiter whod been serving perfect cups of coffee for years. Hed heard the men talking the previous week and now heard this exchange. Hed often had this very discussion about womens anger with his girlfriend, so when the priest asked whether anger was the main thing feminists felt, he didnt hesitate to jump in.

Excuse me, he said, But when a woman feels angry, perhaps she is most angry that she has to feel anything but love and trust and how it feels to be an equal in the world.

The minister, rabbi, imam, monk, and priest nodded sagely to each other.

And that is no joke.

AUTONOMY

Imagine that you couldnt vote or couldnt go to college. Imagine that you couldnt work, or, when you did, you couldnt join unions or hold certain jobs. Imagine that you couldnt serve on juries or hold public office. Imagine that you were prohibited from driving a car, or from having a checkbook or a bank account with your own name on it.

Imagine that stereotypes about you were the basis for discrimination in employment, housing, and education. Imagine that you couldnt own property in your own name. Imagine that in the eyes of the law you were property.

Imagine that you were afraid to walk on the streets of your town or city, afraid to stay late at work or work late in the library, afraid to walk alone to your car in some parking lot. Imagine if you even felt afraid in your own home. Imagine that everywhere you turn, everywhere you look, your body is being used to sell things, from automobiles to stereo equipment.

This was the situation for women for most of the last two centuries. It was against this that women have been fighting. And boy, have they been successfulmost of those rights have been won (except, alas, the ability to live without fear of violence).

Feminism is a political ideology that fights for the rights of women to be treated equally, without discrimination, and to make their own decisions about how they will lead their own lives. The idea of autonomy is the heart of feminism: the radical idea that women are human beings, as one feminist writer put it. Autonomy means women can choose to become what they want to become, and to be safe in following their own path.

Next page

1234567...29

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Guys Guide to Feminism»

Look at similar books to The Guys Guide to Feminism. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Vicki Coppock

The Illusions Of Post-Feminism: New Women, Old Myths

Michael T. Kaufman

Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire

Jessica Robinson

Financial Feminism: A Womans Guide to Investing for a Sustainable Future

Joyce P. Kaufman

Women, Gender Equality, and Post-Conflict Transformation: Lessons Learned, Implications for the Future

Joan Sangster

Demanding Equality: One Hundred Years of Canadian Feminism

Susan Ferguson

Women and Work: Feminism, Labour, and Social Reproduction

Kaufman

The Time Has Come

Michael Kaufman

The Time Has Come: Why Men Must Join the Gender Equality Revolution

Reductress

How to Win at Feminism: The Definitive Guide to Having It All—And Then Some!

Alexandra Black

Feminism Is...

van der Gaag

Feminism and men : Nikki van der Gaag

Michael Kaufman

The Guys Guide to Feminism

Discussion, reviews of the book The Guys Guide to Feminism and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.