Guys — you’re in a bit of a pickle. Around you, women are rising up. Talking about periods. Talking back, period. Wearing pink hats. You’re being called out for remaining silent. You’re confused. Feel attacked. Don’t know what to do.
Hopefully, this guide will provide you with a better understanding of how you can play your part. Hopefully, you’ll understand how to should speak up, and especially why, in order to remove some of that confusion.
My girlfriends get harassed daily.
At a young age, we’ve been called “sluts” for the way we dress and behave.
We’ve felt guilty. Ashamed. Growing up in this context, we feel confused, alienated, misunderstood.
So were you and your guy friends? I’m with you. Growing up isn’t easy. But there’s a fundamental difference. For example,
Early-onset hunchback? Which we had, to stop up our breasts from attracting unwanted attention.
Body hair? Unnatural.
Nails? Too long. Too short.
Waist? Too small. Too big.
Menstruation? Ew.
Breast growth? Uncomfortable — no matter the age.
Hair? Too natural. Too unnatural.
Makeup? Always. Never. Doesn’t matter — someone will have their piece to say, parents, teachers, boyfriends.
And before we had the luxury of sex education in high school, we had to learn things about being female for ourselves.
Things like:
- If you don’t wear makeup to cover your pimples, you’ll be made fun of
- If you wear white pants at that time of the month, you’ll be made fun of
- If you play sports with the boys at recess, you’ll be made fun
- If you eat a banana, you’ll be made fun of
- If you wear clothing from the dedicated “boys” section, you’ll be made fun of
Were you made fun of any of the above?
We weren’t exactly learning about equality of the sexes at school. I know growing up was hard for you too, but there is something particular about being a girl that complicates how we view our identity.
While men struggle with the existential condition of being human, women struggle with their conceptual place in society, forcing us to negotiate two barriers of “why do we exist?”.
There wasn’t a single moment gender wasn’t separated into male/female at school: sports, bathrooms, classes. We were never taught about the gender spectrum, it was always just man or woman.
If you didn’t subscribe to either of these, you were made fun of.
When high school eventually hit, what did you have to learn as a “Man”? How not to get bullied by other men? How to be an alpha-male? How to date girls (because, let’s face it, dating anyone else was out of the question)?
Girls were also learning. We learned that we lived in a dangerous world.
- If you went out with your girlfriends, this was dangerous
- If you looked at someone, this was dangerous
- If you sat by yourself, this was dangerous
- If you walked, this was dangerous
- If you talked, this was dangerous
Many high-schoolers were worrying about who would or wouldn’t text back. But almost all of my girlfriends would worry about boys and men who would;
Touch
Stare
Grab
Scare
Hurt
Molest
Rape
Kill
us.
Of course, we worried about innocent things too; the boys who wouldn’t text back, wouldn’t give us the time of day, wouldn’t return eye contact.
Except we were thinking:
What’s wrong with me? Not good/skinny/cool/happy/pretty/funny enough.
What can I do better? Work/put out.
Again, I’m not saying you didn’t have it hard. Puberty is messy and embarrassing. And you were probably battling with your own demons. But this is article is about empathizing with the demons that girls had to battle with while growing up in the same context.
The demons that grabbed our butts in bars.
The demons that didn’t let us touch a bat or ball. The demons that told us to shut up.
The demons that still sometimes offer the job to someone else, less qualified. The demons that force us into dresses, when we really want to wear pants.
We were never taught about the gender spectrum, it was always just man or woman.
So why should you care?
You’ve never squeezed a girls’ butt in a club, never cat-called, never taken up more space than necessary on a subway, never cut off a woman while she spoke, never looked at a girls’ breasts instead of her eyes, never not asked for consent, never watched porn.
Despite that, you should care because being a feminist isn’t just about empathizing with the female experience. It isn’t just about having mothers, grandmothers, sisters, or girlfriends.
It’s about speaking up for them, too.
Because when you speak up against instances of sexist microaggressions, you not only make yourself a better person, but you stop those microaggressions from becoming full-on aggressions.
I’d like to think that if more of you spoke out against these smaller instances of female discomfort, women everywhere wouldn’t have gotten harassed/raped/depressed.
So let’s get rid of the jargon for a second — the mumbo-jumbo of manspreading, misogyny, the misandry.
Let’s talk about contexts you might be familiar with, so you can get a better idea of when you should or could say something.
When you speak up against instances of sexist microaggressions … you stop those micro-aggressions from becoming full-on aggressions.
When someone tells a woman she looks prettier when she smiles
Understand that women are objectified. This means that the media, history, economics, society, and politics are guilty of taking parts of a woman’s body to represent her whole.
In cinema, this is represented by the shot of a leg, eyes, or lips. In conversation, this could be your mate saying something like “her boobs are huge”.
Which may seem playful to you. But understand that if you reduce a woman to a part of her body, then you are sanctioning others to do the same.
And others won’t be as playful.
If women are reduced to a sum of their parts, this leads to behavior like cat-calling and rape. To be a mouth on a face, or an ass on a body is dehumanizing.
Woman as sexual object is the recurring motif of erotic spectacle. And if we are just a spectacle, eroticized performance, then we are no longer complex individuals. Dehumanization permits the degradation and sexualization of the female body.
So what do you do?
- Ask your friend about the girl’s personality, rather than her body. Of course, women talk about men in a similar way (because language is structured by the patriarchy), but you should be the one drawing the lines between violent objectification and harmless attraction. I’d like to think I know the difference. Do you?
- Read Laura Mulvey or bell hooks to get a better understanding of the theory behind fetishization in popular forms — the more tropes you can spot the better you’ll become at calling them out.
- Educate yourself and your friends about the “male gaze” and why this makes girls and women so uncomfortable.
If you reduce a woman to a part of her body, then you are sanctioning others to do the same.
When someone tells a woman she’s just mad because she’s on her period
Periods are complex. I know very little about my own.
What I do know is that every month, I release an egg which causes the lining of my uterus to thicken. If the egg isn’t fertilized, the uterus sheds the lining, which causes bleeding.
Ask yourself: why does that make me uncomfortable/squeamish/disgusted?
For many women living in the Southern Hemisphere, having a period is shamed or shunned. In rural Nepal, for example, women are exiled to freezing huts every month for a week when they get their periods. In some extreme cases, they aren’t allowed to touch food or water. Many women across the world have died as a result of period poverty.
In economically developed countries, period cramps are still incapacitating. They can cause migraines, nausea, vomiting, stomach ulcers, dizziness, passing out.
On average across the world, a woman spends $6,000 on pads and tampons in her lifetime. This means that if an Indian woman didn’t buy anything (including food and drink) for 16 years, then — and only then — could she afford to buy the average menstrual product (because of the gender pay gap in India, women earn on average $1 per day).
In the UK, the tampon tax only just got scrapped in 2020.
So, if you make a flippant remark about a girl or woman being “on her period” and thus not able to “think clearly”, you are feeding into a culture of violence and repression done to women for something that is, ultimately, natural.
If a female president of a country gets mad — she must be on her period.
If we are fed up, opinionated, have strong personalities — we must all be on our periods.
When you hear a remark about a woman being “on her period” and are unable to comment, think of Nepali chaupadi huts. Think of your girlfriend curled up in pain on the couch. Think of the money you’ve saved on menstrual products that you can buy video games with. Think of the womb you came from.
Think of the fact that once a month for about 5–10 days, we bleed from our uterus, and the world continues to function.
So what do you do?
- Educate yourself about a woman’s menstrual cycle. Especially if you are in an active sexual relationship with a female, her period should be of similar concern to you.
- Always have access to birth control if you are sexually active (if you are in a long-term sexual relationship, consider equally splitting the cost of birth control).
- Call someone out if they conflate a woman’s emotions with her menstrual cycle — only women are allowed to blame their mood swings on their period!
- Use words like “vagina”, “uterus”, and “clitoris” instead of pussy, fairy, flower, or whatever the kids are using these days (on the flip side, it might be worth exploring why swear words like “bitch”, “whore”, “hussy” are all female words. For more on this, read about gendered language).
- Know Thyself: testosterone is an aggressive hormone that, unlike the monthly hormonal imbalance a woman experiences, stays constant in men (kind of like a perpetual period). Testosterone is responsible for feelings of gaining strength, winning, power, and defending territory. Think about that next time you call a woman “hormonal”.
Once a month for about 5–10 days, we bleed from our uterus and the world continues to function.
When someone says that they are talking between men, and a woman should stay out of it
Are women inferior to men, intellectually?
When you exempt women from exclusively “male” conversations, you are feeding into the notion that women simply don’t understand. We are stupid. Couldn’t possibly watch sports, debate, or have opinions.
This phrase, by the way, could be as explicit as stated, or implicitly thinking a woman can’t join in on conversations about gaming, stock investments, gambling, or football. It could also manifest in the phrase boy stuff, exempting women from a “boys evening where we’ll do boy stuff” and the like.
My best guy friends are the best cooks, conversationalists, and emotional backbones I have. I can only imagine how wonderful “boys' night” would be.
“Talking between men”, for the record, will become void as the next generation effaces over gender norms. When non-binary, trans, and queer people take center stage for our most important discussions, there will be no room for “men” to talk between “men”.
So what do you do?
- Ask a woman what her opinion is about the subject at hand and let her speak, for God’s sake. And listen. Because if you repeat the same thing a woman has just explained — you got it, that’s called “mansplaining”.
- Be provocative about it. Ask a woman, “how do you feel”, “what do you think”, “what’s your opinion” if she hasn’t been given the space to speak.
- Don’t be surprised if a woman is interested in sports, cars, motorbikes, suits, whiskey, cigars, or anything you typically associate with the “male” gender construct.
- Don’t immediately assume that women and young girls can’t understand what you’re talking about if it’s about topics ranging from sports, music, technology, science, etc.
- Create safe spaces where your girlfriends and mothers can voice their opinions without being reprimanded, or feeling nervous about it. And for God’s sake stop interrupting them.
When non-binary, trans, and queer people take center stage for our most important discussions, there will be no room for “men” to talk between “men”.
When someone comments on what a woman is wearing
Why are my compliments always taken in the wrong way? When should I comment on a girls’ outfit, and when should I not? What’s harassment and what’s just being nice?
I understand that for men, there are a lot of gray areas you have to navigate.
So understand that for women there are a million, trillion, fifty billion shades of grey. We weren’t brought up to feel comfortable with our desires, appearances, and motivations. The world you’re navigating is just as confusing to us, who went to the same schools, saw the same films, and lived in the same world as you.
So if we do choose to wear something, or not wear something, any remark that questions our choice is wrong.
It’s taken years and years and years for women to wear what they want when they want.
From petticoats to perms to Prada — historically women are boxed into feminine stereotypes. And if we stray too far away from these socially imposed standards of beauty, we are outcast and alienated.
So if you do notice a woman who’s -
Not wearing a bra
Wearing boy shorts
Touting a mohawk
Wearing piercings and tattoos
Wearing a suit
Let them. My body, my choice.
So what do you do?
- If you notice that a remark makes a woman feel uncomfortable about her appearance, apologize, or speak up. For this, you need to be observant, perceptive, and empathetic (traditionally “feminine” qualities?).
- Don’t immediately think pink, nail polish, or any traditionally female gender construct will appeal to a woman. Imagine you’re an extra territorial, guardian of the galaxy, or whatever fantasy takes you away from years of gender coding, and then use that same metaphor to question your bias towards women.
- Compliment a woman on her wisdom, opinion, grit, or emotional fervor, rather than her shade of lipstick.
- Don’t make assumptions about women based on their appearances. I mean, this is just a lesson in life, really.
When someone interrupts a woman while she speaks
There is a gap in literature, film, politics, sports, entertainment, and language. This gap lacks female voices. Instead, for years women have been praised for being shy, mute, discreet, and private.
And the ones that do have a voice are called,
Loud
Bitchy
Fiesty
Difficult
Annoying
Ugly
Aggressive
Hormonal
Understand that for some women who do find the courage to speak, this means they will often feel nervous, anxious, or ignored.
If you interrupt a woman while she speaks, this feeds into her internalized sexism which means she’ll feel that she’s not good enough to warrant a voice in the first place.
So what do you do?
- You listen. You learn. Women and men have different brains, which means she could say something you wouldn’t have thought about in the first place.
- Watch more films/series by and about women, read more books by and about women, and generally allow yourself to experience the female voice without prejudice or preconceived notions.
- Don’t put women who have important voices down, and question why certain people would (thinking of all the backlash Greta Thunberg got, for being a girl who would speak up).
- Listen to Lizzo. She’s a Queen.
By now I hope you can see how even micro-actions and tiny words are tied to a Bigger Picture. But this doesn’t mean you have to walk on eggshells around us.
It just means you should be open to questioning others and yourself about how the things you choose to say — or not say — can contribute to a larger system of oppression.
It’s about learning about the female experience and recognizing when this is under threat. For the record, there’s nothing sexier than a man who can apologize for saying something out of place.
Defensiveness? Big masculine ego no-no.
You can also ignore everything in this article and say that’s not me, I’m not to blame, I’m already a feminist and do none of the above.
To you I take my hat off. But ok, what about instances where where you notice these things unfolding and choose to keep silent?
Sorry to say, but if you don’t speak up on our behalf, then you are just as culpable of feeding into a patriarchal system that harms women every single day. A system that stunts our economic growth and political opinions. A system that shames our natural, biological functions. A system that doesn’t work without us.
So if you’re not to blame, how do you stop your male counterparts from feeding into this same system?
Let’s walk through a couple of scenarios.
The things you choose to say — or not say — can contribute to a larger system of oppression.
Scenario #1: A random group of guys sits with your mixed guys/girls group at a bar
Do:
- Make sure your friends aren’t uncomfortable: i.e. the random guys aren’t sitting too close to your girlfriends and they aren’t just focusing their attention on the girls.
- Be perceptive. Pick up on toxic masculinity, and notice whether the guys display any dangerous traits (often exacerbated by alcohol).
- If your girlfriends are feeling uncomfortable, make an executive decision to get the hell out of there. Don’t second guess it — trust yourself to pick up on an off-vibe.
- If you don’t know the difference between harassment and flirting, it’s much harder for women in this context to see that difference too. So it’s up to you (as a neutral party) to assess the situation. In other words, use your brain.
Don’t:
- Add fire to a masculine-testosterone-fueled situation by being aggressive or possessive, just because another group of men has joined your circle. Camaraderie is great, but just be careful when it slips out of a comfort zone.
- Let the situation escalate — if you notice any glimmer of discomfort, inappropriate touching, or remarks directed to the women then do something about it in a calm and democratic way.
Scenario #2: A guy is chatting/flirting with your friend
Do:
- Take her aside to ask if she’s ok — often if a girl doesn’t want you to intervene but is uncomfortable she’ll say something like “nah, I can handle it”. At this point, keep an eye on her. If you’re a true friend you’ll notice through her body language if she’s uncomfortable.
- Intervene if it gets weird. Most women don’t want to think that a man should intervene on her behalf. Unfortunately, the reality is that you will always be in a position of privilege. Check your privilege, and use it to do good.
Don’t:
- Sweep in, embodying the male savior trope, and put your arm around her possessively — unless she asks you too!
- Let it go so far as to where the other guy is touching her when she’s obviously uncomfortable (touching can be anything from “let’s measure hands!” to fondling — either way, if the girl isn’t into it, she’s just not into it).
Scenario #3: A colleague/ friend says something blatantly sexist as soon as a woman leaves the room
Do:
- Call him out for it. Why not? What do you have to lose? He’s the one with profound miseducation and disregard for his peers.
- Ask him: “Would you have said that had she still been in the room? Why not?”. Most of the time comments like this can be written off as harmless, but it’s interesting to watch a man have to think about his own comment.
- Send him this article, because he may need some guidance too.
Don’t:
- Write it off as “just a joke”. It’s true that I’ve also let this pass in most cases (although in hindsight I regret it). At the end of the day, you’re an adult. You are capable of empathy. How would you feel as a woman being the brunt of a sexist joke?
- When in doubt, a good place to start is to ask someone to explain what they mean. i.e. “I’d love to have my way with her”, ask “Oh sorry, I didn’t catch that. What do you mean?”. Most of the time, sexually aggressive jokes can be diffused by prompting.
- Get violent, aggressive, or mansplain sexism to a sexist. That’s redundant and just won’t work. Be an ally, not a hero.
- Say nothing. Because if the woman does come back, you’ll feel guilty (like I have, on many occasions). If she were still in the room or had heard, you’d be to blame as well.
Conclusion
There are a million more scenarios where you might (and will) need some guidance. If I were to list them all, I’d have to talk to every single woman on this planet.
It’s worth noting that this is written from the perspective of a heterosexual, Eurasian, cis, person. It doesn’t even begin to acknowledge the myriad shapes, spectrums, and sizes of all women everywhere.
Cat-calling might be the worst or least impactful thing in a woman’s life. Some women may not agree that some behaviors are sexist. Others might have lived with violence and abuse since childhood and not know how to name it. Some people may not identify with being a woman but have had the same level of mistreatment.
We all have different experiences of being “female”. And we all have grappled with this difference in the face of how you all experience being “male”.
What’s been made clear in my personal experience of being a woman is that it’s more important than ever for men to speak up.
Not about women, not on behalf of women, but to other men who think that putting women in a box lower than them is the norm.
Be an ally, not a hero.
We have to change the status quo together, and it starts by being strong enough to speak up against these tiny acts. Because tiny acts made by 3.5 billion people build up a system of inequality that lasts forever.
To truly participate in a changing world, you have to play your part.
