What to do about bad male behavior

There's no question that many men behave badly. Many women, in particular, experience lots of the men they come in contact with as not treating them fairly. There is sexual harassment. When women show up in work environments that are primarily male, they often encounter a lot of hostility.

So, how can we improve this situation?

A strong message I think I hear from feminists is, "This is a men's problem. Men are the oppressor class, and it's not women's job to fix this nor could they as they lack power. It's up to men to get their house in order. Men need to hold men accountable. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

I like to think of myself as one of those men who treats women with respect, and any transgressions I have been guilty of since I turned 18 are quite minor (not that I did anything terrible when I was younger). I hope and expect that the women who I have related to would agree.

Yet I also feel frustrated using the feminist analysis as a starting point because I certainly do not feel like I have any power to even start to make progress on this issue.

Some men will join anti-sexism groups where they examine their assumptions and seek to become less sexist. But my sense is that these men are overwhelmingly those who consistently treat women pretty well already. There's always room for improvement, but I don't see that refinements in giving no offense or hint of offense is part of the solution to changing the men who give rise to the more serious problems. Let's call them badly behaving males or BBMs.

My hunch is that only a small subset of men are in a position to connect with BBMs to even begin the process of change. They have to be people the BBMs respect or who share key values with them. Professional athletes might be one category. Others might be those who can fit into "bro culture" if they choose but also would like to see women treated better.

Gay men, intellectuals, nerds -- we don't have standing with those men to make any difference. Members of the anti-sexism groups who have decided that it is vital to always say "women and men" instead of "men and women" because the historically oppressed group should now appear in first place don't seem like good candidates. That certainly isn't the sort of observation likely to help when trying to connect with BBMs.

It's frustrating to be a dissenting minority in a class with an objectionable position (sometimes majority) that defines the group. How do we progressives feel if foreigners say, "You Americans elected Trump. How could you?! You're guilty. Fix it!" In the apartheid era I once met a South African white man who was an anti-apartheid activist. However, the Commonwealth of Nations at that time denied entry to South African whites as part of sanctions. His life was limited because of the class he belonged to (though he also understood why the policy was needed and individual exceptions impractical). It is similarly frustrating to be a decent male in a class defined by its BBMs.

I also think women cannot get off the hook so easily. What about the majority of white women who voted for Donald Trump? He is surely a BBM, and his election enables and encourages BBMs. And what about the mothers who tell their sons not to be sissies? The women who scoff at men who shy away from confrontations with other men, and the men who are weak and lose those confrontations?

This is one example of why I think the <intersectional approach> that emphasizes class membership is not helpful. If the women's team denigrates the men's team (including non-BBMs) while downplaying any shortcomings of their Trump-voting sisters, that's not slicing the world up in the right way. If men are forced to be part of the men's team, tarred by women with the BBM brush, they are likely to feel defensive. If they have suffered at the hands of BBMs themselves, they may feel doubly frustrated.

I don't know how to convince women who are BBM enablers to stop enabling them, but surely it is part of the task at hand; perhaps relevant men and women could both have a role. We could all support that small subset of men who can both earn the respect and trust of BBMs but would like to reduce bad behavior. If we assume that women dealing with BBMs rarely get good outcomes by confronting them directly, perhaps experience would also reveal a few opportunities for challenging the thinking of the BBMs "from the side" without confronting them directly.

Also, demonizing BBMs by calling them despicable sexist pigs is unlikely to help. They are mostly not evil people, but products of their circumstances and subculture, who have their own fears and complicated lives.

I'm afraid that this is not a recipe for instant or even rapid progress. But more simplistic approaches motivated by anger and frustration are even less likely to be helpful.

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Addendum, 7/7/2019

Addendum:

Psychologists speak of "figure" and "ground" -- what are you attending to in reality as opposed to what is just taken for granted. As I read again the post above, I see it might give the impression that BBMs themselves have no responsibility to change and it's up to everyone else. The "ground" in the post above is the reality that feminists of all stripes and their allies have been shouting at BBMs for a long time to behave better, and it has little effect. Part of the problem is that part of the BBM notion of masculinity is a strong resistance to letting women or lesser males tell you what to do. BBMs have a clear moral obligation* to treat women better. But a moral obligation is not a recipe for actual change. So the post focused on other actors. I'm less interested in moral righteousness than finding practical ways to actually improve society.

*No, it's not an <objective moral obligation> , but it fits my personal sense of right and wrong and I expect most of my readers will share it.