Let me tell you something, man-to-man. The fact that you or I haven’t beat a woman? That counts for nothing. The fact that you and I have even been so good as to be nice to a woman when it wasn’t strictly called for? That’s not enough to qualify you (or me, or anyone) as a non-arsehole. You know why? Because women get that stuff for free. It’s a matter of course. It’s not something that requires a special effort and a pat on the back for us, every time we do it. “You know what, I have been on the road dozens of times, and I never once deliberately tail-ended someone, and even when someone else blew their horn when they got cut off, I totally agreed with a nod and sympathetic look”. The whole problem that feminism looks at is that the experience of being a woman just isn’t judged as being important or noteworthy. But hey, us guys, look at us, right? We’re nice to people for no reason! Doesn’t that make us great!

Here’s the dirty secret: nice, polite, friendly, politically progressive guys like you and me can reinforce and perpetuate sexism, in fact we often do. So let’s stop pretending that we have some sort of free pass because of our inherent niceness and instead when a woman says “you are behaving in a way that supports sexism” respect her perspective. Because your perspective on sexism? My perspective on feminism? Feminists don’t have to respect it. That’s not how it works because, uhh, we’re not women. So talking about how important it is that feminists “respect” our ‘oh, but as a really nice man I think sexism is bad’ perspective is just bullshit.

Also, for men worried about “making [our] lives easier”, “back pay”, or “paying it forward”, how about things like truly doing half or more of the housework, truly doing half or more of child raising, educating other men to stop rape, doing your best to promote women at work, speaking up in situations where misogynist comments are made, refusing to take unfair raises, refraining from talking over or interrupting women, participate in anti-violence work, taking women’s concerns to heart when voting, resisting government restriction of a full range of reproductive options for women, boycotting movies and other media that promote misogyny and rape, or, you know, any other thing that would actually CONCRETELY benefit women, instead of the occasional mini-ego-stroke of shallow public “chivalry”.

Oh, and we don’t need your protection. We don’t need you to *do* anything. We need you to NOT do things, like oppression, misogyny, and rape, for example.

However, I strongly believe people cannot receive messages until they are ready for them. Racialicious – and our particular type of racial discussion – is not for everyone. It’s not for people who still question white privilege, it’s not for people who believe that stating they are a white ally means they can then police POC on their tone and tactics for organizing, it is not a space for people who demand to be “taught” anti-racism in their way to their liking. (It is also not for people of color who do not care to organize with other groups, or POC would would seek to deny those of us with a different sexual orientation or gender identification.) And I’m fine with that. To solve the issues of race in this country, a lot of things have to happen in tandem. Someone needs to have the 101 conversations, some one needs to have the 303 conversations. Someone needs to try to work out the interpersonal aspects of racism, and someone needs to tackle structural racism. There is a lot of work to be done, so there is no one right answer.