Nice guys

I think a lot of feminists have a tendency to a double standard, or sorts. I do too, although this is something that I’ve tried hard not to do. A lot of the time we will refuse to blame women who are victims – which is absolutely the right thing to do. A lot of people, when a woman is in a violent relationship, for example, will question why she stayed there. That this is the first question we ask is indicative of some problem in society, and I wish I knew how to change that! On the other hand, a man that is being abusive is treated, among feminists, as having complete control over every decision he made, every one of his actions. Of course he shouldn’t be let off, but feminists, I think, need to work on ways to educate all men so they understand that women are people too.

There’s a point to which, of course, a man who is frequently violent towards his wife, is just a wanker! But a lot of men do things which are intensely problematic, but aren’t as obviously wrong, to a lot of people. I’m going to give a one example here:

• my ex-boyfriend used to like “tit-wanks” (and by the way, who called them that??). I hated this, and he could tell. He used to try to reassure me, saying that he would never do anything to hurt me, which was true. But still, I hated it, every single time. Despite that, we would do this, fairly often. My ex was, basically, a nice bloke. He was a bit right-wing, but essentially I think that was because he didn’t understand. I remember one time we got in, we were kissing, and were going to have sex. I was really tired and really didn’t want to, but equally, I didn’t know how to say that I didn’t want to have sex. Anyhow, he picked up on this, and we didn’t have sex. Like I said, he was a nice guy. He genuinely thought that his reassuring me that he would hurt me was enough.

I would like to give a few more examples that I know of, but to do that I’d have to talk too much about other people, which I’m not willing to do. But if you take a look at this post, in particular numbers 13, 14, 17 and 18, I’m pretty sure almost any woman will have an experience of at least one of these, probably more. I expect also that a lot of basically nice men have done one of these. These men need to be educated. These things are so common, people make jokes about them, that the men who are doing this don’t necessarily realise that they are doing something they shouldn’t.

Women have been taught for as long as they’ve been alive that they exist for the pleasure of men. The thing is, men have been taught this about women too. Even the nice men, even the ones who support us in looking for equality, and in trying to change society, they can’t help but believe it. So they don’t fully understand that sex has to be about the enjoyment of both!

Sometimes, these nice guys fuck up more. In the same way women do. I am hugely feminist, I am totally anti-prostitution. However, I posted yesterday about the incident a few weeks ago. Sometimes men do this too. They make a snap decision about something or other. Sometimes it’s the wrong decision, but that’s what happens, they’ve been taught things about women which nice men find as hard to shake off as we do.