So yesterday was National Women’s Day, and women who could afford it stopped doing all the good stuff they do to make it the Day Without a Woman, and God bless them. Big symbolic gestures made by the people who can afford them are how most of the good in this world gets started. But of course the hills of the internet were alive with the sound of rhetoric all day long. A lot of it was from women expressing solidarity, but at least as much of it came from men. Before it all made my head hurt so much I had to walk away from the computer, I identified four different types of straight men who were sounding off. (Gay men were part of the conversation, too, of course, but their relationship with women is a completely different paradigm. Most of the day, I just felt like I owed them an apology.) Now that I’ve had some Excedrin and a good night’s sleep, I’d like to answer those four straight man-types back.
Type Number One: The Troll: You boys are the ones who spent all day yesterday trolling your sister-in-law’s Facebook wall, looking for strange women to piss off. You had your misogyny memes all cued up and your big boy cuss words in reserve, and frankly, kumquat, we saw you coming from a mile away. You little bastards are the loudest, most infuriating, and ultimately most dangerous subset of man known to woman—hell, one of you got himself elected President. One comment from you, and we know you’re not safe, to avoid you in the real world like the plague. You’re the guy we know will hurt us given the slightest chance because you hate us and believe in your rotten little hearts that to punish us is your right. But as loud and as horrifying as you are, you’re a tiny voice shrieking in the wilderness; there just ain’t that many of you. For the purposes of the internet, you’re easy enough to ignore. And you give the angriest among us womenfolk something to snack on. So go ahead on, dumbass. You do you.
Type Number Two: The Iron John: You’re the ones who feel marginalized by the whole notion of a National Women’s Day, the ones who feel a little queasy at the idea of anything that’s not about you. You ask why can’t there be a National Men’s Day. (There is one.) Whenever any of us says men have historically done this or that bad thing, you’d rise up from the grave to holler, “Not all men!” Many of you are the same guys who spent Valentine’s Day complaining to the perfectly attractive female friend who shares your office and eats lunch with you every day that women only like men who treat them like crap and that’s why you don’t have a girlfriend. You spent most of yesterday demanding affirmation from the women who care about you that you really are a nice guy. You’re irritating as hell, but I can’t be too mad at you. I know a lot of you are one really good eHarmony date away from re-thinking this whole thing.
Type Number Three: The Motherfucking Expert: You’re the ones who spent yesterday cracking jokes and laughing at how ridiculous it all was. You’re just sure we silly womenfolk are over-reacting, again, because you know that’s what women do. From the safety of a context that extends precisely as far as the length of your dick, you think you have the whole wide world worked out, that life is for all of us as you perceive it to be for you, and if we are finding it difficult, we’re just not trying hard enough. Or worse, we’re oversensitive, making things hard on ourselves and blaming everybody else. You’re the guys who talk about how we women live on a pedestal; you joke that we shouldn’t want to be equal to men, that to be so would be a step down. In the same breath, you say we’re all for equality until some manly job needs doing, then we come crying for Daddy, and isn’t that cute? Last night as I unclogged the kitchen sink while my six-foot-two, two hundred pound, bearded Aussie Viking of a husband created something pretty on his desktop, I mused at length on how satisfying it would be to choke each and every one of you to death with your own jockstrap. But after a night’s rest and reflection, I will simply say: Fuck you.
Type Number Four: The Ally: Speaking of that Aussie Viking. You were the ones I read the most yesterday. You outnumbered every other type by at least two to one, and that’s awesome. You know having a National Women’s Day takes nothing away from you, that the rights women demand are to be shared, not stolen. You see us, respect us, collaborate with us, and recognizing your own strength and privilege, you risk your own comfort, security, and physical safety to defend us. And while some of us have been hurt too much and too deeply to dare to trust you, I think I speak for most of us when I say we see you, too. We love you. And we thank whatever higher power we believe in for you every single day.
Lucy Blue Writes 