Who cares about women's issues? Be real, dude... 1 in 3 women are raped and nobody is doing anything about it. 85% of girls are sexually harassed starting in childhood and it's "Meh, that's just how things are...." There's lip-service to caring about the things that women face, but that's mostly all it is. Most men say, "That's not me, I didn't do it" and then continue to turn a blind eye to all the ways they uphold the system that allows those who do do it to go on unimpeded.
And it's not feminism saying that mainstream norms of masculinity are harmful - it's 40 years of research done primarily by men - as finally recognized by the American Psychological Association and a few other mainstream organizations. It's men themselves saying it.
I'm not saying that men don't have plenty of trauma, but it pretty much all comes from upholding and clinging to patriarchy, no matter how much it harms them, and refusing to acknowledge that as the source of the pain. We live in a PATRIARCHY - that means that as disenfranchised as the little guy is, he still has innumerable perks and privileges over all women. Yes, we are all in this together, but sorry to say, you guys made this mess, and you guys need to take the initiative to clean it up. Women need to support and allow for that, but this is demonstrably not an "equal responsibility" scenario.
Pretending that it is would be like assigning Black folks the same amount of responsibility for climate change as white folks - all the while refusing to take into account all the ways that Black folks are still fighting everyday for their very humanity. Women are still fighting for their humanity too - and for their safety, and to be treated as more than sexual objects whose main function is to produce children. We'll have more bandwidth to care about male trauma when an androcentric culture stops systematically abusing us and actually does something meaningful to impact our lives for the better.
Men need to take the lead here.
"Research done at Cambridge University indicates that men are more likely to listen to other men — both around issues of gender and race. They are able to present information as well as to confront inequality with much fewer negative repercussions than members of the groups in question."
As Jackson Katz and many others have pointed out, the things that women face as far as safety, as far as discrimination, and sexual violence go — those aren’t actually women’s issues — because they are problems that are overwhelmingly perpetrated by men acting on scripts of masculinity as it is constructed in our culture. And, those are the huge problems that they are in large part because the men who don’t do those things nonetheless still uphold or turn a blind eye in a system that allows for them. These are, in fact, men’s issues and men need to take the lead in shifting that.
When #MeToo broke, the overwhelming response from men was not, "Oh my gosh, I had no idea it was so terrible and that every woman I know has suffered from this dynamic. How can I join the fight to make things better?" No, the overwhelming response from men was "Stop lying bitch, you're just trying to make men look bad." Until that mindset shifts, until more guys are willing to give up the perks of patriarchy and to actually participate in creating a healthier, safer culture, until more men are willing to do the hard work of self-inventory and self-responsibility for the myriad ways they subconsciously uphold patriarchy, then everyone will continue to suffer.
