In high school, we had a club called Women’s Issues Now. It sponsored things like phone banks for pro-choice politicians, Love Your Body Week, and a variety of other events. Though it wasn’t a particularly active group, I appreciated what it did for Love Your Body Week.
There was one thing that always bothered me, however. In the posters and assembly announcements for the events of Love Your Body Week, as well as in discussions about anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders, they consistently ignored men. Allow me to clarify: I don’t have any problem with creating safe spaces, but I do have a problem with the approach WIN took.
The way WIN presented facts and focused events framed them in a way that made it seem that eating disorders simply were not a problem men had to face. While group members made entirely legitimate points about the ridiculous standards to which women are subjected, and how those standards affect women, they totally ignored the ridiculous standards men are expected to reach and how such standards affect men. As someone who was close with a couple of men (I guess we were boys at the time) who struggled with anorexia, I find this incredibly troublesome.
Besides the fact that they further bury a problem about which so few people are willing to speak—and a perceived “weakness” to which even fewer men are willing to admit—such characterizations of eating disorders as specifically female diseases can be disastrous, and may prevent insecure teenage boys or even young men from seeking help.
Likewise, it was with consternation that I learned that, until recently, Take Back the Night required men to stay around fifty feet away from its main march at all times. There is no ambiguity in the messages that this sends to men (or everyone, really): All men are rapists and aggressors, and all women are victims; men are strong, women are weak; men are aggressors, women are prey.
The problem with this characterization—besides the fact that it’s not true—is the same problem that one finds with the characterization of eating disorders as exclusively female illnesses. That is, it breeds the notion that rape affects only women when, in reality, it doesn’t. While most people will rightly point out that rape does indeed overwhelmingly affect women, the fact of the matter is that there are many, many men—both straight and gay—who have been raped.
In a culture that is generally homophobic, and a specifically male culture that is insecure about its own masculinity, to perpetuate the notion that to be raped is to be somehow emasculated makes it even more difficult for those men who have been raped to come forward. Additionally, it makes young men less likely to bring charges or even seek counseling so that they can at least try to move on with their lives.
Before any progress can be made, as with anorexia and bulimia, rape must be declassified as a woman’s issue and reclassified as something that can affect anyone—regardless of sex, orientation, class, race, or geographic location. The full inclusion of men in Take Back the Night, such as was practiced last year and, from what I gather this year as well, is an essential part of that process.
This trend must continue in years to come.
The author is a Columbia College junior majoring in political science. He is the co-editor of the Commentariat, the official blog of Spectator Opinion.