Sarah stared at her phone, seeing the number of the man she had been dating for about six months. Her stomach churned. “Maybe I’m done,” she muttered, thinking of their last few dates. Actually, things had been progressing nicely with this man. Yet with the recent election, the face of misogyny was everywhere now and impossible to ignore.
Her friend Maya’s voice echoed in her head from their conversation last week: “You can’t let the bad ones win. There are good men out there who are doing the work, who are fighting alongside us.”
Sarah thought of her friend Tom, who’d started a men’s group focused on dismantling toxic masculinity. Her colleague James, who consistently amplified women’s voices in meetings and called out sexist behavior. Her friend Michael, who was raising his son to respect boundaries and express emotions freely.
Still, dating felt like walking through a minefield. For every aware, emotionally intelligent man, there seemed to be dozens who viewed women as conquests or commodities.
Her phone buzzed while still ringing in the call – a text from her mom: “Saw this article about men’s groups working to combat misogyny. Made me think of Tom. Got to keep up hope!”
Sarah’s finger moved to accept the call. Maybe Maya was right. Giving up wouldn’t fix the system. Change happened gradually, through connection and conversation. Through people choosing to be better.
“Hey Jason, how are you doing?” Sarah listened to his response and wondered if they were far enough along in their dating to share her concerns about the current climate of misogyny and her impulse to cut off all men.
She returned her focus to the call and said, “Yes, Saturday night sounds great. Can we find a kind of quiet restaurant—I’d really like to talk about some things and not have to scream over a crowd.”
Jason’s response reflected a wondering that it was something he’d done, and Sarah rushed to explain, “No, nothing you’ve done. More just what’s being done under the bigger issue of men and the world we live in today.”
As she hung up, she recalled a recent conversation at a meeting where one of the older Black men had literally asked the other men in the group to ‘tell this woman to stop talking.’ The younger men had rushed to her side, but she’d brushed them away saying “I’m okay because this doesn’t reflect bad on me, but on him.”
Then she looked at the older man and said, “You do realize that misogyny hurts men as much as it hurts women? That when any one group thinks they’re superior to another, all it does is give permission for other groups to do the same. You’re a Black man who doesn’t want white men to think they’re better than you, but you seem to be just fine to think that a man is better than a woman. If misogyny is accepted, racism can never end because you just gave a clear example that you accept that some are better than others. The thing is—you want to pick that it’s okay for men to be over women, just not white over black. But once we accept that one group is better than another, it’s impossible to contain it. Misogyny is the worst because it is one group that is 50% of humanity over the other 50% of humanity and we all lose. So, I challenge you to go home, look in the mirror and see how you are maintaining racism by being a misogynist.”
Sarah thought—this will be a good way to start my conversation with Jason—a real life example.