Not all of us #MenAreTrash

Slogans are great for the street, but not so useful in intelligent debate.

Marchers at the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against gender-based violence on 20 May 2017. Picture: Michel Bega

Sometimes, I think feminism – like many other isms – is wasted on the dim.

By that I mean the sort of people who parrot the slogans, feel the outrage, walk in the marches … but fail to really understand the complexities of gender relationships in the modern world.

Example: a few years ago, one of my reporters (on another newspaper, not this one) had, apparently, just heard the rabid feminist war cry: “All men are rapists!” Like any Rhodes arts or journalism grad with a shiny, new intellectual toy, she decided to try it out on me. Why me? Well, I supposed I looked like your typical Male Chauvinist Pig…

“It’s true!” she insisted, with the fire of righteousness in her breast (and I mean that in a metaphorical, not literal way – for anyone who wants to have me up for gender hate speech).

Really? “So Nelson Mandela is a rapist?”

She started to falter. I pressed. “The pope too?” Then, perhaps a bit unfairly, “Your father?”

Slowly it started to dawn on her that slogans are great for the street, but not so useful in intelligent debate. And she began to modify. “It means all men are potential rapists…”

No, again. You are saying that men have the potential to sexually violate a woman simply because they have the equipment. By that rationale, then all women are sluts. Because they have the equipment. It’s absurd.

Mind you, since when did absurdity stand in the way of a good rabble-rousing chant? If it did, then perhaps we would not have the bastard offspring of the “All men are rapists!” meme – to wit, the latest #MenAreTrash movement.

With the large number of horrible sex crimes and even femicides that have been on our news pages and TV screens of late, it is difficult to argue with those who say patriarchy and its evil cousin, misogyny, rule this country.

However, not all of us are #Trash. Some of us are trying to do the best we can as sons, as fathers and as husbands and lovers.

Raised by a Fitzpatrick woman (my father was around but often kept his head below the gender conflict parapet) – she of the DNA gender strain which does not take even the smallest amount of kak from any male – I instinctively knew women were not second-class citizens.

I saw my mother run an office while useless white men took the credit.

It was drummed into me to respect women – even my sister, who once whacked me so hard with a rolling pin I lost my memory for a day or two…

Perhaps because of that, when it came to relationships, I was always waiting for love to come to me. Now that I think about it, I might have been more successful had I taken more risks.

Late one evening, a date looked at me, exasperated: “Are you going to sit there all night talking, or are you going to do something?”

I cannot comprehend a man who would use force to get his way sexually with someone else. The whole fascination with this physical tango rests on mutual attraction – willing buyer, willing seller – so what sort of pleasure is there in seeing disgust in the eyes of the person you are with?

I have been blessed with a wife the feminists would call a sellout: she unashamedly puts her family first. She loves to cook and keep house. But she also runs the money and has as much say as I do in the major decisions (more when it comes to new kitchens). She helps people. She listens to them.

I am a bit ashamed that I don’t do more. But then, around the house, #AllMenAreLazy…