I’m a cis male and I believe in the importance of feminism, but I hesitate to call myself a feminist because it seems like there is a presumption of understanding women’s experiences as if I was part of the Me Too movement. In some binary sense given how hateful and shitty men can be I’m absolutely a feminist, but I wouldn’t declare myself to be one. What is your standpoint?
I think it’s a fair question/point. Different factions within feminism will give different answers to that. Personally as a cis man I am fine with feminism focusing primarily or exclusively on women’s issues (it’s in the name), we should have other movements to deal with the way those same issues affecting other genders. Activism and organizing is almost never a zero-sum game, someone can be a feminist and an LGBTQ activist and a socialist for example.
The way this ties into the OC is that it is OK for feminist activism to take away privileges from men if that means improving rights for women. Even if there was a dichotomy of “there are fewer hetero relationships but women are safer from sexual harassment” as presented by OC — which, to be clear, is a false dichotomy and not actually what the vast majority of feminists are advocating for — it would be a fine step to take.
What I’m saying is, I think both of these views are entirely reasonable, but that it’s incompatible to truly hold both of them simultaneously:
I recognize that people don’t tend to hold both of these views simultaneously, but it’s not like it never happens. Regardless, to me it seems like this is a rather important distinction between two popular types of feminism.