Setting aside their preconceived notions of gender, 25 members of the Duke community gathered Monday afternoon in the Mary Lou Williams Center to dissect a "dirty" word: feminism.
In an event sponsored by the Women's Center, Shira Tarrant employed her book "Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex and Power"-an anthology of essays submitted by men from around the country and the world-as a springboard for further discussions of male stereotypes and the apparent paradox of being a feminist man.
"[Feminism] conjures images of whiny, bitchy women with sanctimonious complaints about men," said Tarrant, an assistant professor of women's studies at California State University, Long Beach. "And the men who call themselves 'feminist?' If they aren't simply whipped, it's a cheap ploy at getting laid. Or so the story goes."
She said it is important to redefine perceptions of feminism in order to curb violence against women and galvanize men to embrace new roles as women's supporters.
Jonathan Ravarino, a social worker with Counseling and Psychological Services and a contributor to the anthology, described himself as a women's advocate and explained that he arrived at that identity from an upbringing rooted in conceptions of traditional masculinity.
"I was raised to be strong and competitive and derive my worth out of doing well in school, doing well in sports, doing well with having intimate relationships, having sex," he said. "I'd been socialized to speak first and listen second, but I moved into a place of listening to women and through that, I was informed about a different way of being a man."
Ravarino described having a Y chromosome as a privilege and cautioned against underestimating men's capacity to change.
"Being a woman's ally is the rent I pay for being a man," he said. "Just when you think men can't change, they change just a little bit."
Contributing author Jay Poole, a visiting associate professor of social work at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, noted that conceptions of masculinity can result not only in violence against women but also identity crises for men who cannot conform to stereotypes. He experienced this acutely as a homosexual teen coming of age in a Southern Baptist community.
"My identity as a man was spiraling down a dark hole," he said. "Later, I would come to recognize that society had made up those rules about gender by which I was trying to live."
Also raised in the Baptist South, freshman Charles Saadeh said he grew more sympathetic to feminism after he learned of his family's history of spousal abuse, and questioned how one approach could appeal to a large number of men when his own awakening was so personal.
Sophomore Jesse Huddleston said men might not be the most effective champions of feminism simply because they are not women, noting that only a handful of his male peers were in attendance.
"Some people say men can't be feminist, but that assumes that feminism is a girl, that a movement has a gender," Tarrant responded. "There are so many feminists who are unaware of the work that men are doing."
Junior Soyee Li, who said she is active in the Women's Center, said she struggles to analyze her own relationship independent of women's issues.
"It's hard to be in a relationship and see each other as people and not men and women," she said. "There are times when he's busy and he asks me to help him with his laundry and I wonder, 'Are you asking me because I'm a woman, or because you're just really horrible with time management?'"
Ravarino advised Li not to let her boyfriend off the hook too easily.
"Women need to continue to hold men accountable," he said. "I think we have pretty low standards about what's a good guy in society."
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