My DP is one of the good guys. He is kind and respectful. He treats me (and women in general) as his equal. He does his fair share of the housework and we have discussed the possibilities of him either working part time or being a SAHD when we have children, so that I can focus on my career, which I love.
One way in which we differ is that he is quite self-contained in his world view. Life has been pretty good to him, and he is very comfortable in it, which means that he has little interest in thinking critically about why things are the way they are, and whether anything could be done differently.
He is broadly supportive of the feminist cause, and although he is guilty of placing more emphasis on the legal gains towards equality that have been made, rather than the social ones, this seems to be because he has not been confronted with the effects of social inequality, and has just never had cause to think about it. When I have pointed out things to him, he has been quick to appreciate what I have shown him: for example, he used to watch pornography, but after I pointed out to him how damaging it is to individual women and women as a whole, he completely changed his view of it.
But yet, earlier this week, I re-posted on Facebook this article - 5 ways modern men are trained to hate women after I saw it on one of my friend's feeds. DP was really upset. We had a big discussion about the article. He said that he felt it was unnecessarily aggressive and would in fact have the effect of alienating men from the feminist cause. His view is that the pace of change towards equality is steady and progressing, and that it is counter productive to try to force a big change, as it could create a backlash amongst men who would see it as a gender war, rather than something that benefits both sexes.
My first thoughts were that DP reacted this way as a result of unconscious male privilege. That the 'good guys' still expect women to be explicit in making it clear that we could not possibly mean them when we criticise patriarchal attitudes - amounting to a sense of deference to their position. Also, that even amongst the 'good guys' they are still shocked to hear a strong female voice that uncompromisingly criticises male behaviour, and are made to feel uncomfortable by it even if they agree with what is being said.
However, as we talked it through, DP said that the main thing was that he felt very hurt, and his first thought on reading the article was "I hope that she does not think that I am like that".
I am confident that this was a genuine feeling of hurt on the part of DP, and not any attempt to manipulate. So my question is, how can we as feminists best try to tackle the patriarchy, without hurting the decent men in our lives, but without compromising on our beliefs and what we need to say? Has anyone else had a similar issue in their relationship, and if so, how did you deal with it?
Feminism: Sex & gender discussions
Negotiating feminist agitation within a hetrosexual relationship
Thistledew · 30/03/2012 19:39
Haven't read the article, but I think your question is a good one any, as my v good and equalitarian (domestically) DH has at times been baffled by my feminism. We had a few arguments over it too. I ended up making him a power point presentation on why he should be interested in feminism, a really cobbled together one. And bless him, he took in in good spirit 
But it is still hard for them to understand the bigger picture sometimes. And easy to take it personally too.
I think it is hard, specially if you've kind of increased your feminist awareness since you've got together. It's like, first you learn to pick out the men who are actively misogynist and avoid them, and then you realise there's this whole other category of men who are "good guys" but are totally and utterly unaware of their own privilege, and it's frustrating, and very very rare to find someone who is aware too.
DP basically accepts that some things are shit for some women, but thinks on a general level that things are equal and the main differences are down to either choice, or individual men who are twats, not an oppressive system which we are all influenced by.
So, you can basically take one of a few approaches - go for the drip drip one, keep bringing up discussion points, mentioning things, open his mind, although this shouldn't be your job to do. You could send him a few articles on privilege, examining one's own, male privilege in particular, get him to read some books, etc. Or you could give it up as a lost cause and either ignore (I suspect this would become more difficult if you learn more about feminism) or say, actually, I can't be with someone whose worldview is so fundamentally different from my own.
I'm opting for the first one because I don't really mind this last part - I learn things from DP after all. But it does get incredibly frustrating at times, and sometimes I wonder if there is an end point - when I hit a brick wall of something he doesn't want to accept or get so frustrated with it I have nowhere left to go. But generally, he's an open minded bloke and we have interesting discussions about all kinds of topics so this is no different really.
Didn't read the article but if it's like everyone else is saying I would be offended too
Bumper - that's a great PP. I think we should make it compulsory for all PSHE lessons in school.
Thistle I hope you've got some clarity from this thread. It's difficult for men who don't actively oppress to get their head round. I think the way to try to explain it is to say you're talking about men in terms of group behaviour rather than individual men. Once he's got his head around that, you can move forward on to the discussion of benefitting from male privilege without being aware of it at a later date. Good luck. 
Thistledew
Something else I have found handy for the 'but that hurts my feelings!' crowd is this:
Consider ye a Victorian coalminer. Working class, life is hard, labouring white man. In Country Durham, in, say, 1850.
Is that man personally enslaving and/or oppressing the black man in the west indies who toils all day in the sugar plantations?
Nope.
Is that man nonetheless benefiting from a system which oppresses black people, valuing them less than white people, thinking it's okay to exploit and oppress them.
Yep.
How? Well, the simplest answer is the price of sugar. In 1700 it was so precious it was kept locked up. In 1850 this coal miner can put it in his tea, on his porridge, buy boiled sweets for a farthing, etc. Sugar has gone from being a luxury commodity to an everyday one. And because he is white, he never needs to even think about whether or not that's a good thing. The system is SO good, he never even needs to see the systematic oppression of one people to the benefit of another, he can benefit from being white without knowing it's happening.
It doesn't make him a bad person, unless he finds out that he has white privilege and starts rationalizing that 'that's just the way things are' or 'I didn't do it' or 'some black people actually prefer to be oppressed/bring it on themselves.'
Sometimes the Decent Ones can grasp an analogy to racism quicker than they can grasp actual sexism. It's a shame, but it's true. And it shows how far we have to go.
(tangent: A teacher friend of mine was 
at one of his colleages telling a snivelling eight year old to "stop being such a girl." He said "aside from the hideous implication that (1) feelings are bad and (2) only girls have them, the pupil WAS a girl: it's not like she'd tell another kid to stop being so fucking black, is it?")
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