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?