Can straight men be feminists (asked by a straight man)

[dontwanttobethatguy]

In youth I (like every other teenage boy) unconsciously assimilated misogynistic ideas that were imprinted on me by our culture. Think a rural background with socially conservative working class people. I was a teenager in the era of lads mags, 1990s, pre internet. Access to porn was nothing like today, but the message coming from the media (FHM etc) was implicitly that women existed to service men one way or the other. The route up for female pop stars/presenters was basically, kids TV, lads mag shoots in bikinis, basically trading on female bodies and the expectation that they were a commodity for heterosexual male consumption (I see it now as promotion of a madonna/whore duality as being the perfect women for a man). I went to Uni, horizons broadened, and over time I saw the issue and attempted to change myself. I've thought about this a lot as things seem worse now with turbo charged access to porn and MRAs with huge international followings on social media.

So on to my question, can straight men be feminists or at best, are we only ever active non-misogynists swimming against the tide because of the culture we live in and the assumptions imprinted on most of us in youth?

That came across a bit more confrontational than I intended! I'm not having a pop. I just think we need to really have a handle on the stats and what they suggest before jumping to conclusions. I think most people are guilty of being selective with the data they accept.

I noticed this on the recent DV thread where posters were claiming that 'men admit that they'd rape if given the chance'. Turns out the study was conducted on males from a single US college, so a narrow age range and all from the same area. And further investigation revealed that said students had been awarded course credits for participating, so many people had concluded they'd just taken part for the credits and given disingenuous answers for shits and giggles

However, after straight facedly referencing this somewhat obscure study, the same posters turned their noses up at a meta analysis of 1700 peer reviewed studies and another 32 nation study just because both concluded that women commit DV at similar rates to men in spite of crime stats not showing this (presumably down to men not reporting).

So I do usually tend to take what people say with a pinch of salt tbh.

@LadyTrunchbull

Just stop. Seriously.