It has to be ‘all men’, until it becomes ‘no man’

Another woman was killed by a man. For being a woman. That really is all we need to know to accept that there is a millennia-old problem. And the statistics clearly show that this was not a tragic singularity. In the UK, a woman is killed by a man every 3 days.

Yet, we see a familiar pattern emerge — men feel the need to be defensive to the point where #notallmen becomes a trending hashtag. Suddenly, individual men feel the need to defend 50% of humanity of their own sex instead of at least accepting that the other 50% of humanity has a point to make.

Loyalty can be a powerful, positive thing. But loyalty can become toxic when it makes us blind for the dynamics of loyalty. If us men are hesitant to call out other men for sexist behaviour, loyalty becomes an accomplice. And how quickly men flock to defend the collective show us how strong male loyalty is.

The mechanisms and twisted logic that created #notallmen is the same that gave us #alllivesmatter. It’s privilege being called out. As Kübra Gümüşay points out in her book ‘Sprache und Sein’, it is those who used to label others being labeled. And suddenly it gets personal. If you also feel discomfort from collective responsibility, I suggest you try to channel it into fixing the problem.

What I need fellow men to understand and practice is that it is not enough to state that there are men who do not kill women. We need anti-racism from everyone to combat racism. And we need anti-sexism from everyone to combat sexism.

To think being neutral is being on the right side is empowering the wrong side. Sexism and Racism are cancers. And no doctor would say ‘I see there’s a cancer but I am doing my part because I did not add more cancer’.

Being anti-sexist involves educating children from an early age. But unless adults deeply investigate their own biases and influences, the kids are bound to repeat the same patterns. So education requires deep examination and productive, regular and ongoing discomfort. For men. We have to understand the dynamics of the male tribalism that creates #notallmen because it is in the way of making anti-sexist behaviour normative and sexism socially unacceptable. But we are still far away from that point because male identity is largely formed by belonging to this tribe.

Another traditional source of male identity is the assumed purpose of protecting the family, or more specifically, protecting female members of the family. Often, younger male family members will soon take on the role of co- defenders. This leads to absurd scenarios like fathers tasking their 4 year old sons to ‘look after mommy’ while they are away from home. We accept there is a threat to defend from, but we seem to feed off the purpose and status that protection provides. To the point where we may subconsciously welcome the threat to provide purpose and status. This is like a firefighter turned arsonist. And we have to start to uncover how subtly this identity kicks in and leaves its impression when we treat male and female children differently. Toxic behaviour often starts as an innocent habit.

The fact that women are under permanent threat from men is a male problem. It is the responsibility of men to address. Men can’t expect women to take on the emotional labour of ensuring that men are not offended by being called out as a collective. We have to sort this shit out, guys! And while we can tackle the habits and behaviours close to and leading to violence and aggression, there is something we can do right now, in our homes, at work, with friends. (Hint: it does not involve running neighbourhood watch patrols.)

Objectification leads to violence. So we have to fight objectification. Objectification is often understood as reducing a person to their sexually relevant body parts. But objectification really means reducing a person to a restricted, narrow role or function. The first step to empowering women is to see them without the filter of objectification. And that filter can often take the shape of innocent, seemingly lovely gestures with uncomfortable undercurrents.

During Women’s day and Women’s History Month I have seen many good intentions to honour strong and inspiring women. As my colleague Sarah Mills points out, why do we only recognise strong women? Is strength a requirement for equal rights?

But also, many posts of well-meaning men wanting to contribute follow the same pattern: men will often talk about their own wives or mothers as examples of inspiring women. When asked about inspiring business leaders, artists, athletes or politicians, most men will come up with a list of men.

You can blame our culture and media, but given the gravity of the problem, we have to change our culture now. Men, please make a habit of looking for inspiring women and knowing them for their work and wisdom, not for their motherhood or care. Because we are not interested in Elon Musk’s (potentially questionable) qualities as a father either. This means shattering the filter of stereotypes and objectification and enforcing a feeling of belonging to the tribe of humanity.

Until no man threatens, hurts or kills a woman for being a woman, all men have their work cut out.

Many featured ideas in this article are the result of breakfast and dog walk conversations with my partner Sabine Harnau.