“Checking my male privilege” is trending on Twitter this lovely Monday morning, and I want to blow my brains out.
It’s another useless reaction to the recent onslaught of accusations of sexual harassment and assault against women. This time it was New York Times columnist Charles Blow confessing his inherent sin of maleness and vowing to check his male privilege in order to combat perceived rampant sexism.
What a load of hollow garbage.
First, Blow cites dubious statistics from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center to paint America as some deeply misogynistic country overflowing with sexual harassment, assault, and rape. For the sake of Blow’s argument, let’s look past the questionable validity of these statistics and accept his premise: America is a hell hole for women.
Okay, it’s basically Saudi Arabia up in here, so how does Blow suggest we combat this problem? With the promise of checking his male privilege, being a “feminist,” and promoting “ally-ship.”
“I am a man. Six-foot-two, 200 lbs. Able-bodied, and physically fit. I move through the world with the privilege of never even considering the idea of being sexually assaulted or harassed,” writes the columnist.
“This is one of my male privileges, and I have to check it.”
He continues: “It is not sufficient to simply not be a sexist yourself if you are a man. You must also recognize that you benefit from the system of sexism in ways to which you may not even be aware.”
“Every man must become a feminist,” he adds. “Every man must work as hard as every woman to elevate gender equality and to eliminate gendered violence.”
Blow wants men to become male feminists, to empathize with women, to essentially throw up a trending hashtag to fight The Patriarchy. This is unsurprisingly hollow, and even counterproductive.
Accepting the premise that sexual assault is this prevalent, men must embrace their masculinity to combat the issue, not cower from and apologize for it.
We need to come to grips with the reality that men and women, while equal under the law, are different. Men must respect and work to protect women, not strip themselves of alleged toxic masculinity (or traditional masculine norms) to morph into Pajama Boys: passive, beta males trading in their responsibility to protect women for talking about their feelings cross-legged on a bed drinking hot chocolate.
Instead of emulating the creeps of Hollywood like Harvey Weinstein, who was praised as a male “feminist,” we need men to be protectors of women. As noted by Ben Shapiro at National Review, “all men must strive to be sheepdogs.”
“The sheepdog must be willing to do violence but must also ensure protection of the flock against all manner of horror. That’s the role of men in the social fabric. That doesn’t mean that women can’t participate in that task — but a society of men who refuse to protect will be a society that collapses in short order,” wrote Shapiro.
This collapse is not just the fault of men, of course. The feminist movement has worked tirelessly to blur the lines between male and female to ostensibly promote “equality.” It’s now looked at as patronizing for men to act as protectors, or for anyone to even acknowledge the innate differences between men and women.
Additionally, women are told that being empowered is to emulate a male jerk who sleeps with anything that moves. Instead, it would serve women well to embrace their biological differences and respect themselves enough to give themselves to only those worthy of them, ideally within the confines of marriage.
If you actually want to reduce misogyny and disrespect toward women, men should reject Blow’s shallow recommendations and embrace the traditional masculinity which the Left has condemned as “toxic.” We need more sheepdogs who respect women and are willing to act and fewer Pajama Boys only willing to virtue signal with a pathetic hashtag.