Speaking up about men’s rights issues in the real world gives me an adrenaline rush.
Pondering what I ought to say at a diversity and inclusion session at work, my heart races – I feel it thumping in my chest. It’s not just the fear of public speaking which I have largely overcome – it’s the knowledge that if I say something pro-male and anti-women’s privilege, everyone in the room will be against me. Even the white knight male who nodded his head when the speaker expressed concern about how executives are dominated by one type of person – the type with a penis – even he would be against me.
I almost didn’t speak, contemplating what I might say and how I might come off, like a pick-up artist waiting too long to make initial contact and staring awkwardly at his target. Knowing there were only fifteen people in the room and I probably wouldn’t change anything, but being on a diversity and inclusion steering team myself, and hoping that at least one person in the room might feel silent solidarity with me if I expressed my views, I really, really wanted to say something.
Driven more by instinct than conscious thought, I raised my hand.
I told the speaker that, when women graduate at a rate of around 100 women to every 70 men, it doesn’t seem very inclusive to men to create a goal of increasing the number of women in upper management two-fold in 5 years – at the expense of men. I noticed one of the leaders of the diversity group I belong to looking at me with incredulity and a strange, contorted grin, as if what I was saying was complete nonsense and out of character. I told the speaker that a large part of the reason women are not represented as much as men at the top of the corporate ladder is by choice – just as many fields are dominated by women, such as nursing and HR.
Speaking up was at once dreadful and intimidating yet so exhilarating – it gave me a rush like riding a roller coaster at Cedar Point.
I want to go skydiving someday. In the meantime, I’ll just keep speaking up about men’s rights.
