thebrownjomarch

Mammon. Dedicated to his Worshippers, 1885, George Frederic Watts

I often see some men on the internet say something like, “Women only have rights because we granted them rights. If we wanted to, they could take them away tomorrow.”

I find this funny on two fronts.

First, they present it as some sort of a gotcha against women’s rights, women’s emancipation, or feminism in general. But the same argument could be made about almost any historically marginalized or oppressed community: colonized people, poor people, racial minorities, men and women alike. Their rights were fought for and won, often at enormous cost. The fact that those who held power eventually conceded those rights does not mean they generously gifted them to everyone else. Being forced to concede something is not the same as voluntarily granting it.

“The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.” – Aesop’s the Wolf and the Lamb

And yes, a lot of those rights can still be taken away if and when those with enough power decide to do so. That is an argument about how vulnerable rights are, not an argument against anyone deserving them. “We could oppress you” does not establish that freedom is illegitimate. It establishes that you have something to defend.

Consider an exaggerated hypothetical: if the US, China, Russia, and the rest of NATO somehow united and decided to make the rest of the world their bitch, their combined military and economic power would make resisting them extraordinarily difficult. You might immediately say, “But why would they do that? They’re adversaries. They have competing interests.”

Exactly. So why does their hypothetical assume that all men have such perfectly aligned interests that they would collectively organize to strip women of their rights?

This is where the second argument comes into play. These men seem to imagine that, when this hypothetical takeover happens, they will be standing beside the men making the decisions.

Funny.

You are, at best, a middle- or upper-middle-class man. What makes you think sharing a gender with the men at the top gives you any meaningful share of their power? What makes you think they see you as a comrade rather than another group whose labor they can extract?

“When he needs what you have gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you shall be dry again” – Hamlet

You imagine a world in which they take away women’s rights and then respectfully preserve yours. But if power becomes concentrated enough that they can strip an entire group of its freedoms with impunity, what exactly is supposed to protect you? Their gratitude for your enthusiastic support?

The same system that wants women’s labor without women’s independence will also want your labor without your bargaining power, security, or freedom. Your gender does not make you indispensable to the people running it. It certainly does not give you a seat at their table.

You think you will be the patriarch enjoying the new order. You will instead be the man working himself into the ground to maintain someone else’s wealth, wiping the mud off the shoes of the powerful and to your horror, probably also their wives. At best, you may be able to oppress the women under you.

So yes, enjoy the one day you imagine you will get to celebrate women losing their rights. When you wake up the next day, just be ready to lose yours.