My Humanism

I'm a humanist... which, for me, means that I believe in the equality of all people no matter race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexuality, religion, class, or age. This means, yes, I'm a feminist(a male one at that!) and an LGBT ally, but it includes so much more as well.

I've often been asked about why I don't call myself a feminist. Simply said: I am, so is it at all relevant whether I label myself one or not if I work and agree with feminists?

Labels such as "feminist" have extreme value, no doubt. They establish an undeniable connection and almost a vow that you are committed to a specific struggle, identity, or persona. My calling myself a feminist may indeed be a powerful statement to other feminists and, possibly even more so, to other men who aren't feminists.

As a gay man, I often have felt, in the past, that I am expected to identify with women and therefore identify as a feminist. Gay men and straight women share biological similarities(mostly in brain structure and use) just as gay women and straight men do. More than ninety percent of all my friends have always been women. (I've hear the words "period," "vagina," and "clitoris" more often than I can count in these past couple of years!) And... FACT #1: I am feminist. (Wait, didn't I already say that?)

I see exactly why this can be a simple assumption to make, but I relate to men equally if not more than to women, and I see the male perspective while also trying to see the female as much as possible as well. I sympathize with the fact that American men resort to suicide approximately four times as often as women, with the undeniable majority of rape victims that are women, with the estimation that ninety percent of prison inmates are men, with the favoritism given to men when allocating wages to nearly all employees in the country, and with all the other struggles faced by either gender. I sympathize, and, when possible, I do my best to make others aware of these facts in a minor effort to possibly help to change the national perspective of these issues.

And... FACT #2: I am a man. Until very recently, I used this as my primary reason to not label myself a feminist. I explained to others constantly that "feminist" gives an immediate implied preference to females. And, yes, this is a fact, and it is clearly due to the foundation of the feminist movement itself. There was little to no nationally recognized struggle faced by the general male population. The movement was meant to empower women to give them the right to vote, to hold a job, and to give the rights that men possessed to women as well. Feminism means the belief in equality between men and women in rights and opportunities. The definition implies no preference, but my experiences with the feminist movement show no sign that it fights to tear down the ideals of masculinity in the same way that it is working to fight for women's abilities to defy the traditional "stay-at-home mom" housewife mentality.

Therefore, despite the disjoint relationship that this may incite between me and other feminists, I see no problem with my reluctance to self-identify as a feminist. Neither do I see any problem with any other man, straight, gay, or otherwise, facing the same dilemma and settling on a label such as "humanist" or something else other than "feminist." Any label they find for themselves is entirely viable and worthy of support from the feminist movement and community as long as appropriate support for the equality between men and women is included.

If a man were to identify as a "masculist" for example and if the term were to spread into wide-spread use by other men, similar to the juxtaposition that "waiter" offers with "waitress," is there any reason to fret about the letters M-A-S-C if they support that same universal equality between men and women but simply don't discover themselves to fit in/relate with the feminist movement? Isn't their support for the battle against sexism the only quality that truly matters? I'd hope that, by this point, this reliance on labels seems as obvious and trivial as it does to me.

FACT #3: I'm a college student. (Again... nothing new, I know.) However, I think this fact often gets lost in the shuffle of Facebook debates and with face-to-face discussions. I see college as my four years to grow and build myself into the person that I want to be for the rest of my life, so... yes, I've made bad judgments in the past, as recent as this morning, about where my beliefs lie. However, I've decided that if, one moment, I say I'm not a "feminist" because of the letters F-E-M, and the next I realize that my self-identification as a "humanist" has little to do with that in reality, instead of being stubborn about my stance, I can simply move on and develop a new explanation(...and why is that explanation so important in the first place?). I don't expect to be held to my initial statement just like I don't hold you to the statement you said in fourth grade that you wanted to be a firefighter, an astronaut, a rock star, or whatever other dream career you came up with.

My being a "humanist" was indeed founded in my reluctance to accept the prefix fem-, much like the feminist movement was initialized by the necessity for women's empowerment and equality, but it has since become a way in which I can incorporate and remind myself of the importance for the equality of people of all gender, sex, sexuality, race, class, etc., as the feminist movement could very well imply the same adjustment for other men, women, and feminists.