Before reading this article, go and look at my profile: white, in my 20s, quite handsome, and most importantly male. Therefore, I find it quite entertaining that my two co-founders (both female) wanted me to write an article for International Women’s Day. Both of them are probably expecting a rant about the celebration of man’s day (oh wait, that’s every day, right?), more appreciation for hard-working men, or why sexist humour should not be cancelled. While I could write a fierce piece about the latter, I’m not doing that today. I believe that paying attention to the fight for equality of women is important, especially on this day, and especially by men like me!

A year ago, I discussed feminism with some friends. All of them were male, watched Ben Shapiro, and drank beer. Typical man stuff, right? They also were all feminists, hard-core advocates of equal women’s rights and wanted more high-earning women at the top. Weird enough, I was the exception. I wanted nothing to do with feminism. In discussions about this topic, I was always in disagreement, argued for a focus on quality, instead of gender. For that reason, it was no surprise that my friends were shocked I was going to follow the UvA’s Gender and Identity course: Feminist Theories. Some of them even checked if I wasn’t drunk. Just to clarify: I was not.

It was a deliberate choice; didn’t need the points, wasn’t drunk, and didn’t do it to impress the ladies. I found myself at a point where I talked about topics that I didn’t understand. I simply wasn’t a feminist, because my picture of feminism was wrong. As I soon found out, feminists are not all screaming women with short pink hair who want to burn all men alive and rule the residual chromosome X wasteland. My feminist theories class was full of different people, however, not many men were present. Some male peers told me they didn’t want to join a feminist course, because they were afraid of confrontations with fanatic feminists about their birthrights. For some reason, men think that equality for women means less equality for men.

The course taught me differently. What men perceive to be a fair and equal world, is not fair at all. In all aspects, men have advantages over women: higher chances of getting a job, their physical power is greater, and so forth. One of the most memorable things I learned was that the standard temperature level of radiators is based on the average temperature that men can withstand. The only thing that women have over men is that they can’t get bald (huge advantage). There is no denying it: our gender has ruled the world for the past 200,000 years. In hindsight, seeing emotional women at equality marches wasn’t that weird for me. For all women, equal rights have only started developing in the past century. In football terms: it’s 2000 against 1. Does that mean that men have no rights to their own views about an equal world? Simple answer: no. Complicated answer: no, of course not.

In Feminist theories, I discovered the importance of having high-quality conversations with each other. We can all be right, but we can also all be wrong. Sometimes you just have to shut up and start to listen! Finding out about your own advantages can be confrontational, tough, and emotional – at least in my case it was. My whole life I had mostly female friends, shopped at the female sections of V&D as a kid, and never tried to assert my male dominance. And still, my view of the world was inaccurate. It’s logical that after such discovery, you get defensive. What International Women’s Day for men can signify is a wake-up call: don’t higher your shields, lower them,  take a feminism course and listen to the women around you!

Want to change your own world view? Check out the course Feminism Theories here.