THE SUPPORT ACT
Show your support – but don’t be the man telling everyone how right on he is, says Stuart Heritage
Stuart Heritage on the thin line between showing off and authentic activism
Whenever we see reports that a man has done something awful to a woman – which, spoiler alert, is all the time – men have a habit of responding to the news as cackhandedly as they possibly can.
For example, one male response to the #MeToo movement in 2017 was to invent the hashtag #NotAllMen. Having heard that Harvey Weinstein had raped a number of women, these men cleared a space to inform the world that they were exempt from any outrage, because they hadn’t raped anyone. Which isn’t the most helpful response, is it? It’s like stomping into the middle of a 9/11 memorial, taking out a megaphone in the middle of all the grievers and yelling, “Don’t blame me, I don’t even like aeroplanes.” You’re taking something that isn’t about you and making it about you.
Lately, though, I’ve noticed a new reaction. It gets the same results as #NotAllMen, while somehow being much worse: performative male feminism.
Let me try to explain this. I once got taken on a school trip to see a Shakespeare play. It was long and boring, but the guy in front of me would occasionally slap his thigh and go, “Ha!” whenever there was a joke. It wasn’t proper laughter. He just wanted to let the rest of the audience know that he was clever enough to understand that it was a joke. And that’s what PMF is.
I’ve lost count of the number of tweets I’ve read after a tragedy saying things like, “Hey, guys, don’t forget that sexual violence is bad”, and, “Bro, maybe it’s time to stop murdering women.” They were all written by men, but none of them were written for men. They were greasy, insincere attempts to gather applause for themselves. Like #NotAllMen, the PMFs want a space to point out that they’re the good guys.
The best example of PMF I’ve ever seen came just before Donald Trump was elected president. The furore surrounding the recording of him bragging about how he could grab women “by the pussy” because he was famous was raging. One group of men decided to start an initiative called “Grab Her by the Brain”, “dedicated to empowering females of all ages” by selling hats and giving 10% of profits to an anti-bullying campaign. It sank, mainly because women pointed out that they’d rather not be grabbed anywhere, but the intention was pure PMF.
This kind of response isn’t only limited to men. Whenever something awful happens to a black person, the internet starts teeming with reposted Instagram stories about how bad racism is. It usually happens regardless of gender. It’s the bare minimum that anyone can do, and the intention is to show people that they’re not part of the problem. Call it #NotAllWhitePeople.
So, what’s the alternative? One get-out line when you find yourself in the crossfire is to say, “This is my time to listen,” but in my experience that just means: “This is my time to act as normal until all this blows over.” I try to donate money to relevant charities, but that’s probably just as obnoxious. There are no easy answers. Either way, as a rule, it doesn’t hurt to not aggressively make everything about you sometimes.
“Like #NotAllMen, the PMFs want a space to point out that they’re the good guys”