Telling women to modulate their tone will not hinder male extremism

It will only embolden it.

A couple of months ago, I was interviewed on a podcast about what at this point is my decade-long research on emotional labor. It was a lively and respectful exchange, but one brief comment -toward the end of the discussion- left me unsettled. 

In all of my conversations on emotional labor, I always seek to stress the real, systemic consequences that supersede what may be seen by many as a petty set of domestic complaints. Understanding the inequality within emotional labor dynamics is understanding the root of the fabrication of extreme gendered hierarchy, among other violent hierarchies.

During our podcast conversation, I leaned on academic research from dozens of disciplines to explain the ways in which women and girls in our society are unduly burdened by the forced expectation that they should first and foremost be the facilitators of the experiences of others – particularly men and boys. 

This invisible weight has real impacts on women’s time – as they are expected to put other people’s needs before their own. It has consequences on women’s economic opportunities and outcomes – as they are faced with an added layer of scrutiny in professional settings. It has consequences on women’s bodily integrity – as women who withhold emotional labor on the street or in private relationships are regularly faced with physical violence. 

You see, the simple acceptance that I should be put to work for your individual and collective enjoyment or else is the massive acceptance that you, man, are above me, and that I woman am able to exist only in so far as my body, soul and spirit are oriented toward you. 

It may come as no surprise that I reject this premise. As do many others. Women, as it turns out, do not owe anyone happy. 

The comment that left me unsettled? 

As we were wrapping up the episode, one of the hosts, a man, said the following: “As younger men struggle more, I worry also that that is ostracizing in a way that says “well, women have been struggling forever”.”

“We need to also make sure that these young men are not becoming more and more extreme. Because that is not good for anybody. So it has got to be ‘yes and’ from my perspective.”

In short, my host did not find my argument lacking as much as potentially off-putting to a population he was concerned with. He did not deny the existence of emotional labor inequality as much as worry we talk about it too loudly. Sssshhh, lest we offend the boys about what the boys are being taught to do to the girls.

My answer to him was the same that it always is when I receive such a comment: 

Denying men the opportunity to develop emotional labor skills is not just damaging to women who must become society’s shock absorbers and experience facilitators, it is damaging to men too. The so-called male loneliness epidemic is a skills gap plain and simple. Casting essential human traits of connection as feminine and therefore “less than” has made losers out of us all. 

To be fair, my host was fully receptive to this answer to his dilemma. But what I wish I had added had I not been so exhausted from the predictability of the pushback is that the way you react to a bully -in this case an angry white male supremacy seeking to regain control- is not concession. 

And surely, insisting that patriarchal men should be centered in a discussion on the harm that patriarchal men inflict is too obvious an irony – even on a podcast. 

Apparently though, it needs to be said: 

Placating patriarchal men will not soften them, it will only embolden them. 

Should I add: Daring to point out what is going on is not the problem, what is going on is the problem. 

For those of us paying attention to gender rights among other drastic attacks on groups, it has been a dizzying, truly desperate few months. 

Across a dozen US states, new bills threaten women seeking abortions with homicide offenses – charges which carry punishment levels varying from prison sentences to the death penalty. Because of the introduction of “fetal personhood” frameworks, which would give fetuses and embryos the same rights as people, proposed legislation would also scrutinize and preemptively treat as suspects all women of childbearing age, including women seeking to maintain pregnancies. Thus, a woman who sips on a glass of wine before she finds out she is pregnant could be charged with child abuse or neglect, and a woman who falls and miscarries could be charged with manslaughter. This is not just theoretical, arrests of women have already started.

A bid to preemptively criminalize and control women’s bodies is being matched by an effort to limit our full participation in public life. Earlier this month, the US House passed a bill, which threatens the right to vote for an estimated 69 million American women, whose names on their birth certificates do not match their present married ones. 

And as the White House brainstorms ideas to convince American women to have more children (while simultaneously gutting workplace protections for women and other minoritized groups), conservative lawmakers across the country are seeking to introduce bills making it harder for women to leave abusive marriages. 

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a Zoom presentation led by a progressive organization seeking to address young men’s political move to the right. At the top of the meeting, one of the male presenters explained that his team and he had been focused on men’s politicization and increased isolation, not on the problem of online misogyny and hate, which some people, fresh off of watching Netflix’s number one show, Adolescence, may have hoped for. 

That is a separate problem to be tackled, he said. 

Except it’s not. 

Belittling of women, incitement to violence, and a reduction of women to their bodies and reproductive capabilities are front and center in the right’s political re-programming, and data is clear that the right-wing radicalization of men and boys has gone hand-in-hand with a rise in misogyny. Hatred of women is on the rise among younger male generations, it’s not falling. 

Why the left cannot bring itself to stare at this problem head on is its own riddle to solve. Though it seems clear as day to increasing numbers of us who think of ourselves as progressive, even if we may often lack a formal home. Protection of boys over girls knows no political party. Prove me wrong. 

In this same virtual meeting a fortnight ago, the presenter, who mentioned he was father to a son, congratulated his team on their successful effort to not pathologize men and boys. 

But from the vantage point of my blue screen in north-east Mississippi, it seemed clear that in an effort to protect men and boys from criticism, they had refused to condemn the white male supremacist disease rotting us all. 

Benevolence is the cowardly brother to outright hostility. The hypocrisy at its heart as it pretends to be genteel yet still favors one group over another arguably makes it the worse of the two siblings. 

Can we not conceive of empathy for men without female erasure? Can we not hold two truths in one hand at the same time? 

After all, the problem is not “violence against women”, it is “male violence against women”, specifically cis-male violence against women. These are not my feelings. It is right there in the data. And yes, men are victimized in this system too. But not because of patriarchy’s weakening – whatever the right-wing emotional outbursts will try to tell you. 

Can we not have the courage -moral and otherwise- to conceive of masculinity beyond misogyny? Would that not be the most loving thing to do for all genders? When we refuse to do so, who, or more to the point, what are we actually defending? 

As a journalist, feminist writer and sentient person in the year 2025, I will not apologize for refusing to swallow the hypocrisies. 

I am so thrilled to formally announce my second book deal with Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, for a book tentatively (and hopefully, provocatively) named ‘Men Too’. In it, I will directly tie our society’s deathly devotion -across spheres and narratives- to defending white male supremacy with the return of far-right extremism. I will be finishing researching and writing it the rest of the year. If any of you have thoughts to share, or interviewees to suggest, please do send them my way. 

Eyes wide open, hearts strong.