As the title can suggest, this article tries to give a reason to men to support feminism as

gender movement. And this is not just because it can be in their best interest for men, but
because total equity only can be achieved with the support of men in women revindications.
In the author words: “gender equality is not a loss for men, but an enormously positive
thing that will enable us to live the kinds of lives we say we want to live.” (Kimmel 2005,
103). The way to do so is comparing the typical definition of men with four of the fields
that feminism have done deepest changes, this comparison shows that this changes benefit
men in several aspect of their lives.

Kimmel starts describing one by one the spheres in which the struggles of women have
made the deepest changes in the last half-century: making gender visible, transforming the
workplaces, balancing work and family life and changing sexual landscape. All this
transformations have make changes in the men world and they usually feel that this changes
are against they, they feel that are loosing their jobs, that women have privileges that they
don’t and that the laws are being made in favor o women. But none of these fears are real,
what feminism is doing, is making equity the rule of society and this implies to change the
historical disbalance in some spheres of human activity.

To explain his point, Kimmel starts from what he considers “the ideology of masculinity”
(Kimmel 2005, 105) that has remained since the last three generations (perhaps more).
From this point of view a man must be absolutely opposite to feminine and even repudiate
it, have a strong economical position and a highly developed professional career, let aside
all his emotions to be strong in critical times and, finally, live a life full of risks and
aggressiveness.

These four characteristics contrast with the achievements of the feminist movement
because these normative exigencies prevent men to enjoy the benefits of equity. The first,
and I think more important, of these situations is the one related to gender. Men usually
don’t understand gender o, more precisely, men think that gender is a female thing. They
don’t think the male is a gender because they think that all things related to masculinity are
gender-neutral, but there is no such thing as gender-neutral, all our behaviors and
interactions are gendered. Who is in power always refers to him as the rule, that is what the
word “normal” means something that isn’t the exception but the norm. “When you are “in
power,” you needn’t draw attention to yourself as a specific entity, but, rather, you can
pretend to be the generic, the universal, the generalizable” (Kimmel 2005, 107)

This situation leads to a blindness about privileges, for example the one who let men think
that jobs are theirs. It is not that women are stealing someone’s jobs, but that women are
starting to compete equally for these jobs. Well, not equally, there is still a lot of things to
change out there, but at least, women are starting taking in count to be equally worth for
doing jobs than men. Men have been having a lot of privilege in our society like having the
possibility to maintain both their careers and their family life, but only become aware of the
situation when women demand the same.

This leads us to the last topic, the complex relationship between jobs, family life and the
prohibition for men to share their feelings. This is the main point in the article because in
this topic converges both, the “ideology of masculinity” and the feeling of despair caused
by feminism achievements. Kimmel says that because of this prohibition, men can’t share
enough time with their families. “You see, when women take parental leave, they’re seen as
responding to a higher calling; when men take parental leave, they’re seen as henpecked
and not committed to their careers” (Kimmel 2005, 112). There is a double criterium to
judge the decisions about prioritizing the career or the family, is good if women decide to
prioritize family, but for man, the right decision is to prioritize career.

A better social life and social standards are those who don’t make unnecessary pressures
against the important decisions in life. If men support the feminist request for equity, they
can be benefited by letting every one of them express themselves in the way they prefer,
and this means they can choose to be “sissy” or just be emotional about the things they care
about without receiving judgments against their decisions. It means too, that no matter if
you are a man or a woman, you can balance the development of your own career and, at the
same time, expend quality and quantity time with your beloved ones. This is, undoubtedly,
a better world to live, a better world to be.