Am I a Man or A Feminist? Constructing Positive Male Feminist Thought

Male Feminists find themselves in the weird position of opposing entrenched patriarchal gender hierarchies while effectively reinforcing them. The question arises, am I a man or a Feminist? This question is seated in a seemingly oppositional relationship between the culturally masculine, the culturally male, and the positive theory of Feminist thought. In this paper, I attempt to provide a way of being both a man and a feminist. In the first section, I try to debunk the common notion of many Feminist separatist movements that the culturally male and masculine are destructive to the feminist cause. After showing that the separatist agenda is both unattainable and self-defeating, I proceed to lay the groundwork for a positive construction of Male Feminist Thought by initially explaining what this project is NOT intended to be. Once I have laid out some of the common ways that male Feminists undermine the feminist cause, I move on from my negative account to a positive account. My positive account utilizes Larry May’s Progressive Male Standpoint while emphasizing the need for continual critical reflection in order to build a theory of Male Feminist Thought that is both male and Feminist.