By Dr. Miguel Gallardo
Director of Aliento, The Center for Latina/o Communities
I grew up hearing my father say, “If you want the job done right, ask a woman.” I heard this for years, but I do not think I really understood what it meant until much later in my life. I have certainly come to appreciate it today more than ever, particularly as I reflect back on my life as the son of Evangelina Robles Gallardo, and now as a husband and father to two daughters. It is impossible to think of myself as a man without thinking about my mother. Period. My father was also influential in my life, but my mother taught me so much that my father simply could not. When I think about the person I try to become and the way that I try to live my life, much of this boils down to the role my mother had in my life. This is true for many of us. While a month during the year to honor women is a nice thing to do, I am hoping that we, as men, and as a nation, can better appreciate the role of women in our lives and in the creation of a more just society. I do not need to go into the continued disparities between men and women because they are all too present. What I want to do is to talk about my male privilege. I wish I could say that I am past having biased thoughts, past making assumptions about women when certain things happen, and past falling into stereotypical gender roles in my personal life. I’m not…and I haven’t. I have to be intentional and work at this like, much like I do all the other isms that I continue to work on. I hope that I am a better person today than I was 3, 5, 10 years ago. Being intentional is important, but I also need to take responsibility when I do something that offends a woman, or some other human being for that matter. It is not enough to say that I am aware or conscious, if I do not change how I live my life. Here is where the rubber hits the road.
It is hard for me to reconcile society’s continued support of dehumanizing behaviors towards young girls and women. From sexual objectification, to intimate partner violence, to paying women less simply because they are women, to forcing women to make choices that we as men do not have to make about careers, being parents, to trying to control the choices women can make about their own bodies, to too many more to name here. The current national climate in the United States is certainly not supporting changing these attitudes and behaviors, but I can in my own local, social world. It has to start with me/us. It has to start in our own families. It has to start in how we raise our children. It has to start with recognizing that if you exist in the world, you are inherently breathing sexist air on a daily basis. If you think you are not, therein lies part of the problem. It also has to start with recognizing these behaviors in other people and places, and naming it for what it is. Maybe you do not laugh at the sexist joke, maybe you stop telling sexist jokes yourself. Maybe we start to think about the language that we use to describe and talk about women, men, and our relationships with one another. Maybe we as men start to appreciate the stay at home dad and not ridicule him for not being the “provider.” Maybe women can also help by allowing men to show emotions and not say that they want a sensitive man, yet when he cries in front of them, they say they feel uncomfortable and want him to act like a man. Remind me, how does this work again?
There are a lot of possibilities in changing how we see, hear, talk about, and appreciate the women in our lives. A month out of the year or an acknowledgement here and there are nice things, but they do not change, and cannot change, what is inherently flawed in our patriarchal and sexist society. Only I can do that. Only you can do that. I, we, do not exist without women…literally. How is it that we refer to women’s sexual anatomy as a sign of weakness (by the way I have heard both men and women use these terms to describe what they assess to be “weak” behaviors)? Life is created and manifested through a woman’s sexual anatomy, yet we somehow have learned to refer to those who are “weak” as being connected to the very same organs that gave us all life? Huh? What? Does this even make sense? Maybe we can start by recognizing the everyday language that we hear and have become so desensitized to that it does not even register to us. This might be a good place to start…
I am a strong man because a strong woman raised me. I am a strong man because I have a strong wife. I am a strong man because I am trying to raise strong women.
Aliento, The Center for Latinx Communities Blog 