I'm a man, and I'm a feminist. This isn't controversial, regardless of what large swaths of the internet thinks it is. I believe in equal pay, I believe that we should work into our compensation culture new ideas to make sure that women who are societally conditioned to ask for less don't end up making less just because their equally qualified coworkers are more aggressive. I believe that we have a rape culture in western society because to this day rape victims are questioned and second guessed, and to some of those same areas of the internet a man falsely accused of rape is considered a worse problem than actual rape. I also believe that "Social justice" is inherently an important problem, and it pisses me off that "social justice warrior" is a derisive insult.
I'm also an ally - I call out male coworkers who talk over or interrupt my female coworkers. And if a group of male coworkers get too "bro-y", even without women around, I'm the villain to say "yo dude, don't be sexist", and not back down from the "It's just a joke" defense. I'm a software engineer and I regularly introspect about how I can take active steps to make my environment more welcoming to women engineers.
I say all this to give you SOME of my beliefs before I say the next thing as un-insultingly as I possibly can.
The stuff you are talking about is a step too far, and it actively actively harms the cause of progressive feminism by making it seem frivolous, and immature. There is real harassment going on all around us, active/aggressive, and passive/insideous. But the way people WALK? Are you kidding me right now? I am an ally with my words and my actions. I will not change the way I walk because it signifies my maleness to a sensitive little wallflower who apparently feels powerless in front of 50% of the visible population?
I hate the "#notallmen" hashtag because it was reactionary and distracting from women who were at the time trying to speak real truth about their experiences. It misses just as much of the point as "All Lives matter".
But in the case of your example, a woman who is being harassed at work surely does not assume that all men in her workplace are against her by default, on account of their maleness. If she does, it has more to do with how they treat her, and not how they walk through the office.
I'm also an ally - I call out male coworkers who talk over or interrupt my female coworkers. And if a group of male coworkers get too "bro-y", even without women around, I'm the villain to say "yo dude, don't be sexist", and not back down from the "It's just a joke" defense. I'm a software engineer and I regularly introspect about how I can take active steps to make my environment more welcoming to women engineers.
I say all this to give you SOME of my beliefs before I say the next thing as un-insultingly as I possibly can.
The stuff you are talking about is a step too far, and it actively actively harms the cause of progressive feminism by making it seem frivolous, and immature. There is real harassment going on all around us, active/aggressive, and passive/insideous. But the way people WALK? Are you kidding me right now? I am an ally with my words and my actions. I will not change the way I walk because it signifies my maleness to a sensitive little wallflower who apparently feels powerless in front of 50% of the visible population?
I hate the "#notallmen" hashtag because it was reactionary and distracting from women who were at the time trying to speak real truth about their experiences. It misses just as much of the point as "All Lives matter".
But in the case of your example, a woman who is being harassed at work surely does not assume that all men in her workplace are against her by default, on account of their maleness. If she does, it has more to do with how they treat her, and not how they walk through the office.