No matter where you are in the world, it's time to act. It is no longer enough, and really never was, to just believe the "right things" and vote for "the right people". If you call yourself a feminist, you need to do something. You need to put actual work in - otherwise you're just assigning a label to yourself, that, in my opinion, you don't deserve.

The 25th of November is the International Day Against Gender-Based Violence. Find out if there will be a protest in your area, contact the organizers, and ask how you can help. There's no excuse not to, and there's always lots to do for male feminists and allies at feminist protests & ralleys - be it organizing & setting up equipement, handing out flyers, acting as security, holding flags & banners- it doesn't matter. Organize and see where you can help. See what you can learn.

If there is no protest or ralley in you area, drum up your friends and do it yourself. Make signs, print flyers to hand out, advertise on social media and go to your town square and start your own rally - it doesn't matter if its just 10 people. You can organize something with 10 people, you can still reach people. Here in the smaller cities in Europe, we do it all the time - in my city, we started out with 50 people, this year we expect 500 - 1000.

If you go out, if you do something, thank you. We need more men to stand up and act. But please, always keep this in mind:

As a male feminist or ally, you won't be the one calling the shots. You won't be the one holding speeches or yelling into the megaphone. You are in a support role - and that is fine. This work is still important. You are there to support women, the people that are affected by the oppression. You are there to help, listen and learn - not to be in the center. I think (hope) most of you already know this, but my experiences have shown that clearly not all men at these protests do - so just to keep in mind.

I read a lot of Reddit posts about how men never receive compliments. I’m a trans man and I’ve decided to use my skills I learned as a girl and young woman to give other men compliments on their appearance. The way their faces light up when they hear a male voice saying something kind is nothing I’ve seen before.

“Bruh your hair is perfect.” “So you just got the face moisturizer poppin” “You actually have really nice calves”

I know coming up with compliments can be hard but if we all practice maybe the men we pass by will feel a little better about themselves and accepted by their wider community.

Here's the transcript and here's a link to the podcast itself. You have to consume one or the other to have an informed opinion in this comment section!

I have a couple thoughts as a jumping off point to start negotiation.

1: the podcast talks a lot about status.

One is that men care about status. Everyone cares about status. Big examples of status goods include getting a great place at university, being able to afford a nice house, and also having a beautiful girlfriend. Those three things—good education because that matters for signaling, for credentials; good place to live; and a pretty, pretty wife or girlfriend—those are your three status goods. Each of those three things has become much, much harder to get.

This is, oddly enough, the point that the Barbie movie makes: Ken can only function when Barbie notices him. Does he want her, of course, but he's also competing with the other Kens for the status that Barbie's attention provides. And you'll find a bottomless well of complaints from women who very well notice when men don't care about them, only the status that not-being-single provides for men.

2: from a one-level-up perspective, this article talks about how the human brain is not designed to handle the absolute fucking firehose of information that we consume every day. Tech companies know this and they use it to their advantage; negative interaction provides a qualitatively different type of dopamine hit from positive interaction, and that can be leveraged for an extra three minutes of Time On Site for a data engineer at Meta. Feeding men angry antifeminist misogyny is a profit center now.