Feminism Is for Beginners: Learning from Straight Men Doing Queer Feminism

Abstract

This essay argues for the importance of cisgender straight male perspectives to contemporary feminist theory and practice. I identify four lessons to be learned from what I call male affirmative feminist theory written by people of all genders, defined as any feminist thought that considers cis men critical interlocutors to feminism and legitimate subjects of gender and sexual freedom projects. These lessons include the value of androgynous thinking; the necessity of anti-essentialist approaches to male gender; the importance of understanding nonviolent and anti-sexist male perspectives on gender dynamics; and the potential queer investment that cis straight men might have in feminist politics, namely the freedom from heteronormative policing. I offer an intellectual genealogy of cis male contributions to feminist thought, followed by a close reading of Mike Mills's Academy Award–winning film Beginners (2010). The movie presents a visual account of straight male masculinity as it is positively impacted and influenced by feminist and queer perspectives, without necessarily becoming them. The film makes a powerful male feminist argument for the value of “beginning,” asking what feminist and left social justice projects might gain by splitting their gaze between a focus on failed relations across gendered difference—grounded in the seemingly endless betrayal of women and queers by straight cis men—and a productive openness to the inauguration of unexpected relationships between all gendered subjects.