Hey, guys – feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of women posting stories on Facebook and Twitter under the hashtag #metoo (in which women describe incidents of sexual abuse and assault – the number of tweets has been in the millions, though I don’t know how to get Twitter to give me stats)? Guys, do you feel you’d like to do something, but have no idea what? Women’s lives can be so mysterious to us dudes.
Don’t worry, guys, help is on the way. Helen Rosner, in a post on Medium, lists 20 ways a guy can support women. This, of course, assumes we’re way past stop abusing women. I’ll list only a few:
* Be pro-choice and be vocal in support of reproductive rights. Understand that the opposite of reproductive rights is forced childbearing.
* Support nontaxed menstrual products. Get over any embarrassment you may have about menstruation.
* Whenever you are in a group composed of only men (whether it’s social, work, church, or whatever) ask yourself why there are no women present. Then ask out loud why. Force an honest answer.
* Ask yourself what things you don’t do, for whatever reason, that you also think of as something women tend to do. (Sew? Send birthday cards? Care about skincare?) Try doing it for a while, just to see what it’s like to be a person who does the thing.
* Deprogram your beliefs about thinness being an optimal state of feminine beauty. Deprogram your beliefs that your desire matters in determining a woman’s worth.
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