An excerpt from Sexism Ed: Essays on Gender and Labor in Academia (Raven Books, 2018).

The academy claims to be a meritocracy, in which the best and brightest graduate students gain employment as professors. When Kelly J. Baker earned her doctorate in religion, she assumed that merit mattered more than gender. After all, women appeared to be succeeding in higher ed, graduating at higher rates than men. And yet, the higher up she looked in the academic hierarchy, the fewer women there were. After leaving academia, she began to write about gender, labor, and higher ed to figure out whether academia had a gender problem. Eventually, Baker realized how wrong she’d been about how academia worked. Sexism Ed is her attempt to document how very common sexism and labor exploitation are in higher ed.

She writes about gender inequity, precarious labor, misogyny, and structural oppression. Sexism and patriarchy define our work and our lives, within and outside of academia. She not only examines the sexism inherent in hiring practices, promotion, leave policies, and citation, but also the cultural assumptions about who can and should be a professor. Baker also shows the consequences of sexism and patriarchy in her own life: hating the sound of her voice, fake allies, the cultural boundaries of motherhood, and the perils of being visible. It’s exhausting to be a woman, but Baker never gives up hope that we can change higher ed—and the world—if only we continue to try.

This excerpt is about the dangers of men who pretend to be allies, but really aren’t, and the problems that they can cause.

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Men Who Claim to Be Allies

I started my morning, before coffee, reading Irin Carmon’s “Women shouldn’t trust the men who call themselves allies” at The Washington Post. [1] Go ahead and read it. After coffee. Lots of coffee. Carmon writes powerfully about allegations of sexual harassment and assault against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and a whole slew of men who proclaim to be allies to women while harming, maligning, and harassing them. The actions of these men tell us a story about how claiming to be an ally doesn’t actually mean you are an ally. This is a story—perhaps, the story—about power, misogyny, masculinity, and the emptiness of words without action. Camron writes:

To the preexisting condition that is misogyny in the world, such men add a certain sense of hopelessness. They fuel those old snickering jokes about the ulterior motives of men who visit feminist spaces. They exploit the fact that women are eager to affirm men making baby steps toward our humanity and make a mockery out of our socially ingrained impulse to give them the benefit of the doubt. At least the Bannons of the world stab you in the front.

As I read her article, I laughed grimly, though I wanted to cry, when I reached this line: At least the Bannons of the world stab you in the front. I couldn’t help but agree with her. We know where the Bannons stand and how much they hate us. It’s the knife in the back from the men who are supposed to be friends, partners, colleagues, co-workers, bosses, and professors that we aren’t expecting. They say that they are allies. They say they are feminists. They assure us that they are on our side. And we want to believe them. We want to take them at their word, but like Camron, I’m not sure we should.

A man, who claims to be an ally and/or a feminist, has become a red flag for me. Especially if he loudly proclaims to be an ally. Especially if he looks around to see if everyone is paying attention to him. Especially if he insists on telling me about his feminism in detail while ignoring my arched eyebrow.

He’s a guy who has learned to use the right lingo. He talks intersectionality. He tells me about what he’s been reading (but doesn’t necessarily ask me about what I’ve read or think). He’s trying so damn hard to show that he is “woke.” He’s hoping that someone might call him a “feminist” or an “ally.” He really wants me to praise his ability to use the right terms. What he really wants praise for thinking other people are also human, which is a really low bar.

And yet.

And yet, he doesn’t act like an ally, does he? He doesn’t notice I’m being patronized, talked down to, objectified, sexually harassed, or worse. He doesn’t have my back something goes wrong. He doesn’t believe what I say about other dudes and how they act. He explains that I must be remembering something wrong; that I must have misheard; that I must have imagined something rather than it being real, that another dude, especially another ally, would never, ever act that way; and that maybe I was overreacting or emotional or hysterical or some other gendered insult that folks like to pretend isn’t. He claims to be an ally, but never acts like an ally should.

He doesn’t support women to just support women, but rather he’s hoping to cash in on being called an ally. He’s hoping to gain some cultural capital by using the right words. He’s hoping his words deflect from his actions. He’s hoping we pay more attention to what he preaches and less to what he practices.

Worse than that, some men, who claim to be allies, talk feminism and allyship while they actively harm women. Allyship becomes their cover for abuse.

I’ve known, and know, so many of these so-called allies who are men. They are mostly white men. They’ve been my professors, colleagues, bosses, fellow writers, and even friends.

There were the professors who claimed to be feminist while doing extra for male students, so they could get ahead and much less for their female students. These professors who claimed to be allies also questioned my commitment to my work because I was a woman and mother. They ignored how gendered their assumptions were, and if pressed, they would claim that their actions had nothing to do with gender at all.

There was the senior male colleague at the last university I worked, who claimed loudly, to anyone who would listen, that he was a feminist. Once he pulled me into his office to explain how he was a better feminist than I was and could ever be. It was not a random encounter. I had been invited to participate in a methods and theory group, and he had not. He wanted me to let me know that I was a token addition to the group, which was mostly men. With sympathy in voice and a sneer on his face, he reasoned that they needed women, which was the only possible reason that I was invited. He shamed me for my acceptance of the invitation. He doubted my abilities and my scholarship. His so-called feminism would not allow him to participate in such a group because of their gender politics. Thus, he was a better feminist, and I was a bad one. He was just trying to be an ally, and I knew that he really wasn’t.

There were colleagues who talked like they were feminists but acted like they were misogynists because they were. Theses colleagues understood women to be objects, not people. These colleagues hugged a little too long and their eyes lingered. They commented on my appearance and other women’s bodies to let women know their “place.” They talked to other colleagues about how women were “bitches” who you couldn’t trust. They ignored sexual harassment because that dude was such a “nice guy.” They ripped off the work of white women and women of color and pretended it was theirs. They hepeated, mansplained, and gaslit women, all while calling themselves allies and feminists.

And then, there are the men who are writers. They who loudly proclaim their feminism while denigrating women in the same breath. They put feminist in their Twitter bios but don’t act like they don’t actually understand what feminism is.

I could tell you more stories, so many stories, about the men who claim to be allies and the damage they wrought. I could tell you more recent stories about my interactions with men who are self-proclaimed “good guys” who are anything but.

But, reader, would you believe me? Or would you trust their words over mine?

They’re men, after all. We tend to believe them. We tend to not believe women.

But, maybe, this time, you will believe women. Maybe, you’ll hear our words. Maybe, you’ll pay closer attention to their actions. Maybe, you’ll realize that they aren’t allies. Maybe, you’ll realize they aren’t feminists. Maybe, you’ll recognize yourself in the men who claim to be allies. Maybe, you’ll change. Maybe, you won’t.

I’ll hold out hope that you will.

October 2017

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Kelly J. Baker is the editor of Women in Higher Education. She’s written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Rumpus, Chronicle Vitae, Religion & Politics, Killing the Buddha, and The Washington Post among others. She’s the author of an award-winning book, Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 (University Press of Kansas, 2011) and The Zombies Are Coming!: The Realities of the Zombie Apocalypse in American Culture (Bondfire Books, 2013), Grace Period: A Memoir in Pieces (killing the buddha and Raven Books, 2017), and Sexism Ed: Essays on Gender and Labor in Academia (Raven Books, 2018). When she’s not writing assignments, editing, or wrangling two children, a couch dog, and a mean kitty, she’s writing about zombie apocalypses and their discontents for the University Press of Kansas.