The Signs

Those Oxford students with their signs about needing feminism. Direct gesture, forces you to pick a side. But the binary bothers me. Not because I’m skeptical of gender equality but because there’s no room anymore to think carefully about it without someone assuming you’re avoiding the issue.

The German debate everyone was wrapped up in for weeks split predictably. Women naming what they actually deal with—less pay, more danger, constant harassment. Men responding that they didn’t create the system and shouldn’t be personally blamed for it. Both sides had a point. Both sides angry. Neither really listening.

Here’s what I keep coming back to: the world genuinely is shaped by male interests and defaults, and that creates real disadvantages for women. Also true: you can’t fix that by heaping guilt on individuals. You need actual change—policy, hiring practices, legal stuff. Personal guilt helps no one.

But saying that makes you the guy in the middle. The signs probably needed to exist precisely because the middle stopped working. You broadcast your position or you’re invisible. I don’t know if that’s how change actually happens, but that’s how it happens now.