On not knowing what to say on Intl Women’s Day — and doing something useful instead.

It’s International Women’s Day (IWD) and, to be honest, I’m not sure what to say.

I know what I want to say, but I’m not sure anything that I do say will be somehow “appropriate” or “correct” or “helpful” during a possibly transformational moment in Australian political and social history where there are many emotions around about the role and treatment of women.

I think like many men — and excluding the arseholes — I see myself as wanting to do the right thing by women.

And, no, it’s not because I have a very independent and determined wife, sister, and adult daughter, or a migrant mother who was an indefatigable fighter for social justice in the South Bronx.

It’s because it’s right; because the past misogynistic workplaces I was part of and (frankly) turned a blind eye to sucked; because a future of fully empowered women is a better future in every way; because those men who are abusers in any form are gross; because I strongly believe that we are all truly equal and have a universal right to the same opportunities.

However, IWD’s not even into the third hour of the working day, and I’ve been told by prominent feminist activists on Twitter that I’m guilty of mansplaining. (By way of context, I questioned whether anger, while legitimate, was the best basis on which to sustain a campaign for social change.)

There’s part of the dilemma.

It seems to me that there are many men, like me, who want to be “allies” of women in the cause of equal rights, #metoo, and much better treatment, especially in terms of stopping sexual abuse and domestic violence, achieving wage parity and holding more positions of real power in our society. But apparently there are some who see the bandwidth of what can be acceptably said, thought and felt (as even self-declared allies) in pretty narrow terms.

If I express empathy with an abuse victim’s pain, I might be told I can’t really understand that feeling of horror, disempowerment and violence. (That’s fair in some ways, but it doesn’t negate my intent. Nor does it fully negate the alternative lived experience of hundreds of thousands who provide regular support to the sick, the vulnerable and the oppressed who are different from themselves.)

If I argue that the #metoo cause is vital, but I don’t like it when emotion overwhelms evidence, or I that it’s better for advocacy to be led by advocates rather than by Parliament House journalists, I could be labelled a misogynist.

Equally, when I cite older feminists of my acquaintance who are concerned about women seemingly self-exploiting themselves through Instagram, Only Friends, or other form of porn culture, or talking about the rights of blue-collar women, as opposed to bourgeois women, I could be deemed patriarchal.

I think I get the important intent of all the above, but it’s pretty tough going. Indeed, I’m not sure I can abide the perhaps unintended outcomes — like ostracising sympathisers for some perceived lack of purity.

Sadly, it seems an element of modern social change movements — many of which are inevitably left-leaning and that’s okay — that if you’re not unambiguously of the victimised category, your main responsibility is some form of self-castigation and re-education. Allies, it seems, are only real allies when they somehow admit their inherent and even unconscious biases, faults and responsibilities because one happens to be male, or white, or non-Indigenous or heterosexual etc. And that if we don’t do that, some deem that our “silence is violence”.

So what to do? When we are implored to speak out but it’s a minefield to do so? How to behave?

Control the things I can control is my self-counsel on IWD. My reality is the only one I can truly shape. My tiny corner of an at-times confusing society.

I’m currently starting a new business. It involves hi-viz, trucks, bins, logistics, warehousing and all manner of activities that have historically been the domain of blue-collar men and a small group of white-collar male bosses. In advertising a management role for the new biz, I’ve had nearly all men reply.

That’s where I think I can step beyond the rhetorical, and try to make a practical difference and contribution to a more positive future. I can today — and I will — try to rethink the things that might attract more female candidates to my business and to seek to fill this and other “non-conventional” jobs with women. That involves everything from re-crafting the job spec and its working arrangements, to how I advertise the job, and to obviously ensuring that there’s equal pay and conditions (at the very minimum). And, it includes actively finding out if there’s a woman interested in running the whole box and dice.

Ultimately, it’s seeing the world through somebody else’s lens to effect change and that’s a great lesson from IWD regardless of what I may have copped on Twitter.

And perhaps, most importantly, it’s simply making sure that each of my interactions with women on IWD and everyday are fully respectful. Even if I struggle for the right words.