Dear Clementine: "I'm worried I might be a creep"

"Dear Clementine,

I’m cis male and have been second guessing my interactions with others. I notice I find it easier to socialise with women, and while I have some strong and satisfying male friendships, the vast majority of my new friendships are with women. Throughout my PhD I’ve also had the opportunity to start managing volunteers, and similarly find it easier working with women. To sum it up I’d say I’m just more interested in spending time with women. I’m really worried these might be warning signs that I’m becoming a creep. Or is it simply that women ARE easier to get along with? While I obviously find other women attractive, I am very content in my current long term, monogamous, heterosexual relationship.

Your advice will be much appreciated!"

Can men and women truly be friends without societal judgments getting in the way? Today I'm challenging long-held perceptions and stereotypes surrounding cross-gender friendships and highlighting the constraints of traditional gender roles that have historically boxed men into roles of protectors and women as emotional caregivers. Drawing insights from feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye, we unpack how patriarchal dynamics shape male friendships and often prioritize male approval over genuine connections with women. 

This episode invites listeners to rethink the outdated norms of masculinity and recognize the profound value in forming authentic, respectful relationships with women. What are the implications for both men and women's interpersonal connections when stereotypes about WHY we form friendships with each persist? This is a call to approach all relationships with empathy and understanding, challenging the patriarchal structures that limit our perceptions. Listen in as I advocate for a more humanized view, encouraging men to appreciate these relationships not only for personal growth but as a larger responsibility to dismantle the harmful norms of patriarchy.

Chapters

• 0:00 Men's Friendships and Socialization Towards Women
• 10:40 Men's Relationships With Women and Patriarchy
• 18:50 The Responsibility in Male-Female Relationships

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Dear Clementine with me, your host, clementine Ford. As I always say, I'm the mother you never had, the sister you always wanted and the auntie who always listens. Dear Clementine is where you go to get the advice you may not want to hear, but that you definitely need to listen to. No matter what, though, everything I say I say with love. Dear Clementine is a side podcast of my Untethered podcast channel. Untethered drops a long conversation every Wednesday between me and an incredible, amazing person who is living a life untethered from societal expectations, bravely and courageously and in a way that you could definitely enjoy and benefit from listening to. So please tune in. This week's episode is with Marie Carty. I know I said that last week, but I got them mixed up in my head. Last week's episode was with Dana Omari, who is an intensely smart Palestinian American woman, and we discussed at length the genocide in Gaza and how she feels as a Palestinian American, especially staring down the barrel of a federal election. So please tune into that. And then, of course, on Fridays we have the Friday Five, which is me summarising my top five news stories of the week. So it's just all go, go, go here at Untethered. But for today, on, dear Clementine, we are discussing men's friendships with women and the socialisation of men to see engagement with women as necessarily sexual in nature. That's all coming up.

Speaker 1: 1:33

I'm recording this on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Remember, wherever you are, know whose land you're on. Let's get to it. Let's get to it, dear Clementine. I'm a cis male and I have been second guessing my interactions with others. I notice I find it easier to socialize with women and while I have some strong and satisfying male friendships, the vast majority of my new friendships are with women. Throughout my PhD I've also had the opportunity to start managing volunteers and I similarly find it easier working with women. To sum it up, I'd say I'm just more interested in spending time with women, but I'm really worried that these might be warning signs that I'm becoming a creep. Or is it simply that women are easier to get along with? While I obviously find other women attractive, I'm very content in my current long-term monogamous heterosexual relationship.

Speaker 1: 2:30

This question kind of shattered my heart a little bit when I read it for the first time, not because there's anything necessarily heartbreaking about it on its surface, but because it struck me how concerted and successful the centuries, if not millennia, long project has been to separate men and women from each other, to separate them into categories where the only perceivable purpose or use that they would have for each other is for. You know, if you're going to talk about stereotypes, women are always told that men are there to protect and provide for us, and we know obviously that that's bullshit. But also, it shouldn't be men's job to protect and provide for women, especially not when women can do that very well for ourselves if they just get out of our fucking way. On the other hand, men have been told that women's only job is to provide service and labor and emotional succor and sexual provision of body and satisfaction and pleasure and all those things, and that in exchange, the deal is that men will provide and protect, that men will provide and protect. Now again, whether or not men provide and protect very well is not even up for debate, because it's quite clearly obvious that they don't en masse and certainly not doing a particularly good job of protection generally speaking. But the reason that I found this question so heartbreaking was because here is a man asking it and I can only go based on the question as it's framed on the surface of it. So I approach all of these things in good faith and I approach them with the belief that whoever is submitting the question is genuinely seeking some kind of guidance. So to the man who sent this in, I believe genuinely what he's saying about preferring the company of women.

Speaker 1: 4:27

I suspect that there's a whole host of reasons for that, not least of which is because the socialization of men into profoundly harmful methods of interaction, either with each other, towards themselves and certainly towards women, can be, and often is, extremely damaging for men. I completely understand having a wealth of men in my life who don't conform to hyper masculinity expectations and stereotypes, and certainly in a country like Australia where those things are just fucking hammered at people all the time, what kind of man you have to be? The men that I like to spend time with are ones who, generally speaking, sit outside of those categories and molds, and I can fully and completely appreciate, having grown up within that hyper-masculine culture and still subjected to it to this day. I can completely understand why men who operate in it, if they feel like it's not a culture that speaks to them or one in which they're not represented well by those modes and methods of masculinity that it's incredibly frightening for them. And actually that's something that I often know and advise to people if they're having discussions with men about men's violence and they find that the the knee-jerk reaction is so often to accuse whoever's talking about it. It's usually women, whoever's talking about men's violence and the risk that men's violence poses to us as women the accusation that, well, we just hate men or we're paranoid or you. You know we're being ridiculous, we're overblowing things. Not all men, not all men, not all men. Okay, fine, we accept it. We know there's only so many times we can have the conversation about not all men and, to be honest, I fucking quit having that conversation years ago.

Speaker 1: 6:20

But a good riposte to that tantrum is to say to the man who's you know executing it okay, have you ever been afraid of men? Because it opens up a dialogue in which they can reflect on the reality. And if they say they've never been afraid of men, if they say they've collectively, if they say they've never been afraid of a collective of men harming them, whether physically or emotionally, if they've never been afraid of men's poor opinion of them, if they've never been afraid of violating homosocial bonds with other men and what that will mean for them. If they can stand there and truly hand on heart, say I have never been afraid of that, then they're the one that men are afraid of, because it is simply illogical and dishonest to pretend that somehow men are not also in different ways but to a similarly emotionally damaging and, as we know, physically damaging.

Speaker 1: 7:23

The most dangerous risk of violence for men is on the street from strangers. It's dishonest to suggest that men have nothing to fear from each other and it's this fear of each other that I think highlights that wide chasm, or what you know the questioner of this question perceives to be the wide chasm of difference between men and women and why he finds it so much easier to be in relationships with women, whether or not they're platonic relationships, workplace relationships or, obviously, emotional romantic relationships, such as he has with his monogamous long-term partner. Of course, someone who finds the concept of hyper-masculinity and finds the intense overwhelm of the demands that men place on each other, of course, someone who finds that hostile to them and difficult to navigate and threatening in the way that it requires one to always be on their feet and always be aware of their surroundings in a different way to the way that women have to be, but certainly in a way that they are aware of in their interactions with men. Of course you would find relief being outside of those roles. Now, going back to why I said I found this really heartbreaking.

Speaker 1: 8:45

I think it's heartbreaking whenever anyone is sort of socialized into a way of being and socialized into a relationship model that makes them feel inherently and at their core that they have to live ever so slightly on the edge all the time, that they're always feeling a little bit like they're walking on eggshells, like they're always hypervigilant, that state of hypervigilance. And I really think we probably don't talk enough about how men are not just socialized but required for their own self-preservation to be hypervigilant around other men. There's a lot of chatter and it's all fucking bullshit about how men's true problems come from women, that women are the source of their anguish and their distress. And I'm not going to say that women are never poorly behaved towards men, that women aren't capable of wounding men, that women aren't capable of hurting or exploiting or being violent towards men or abusing men. I'm not going to say that we know the statistics around that and what they reflect about the risk of those things and how those things are perpetrated and the risk of fatality amongst that. I don't need to defend what I've said by pointing to those statistics, but in acknowledging that women can be harmful to men, I think that it's also imperative that we address and seriously deal with the reality that most of men's fear comes from other men, even in terms of feeling rejected by women, feeling heartbroken by women, feeling like women aren't fulfilling their duty physically, emotionally, sexually, whatever it might be. That's not really about women. That's about other men and that's about where men perceive their place to be on the hierarchy of power.

Speaker 1: 10:40

Now I always turn to Marilyn Fry, who is one of my favorite writers. Feminist philosopher. She wrote a book in 1982, a collection of essays called the Politics of Reality, and within that book of essays she has this incredible quote and I'll read it to you now. I've shared it many times, but it's always worth a listen.

Speaker 1: 11:02

She says to say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex in brackets, fucking exclusively with the other sex, ie women. All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men, the people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize and form profound attachments, to whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire. Those are overwhelmingly other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism. What passes for honor is removal to the pedestal from women. They want devotion, service and sex.

Speaker 1: 11:45

Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic. It is man-loving. That is a profoundly fucking mind-blowing quote and when I first read it I was like I had that moment where I was like you have put into words something that has always, you know, tickled at my brain but that I've never been able to express in exactly that manner. But it is so true when she says heterosexual male culture is homoerotic. It's man-loving. It's about the pursuit of men's approval amongst other men.

Speaker 1: 12:18

Men are not living their lives, generally speaking, in a patriarchal world, in pursuit of women's good opinion. Pursuit of women's sexual gratification, maybe, or sexual obligation, certainly pursuit of women's admiration, because that is what allows them in part, to compare themselves to other men and to compete with other men. But, as she says, the things that men are conditioned to seek admiration from, you know, intellectually, admiration from philosophically. These are all overwhelmingly from other men. The way that men perceive each other is more important to their self-esteem than the way that women perceive men. That's conditioning.

Speaker 1: 13:06

I don't think that that's inherent. I don't think that that's men's nature. I think that that is what happens when you construct an artificial reality of a world in which patriarchy is the perceived natural order of things, when it's not. These things are all constructed. But when you make male approval and male authority of perception, as Marilyn Frye would say, the norm and the standard, of course everyone who operates within that structure seeks to have the kind of centralised male authority condone their existence, approve of their existence. What that means is that in being conditioned to seek primarily the approval of other men partly because this is where we've placed the primacy of, you know, gratification and and again authority that men are the ones who get to be the arbiters of taste and quality and smarts and humor and comedy and everything in the world, when you accept that that is the system, of course men feel an urgency and a fear that they somehow will not be blessed by that approval.

Speaker 1: 14:28

Women also seek that approval for different reasons, but men seek it too, and that's what we don't talk about. So if men perceive that there is risk to them, that will either be meted out physically, emotionally, psychically, whatever it is that, if they fail to live up to the standards of patriarchy in order to satisfy the male authoritative voice and be bestowed, with, you know, acceptance by that voice, then they sort of become, but within the system, half men. And I'm not saying that they are, I'm saying that in the same way that women often feel like we're kind of half women. Or if we lack, if we fail to, if we fail to secure that admiration, if we fail to secure that approval that it somehow reflects on the core of who we are as people, men experience that too. So, circling back to this question, I'm sad about it because what that system has done is not just separate men from each other, not just disallow men from being able to have emotionally enriching relationships en masse with each other. Of course individuals can, and I'm so gratified to see that this is changing amongst the younger generations.

Speaker 1: 15:43

But I also think that maybe I live in a bubble amongst the younger generations. But I also think that maybe I live in a bubble and so it's not changing broadly enough that it damages men's relationships with each other, and it damages men's relationships with women, because if women are this sort of secondary factor, from whom this, this kind of core admiration and approval can't ever really be either sought or qualified within that system, then a good proportion of men will only ever see women as a form of currency in order to buy them approval from men, which is why it's so important for them to have female attention. It's so important for their girlfriends to look a certain attention. It's so important for their girlfriends to look a certain way. It's why we have this terrifying problem with incel ideology, where all of these incredibly warped young men, and some older men too, have perceived that they've missed out on what they're entitled to by virtue of being men, and what they're reacting to is rejection from patriarchal order, and doing so by blaming women for men. And what they're reacting to is rejection from patriarchal order, and doing so by blaming women for it and exerting violence against women. It's just fucking up everyone's connections with each other, basically. So to kind of like strip back all of the academic theorizing there. It's just fucking up everyone's relationships with each other.

Speaker 1: 17:05

So to this person who sent this question in, what I would say to you is the reason that you feel like there might be something wrong with you, that you might be a creep for just preferring women's company, is not because you're inherently a creep, because you prefer women's company. Now, look, you might be. And I'm only saying that because, as I said, I can only take the surface level of this question. I would hate for whoever was submitting this to be seeking, I guess, some kind of what's the word? You know, absolvents, that kind of thing. But you know, taking the question in good faith, you are not inherently you or any other man listening to this are not inherently misplaced in your affection and love for women's personalities and for what women present in the world and for how you interact and communicate and engage with women, simply because you enjoy their company.

Speaker 1: 18:02

That is what patriarchy wants you to believe, because patriarchy has always told men that the only reason why they like women is for this reason. Patriarchy and patriarchal authority and those who would step in to keep people in line to patriarchy, has always responded to men who genuinely like women with suspicion and blame and accusation oh, she's not going to fuck you, dude, she's not going to fuck you. It's like men express the basic view that they think that women are human beings, and some fucking misogynist dickhead comes along and says oh, she's not going to fuck you, dude. She's not going to fuck you Because in his mind, the only reason why you would be nice to a woman and treat her like she actually is a human being is if you were trying to stick your dick in her. That is heartbreaking.

Speaker 1: 18:50

I think that if this is how you feel about women, if you have cultivated really strong and emotionally fulfilling relationships with women and you enjoy the company of women and you find within those relationships some security and safety, an outlet away from the demands of patriarchy on men and the demands on masculinity in particular, then that's wonderful for you, because a lot of men need that kind of love and need to express that kind of love in their friendships, and they won't ever do it and they won't ever find it, and one of the reasons why they may never find it is because they don't know how to talk to women. They want it, but they don't know how to talk to women because patriarchy has fucking addled their brains. So hold on to what you've got. Be really thankful that you've able to develop this attitude towards women, despite, in spite of everything that patriarchy would have you believe about women and believe about your responsibility to be enthralled to and in allegiance with the brotherhood, because that's the other thing as well is that patriarchy demands allegiance from men so that it can continue to construct authority and construct reality in the artificial way that benefits that patriarchy. If you have men conforming to patriarchy, if you have men lining up to be part of the fraternal brotherhood of patriarchy, then it's a much easier system to inflict on everybody. So you're in defiance of a lot of things here and I think that you should be proud of yourself for being able to reach that and don't allow that.

Speaker 1: 20:37

Second, don't allow that voice of shame, which is really what it is to creep in creep, to use that word. Don't allow that voice of shame to creep in and tell you that there's something wrong with how you view your relationships and there's something wrong with your approach, that you must of course be behaving in a creep manner because you like the company of women that's just external noise and of course you have to be responsible in your relationships with those women. Don't think that just because you have a lot of female friends or you like women, or you think that you're a good guy, that that necessarily means that you can't ever participate in patriarchy, or you can't ever necessarily wield that patriarchal power against women. It's the same way that white people we don't get to be absolved from our place in white supremacy just because we think we get it, just because we read writers of color and we've engaged with the idea of our own racism. We still have to wake up every day and do that work. So in the relationships that you have with women, don't only see them as being of value to you in your life and your emotional wellbeing and what you give back to those women, but also see the responsibility that you have to be a good disruptor of patriarchy, to be a good collaborator in tearing patriarchy down. That's a project that you can do together and one in which you will still continue to learn.

Speaker 1: 22:15

And to just close this out, I saw you know there's a thread that's going around at the moment that I've seen a few people share, and some guy asked you know, men, men in my life, what is it without naming sexuality or anything sexual or physical? What is it that you love about women? And everyone's sharing this thread like it's the most amazing thing they've ever heard. No, I really needed that today. I really needed to hear that. But actually in the thread, all I'm seeing is responses from men saying I love how nurturing women are. I love how they create a safe space for my vulnerabilities. I love how they just bring an extra ingredient. It's still nothing about who women actually are in our capacity and our complexities and our, you know, incredible diversity. It's nothing about who women are in the world. It's still about that provision. What do you love about women? I love how nurturing they are.

Speaker 1: 23:05

That's not a female trait and that, maybe, is the core problem of all of this is that what you're seeking to do as a person in the world and what you're seeking to have reflected in your relationships is a mutual reciprocity of care and kindness and nurture, and so often it's seen as a one-way responsibility from women towards men. So, by all means, cultivate these relationships with women in your life. Love the women in your life. You know, work with women, but question not constantly, but question regularly whether or not you're also allowing space for those women to be fully realized complex humans in your relationships with them, or if what it is that you enjoy about your company with them is that they just make you feel safe from men. I'm sure that it's not that, and even if you really explore that in yourself and you find that there may be a part of that going on, that doesn't make you a bad person. It's just something really good to be aware of so that you can start unpacking that in your head. So I hope that that has helped, and to anyone listening as well, just remember that we all have the responsibility to engage with all of our relationships with care and kindness and empathy and an open heartedness that you know reflects the fact that love is so essential to all of our being.

Speaker 1: 24:29

It's so essential to our nature and any kind of relationships that we participate in, particularly those that accord to really oppressive structural power systems like patriarchy or whiteness or class or authority, whatever it might be that every time we participate in a system and in relationships within that system that either significantly or even just bit by bit dehumanize another person or another group of people, we are simultaneously dehumanizing ourselves that our relationships should seek to make us. You know there's a wonderful quote from an American writer who I shamefully can't remember the name of right now and no amount of Googling will illuminate me, but she writes on consent and probably about 10 years ago she wrote sex is something that should make all people feel more human by the end of it, not less. And of course, she was writing about sex and consent and it's a wonderful phrase to govern yourself if you're an adult, but also to teach adolescents, and teach anyone who is beginning to engage with ideas of consent, that this is something that should make people feel more human. It's a very human act make people feel more human but I think that we should apply that to friendships and relationships as well, that our engagements with other people, our care and our kindness and our relating to other people, whether sexual or not, should aspire to make all parties feel more human within those relationships and not less human within those relationships, and not less. I wish the person who wrote this well. I wish you luck. I'd love to hear your thoughts, not just you who've asked this question. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what I've said, but the thoughts of everyone. If this has been helpful to you, if it's prompted any other thoughts from you, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Speaker 1: 26:21

You can email me on untetheredpod at gmailcom. You can also subscribe, obviously, to the podcast, so you'll never miss an episode, either of Dear Clementine or the Wednesday Conversation Hour or the Friday Five, which is my top five news stories of the week. If you like the podcast and you would like to support me to make it, I would love for you to check out my Patreon. It's patreoncom forward slash, clementine Ford. You can support me for as little as $2 a month. Every coin thrown into the busker's hat helps in terms of making independent content that is free from censorship and free from corporate interests. I also have a sub stack. It's a slightly higher subscription fee, but you get access to my writing. You also get access to my closed friend stories on Instagram and pre-sale tickets all that kind of thing. That's substackcom forward slash at Clementine F. All of these details are on the line of notes of this episode and, of course, you can follow me on Instagram, which is at Clementine underscore Ford.

Speaker 1: 27:19

I love to hear your feedback. Again, that email is untetheredpod at gmailcom. Send your questions to me. Everyone will remain anonymous. I got your back, babe. In the meantime, remember we are all on this earth for a short time and we better spend it loving each other and loving ourselves. I hope this episode has found you well. Yours sincerely, clementine.