Men are not our protectors

And they never were

I distinctly remember the first time I heard the phrase “men are natural protectors”; I was a naive middle schooler with unrestricted access to YouTube, watching anything and everything that came up on my autoplay. The memory of the moment as I was watching an unsolicited “Crazy Feminists get OWNED!!!” compilation still fills me with shock and disgust — as a lifelong feminist with progressive parents, the talking points were entirely foreign to me. The case for men being protectors was being made by a conservative pundit who was attempting to convince a “crazy blue-haired liberal” that men were biologically programmed to protect women. After a few minutes of listening to his carefully rehearsed sophist’s script laced with logical fallacies, I rolled my eyes and decided to click on a Minecraft Bedwars video instead.

It wasn’t until I started college that I realized how profoundly stupid the idea of men as “natural protectors” was. One night, I was engaged in a rather heated discussion with a man about gender roles; he was hell-bent on proving that men were innate providers, programmed to venture out for resources and thus entitled to return home to a subservient wife. I politely disagreed, pointing out that despite what he had heard from online “alpha males,” archeological research indicates that ancient human societies were significantly less segregated by gender than once previously thought. After some back and forth, the conversation had devolved into an unproductive debate, so I left to head back to my room and thought nothing of it.

A few weeks later, I heard that he had been unable to let go of our spirited conversation. I was informed that a few days after we spoke, he went on a two-hour rant, during which he referred to me as a “bitch” and alluded to what he might do if I ever “dared to challenge him again.” After hearing what he said, I was rather taken aback — not because I felt he posed any significant physical threat, but because I was rather amused at the irony. This boy, who seemed entirely convinced that men were our God-given protectors, had threatened to hurt me. After several years, I’ve come to realize that the very idea of men as “protectors” that he held so dear was more so a desire for possession.

If men were truly our protectors, then our female ancestors would have lived incredibly comfortable lives. Contrary to what trad-wife content creators want you to think, the prospect of being financially dependent on a husband was a detriment to female liberation. For most of late-modern history, marriage was the only path to achieving social and economic stability, which could not be accessed by single women.

The reason why so many women stayed married and refrained from pursuing “no fault” divorces was because it simply was not legally feasible up until the 1970s. In many other parts of the world, women were deprived of legal protection from even the most despicable forms of spousal abuse. For instance, in Singapore (where I’m from), marital rape was not considered a criminal offense in the court of law until 2020.

The causal link between our traditional ideas of marriage and female subjugation is often misconstrued by right-wing media. Christian evangelicals often cite Genesis 2:21 as justification for promoting female subservience, ignoring the overwhelming evidence that the concept of Eve being created from Adam’s “rib” was a flattening of the Hebrew word for “powerful counterpart.” When citing the range of anti-feminist verses of the Bible, Evangelicals tend to conveniently overlook the fact that translated texts inevitably reflect the biases of those who have the power and education to do so, which historically have been men who benefit from patriarchal theocracy.

As an optimist, I sincerely hope that the women who precede us stayed married out of willingness and not reliance on male partners. But as a realist, it’s evident that there were no legal protections in place to ensure that women were substantially defended from experiencing spousal abuse. It would be ignorant to dismiss the fact that many women endured abuse and oppression in silence to ensure that they were not ostracized from society.

The fallacy that men are our inherent and sole financial providers is derived from counter-factual myth, galvanised by years of social conditioning and theological fantasy. In reality, women were systemically barred from pursuing higher education and were consequently unable to reap the financial benefits of climbing the corporate ladder. The kinds of labor available to women were primarily informal and domestic, and invisible to census detection with no financial records, which has only fed the narrative that women were entirely provided for by men.

So why are some men still unwaveringly committed to believing they are our protectors? It’s because this self-aggrandizing notion helps justify possession. Insisting that men are inherent protectors for women allows society to dismiss the real ways in which women are victimized. The very patriarchal system that instigates violence against women is responsible for the same structures that have propelled men as the dominant gender.

Misogynists might be tempted to issue me a well-worn retort like, “If men stopped protecting women, then who would protect you?” And to that I ask: from what? If men are our biggest protectors, then why are they such prevalent perpetrators of harm against women? It’s a diametrically opposed fallacy often made by men who are looking for purpose in a disenfranchising capitalist hellscape. Instead of spending time and energy trying to force women into subservient roles, why not listen and think about why gender based violence occurs in the first place? After all, women don’t need male “protection” if there is no harm to begin with.

Written by: Anjali Iyer — amiyer@ucdavis.edu

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