Men and feminism

Since the 19th century, men have taken part in significant cultural and political responses to feminism within each "wave" of the movement. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in a range of social relations, generally done through a "strategic leveraging" of male privilege. Feminist men have also argued alongside writers like bell hooks, however, that men's liberation from the socio-cultural constraints of sexism and gender roles is a necessary part of feminist activism and scholarship.

Parker Pillsbury and other abolitionist men held feminist views and openly identified as feminist, using their influence to promote the rights of women and slaves respectively.

Pillsbury helped to draft the constitution of the feminist American Equal Rights Association in 1865, he served as vice-president of the New Hampshire Woman Suffrage Association. In 1868 and 1869 Parker edited Revolution with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the majority of pro-feminist authors emerged from France, including Denis Diderot, Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach, and Charles Louis de Montesquieu. Montesquieu introduced female characters, like Roxana in Persian Letters, who subverted patriarchal systems, and represented his arguments against despotism. The 18th century saw male philosophers attracted to issues of human rights, and men such as the Marquis de Condorcet championed women's education. Liberals, such as the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, demanded equal rights for women in every sense, as people increasingly came to believe that women were treated unfairly under the law.

In the 19th century, there was also an awareness of women's struggle. The British legal historian, Sir Henry Maine, criticized the inevitability of patriarchy in his Ancient Law (1861). In 1866, John Stuart Mill, author of The Subjection of Women, presented a women's petition to the British parliament, and supported an amendment to the 1867 Reform Bill. Although his efforts focused on the problems of married women, it was an acknowledgment that marriage for Victorian women was predicated upon a sacrifice of liberty, rights, and property. His involvement in the women's movement stemmed from his long-standing friendship with Harriet Taylor, whom he eventually married.

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