Problematic whiteness and masculinity have zero sum definitions (Oluo), so if a white man supports women or POC, he tends to try to further improve his station to compensate. This could mean:
This can also mean that men have a WIIFM attitude, and that feminists even take an approach of selling feminism because it will also benefit men.
So what happens when a white man decides to take up a cause that will directly threaten his identity as a white man? Well, sometimes he will subconsciously work to maintain his position above those he is trying to “help” by elevating himself even further above them with his selfless deeds, by recentering the goals of the group to maintain his social and political power, or by quietly exploiting or abusing individuals he is claiming to help—or perhaps a combination of the three. Sometimes this is the conscious goal of the white man in joining these efforts from the very beginning. Such men are predators. But often these men are completely unaware of their hypocrisy because they are not doing anything out of the ordinary by centering themselves when they’ve always been centered, or by taking advantage of those who have always been taken advantage of—they’re just living according to the norms of society. But ultimately, if a white man’s abuses are discovered and he’s no longer able to freely center himself or to elevate himself above those he feels entitled to oppress, he will often completely reject his previous declarations of allyship. When challenged, he will go back to the open misogyny and racism that will always put him first. — Mediocre, pg 48
Mediocre, highly forgettable white men regularly enter feminist spaces and expect to be centered and rewarded, and they have been. They get to be highly flawed, they get to regularly betray the values of their movement, yet they will be praised for their intentions or even simply for their presence—while women must be above reproach in their personal and public lives in order to avoid seeing themselves and their entire movement engulfed in scandal. Even in today’s feminist movements, there is a push to show men what they will get out of supporting feminism. You should be a feminist, we argue, because it will also benefit you. — Mediocre, pg 57