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I mean don't the majority of feminists decry the mere concept of men's rights activists though?
That red pill movie was very eye opening to me. Not just the movie itself, but the reaction to its mere existence.
Seems to be a good litmus test though, if you don't support the men's rights groups as a concept then your maybe less egalitarian than you think.
Tbf, some feminists do hate men.
They used to just be on the Internet, but that brainrot is reaching gen z. Half of my younger female coworkers openly talk shit about men.(then pull the "oh I don't mean you" card when I give them the side eye. Like that's less offensive)
If the possibility that a man will treat a woman badly (everything between belittling and straight up murder) is high enough, it is a life insurance to expect every man to be dangerous until proven otherwise. Its the same logic as "don't talk to cops".
I've seen other men giving me answers to questions my wife asked to many times. Of course thats not dangerous, but thats still asshole-behaviour and you can recognise a whole lot of this behaviour everyday, if you just listen to your female coworkers instead of giving them the side eye. They probably wouldn't feel the need to "not-you" you, if they KNEW you are not a possible asshole.
The fear of men is vastly over exaggerated. Men are still far more likely to be assaulted or murdered than women. Even when women are attacked, it's rarely a stranger.
Well... if the fear of man is exaggerated, who is committing those assaults?
I'm sure some do, but I've seen more examples of feminists who hate certain subsets of women then I have ones who hate men.
SPLITTERS!!!
I do find the idea of saying TERFs come across as stupid as some absurd Monty Python characters delightful.
But on the other hand, John Cleese has shared some transphobic views in the past, so using his work may not hurt the TERFs' feelings as hoped.
Maybe thats a good example for "the author is dead"? I know about Cleese's views, but I think this joke is funny in itself.
My problem isn't per se in the fact that Cleese is transphobic, it's the fact that saying to a transphobe "hey, you're like this moronic character that was created by a transphobe" might be taken as a compliment by said transphobes, and so not have the intended effect.
I don't know if this would be the case (not because I disagree, but because I literally do not know) but I think I get your point now.
Wonder why.
Just recently we had a popular post: "The Will To Change Men, Masculinity, And Love By bell hooks". I can take a couple quotes from the preface of that book:
I had not been able to confess that not only did I not understand men, I feared them.
Militant feminism gave women permission to unleash their rage and hatred at men...
I think too many feminists do hate men, and to say "no true feminist hates men" is falling into the no true scotsman fallacy. Typically the loudest people in a group are the most extreme and I don't believe most feminists hate men, but I also think it's understandable how some people do believe that.
To share some of my own experiences:
I'm a cis, heterosexual, white male. I also pretty heavily defend human rights, try not to be a skeeze ball, and like to think of myself as generally a pretty decent dude. During the height of the MeToo movement and the #NotAllMen thing, though, it really felt like society as a large, or at least the parts of it I want to occupy, viewed many aspects of my simple existence as villainous.
Believe me, I KNOW that no one reasonable has ever thought it was all men, or all white people, or all straight people, or all cis gendered people. That doesn't stop it from hurting anymore when you're walking around the city with a woman you consider a really good friend, and she's posting pictures of stickers that actually DO say "all men suck" she finds to social media.
I'm also not blind. I know this is the same treatment that marginalized groups have faced since the dawn of time. Maybe it's finally time for men to get theirs. Or, we can all acknowledge that any condemnation over an immutable human feature just plain sucks. Just my 2 cents on the matter.
During the height of the MeToo movement and the #NotAllMen thing, though, it really felt like society as a large, or at least the parts of it I want to occupy, viewed many aspects of my simple existence as villainous.
I just stopped bothering. My input was clearly neither desired nor welcome, so I stopped offering it. I'll happily stay out of the way, but if they want active support I want to stop hearing that my opinion isn't valid on any given set of subjects, before I even voice it.
You're so close. There's just a bit further to go and you won't be comparing losing your privilege to being discriminated against.
Can you point out which privilege he is losing (that everyone shouldn't have)?
Can you elaborate on which aspects of your simple existence were perceived as villainous?
Mostly the "man" part. Pretty clear in the OP I thought. I was quite simply born as a male, and happened to identify as that gender. A significant enough portion of the population seems to believe that, because a patriarchy exists, all men have benefited from it, and all men want to continue it. The same idea plays through well enough for skin color, and orientation.
I know what I am, I know my thoughts, my feelings and my intentions. It starts to play with your sense of self-worth to be told that these things, things that have never caused you to do anything to harm anyone else, must be bad parts of yourself, because look at what people have done in their name.
It's not the same scale, no. I'm not facing segregation, and don't have to fight for my right to vote. Any of a number of other advantages you want to point out. Yeah, I benefited in some ways from the circumstances of my birth. All of this, common talking points from the sides of the aisle that I want to belong to. The side of the aisle that believes that no person should ever feel marginalized because of something that they had no control over. To hear that, and then feel like these same people are telling you you're part of the problem because of your existence... It's not hard to see how that can really impact one's sense of worth to the world.
I'm sorry that you've had to experience this. It terrible to have sexism not only impacting one group of people, but both/all. I haven't experienced what you have, it's not possible for me to exactly as I'm female. Could you share one or two specific examples that made you feel that way? It would help me to understand your experience to help paint a picture. You are under no obligation to, nor does my request imply your argument is invalid.
Sometimes discrimination can be more of a gut feeling. Sometimes it is obvious but hidden, and sometimes it is direct. I'm going to list a few examples. None of which left me weeping and defeated, but all of them felt unpleasant. I want to hear your experience particularly so I can avoid doing this to others, but also because your experience is outside of my own.
Some of my examples:
It seems so silly to type out these things that hurt me. I almost feel it's an unfair ask to commit yours to 'paper', I just don't know how else to learn what your feeling, except to assume that your situation may be different but your feelings similar to mine.
As a man, I don't even like men. So I wouldn't blame anyone for hating them. As a whole we're right bastards.
“Kill all men”
- the average feminist, advocating female supremacy and male genocide.
“The future must be in female hands, women alone must control the reproduction of species; and only 10% of the population should be allowed to be male “
- Sally Miller Gearhart, feminist icon of the 20th century, advocating female supremacy and the violent eradication of most males.
As in all extremist organizations, moderates have zero power. They are there purely as window dressing and cannon fodder and to give the movement a wafer-thin veneer of legitimacy and respectability. It is the tail - the extremists - that wags the dog. And feminism has shown their hatred of men far more than any love of them.
So what you're saying is that you, a commenter using a username on an internet forum are the true feminist, and the feminists actually responsible for changing the laws, writing the academic theory, teaching the courses, influencing the public policies, and the massive, well-funded feminist organizations with thousands and thousands of members all of whom call themselves feminists... they are not "real feminists".
That's not just "no true Scotsman". That's delusional self deception.
Listen, if you want to call yourself a feminist, I don't care. I've been investigating feminism for more than 9 years now, and people like you used to piss me off, because to my mind all you were doing was providing cover and ballast for the powerful political and academic feminists you claim are just jerks. And believe me, they ARE jerks. If you knew half of what I know about the things they've done under the banner of feminism, maybe you'd stop calling yourself one.
But I want you to know. You don't matter. You're not the director of the Feminist Majority Foundation and editor of Ms. Magazine, Katherine Spillar, who said of domestic violence: "Well, that's just a clean-up word for wife-beating," and went on to add that regarding male victims of dating violence, "we know it's not girls beating up boys, it's boys beating up girls."
You're not Jan Reimer, former mayor of Edmonton and long-time head of Alberta's Network of Women's Shelters, who just a few years ago refused to appear on a TV program discussing male victims of domestic violence, because for her to even show up and discuss it would lend legitimacy to the idea that they exist.
You're not Mary P Koss, who describes male victims of female rapists in her academic papers as being not rape victims because they were "ambivalent about their sexual desires" (if you don't know what that means, it's that they actually wanted it), and then went on to define them out of the definition of rape in the CDC's research because it's inappropriate to consider what happened to them rape.
You're not the National Organization for Women, and its associated legal foundations, who lobbied to replace the gender neutral federal Family Violence Prevention and Services Act of 1984 with the obscenely gendered Violence Against Women Act of 1994. The passing of that law cut male victims out of support services and legal assistance in more than 60 passages, just because they were male.
You're not the Florida chapter of the NOW, who successfully lobbied to have Governor Rick Scott veto not one, but two alimony reform bills in the last ten years, bills that had passed both houses with overwhelming bipartisan support, and were supported by more than 70% of the electorate.
You're not the feminist group in Maryland who convinced every female member of the House on both sides of the aisle to walk off the floor when a shared parenting bill came up for a vote, meaning the quorum could not be met and the bill died then and there.
You're not the feminists in Canada agitating to remove sexual assault from the normal criminal courts, into quasi-criminal courts of equity where the burden of proof would be lowered, the defendant could be compelled to testify, discovery would go both ways, and defendants would not be entitled to a public defender.
You're not Professor Elizabeth Sheehy, who wrote a book advocating that women not only have the right to murder their husbands without fear of prosecution if they make a claim of abuse, but that they have the moral responsibility to murder their husbands.
You're not the feminist legal scholars and advocates who successfully changed rape laws such that a woman's history of making multiple false allegations of rape can be excluded from evidence at trial because it's "part of her sexual history."
You're not the feminists who splattered the media with the false claim that putting your penis in a passed-out woman's mouth is "not a crime" in Oklahoma, because the prosecutor was incompetent and charged the defendant under an inappropriate statute (forcible sodomy) and the higher court refused to expand the definition of that statute beyond its intended scope when there was already a perfectly good one (sexual battery) already there. You're not the idiot feminists lying to the public and potentially putting women in Oklahoma at risk by telling potential offenders there's a "legal" way to rape them.
And you're none of the hundreds or thousands of feminist scholars, writers, thinkers, researchers, teachers and philosophers who constructed and propagate the body of bunkum theories upon which all of these atrocities are based.
You're the true feminist. Some random person on the internet.
- GirlWritesWhat, on feminism, 2017-05-02
So feminism “not about hating men”?? Yeah, my big fat hirsute arse. That’s some top-tier bovine excrement in spin control.
the average feminist
Hold on just a fucking minute. The misandrists are fringe, never forget that. The great mass of feminists - and women more generally - do not hate men. I say this as someone who's been calling out feminism, check my post history. I'm not a feminist, I have my issues with feminism, but don't fall into the trap of thinking they all believe that.
The feminists probably do hate the men who hate feminists….. neither group seems to be very compassionate in that regard
Gamergate never ended, it just went into hiding.
I think k the issue with patriarchy is a class issue, not a sex issue…. We should be fighting the men at the top, not the men at the bottom…. By calling it the patriarchy we do ourselves wrong, because we lose a lot of butt hurt guys at the bottom of the ladder….
That's like saying we shouldn't deal with neo-nazis who aren't in power. They're choosing to side with evil and thus deserve equal punishment. "Oh no they might feel bad about it" good they should feel bad. They should genuinely feel bad.
Polarization doesn't help anyone. Both groups are suffering as they retreat further and further into their own in-groups. It sucks and it takes a lot of conscious effort on all parties' part to overcome. And unreciprocated effort feels awful and risks pushing people away at an even faster rate.
I'm not sure we're really equipped, as a society/species to overcome that effort barrier given our current information diet (infinite) and our stupid monkey brains (very limited).
You are being lied to.
That's the myth I routinely have to bust to guys I meet who hate feminists. I ask if they think women should have the right to vote. When they yes, I say that's feminism. It's simplistic and I usually follow up with other basic rights until I get to the contemporary issues. I say that if they want all that stuff then they are also feminists. Their reaction after this depends on how entrenched or how stupid they are.
Except that that is the theoretical definition of feminism. Modern radical feminism (what we see around us) is hardly that
So then do you think women's right to their own body is not an issue we should be concerned about today? Assuming you're from the US.
I'm saying modern feminism isn't exactly going by the books anymore. I don't really how my comment is connected to what you said
It's easy to fall into motte-and-bailey reasoning though. The motte is an easily defended simple thing most people agree with. The bailey is a controversial thing you want to advance. If the bailey is debated, you can retreat into the motte and make claims that it's simple and uncontroversial. Most ideologies or systems of thought have a core that many people agree with, and then that's taken as approval of all its extrapolations. For example, do you believe that people should be able to decide what they use their money for? Well, then you must agree with laissez-faire neo-liberalism. Do you want children to be safe online? Then you agree that the government should inspect all your communication. Do you want everyone to be equal? Then you must agree with everything the soviet union did.
With feminism, it's easy to defend the core ideas, but it also encompasses implementations like affirmative action which not everyone agrees with, and practices that are not about dismantling hierarchies but rather just "wanting a better seat at the table of tyranny", to quote White Lotus.
On a personal level, I work in a female dominated workplace, where women hold all the positions of power. There's a lot of remarks and actions that would absolutely not be ok if the genders were reversed. A constant flow of explanations why men are stupid, sexualizing male workers, "playful" sexual harassment, ridiculing men etc. Many of them are self-proclaimed feminists. And it's cheered on and praised as a form of "girl power". If you ask me to identify as a feminist, these are the people I think of.
I have struggled a lot with setting boundaries and not letting myself be taken advantage of, so I'm very reluctant to be a part of something that requires self-flagellation over which group of people I belong to. I agree with the core of feminism, but to call myself a feminist I'd like my voice to be as welcome as a womans voice, which is rarely the case in my experience.
"Feminism" is just a sloppy term. It's "egalitarianism": people deserve rights, your demographic shouldn't decrease your rights. Those who you're referring to when you use the term "feminists" will insist upon this interpretation, for good reason.
"Feminism", as a term, conjures images of the uplifting of women, which was a potent image when women weren't allowed to vote or work most jobs. Now, with many of those low-hanging battles won, equality is largely the case, and the image of uplifting women feels a lot more like favoritism and bias than leveling the field.
Yes there are gender specific issues, but those exist in both directions much more equally than when the "feminism" label was solidified. The goal should not be to uplift women, the goal should be to trivialize the influence of gender and sex on the involuntary conditions of life. When that results in the uplifting of women, great. But men face struggles intrinsic to being men too, and naming your egalitarian movement after femininity only deepens the divide with marginalized men.
I don't think feminism is the wrong word in this case. The way men are harmed by patriarchy is directly related to how women are understood as lesser. Male only drafts, male worth based on possession of women, unequal familial rights, and harmful beliefs about men's emotion all exists as ways to subjugate women.
For the draft and emotions, men's "violent nature" is cultivated because "we have to protect the women." The only emotion you allowed to have is righteous anger used to defend women. This dynamic ties neatly into men as predators. Men are naturally violent, look at how that violence protects the women, but when improperly raised they become monsters.
Men often feel as though they have no social standing if they haven't had sex with a woman. The way that relationship is framed is often conquest and power rather than mutual connection and understanding. The truth is men would benefit far more from connection, understanding, and knowing that they can have social standing beyond fucking somebody.
Unequal family rights are directly related to the societal expectation that women are the primary care givers. Which frequently results in women working full time jobs, taking care of the children, and taking care of the house.
I don't think the term feminism is really the problem. Billions of dollars have been spent by right wing billionaires to control this narrative. It's no wonder young people have a skewed perception of what feminism is. I don't think changing the term to gender equality really would have helped much.
The truth is men would benefit far more from connection, understanding, and knowing that they can have social standing beyond fucking somebody.
Please stop viewing men as defective women. Maybe fucking somebody is more important than you think. Maybe the problem is that instead of supporting men we're telling them to stop wanting the things they want.
As a man who has had sex, it's not as good as connection, understanding, and social belonging. Granted, that's just me. Maybe other men do in fact need to fuck somebody to feel like a worthwhile person.
Yeah, but no. To refuse the term feminism is like to say “white lives matter too”. Of course men deserve rights, and of course white lives matter too. But white people and men don't need to fight for themselves.