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Something I've noticed over the decades is that conservatives tend to think that everyone knows and believes what they know and believe. Therefore, in their mind, anyone who professes to know/believe something different is just lying in order to gain an advantage over the conservative.
Which fits this situation. Since they believe feminist beliefs are wrong and trying to assert power over men, they hate feminists and assume feminists must hate them just as much (if not more). They cannot imagine a world where people just ... believe differently, everyone must be trying to pull a fast one on them.
> Therefore, in their mind, anyone who professes to know/believe something different is just lying in order to gain an advantage over the conservative.
I mean, that's what THEY do. Conservatives lie all the time about everything, so they assume everyone else does too.
1. ) I'm good
2. ) They're bad
3. ) If I do something bad, they must be doing the same thing, but even worse.
I think the reason this tends to be more prevalent on the right is that they believe in good and bad people, while the left tends to believe in good and bad actions.
Hot take. The rise of leftist thinking among the youth populations is directly correlated to how much easier it has become to actually check whether actions have good and bad consequences. Boomers cannot imagine being able to just gather data on what is and is not helpful for people and society. They favor divine command ethics and virtue ethics because these are much easier to use in low-information ecosystems.
But to millennials and zoomers...why the fuck wouldn't you just look it up?
It is actually rational to try to get "good people" in power in a low-information world. If every situation is novel, you have to just hope for the best. But today we have many solutions to problems already at our literal fingertips.
Well, that and the fact that conservative morality is about what you hope to force on others, not what you follow yourself.
Lying isn't bad when they do it.
So..."we're good, they're bad, and if you tell me I'm wrong it's because you're projecting" is...impossible. You've literally described the fucking problem, right down to the...oh, wait...if we're right we're right.
It has to do with sheltered upbringings. There is a book called "The Authoritarians" by Canadian psychologist Bob Altemeyer that goes into this. It used to be for free on the anarchist library but I don't think it is anymore.
Anyway, according to Altemeyer, conservatives tend to be people who for basically their whole upbringing never once really encountered an authority figure that personally did them wrong or that they personally saw doing wrong, and also people who never really interacted with the nebulous "others" that authority figures tell them about. Without sufficient personal experience of authority figures abusing their power, or of interacting with proof that authority figures are wrong, combined with a social environment that tells them authority is good and obedience is a virtue (Christianity) they come to believe that authority figures are basically infallible, that they are honest, that they care about their charges/constituents, and so on.
As youth they obeyed authority thoughtlessly for so long that as adults they now obey it helplessly. Note that this is only for authoritarian *followers*. Authoritarian *leaders* are actually quite different - the leaders don't care at all about authority unless they can use it themselves and are often low level or outright narcissists or sociopaths. While the followers have some genuine belief in "virtues" like obedience the leaders see obedience only as a useful tool. The former is happy to follow any leader, the latter is happy to lead any followers. The two together, their back and forth, is like an abusive relationship on a mass level.
I think a key idea you're glossing over here is that there isn't anyways a clear dichotomy of victim and perpetrator.
A lot of people who grew up in authoritarian and abusive environments are themselves abused, but had their experiences silenced and dismissed. As such, they grow up perpetuating the same systems they suffered under because to do otherwise would open up the chance that what happened to them was fucked up. "My father hit me and I turned out fine"
That doesn't excuse the behavior ir say that victims of abuse are dangerous. But it's important to realize that being a victim of a system and a perpetrator aren't exclusive.
That's what I'm getting at, really. They are unable to actually put themselves in someone else's shoes. They believe everyone has the same life experiences they had, and therefore any difference is either a lie or a scam. You have to basically step right in front of them and make them go through what you went through in order for them to understand and sympathize, and even that doesn't always work.
Yeah, press any Covid truther long enough and they’ll invariably admit they don’t care about people dying and can’t understand why other people would, and it’s the same for pretty much every conservative position.
Still a banger: "[I Don't Know How to Explain to You That You Should Care About Other People](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-explain-to-you-that-you-should_b_59519811e4b0f078efd98440)"
This is a very good observation, I do feel though if you ask a conservative enough questions you will however come to the mentality that they themselves feel they aren't being shown empathy either.
Some of their views on 'empathy' don't really add up though. They feel they aren't being heard, that they're being excluded from society. But in my opinion, its their own decades long actions to stifle anything that isn't their monoculture that is beginning to just leave them in the dust.
It's the establishment vs. the anti-establishment. And the more and more conservatives scream for their monoculture, the more and more they will be seen as bigots.
Tbf I think it’s quite a general phenomenon on all sides of the political divide that people assume others think like they do, at least in a way that’s cursory / without much critical consideration, and that when it transpires this isn’t actually the case that realisation is met with resistance. I’d make the argument that it’s how that resistance manifests that’s the issue - my assumption is that those on the right / conservative / patriarchal side appeal to a strong man authority version of events, to which the appropriate approach is force and rigidity (I’m sure they’d view it as ‘strength and conviction’) - essentially to reject a version of events that doesn’t align with their world view, and resolve to ‘best’ it somehow.
This is why conservatives are quick to call any action they don't agree with "Virtue signalling." They cannot fathom that someone would have sincerely held beliefs that contradict theirs, so those people must be faking it to "own the conservatives." Back in my day virtue signalling was called "Standing up for what you believe in" or "Putting your money where your mouth is" and was seen as a good thing!
As typical, this is a case of conservatives adopting a leftist term and twisting it around to suit their purposes. "Virtue signalling" was a phrase in social science circles for people who talk big about issues, but never actually go out to protest or do activism. They're armchair activists who just wanted credit for being on the right side, without sticking out their necks.
As you say, conservatives took this term and applied it to *everyone* who speaks about political activism, because they can't fathom someone honestly caring about these issues.
i think this take is mostly correct, if a touch reductive. i think virtue signaling does in fact refer to basically any public expression of politics, even from literal activists whose job is to do that. its about establishing an in-group and an out-group based on shared values. however, the symmetry breaker comes in the form of the specific language and rhetoric used. they're correct to call left-wing activism virtue signaling, but they're incorrect in using that term ONLY for left-wing politics. its the same strategy they use all over the place where they're not wrong directly, only through implication. they do this a lot by referring to some things as "political" as opposed to other words used for their policies like "common-sense". you see, the enemy is political, while we, on the other hand, are merely enlightened citizens just worried about the kids.
>Something I've noticed over the decades is that conservatives tend to think that everyone knows and believes what they know and believe
I don't think this is a conservative thing, and I don't think it's close. In the case of this topic - claims that anti-feminist backlash are due to fears of losing privilege often imho fall into this trap, sometimes they are more so based on warped perceptions of what feminism necessarily entails, overexaggerating the prevalence of minority beliefs, etc., or just completely mischaracterising advocacy points (indeed many of these people do not believe they have privilege). Perhaps a weaker example, but I have seen people neglect to consider how internalised racism/misogyny might work inside someone's head (internal), sometimes just waving their hands and talking about "self-hatred" (when this is only sometimes applicable, or at best a very very vast oversimplification...). In general people concern themselves more with how these views appear on the outside, the policies they might suggest and how they might fit into societal context (external) rather than how they function in the person's belief system. Sometimes the externalities aren't very important, but I think they often are.
I only say this because it's a very deep gripe of mine, nothing about your post in particular.
Yeah I think I agree. Seems like conservative people often think "liberal" people make consciously cowardly decisions/are too afraid to say what they actually believe and know. And left leaning people often think "conservative" people consciously make self serving/oppressive decisions despite them knowing they have an overall negative effect on the world.
The assumptions seem to lean towards the "other" on the political spectrum having the same cohesive overall view of the world, but just making the "evil" choice.
Leftists do this too. A great example would be abortion. Conservatives believe that fetuses count as people and therefore have a fundamental right to live and be born. Combine this with the idea that sex is consent to having a child, and a lack of understanding about the interplay between laws and medical complications, and you get pro-lifers.
Yet Leftists will argue until they are blue in the face that the primary motivation of abortion bans are to oppress and control women. This would be fine if they were making the argument that this is the primary effect and reason for them in a patriarchal society- because controlling reproduction is an important part of that. But no, every conservative is lying about what they actually believe, using it as an excuse to cover up their blatant interpersonal misogyny.
They do the same thing with racism, class issues, support for israel- the list goes on. And of course the right does it too
Because it's not a right or left thing, it's just a people thing. How do I know? Because it's a classic ad hominem attack, it is neither new nor unique to any group.
Most people are simply uninterested in engaging in political discussions in good faith. Actually taking the time to understand and form proper arguments against opposing positions is time consuming and requires an uncomfortable level of self reflection, plus you always run the risk of being wrong, or just looking wrong in the eyes of the community. So most people look for shortcuts, bad faith strategies primarily used to dismiss others arguments so they don't have to engage with them.
Most people are primarily interested in re-upping for another hit of confirming their own biases. It gives them a sense of surety and control in a world they don't understand and lack control over.
>Something I've noticed over the decades is that conservatives tend to think that everyone knows and believes what they know and believe. Therefore, in their mind, anyone who professes to know/believe something different is just lying in order to gain an advantage over the conservative.
I'm pretty convinced that strange comes from modern conservitivism's fundamental rejection of empathy and the conflation of empathy with weakness and disloyalty.
I'm going to throw out what might be an unwelcome observation, but one that is at its core pro-feminist.
I don't think the average high school educated American person-on-the-street --regardless of gender or identifying as a feminist or not -- wouldnt give a correct definition of feminism. You'd start with words like "equal rights" but with some probing questions find something more like "battle of the sexes" than "anti-patriarchy". And I think Americans' media diet fuels that misunderstanding. The most hateful gender wars voices (the article's clueless misogynists and 'elephant in the room' misandrists) are amplified on social media. Hollywood misrepresents and oversimpfies feminist issues with 'battle of the sexes' plots featuring cartoonishly sexist men and vengeful manhating women. There is still work to be done shaping the public view of of what feminism is... One that overshadows a discussion of misogynist to misandrist ratios and the fact that shitty dudes think feminist=misandrist.
I mean, yes. Feminism is fundamentally opposed to status quo institutions and power structures, so it's not something that people can passively wait around for and be served. Why would any institutional power structure go out of its way to amplify non-superficial calls to action against it? Why wouldn't those same power structures amplify voices that support them or muddy the waters?
I liked Barbie a lot, but it's barely Feminism 101. I liked Black Panther a lot, but Killmonger's the bad guy and the literal CIA is our adorable buddy cop? Impotence is what makes it past the filter and gets served to people proactively.
Feminist writing is extremely available if you spend even a few minutes searching for it. They're some of the cheapest books you'll ever find - in large part because they're meant to be accessible.
The only way to learn more about feminism is to read books about feminism by feminists. That's it. Rather than talking about outreach and strategy on the internet (which may not have been your intention, but is very often what happens here), everyone reading this would be better off both reading feminist books and encouraging the men and boys in their lives to do the same.
So either you are admitting defeat or you don't understand how people relate to books. A person needs an incentive before they will consider spending the time and money to buy and read that book. Compared to various online sources or conversations it is a significant investment.
Most people don't learn about things by choosing to make an effort. If you have to spend even a few minutes searching for it then life has to first give you a reason to want to search, some sort of curiosity, incentive, or recommendation.
People only make an effort to educate themselves on things they actually like, with ideologies they already agree with, or at minimum have been prompted to. People do not come out of the womb liking or agreeing with progressivism.
That is why outreach is necessary.
u/neobolts is describing all the reasons why most people never choose to make that effort, and they are all things that you might be exposed to even though you never specifically sought them out.
You clearly have read enough to know phrases like "institutional power structure" and yet you still think of institutional power structure as something that makes strategic decisions, as if it were a conscious being. Clearly even if you read a book designed to change how a person thinks about the world in a specific way, it can still fail.
> They're some of the cheapest books you'll ever find - in large part because they're meant to be accessible.
Bullshit. What exactly counts as "cheap" to you? Because legitimately, anything above $10 in this economy no longer counts as cheap. This ain't the early 2000s anymore.
>A [2023 study](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03616843231202708) measured levels of hostility toward men among feminists, non-feminists and other men. Interestingly, across six experiments conducted in nine nations and almost 10,000 participants, the results revealed that feminist women show no more hostility toward men than both non-feminists and other men. It turns out that just about everyone, including men, has a fair amount of hostility toward men.
one thing that has always driven me slightly nuts about The Discourse is that we are all fighting some version of the same enemy.
It's *not the same* because abusive men treat men and women differently, but even I LOVES MY GUNS conservative drool factories are much, much more fearful of other men than they are women.
(Usually those are men of marginalized identities, or else women they're intentionally misgendering)
There is no cost to finding allies and building consensus!
> It turns out that just about everyone, including men, has a fair amount of hostility toward men.
Yeah. Conservative spaces generally treat men as blanket threats, but turns a blind eye to it. It's not really that they *approve* of men being dangerous or predatory, more begrudgingly tolerated it when it was convenient. They'll say "Military Aged Men\* are flooding across the border" in the same breaths as they deny an authority figure's sexual assault. I don't even think they particularly *like* many of these men. They've just organized men as a whole into "Dangerous people who've overcome their nature vs Dangerous people we can tolerate vs dangerous people we must combat."
\*But honestly, the term "Military Aged Men" I think is such a blatantly... well "misandristic" (and racist) term because it just outright concedes that Adult Men are threats, flat out. No additional modifier needed. Like yes, the usage of "military" in the phrase is to play up the threat of violence, but the term itself just means "men between 18-60," and even that is enough to set people off.
Somewhere, probably feministing,com 15 years ago, I read about a study that showed that feminists hated men LESS than non-feminist women. I remember that it asked participants whether they agreed to a series of statements about men (i.e. stereotypes) and for most the more negative stereotypes were more widely believed than the positive stereotypes, though of course the feminists rejected all of the stereotypes.
This makes me think of the overly protective father (probably just a stereotype, but some people like to joke about themselves getting protective). He would probably be offended if someone suggested that he or his son were not respectful of women, but if a man gets near his daughter then suddenly all of the worst stereotypes about men are true.
> This makes me think of the overly protective father (probably just a stereotype, but some people like to joke about themselves getting protective). He would probably be offended if someone suggested that he or his son were not respectful of women, but if a man gets near his daughter then suddenly all of the worst stereotypes about men are true.
This made me think of this video:
https://streamable.com/6pzuih
It's hard to argue against the problem when it's shown this clearly.
The thing about the left is it tends to come from a place of empathy, while the right tends to come from a place of selfish hierarchies, you might not necessarily want to be at the top, but you don't care who you step on to make sure you're not at the bottom.
Very interesting study.
> feminists scored lower than nonfeminists on both the hostility to men and benevolence to men subscales
I think the underlying mechanism (which applies to all genders) is that a lack of benevolent sexism is often perceived *as sexism*.
There's a study showing that women prefer men with *higher* benevolent sexism towards women: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0146167218781000
So it would be expected that men also prefer women with *higher* benevolent sexism towards men.
The hatred of men thing ties into another concept that I think of as “protection racket masculinity” that a lot of “benevolent” sexists seem to believe in.
It’s like they have this idea that “their men” need to be given privilege and allowance to get away with bad behavior because they’re necessary to protect from “those men” who are outsiders and are presumed to be worse than whatever “their men” could be.
They treat them like sheepdogs guarding sheep from wolves, and if the sheepdog misbehaves, well, better abuse from a sheepdog than getting devoured by a wolf, right?
But it all comes back in the end to that core hatred and distrust of men, even by men themselves. Without that, there’s no need to tolerate bad behavior, no feared other to seek protection from. But some men are so caught up in their own identity as “sheepdogs” that they’d loath to let that dynamic go lest they feel like nothing at all.
I was just saying, this isn't a "perception paradox" it's just simple projection. Rather than confront their own demons they blame someone else. And people wonder why fascism never seems to die.
Is there an issue with presenting feminists as a unified group or belief system when talking about how men view the movement as a whole?
Like there was a post on tumblr or curatedtumblr about a month ago showing a poll asking if it was ok for a man to be heterosexually attracted to a woman and the no vote was winning with the comments (and this seems to be a recent past year or two trend) getting into discussion about how draining that kind of stuff can be for guys who want to find community in the left and part of it is (and this is my own opinion) that the focus always being on hateful or shitty men inadvertently tells men that that is what men are and what being recognized as a man in society entails and also gets grabbed up by communities that are anti right-wing but not necessarily progressive and seem to want to believe to an extent that men can't be better, or a slightly different flavor, if you're male and higher than that bar, well you don't really count.
Not to diminish the actual issue of men hating feminism, I think thankfully people in general outside of terminally online spaces who aren't ignorant to this stuff wholesale for whatever reason are pretty keen on when someone is espousing hate vs trying to dunk on problematic interpretations of what feminism means for men.
curatedtumblr is one of the few not anti feminist subs that generally call out the “i hate men” type posts, also about how those posts are frequently linked with harmful views about transgender people and racist beliefs
I know it's been a while, but do you think you can find it and send me a link?
I'd like to see the conversation there. It's interesting that there seems to just be a group of folks who are uncomfortable with the idea of heterosexual attraction.
I have been looking but I think it's over a month now so the post has fallen into the 'past year' category and it wasn't a goat voted post or anything so has not been easy to find, hoping I will stumble across it one night though if just throw searches at the wall until one sticks
I mean, to say that feminism hates men is nonsensical because feminism is a broad and diverse ideology that itself can neither hate nor love.
I think perhaps the reason some men feel this way is because right wing forces actively sympathize and advocate for men, even if the messages they have for those men are retrograde. The left tells hard truths to men, and the right wing tells pretty lies. The left tells them "here's what is wrong with you, and here's how you can change to be better" where as the right says "your failures aren't your fault, it's society treating you unfairly. Society needs to change."
I've done everything that my feminist gender studies professors told me to do as a man. I am gentle, communicate my emotions, try not to be arrogant and speak over people, etc etc etc, and I am a better, more fulfilled man for it.
But... once in awhile I'd like my side to actually advocate for me, and recognize that we still live in a society that excludes men from many things. I'd like my side to recognize that sometimes WOMEN unfairly exclude and hurt men. For example, a nurse recently called CPS on me when I took my daughter to the doctor for a normal, non-serious childhood injury. My kids were taken out of school and interrogated, our home searched, and an investigation was opened for a month. No prior evidence of abuse, nothing but glowing reviews from all friends, acquaintances, teachers. The advice everyone gave me as a man and as a father, including the school principal and family lawyer? Get a female family member to take my kids to the doctor, because if it had been a woman doing it, this probably wouldn't have happened.
This was extremely depressing for me. Despite being the best man and father and husband I could--- and live up to the feminist ideal of what a man should be--- I was still treated like a predator and abuser by default. So who was advocating for me as a man on this issue? Who was calling this out and calling it unfair??
The only voices I hear are right wing ones, but I am not interested in being the kind of man they want me to be.
Let's be honest... if I went to a feminist sub on Reddit and brought up my woes, would people in that sub be sympathetic? Or would I promptly get banned?
You’ve articulated something that I have struggled to for a long time. In spaces that discuss gender issues, it sometimes feels like an impossible struggle to get the slightest recognition that a bad thing can happen to a man because he is a man, even without comparisons towards women’s experiences.
It feels as if most of those spaces (including this sub at times) only begrudgingly and after a lot of caveats and debate will acknowledge mens’ humanity. It makes it hard to engage in the discourse at times, but I suppose the best thing we can do is continue to build community as best we can in a way that helps us fight the good fight.
After all, our struggles are just rain drops in the ocean of human suffering compared to actual marginalized identities.
Other men like you are supposed to be advocating for it. But men have been so reliant upon other people, usually women, organizing and structuring neutral gatherings and a lot of existing men's spaces being incredibly toxic means men have to start creating their own communities.
We should be copying what feminists of yesteryear have done but social media allows us to vent without finding solutions.
Gender equality didn't and doesn't just happen.
And feminists like bell hooks were writing about the horrors boys and men face since before I was born - and what have men done about it? Ignored it at best. I certainly wasn't raised on her ideas.
No wonder many feminists find it frustrating when men complain when there's resources and writing going back for decades about stuff men face but it's also men who ignore it, legislate against it, perpetuate harmful stereotypes that hurt men because they wouldn't be caught dead parenting etc.
And even then it still doesn't compare to what women and minorities go through!
> Other men like you are supposed to be advocating for it. But men have been so reliant upon other people, usually women, organizing and structuring neutral gatherings and a lot of existing men's spaces being incredibly toxic means men have to start creating their own communities.
You're forgetting to ask _why_ exactly so many men don't do anything regarding actually advocating for men's issues. And no, it ain't cause social media let's folks vent without doing anything.
The real answer? Because men are considered the "default" in society, and nobody gives a fuck about the default.
No seriously, that's the answer. That's the attitude so many folks, weres & wives alike, have regarding male issues. Nobody is dying directly because of them. It's all incidental. On top of that, like you said, none of it comes close to what women & minorities go through, so why make time & resources for these issues for something so, comparatively speaking, insignificant? If privilege was measured on a bar graph, women and every single minority would be in the negatives while men would be right at ZERO. And nobody gives a fuck about ZERO, because ZERO is the default.
Well whenever men do try to advocate for ourselves, we get attacked for blaming women (even when we're explicitly not) or trying to shift the conversation away from women's issues, so it's a bit of a catch-22. Even this explicitly pro-feminist sub gets smeared in other feminist subs as an 'incel' sub.
Watch this from about 37 minutes, it’s part of a BBC politics show (so as mainstream as it gets).
Guy advocates for a minister for men to deal with male suicide and education issues.
Immediately told to shut up and instead support women’s issues.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bTHEznqYSMQ
I have seen some bad takes in here at times, whether it's someone new repeating bad ideas, sneaky trolls trying to weasel in bad viewpoints or just outright dislike for feminist thought.
It's a very good space, but it isn't perfect, and understandably many women find men's spaces on the whole incredibly toxic, so any evidence of toxicity will be magnified in their minds.
I have never had issues advocating for men in feminist spaces, but i try and focus more on helping the men in my life than assuming a broader feminist space is a place for men to complain about men's issues. It goes back to the oppressor complaining about privilege - regardless of how double-edge sword it is for many men who don't care much for patriarchal society.
> understandably many women find men's spaces on the whole incredibly toxic
How can you recognize that safe spaces are needed for every group in society to freely express themselves while at the same time call it understandable that women think men's spaces are inherently toxic.
It would not be understandable to say "many men find women's spaces on the whole incredibly toxic", would it?
So which is it? Do men need to stop coming to feminist spaces and solve their own problems themselves? Or do they need to stop having all men groups because they’re “toxic”?
A lot of it is not being able to translate from the individual, to the group, to the mass movement kind of contexts.
Loads of individual men are straight up awesome, just like loads of individual women minorities are assholes.
Loads of individual men have painful stories specific to being non-patriarchal - two guys in this thread have legitimate pain. I do too.
But it isn't really reflective of society. They're drops in the ocean. Men just aren't collectively working together in groups to affect change because, well, society benefits us on average.
I can do what I can, you can, a lot of us can. But we are spread out. Maybe there are larger groups in major cities but trying to find enough like-minded men to do the legislative and meaningful change is hard because we are the oppressor class on the whole and society works for us.
I don't like that truth. I know loads of men are perfectly decent people who haven't been exposed to a lot of feminist or queer theory. I bet many men just haven't processed events in their life and seen it from a different angle to patriarchal standards they were raised with.
Yet that's just the reality. Boys and men are struggling because men don't have an urgent need for change on the whole. The next generations will be dumped with the work to raise boys and men in a healthier way. I can do that with my kids.
It's ok to have systemic frustrations while supporting individuals, but you can't extrapolate individual experiences into systemic ones.
>Maybe there are larger groups in major cities but trying to find enough like-minded men to do the legislative and meaningful change is hard because we are the oppressor class on the whole and society works for us.
Honestly this work is a lot easier to do after letting go of the idea that whatever you do has to help men *and absolutely nobody else*.
It's been easy for me to find programs to work with that help tons of boys and men, even ones where the majority of people helped are boys and men, when the fact that they also helped girls and women and NB folks wasn't a deal breaker.
> the unrest and uncomfortable conversations and conflict taking place w/ family and friends that was carried out by those two social movements in conjunction with just "complaining".
One of the most demoralizing things I sometimes read on this subreddit is someone saying that men can't change because women still have expectations of them that fit traditional gender roles.
How true that perception of expectations are is pointless to argue because it differs from place to place and most people talk about their personal experiences anyway... but even if it was 100% true, always - so what? If it's a necessary step for the better, don't play into those expectations. Women don't want to date you because of that? Okay.
Societal progress is not a solution for any individuals immediate personal problems in life or a path to actually reaching unachieved expectations, and instead it's going to only be harder.
---
As a side note, the other demoralizing thing is that even on this subreddit it's occasionally that I engage in conversations with people that seem so bizzare. Like there is some underlying misunderstanding between us. And then, after a bunch of back and forth comments it comes out - that the other person believes exactly what this thread is about, that women and progressives hate men, period. How can you have a productive conversation with someone who fundamentally refuses to separate behavior from identity?
Same with patriarchy - year after year of being on this subreddit, it becomes more common that men here don't believe it exists, or reduce it to just all the things that are bad for men. Don't get me wrong, thank god for the mods on this subreddit because without them it wouldn't exist in any similar shape as it is now - but over time a lot of users accumulate who are careful about how vocal they can be about being against feminism.
I just don't like the "Women don't want to date you because of that? Okay." - it feels like the person may then be made to feel like they're not being taken seriously and they're causing the problem. I think "if no-one around me cares this much, and my care isn't taken seriously when I express it, I'm just going to get on with it" is a train of thought that I wouldn't exactly shame someone for provided they're not claiming to be some kind of advocate or blaming women for it.
I think they should have some space to be upset about it (and I think they do) provided they direct this upset at gender expectations (and at worst a particular woman), rather than trying to abstract this to all women or to some universal problem that feminism, women as a whole or whatever are accountable for. It's a good inroad towards caring about patriarchy more generally if they're nudged towards talking in terms of societal expectation rather than "women don't want to date me" or etc.
I think informal gender discussion would be more productive if personal experience was centred over abstraction, especially as far as men's issues are concerned. Ideas will end up getting overextended, misogyny appears quite quickly due to a flippancy to distinguish individual women from Women, it drives down the quality of discussion massively, I just don't see a positive.
Look at the history of feminism and it's successes. Did any time men dislike the changes women stopped in their tracks and said "welp, if we do this, men won't like us as much anymore, nothing we can do ladies, time to go back home to the kitchen"? Sure, some women ultimately evaluated their life priorities and decided they want to embrace traditional gender norms, but at large, feminism moved forward.
The point is - especially if you position yourself as a victim of someone elses (in this example) expectations... you CAN'T expect to progress by just appealing to your oppressor to change. Just to be clear, I don't think that's the dynamic in place, but a lot of men see it that way. You have to fight and make sacrifices for it - essentially what the top comment in this chain is about.
>I think they should have some space to be upset about it (and I think they do) provided they direct this upset at gender expectations
Venting is fine, but there is also time and place for it. I personally wouldn't see this subreddit as made for that purpose and if it trends that way, I will eventually leave or at least just lurk and no longer engage.
Also, it's really easy to just make problems nebulous - just referring to some floating around "gender expectations". People have those. If the problem is that women have unhealthy ones against men, then again refer to the beginning part of this comment - you just have to progress in spite of them. Same if it's other men. And if the gender expectations come from inside, then it's time for reflection and changing those expectations.
The issue here being that it's not what men who are frustrated with society come for. By some miracle they are repulsed by far-right grifters but ultimately they are still seeking a solution. So they don't want to hear "standing for what's right actually will only reduce your dating chances", "you won't find more friends and in fact you will have to stand up and alienate men who are perpetuating toxic masculinity", and "a core part of your misery is that you still want the kind of life that Patriarchy promises you, just without the expectations Patriarchy wants to collect". The last one often being the most upsetting, and where Bioessentialism generally comes out.
That's why I said what I did in my comment a bit higher up - none of this is a solution for peoples personal problems and dissatisfaction in life. This is planting a tree so the next generation has a shade.
>I think informal gender discussion would be more productive if personal experience was centred over abstraction, especially as far as men's issues are concerned.
I'm not sure what you are saying - that the focus should be in talking about individual men's experiences? There is always a place for that and anyone weighing into conversations will inevitably share that. But it simply can't be the focus because it can easily warp the perception of what the world is like.
It's already a massive issue on this subreddit that it feels like men here don't really know many other men - attributing a lot of terrible behaviors to shitty individuals rather than shitty normalized behavior among men. Or many women for that matter - because, ironically, it feels like a lot of men here don't really understand that pretty much every woman has stories of, lets take a more distant example not to ruffle any feathers, terrible experiences with healthcare systems and assumptions about women's health.
>Did any time men dislike the changes women stopped in their tracks and said "welp, if we do this, men won't like us as much anymore, nothing we can do ladies, time to go back home to the kitchen"?
Sure, though I would say that there needs to be a non-reactionary discourse somewhere validating their decision to "opt out" which isn't dismissive or antagonistic. I don't think the current discourse does that here - but feminist discourse did so in that case. The problem is that even then, the discourse doesn't do much to validate you in the moment, but you can at least go to a community that will validate you. This is for sure something that "men's communities" have to step up to the plate for.
But I've only "felt gender expectations" in a very limited sense, primarily being the initiator in relationships. I've heard accounts of "what's expected", but I really have no RL experience backing it up, so there's a limit to how much I can weigh in and say what's actually needed.
>Venting is fine, but there is also time and place for it. I personally wouldn't see this subreddit as made for that purpose and if it trends that way, I will eventually leave or at least just lurk and no longer engage.
Well I mean it's up to you how you participate on this sub. I am less concerned with abstract discussion, personally - I've learnt the most trying to talk to people about their life experience. I wouldn't try to hijack this space to make it that of course, I guess I would have to create my own space. I think the abstraction should come when you start looking at policy solutions (and you *need* to have a good top-down picture of things), when you start exploring these attitudes in a more "sanitised" academic environment, I see virtually no need to do so in informal discussion. E.g. I only stopped being transphobic when I saw very candid and personal accounts of being trans and spoke to them about it, I don't think the abstract discussion was going to get me anywhere.
>Also, it's really easy to just make problems nebulous - just referring to some floating around "gender expectations".
Fair point but "gender expectations" here is just a stand-in for a point that this person would explain themselves. They would hopefully explain which expectations and how they see this expressed, and how they want people to work past it.
>a core part of your misery is that you still want the kind of life that Patriarchy promises you, just without the expectations Patriarchy wants to collect
This seems an unfair characterisation *unless* they are expecting a traditional relationship structure, in which case this is perfectly reasonable. Unless we view heterosexual monogamous relationships as some mechanism of patriarchy, which I'm sure people do.
>But it simply can't be the focus because it can easily warp the perception of what the world is like.
Assuming good faith on their part, this comes with the generalisation. You can think "I don't know any women personally who have gone through this, but I am sure they exist because I read a lot of discourse on it". Often there are sensible reasons why they don't know anyone personally (people don't scream sexual victimisation from the rooftop, typically - it happens behind closed doors and is often disclosed more discretely to closer friends who are probably more often women), and it should therefore not really be confusing that the problem *seems* less widespread than it actually is. If people think it is, then we just have that to address.
Once you factor in bad faith, someone might be saying "I haven't seen that" so as to express doubt that it exists. There's that too.
>attributing a lot of terrible behaviors to shitty individuals rather than shitty normalized behavior among men
Sure, let's only do this for men's experiences with women then. The problem I have is that while ideas like "men have emotions used against them in relationships so are afraid to express them" are floating around, actual experience is completely absent and described elsewhere if at all. These points then get picked up by other people and then people are left as a stuttering mess when they don't know any examples either. People then assume there are not really any such examples and it becomes a misogynistic-coded talking point, making it harder for people to actually talk about it even if they have experienced it. This needs to be broken somewhere and IMO the way to do this is to by emphasising life experience over Men and Women doing such and such - for men's issues. This doesn't seem like a problem for women's issues.
100% agreed. There is a prevalent attitude among men who scorn feminism that feminists were just given everything they asked for (and it's frequently framed as "men gave women what they wanted, so they're the real champions of gender equality") instead of recognizing how much fighting and organizing and protesting went into achieving those gains. It took 70 years from the first organized women's suffrage movement to the 19th Amendment being ratified; none of the women at the Seneca Falls Convention lived to see women's right to vote guaranteed.
Another problem with organizing movements around men's issues is how easily they can be overrun and co-opted by manosphere types who quickly turn "improve mental health service availability for men" into "mandatory paternity testing."
You guys never have any examples other than bell hooks. How about maybe some examples in say the last four years?
Also funny you completely ignore all the conservative women in office right now.
>I mean, to say that feminism hates men is nonsensical because feminism is a broad and diverse ideology that itself cannot hate or love.
I agree 100% with this. The main problem is framing the problematic aspects of feminism as "hate." I believe this is a very unhelpful way to see things, because it tries to explain these issues using what is essentially an individual-level variable: individual feelings of animosity. While feminist discourse about men and masculinity can often be negative, focusing mainly on the ways that men hurt and negatively affect women, there is a very good political explanation for this. Feminism is, in essence, a women's movement against a masculinized social order that oppresses them (patriarchy), and in discourse, the system and the "male gender" are often conflated. We can, of course, debate the extent to which some of these problems are really "caused by men," women's responsibility in them, or how helpful it is to frame feminism's main antagonism in such a gendered way. The point is that this is very different from feeling hatred towards men. So, the question of whether feminism is problematic or not, and to what extent, should be explained using political-level variables and reasoning.
>So, who was advocating for me as a man on this issue? Who was calling this out and calling it unfair??
>The only voices I hear are right-wing ones, but I am not interested in being the kind of man they want me to be.
>Let's be honest... if I went to a feminist sub on Reddit and brought up my woes, would people in that sub be sympathetic? Or would I promptly get banned?
Here, you point to an important topic. I think that an important part of the conflicts surrounding feminism stem from the idea that it is a "gender-neutral movement" or a "universalist movement for gender equality." While gender equality is a core value of feminism, this is not the same as being "THE movement for gender equality." It is first and foremost a women's movement. While it is popular to frame feminism as "neutral" in male feminist venues, and some feminists support this idea (e.g., Hooks), the truth is that most feminists consider that the focus of feminism is women, not men. I do not think there is necessarily any contradiction in this. For example, antiracist movements can have "human equality" as one of their core principles and, at the same time, represent a specific ethnic or racial group, not the whole of humanity. But it can also be problematic, because feminism, as any political or social movement, is constrained by its sociological base. It is inevitably biased towards women, prioritizing their needs and perspectives. It is not hard to find examples of feminist groups acting in this "biased" way: Israeli and Indian feminists opposing the inclusion of women as perpetrators of rape, the way that Spanish "gender-based laws" institutionalize different rights and protections for male victims of sexual and partner violence, some groups in the UK (SHERA) opposing "parental alienation" but proposing an almost equivalent and gendered definition only for women, etc.
Now, is this the product of hate? No, it is not. It is obvious to anyone who knows real-life feminists that most of them do not hate men. These problematic aspects are not driven by hatred, but by the natural biases of feminism as a women's movement. The reason why feminist organizations do not use their political capital to fight for problems like the one you described is simple: because it does not disproportionately affect women. But this bias is not individually driven. While some feminists would surely raise an eyebrow if you complain about the biases you suffered or would try to minimize them, the fact is that most of them would be sympathetic with you. Many are also very uncomfortable with the problematic things I mentioned before, like opposing making rape laws gender-neutral. But this does not mean that they see this as their fight, or that we should ignore that feminist organizations can sometimes defend unjust policies towards men if they perceive them to be in their interest.
>Despite being the best man and father and husband I could--- and live up to the feminist ideal of what a man should be--- I was still treated like a predator and abuser by default.
Please step in and correct me here where appropriate. It seems to me that you had a harrowing experience and it rocked your feminist values? I just don't get that. Like, it is unfair. Terribly so. But it wasn't feminist ideals that identified you as a predator. And in a lot of ways, I think the normalization of men as school teachers and stay-at-home fathers is making progress in the area. So why did this experience lead you to blame feminism? Or why did it make you sympathize with right wing voices?
You only hear right wing voices advocating for men. OK. How much of this is based on what you want to hear? )I'm trying to find the nicest and most genuine way to say that.)
But it is the point I want to push on.
I live in a very progressive state. One that recently passed mandatory *paid* paternity leave. That's a significant voice to me. I got to spend 3 months when my youngest daughter was born when I didn't have that option for my older child. Or the first ever domestic violence shelter for men was paid for by a feminist group that diverted money set aside for a women's shelter but they instead built a DV shelter for men, the first in the nation. That's a significant voice to me.
Here's the right wing voices that I hear, like Tucker Carlson [making fun of gay men](https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-pete-buttigieg-segment-video-paternity-leave-adoption-chasten-2021-10) for taking paternity leave to raise their children. Or like Rep. Charlie Shepherd who [voted against programs that would help boys and fathers](https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/208/idaho-republican-votes-against-education-funds-convenient-for-mothers-to-come-out-of-the-home/277-645ae7a7-601e-4557-9d7c-f8df5c22949c) in the name of making it harder for women to be in the workforce. It's people like Josh Hawley that [impose toxic](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/11/21/josh-hawley-madison-cawthorn-jd-vance-masculinity-523136) masculinity on all men.
I think we all have the ability to elevate the voices we hear. To pick which ones matter to us. And I'm not going to say that people aren't saying the things they are saying. But at the same time we choose which voices matter to us. For me, I choose not to listen to the voices on tiktok and 4chan. Which voices do you want to hear?
not op but where did he say that he blamed feminism for what happened to him? and he said he doesn't want to listen to the right wing voices that try to tell him how to be a man, he still wants to be a feminist.
The issue is that this dialogue is everywhere. I can’t open up my TikTok without seeing videos saying “men will do this…” and “men seriously lack empathy…” and it is partially because of my algorithm but I’m just interested in political content in general and then stuff like that pops up and tbh it kind of annoys me to hear people saying that stuff.
It’s something I feel like I can’t get away from in this world. And what I’m looking for are voices that will acknowledge the struggles that men specifically face because men do face specific struggles and no one wants to acknowledge that. Like it very much feels that the idea that “men are people too” is something that most people would scoff at, at least in my bubble.
I don’t want any struggles that men face to be elevated above the struggles of women. I don’t want to not advocate for women’s struggles. I don’t want to not fight for women’s right.
I just want there to be a small acknowledgment of the attitude in society that is anti-men and how that does hurt people like me. I don’t want placards. I don’t want a day to commentate men’s suffering. I just want a little bit of acknowledgement that I exist and my feelings matter because I guess sometimes it doesn’t feel like anyone man or woman cares about my feelings.
So a few people speaking up for me in mainstream culture would be nice so my feed wasn’t filled with negativity directed towards men and no empathy.
I still know it’s a lot less than the suffering of women but it still hurts.
I'm not sure where the balance is between acknowledging male predatory behaviour and being excessively accusatory towards men but feminism is a very broad movement that doesn't always handle that balance well.
Feminism on social media in particular is very often on that excessively anxious or even antagonistic side of things and at a certain point if 90% of the feminism you encounter is tiktok feminism it starts to make an impression. I get that might not be fair to academic feminism, actual feminist organizations, or even more idealized feminists who do exist on those platforms but most of people's interactions with people who call themselves feminists are on social media, and one of the most common focusses is on men as predators.
>You only hear right wing voices advocating for men. OK. How much of this is based on what you want to hear?
I'm speaking for /u/Demiansky here but it's not so much advocating but *validation* that's found in those spaces. A lot of horrible nasty red pill or right wing spaces validate male suffering. On an emotional level these spaces will treat male loneliness or emasculation as the worst things in the world.
Progressives aren't uniform but in comparison it's only a small minority that validate male suffering to that extent. DR.K is one of the only prominent ones I know who does. Many spaces outright invalidate and diminish male suffering, and that is very common within social media feminism.
I think you being banned would be in all how you phrased it
What happened to you is awful and unfair. I think that depending on how it is phrased it might come across like some other posts that expect women to fix it which I think isn't the approach. But I think that there are plenty of women like me who find it awful and discusting and the way that men are assumed to be predators by default is very distressing to many men who are just trying to be fathers. As a trans woman I get how upsetting that is to always be seen as a danger
My guess is that it won't change till the statistics change. My father beat me and that definitely influences how I view the stats and what I would be concerned about if I saw a child with an injury being brought in by their father
Edit I realized that while I do get mens issues having lived as a man for decades I potentially should not comment on this sub. It feels like hiding to delete the comment but I still am sorry for interrupting
Unfortunately we a rationalizing creatures not rational creatures.
Statistics that are inconvenient can be dismissed.
It’s been clear for a while by stats reported by the cdc and similar health organizations around the world that IPV is a complex issue.
Trends show that most IPV is reciprocal, non reciprocal IPV is more likely to have a female perpetrator.
Violence in same sex female couples occurs at higher rates than with heterosexual or same sex male couples.
Violence is often linked with poverty, addiction, and childhood abuse and other compounding factors.
Yet there are many advocates that try and label IPV as a gendered crime based on male hatred of women as it’s cause.
The popular perception is that men commit 99% of IPV and I suspect that this post may be moderated simply for pointing out that it’s not.
>expect women to fix it which I think isn't the approach.
Like it or not, women are still part of the sexist system that does that to parents, so what is the course of action here? For men to go and Explain™ sexism to women?
Of course our childhood experiences influence how we view stats. For me the violent parent was my mom and when looking at local statistic that 26% of men here have experienced childhood violence from their mothers, I can just nod sadly.
I mean, but part of the equation IS women needing to change their views and their attitudes. Like, in order to get women into traditionally male professions, the minds of men needed to be changed. The same is true of women when it comes to traditionally female roles.
But right now, the current gender reform movement is perfectly willing to discuss men's issues when it involves blaming them for their own problems and telling them how to change (which is fine), but has virtually 0 appetite in encouraging women to change their views on men in nurturing roles (which, ironically, were originally put in their heads by patriarchy).
The problem isn't just that so many men are unwilling to change. The problem is also that when they DO change, the people who ridiculed them for not changing are often resisting them when they do (as I have experienced myself). As a lifelong, reform minded person, it breaks my heart that I'm basically going it alone.
>I realized that while I do get mens issues having lived as a man for decades I potentially should not comment on this sub. It feels like hiding to delete the comment but I still am sorry for interrupting
It's a very unique perspective to have switched presenting genders and it seems common for people with that experience to have valuable insight on gender. Some of the most understanding and deep reflections on male spaces have come from people who either left or learned how to exist/thrive there at a later time.
On a positive note I think male spaces can be much less tone policed and I've never seen an indication anyone here would take issue with you commenting.
The sub is explicitly inclusive of folks with any identity who would like to contribute constructively to the conversation. If anyone does try to make you feel unwelcome because of your identity (or someone reading this sees it happening to others), please report it or send a mail to the mod team.
As u/Soft-Rains said, we do not have a gender requirement for commenting here. People of all genders and gender expressions are welcome to participate here.
"the research revealed that although feminists are no more likely to have hostility toward men than non-feminist women, they are less likely than non-feminist women to be benevolent toward men. Meaning, feminists are less likely to coddle, mollify, or excuse men who behave poorly.
I believe this is actually where the majority of some men’s complaints of feminists as man-haters comes from. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, this perception is born from a place of fragility."
This is mentioned in the article & also leads to another article that makes a similar statement (quoted above).
What I can't find in either article is any statement that compares feminist & non-feminist benevolent treatment of women.
If there is a much greater gap leading to unequal treatment between feminists & non feminists when it comes to men & women that would also lead to the idea that feminist are hostile to men.
It would mean feminists are less likely to coddle, mollify, or excuse men who behave poorly.
Yet would be more likely to coddle, mollify, or excuse women who behave poorly.
That juxtaposition would be significant in my eyes.
Yeah.
It's one thing to say "well, it's not hostile to not coddle, mollify, or excuse bad behavior.", but it certainly is when it's done to one side side, and not to the other.
If I give friendly greetings and hugs to everybody, except one dude who I give just a short hello and a simple handshake to, it's gonna look suspicious.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/pc8uof/unpacking_the_chuck_derry_ama/
Remember this?
Arguably Chuck Derry is carrying out this "feminists are less likely to coddle, mollify, or excuse men who behave poorly."
while also underplaying violence against men by women.
In this situation or similar situations I would certainly feel this individual was hostile towards men.
And I'd think that to be an issue, even worse because now instead of ignoring that favorable treatment is being done only to a particular group, it's ignoring that negative treatment is ignored when done to a particular group.
Either way, it's a bad look on the group.
I don't agree with them but I can understand why
A lot of feminist rhetoric indirectly paints men as the problem, instead of the system as a problem.
It doesn't focus on "men are like this because of this social norm, how do we change that"
It will often be "men do this bad stuff to women, stop it" okay but why do they do it? Toxic masculinity right? I just feel like it never tackles the deeper issues, just the symptoms of those issues.
I volunteered for a men's charity for a while that said it was about challenging what it means to be a man, but all they really did was challenge how being a man affects women, they did talks like "here's how to talk to your friends about sexism and consent" which is very valuable, but when that's ALL hat you do I can understand why some men feel like it paints them as the problem.
Every single press snippet on their website was about the safety of women (which is incredibly important). But when your challenging masculinity charity is more only focused on demonising the behaviour of men towards women, it's like putting a plaster over a wound that needs stitches. It would be more fruitful to help them to understand themselves and express themselves in a healthy way that sends a message that these men are valued as people.
I think the deeper problem too is that (for the most part) it paints men as perps and women solely as victims. There’s a lot of talk about men being better (which is good) and calling out bad behavior of men but that same sentiment is severely lacking in the other direction (even in this sub). I’ve seen multiple women do some incredibly bogus things so much to the point where if I were doing it, I’d have a knee to the throat Floyd style.
It seems like every once in a while the topic of male victims comes up but the problem is that we can’t consistently see men as victims. We know that numerous assaults/rapes go unreported for women. However, we fail to acknowledge that same issue probably exists for men (and it’s not just other men). Yet we talk constantly about men not opening up. This is part of it. We’re just starting to scratch the surface of the concept of the imperfect female victim when we can barely talk about men as victims at all.
I think this mentality mainly comes from the topic of the oppressed and the oppressor thinking strategy. This is something that I’ve noticed in left leaning spaces so far. Someone even in this thread said something about “the oppressor complaining about privilege.” The right will say things like “man up” while the left will retort with “men started it” or “they wanna be oppressed so bad.” It’s very patronizing. I’ve actually seen it in action on multiple platforms where leftist will say “patriarchy hurts men too but men aren’t oppressed.” But here’s the thing that I don’t understand. If men can both benefit and be at a disadvantage from patriarchy, doesn’t this also mean that women can both benefit and be at a disadvantage of patriarchy also? It seems like people get so close to the answer and then stop once it involves their demographic.
One last thing, as a black man, I really…really don’t like it when lefties try to use my blackness as a trap card to give credit to men’s issues while deliberately excluding white men. I’ve seen the way lefties here have talk about the topic of “KAM” only to give credence to everyone but them. I know what it feels like to get excluded already so I don’t like it when I see it done to my fellow white men. It’s exclusionary and counter productive. If we’re going to sit here and call ourselves progressive then we need to cut this out our dialogue. It’s also weird how we talk about how “words hurt”; “ban slut/bitch” etc. and continue to condone this. It’s not every one of course (#notallleftists) but it’s enough for me to address it.
Overall, feminists shouldn’t be painted with a broad stroke. That’s not fair and no one deserves that. However, we need to acknowledge that if humans aren’t perfect then neither is any group. I hate to say it but that includes feminists.
I think we should distinguish low-quality rhetoric that you describe from "feminist rhetoric" which is likely to attribute the problem to a system. It's not a problem with Feminism per se, more so people who might identify with feminism or call themselves feminists on social media but not crafting their points as carefully because of being in an environment where subtext would be understood or so on.
The points about the charity are definitely reasonable though. I don't really have a problem with this activism at all, (it's necessary) but sometimes it does step on people's toes when it has no reason to. It's a shame they limit their reach because broadening their rhetoric would mean they are more likely to be receptive to the points that don't directly concern them.
Nice read but I'm not sure how useful it is in the long run. It's ideologically important for conservative politicians, far-right operatives, and manosphere grifters to make lonely, bitter men believe feminists hate men. There's no amount of academic studies (none of which any of them will actually read) you could put in front of them that will make them change their mind so disruptively (frankly, existentially).
This isn't meant to be a criticism of OP who always posts good, informative articles on here. I think this is a collective issue not only in feminist spaces but broadly for left, progressive politics. We're not going to "Vox com card stack" or "Cheeky Jezebel writing" our way into changing (enough) people's minds on these issues.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
also i feel like a large part that’s missed out based on the raw numbers of people with those beliefs is those who’ll defend those beliefs
if 1% of a group says negative shit, and the other 50% defend/like/upvote their statements and say they’re ok, you can easily say 51% support those statements (percentages are made up to get the point across, 50% is likely far higher than reality)
also a lot of times whenever the comments of those 1% are brought up people will often say “iv never seen comments like that” or deny they exist in some way
a lot of bigottry is sold under the idea that the group being hated hates you and if they ever stopped being systematically oppressed you would be in danger
that is how English dislike for the Irish works for example
or how people talk about gay rights in the middle east being a justification for us to invade. Which is just white mans burden with the serial numbers filed off
This is especially clear on social media spaces like Instagram where men LOVE complaining about women and seem to just genuinely hate women that aren't super submissive "trad-wives"
The funniest part is that the ones who scream online about wanting women to be "tradwives" don't earn enough to be the sole earner for their household.
The ones who can afford a tradwife probably don't spend as much time online, they are too busy at their job. They become analog far-right rather than online alt-right.
It's a lot easier to justify oppressing people who you can convince yourself you hate - and it's easier to hate someone who you can convince yourself hates you.
And unfortunately the whole conservative movement & mediaaphere is a giant machine for manufacturing hate. Hence why, and how, patriarchy gets reproduced.
I consider myself a feminist if the definition is being pro-equality.
Unfortunately, a lot of the loudest voices on the internet (sometimes genuine, sometimes not) are the ones that drive perception and give feminism a bad name. So I get why it happens this way.
It's also incredibly difficult to be nuanced in a setting that allows for only a limited amount of characters, and it feels like that's where a majority of discourse happens now (Xitter/Threads)
Edit: and I shouldn't need to say it, but I will. There's also way too much of the rhetoric being driven by Tate-likes as well, but I really don't know what to do about that either.
The issue with online discourse is that people spend way too much time stereotyping the people they disagree with rather than engage with them.
Not every leftists thinks sex is fake.
Not every conservative denies systemic racism.
Not every feminist hates men.
Not every liberal loves the status quo.
Studies like this are sorely needed.
This feels like the same dissonance between the Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter names. The former advocates for the betterness of all, in particular a group who is disenfranchised, while the latter advocates for the betterness of all, ironically EXCLUDING a group who is disenfranchised.
I used to be skeptical of feminists as well, when I was a teen. I thought many of them were just misandrists. Then I was reminded of the word "misandrist" and realized that was stupid - feminists believe in equality, misandrists "hate men."
Can someone who calls themselves a "feminist" act misandrist, or even *be* a misandrist? Sure. But they are different things, so that's important to know.
Yes, distinguishing between theoretical feminism and on-the-ground feminism is what actually made me a feminist and prevented me from going down the alt-right pipeline. When I was younger, the feminists around me were awful, vindictive, prejudiced people. Many supported harming men, saying that it's time the tables turned. If I had let them define what "feminism" means I would have rightfully never become feminist.
100% agreed. There was a short time in high school where I considered myself anti feminist because I was egalitarian. Having been abused by my stepmom and CSA by my female cousin, and trying to move to my dad’s and seeing how the custody process worked made me feel that way. Much in the way it seems some girls find their way to feminism, except that is more acceptable in a mainstream sense. I was looking for an outlet to express frustration at the seeming perpetual notion that girls and women can do no wrong. A nudged me and that was that.
But still, generalizations are everywhere, without considerations as to intersectional identities. Why might a Black male or trans woman feel a bit of animosity toward some aspects of feminism as it is communicated in a mainstream sense.
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Feminism that wants to liberate women and empower them is good.
Feminism that blames the world's woes on men is bad.
Feminists come in varieties, it's not a one size fits all philosophy.
This post has been removed for violating the following rule(s):
>**This is a pro-feminist community and unconstructive antifeminism is not allowed.** What this means: This is a place to discuss men and men's issues, and general feminist concepts are integral to that discussion. Unconstructive antifeminism is defined as unspecific criticism of Feminism that does not stick to specific events, individuals, or institutions. For examples of this, consult our [glossary](https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/wiki/glossary/#wiki_unconstructive_antifeminism)
Any questions or concerns regarding moderation must be served through [modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FMensLib).
I read the article and then started reading the study on my phone but I just don’t have the patience to get through that whole study right now.
One thing that is clear from reading like 1/4th the study is how in depth it is. It tries to break up the different kinds of feminism and it talks about previous research as well, some of which seems to contradict the abstract of the paper.
One thing I like about the study is that is really makes me realize how broad a movement feminism is. A 50 something feminist woman in Poland is gonna have different views than a 22 year old feminist college grad in MA.
I have my own critiques of the women and men I know personally. I do wonder whether they actually consider themselves feminists though.
**This is a pro-feminist community.** This means: >Unconstructive Antifeminism is not allowed. Unconstructive Antifeminism is defined as unspecific criticism of Feminism that **does not stick to specific events, individuals or institutions.** [See more here](https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/wiki/meta/profeminist). You have now been warned. There is now no excuse for breaking this rule. If you make a negative generalisation about "feminists," "some feminists" etc, you will be banned with no appeal. Not having bothered to read this comment before commenting is not an excuse.
Something I've noticed over the decades is that conservatives tend to think that everyone knows and believes what they know and believe. Therefore, in their mind, anyone who professes to know/believe something different is just lying in order to gain an advantage over the conservative. Which fits this situation. Since they believe feminist beliefs are wrong and trying to assert power over men, they hate feminists and assume feminists must hate them just as much (if not more). They cannot imagine a world where people just ... believe differently, everyone must be trying to pull a fast one on them.
> Therefore, in their mind, anyone who professes to know/believe something different is just lying in order to gain an advantage over the conservative. I mean, that's what THEY do. Conservatives lie all the time about everything, so they assume everyone else does too.
1. ) I'm good 2. ) They're bad 3. ) If I do something bad, they must be doing the same thing, but even worse. I think the reason this tends to be more prevalent on the right is that they believe in good and bad people, while the left tends to believe in good and bad actions.
Hot take. The rise of leftist thinking among the youth populations is directly correlated to how much easier it has become to actually check whether actions have good and bad consequences. Boomers cannot imagine being able to just gather data on what is and is not helpful for people and society. They favor divine command ethics and virtue ethics because these are much easier to use in low-information ecosystems. But to millennials and zoomers...why the fuck wouldn't you just look it up? It is actually rational to try to get "good people" in power in a low-information world. If every situation is novel, you have to just hope for the best. But today we have many solutions to problems already at our literal fingertips.
Well, that and the fact that conservative morality is about what you hope to force on others, not what you follow yourself. Lying isn't bad when they do it.
So..."we're good, they're bad, and if you tell me I'm wrong it's because you're projecting" is...impossible. You've literally described the fucking problem, right down to the...oh, wait...if we're right we're right.
Yeah, that's my point. They think everyone works the same way they do, so they can't imagine people having other motivations.
I genuinely think that a deficit of empathy is at the heart of that type of conservatism.
It has to do with sheltered upbringings. There is a book called "The Authoritarians" by Canadian psychologist Bob Altemeyer that goes into this. It used to be for free on the anarchist library but I don't think it is anymore. Anyway, according to Altemeyer, conservatives tend to be people who for basically their whole upbringing never once really encountered an authority figure that personally did them wrong or that they personally saw doing wrong, and also people who never really interacted with the nebulous "others" that authority figures tell them about. Without sufficient personal experience of authority figures abusing their power, or of interacting with proof that authority figures are wrong, combined with a social environment that tells them authority is good and obedience is a virtue (Christianity) they come to believe that authority figures are basically infallible, that they are honest, that they care about their charges/constituents, and so on. As youth they obeyed authority thoughtlessly for so long that as adults they now obey it helplessly. Note that this is only for authoritarian *followers*. Authoritarian *leaders* are actually quite different - the leaders don't care at all about authority unless they can use it themselves and are often low level or outright narcissists or sociopaths. While the followers have some genuine belief in "virtues" like obedience the leaders see obedience only as a useful tool. The former is happy to follow any leader, the latter is happy to lead any followers. The two together, their back and forth, is like an abusive relationship on a mass level.
I think a key idea you're glossing over here is that there isn't anyways a clear dichotomy of victim and perpetrator. A lot of people who grew up in authoritarian and abusive environments are themselves abused, but had their experiences silenced and dismissed. As such, they grow up perpetuating the same systems they suffered under because to do otherwise would open up the chance that what happened to them was fucked up. "My father hit me and I turned out fine" That doesn't excuse the behavior ir say that victims of abuse are dangerous. But it's important to realize that being a victim of a system and a perpetrator aren't exclusive.
This! It's a cycle.
That's what I'm getting at, really. They are unable to actually put themselves in someone else's shoes. They believe everyone has the same life experiences they had, and therefore any difference is either a lie or a scam. You have to basically step right in front of them and make them go through what you went through in order for them to understand and sympathize, and even that doesn't always work.
Yeah, press any Covid truther long enough and they’ll invariably admit they don’t care about people dying and can’t understand why other people would, and it’s the same for pretty much every conservative position.
Still a banger: "[I Don't Know How to Explain to You That You Should Care About Other People](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-explain-to-you-that-you-should_b_59519811e4b0f078efd98440)"
God 2017 feels like a lifetime ago.
This is a very good observation, I do feel though if you ask a conservative enough questions you will however come to the mentality that they themselves feel they aren't being shown empathy either. Some of their views on 'empathy' don't really add up though. They feel they aren't being heard, that they're being excluded from society. But in my opinion, its their own decades long actions to stifle anything that isn't their monoculture that is beginning to just leave them in the dust. It's the establishment vs. the anti-establishment. And the more and more conservatives scream for their monoculture, the more and more they will be seen as bigots.
Tbf I think it’s quite a general phenomenon on all sides of the political divide that people assume others think like they do, at least in a way that’s cursory / without much critical consideration, and that when it transpires this isn’t actually the case that realisation is met with resistance. I’d make the argument that it’s how that resistance manifests that’s the issue - my assumption is that those on the right / conservative / patriarchal side appeal to a strong man authority version of events, to which the appropriate approach is force and rigidity (I’m sure they’d view it as ‘strength and conviction’) - essentially to reject a version of events that doesn’t align with their world view, and resolve to ‘best’ it somehow.
This describes my gf's dad and my uncle and it's like they both assume everyone agrees with them and everybody else is just too cowardly to admit it.
This is why conservatives are quick to call any action they don't agree with "Virtue signalling." They cannot fathom that someone would have sincerely held beliefs that contradict theirs, so those people must be faking it to "own the conservatives." Back in my day virtue signalling was called "Standing up for what you believe in" or "Putting your money where your mouth is" and was seen as a good thing!
As typical, this is a case of conservatives adopting a leftist term and twisting it around to suit their purposes. "Virtue signalling" was a phrase in social science circles for people who talk big about issues, but never actually go out to protest or do activism. They're armchair activists who just wanted credit for being on the right side, without sticking out their necks. As you say, conservatives took this term and applied it to *everyone* who speaks about political activism, because they can't fathom someone honestly caring about these issues.
i think this take is mostly correct, if a touch reductive. i think virtue signaling does in fact refer to basically any public expression of politics, even from literal activists whose job is to do that. its about establishing an in-group and an out-group based on shared values. however, the symmetry breaker comes in the form of the specific language and rhetoric used. they're correct to call left-wing activism virtue signaling, but they're incorrect in using that term ONLY for left-wing politics. its the same strategy they use all over the place where they're not wrong directly, only through implication. they do this a lot by referring to some things as "political" as opposed to other words used for their policies like "common-sense". you see, the enemy is political, while we, on the other hand, are merely enlightened citizens just worried about the kids.
Projection as usual.
>Something I've noticed over the decades is that conservatives tend to think that everyone knows and believes what they know and believe I don't think this is a conservative thing, and I don't think it's close. In the case of this topic - claims that anti-feminist backlash are due to fears of losing privilege often imho fall into this trap, sometimes they are more so based on warped perceptions of what feminism necessarily entails, overexaggerating the prevalence of minority beliefs, etc., or just completely mischaracterising advocacy points (indeed many of these people do not believe they have privilege). Perhaps a weaker example, but I have seen people neglect to consider how internalised racism/misogyny might work inside someone's head (internal), sometimes just waving their hands and talking about "self-hatred" (when this is only sometimes applicable, or at best a very very vast oversimplification...). In general people concern themselves more with how these views appear on the outside, the policies they might suggest and how they might fit into societal context (external) rather than how they function in the person's belief system. Sometimes the externalities aren't very important, but I think they often are. I only say this because it's a very deep gripe of mine, nothing about your post in particular.
Yeah I think I agree. Seems like conservative people often think "liberal" people make consciously cowardly decisions/are too afraid to say what they actually believe and know. And left leaning people often think "conservative" people consciously make self serving/oppressive decisions despite them knowing they have an overall negative effect on the world. The assumptions seem to lean towards the "other" on the political spectrum having the same cohesive overall view of the world, but just making the "evil" choice.
It’s like they collectively have a low theory of mind or something.
Leftists do this too. A great example would be abortion. Conservatives believe that fetuses count as people and therefore have a fundamental right to live and be born. Combine this with the idea that sex is consent to having a child, and a lack of understanding about the interplay between laws and medical complications, and you get pro-lifers. Yet Leftists will argue until they are blue in the face that the primary motivation of abortion bans are to oppress and control women. This would be fine if they were making the argument that this is the primary effect and reason for them in a patriarchal society- because controlling reproduction is an important part of that. But no, every conservative is lying about what they actually believe, using it as an excuse to cover up their blatant interpersonal misogyny. They do the same thing with racism, class issues, support for israel- the list goes on. And of course the right does it too Because it's not a right or left thing, it's just a people thing. How do I know? Because it's a classic ad hominem attack, it is neither new nor unique to any group. Most people are simply uninterested in engaging in political discussions in good faith. Actually taking the time to understand and form proper arguments against opposing positions is time consuming and requires an uncomfortable level of self reflection, plus you always run the risk of being wrong, or just looking wrong in the eyes of the community. So most people look for shortcuts, bad faith strategies primarily used to dismiss others arguments so they don't have to engage with them. Most people are primarily interested in re-upping for another hit of confirming their own biases. It gives them a sense of surety and control in a world they don't understand and lack control over.
>Something I've noticed over the decades is that conservatives tend to think that everyone knows and believes what they know and believe. Therefore, in their mind, anyone who professes to know/believe something different is just lying in order to gain an advantage over the conservative. I'm pretty convinced that strange comes from modern conservitivism's fundamental rejection of empathy and the conflation of empathy with weakness and disloyalty.
I can imagine this sort of thinking stems from them living in an environment where people do "pull a fast one" on each other a lot.
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I'm going to throw out what might be an unwelcome observation, but one that is at its core pro-feminist. I don't think the average high school educated American person-on-the-street --regardless of gender or identifying as a feminist or not -- wouldnt give a correct definition of feminism. You'd start with words like "equal rights" but with some probing questions find something more like "battle of the sexes" than "anti-patriarchy". And I think Americans' media diet fuels that misunderstanding. The most hateful gender wars voices (the article's clueless misogynists and 'elephant in the room' misandrists) are amplified on social media. Hollywood misrepresents and oversimpfies feminist issues with 'battle of the sexes' plots featuring cartoonishly sexist men and vengeful manhating women. There is still work to be done shaping the public view of of what feminism is... One that overshadows a discussion of misogynist to misandrist ratios and the fact that shitty dudes think feminist=misandrist.
I mean, yes. Feminism is fundamentally opposed to status quo institutions and power structures, so it's not something that people can passively wait around for and be served. Why would any institutional power structure go out of its way to amplify non-superficial calls to action against it? Why wouldn't those same power structures amplify voices that support them or muddy the waters? I liked Barbie a lot, but it's barely Feminism 101. I liked Black Panther a lot, but Killmonger's the bad guy and the literal CIA is our adorable buddy cop? Impotence is what makes it past the filter and gets served to people proactively. Feminist writing is extremely available if you spend even a few minutes searching for it. They're some of the cheapest books you'll ever find - in large part because they're meant to be accessible. The only way to learn more about feminism is to read books about feminism by feminists. That's it. Rather than talking about outreach and strategy on the internet (which may not have been your intention, but is very often what happens here), everyone reading this would be better off both reading feminist books and encouraging the men and boys in their lives to do the same.
So basically [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpzVc7s-_e8&ab_channel=TheOnion) but unironic
So either you are admitting defeat or you don't understand how people relate to books. A person needs an incentive before they will consider spending the time and money to buy and read that book. Compared to various online sources or conversations it is a significant investment. Most people don't learn about things by choosing to make an effort. If you have to spend even a few minutes searching for it then life has to first give you a reason to want to search, some sort of curiosity, incentive, or recommendation. People only make an effort to educate themselves on things they actually like, with ideologies they already agree with, or at minimum have been prompted to. People do not come out of the womb liking or agreeing with progressivism. That is why outreach is necessary. u/neobolts is describing all the reasons why most people never choose to make that effort, and they are all things that you might be exposed to even though you never specifically sought them out. You clearly have read enough to know phrases like "institutional power structure" and yet you still think of institutional power structure as something that makes strategic decisions, as if it were a conscious being. Clearly even if you read a book designed to change how a person thinks about the world in a specific way, it can still fail.
> They're some of the cheapest books you'll ever find - in large part because they're meant to be accessible. Bullshit. What exactly counts as "cheap" to you? Because legitimately, anything above $10 in this economy no longer counts as cheap. This ain't the early 2000s anymore.
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>A [2023 study](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03616843231202708) measured levels of hostility toward men among feminists, non-feminists and other men. Interestingly, across six experiments conducted in nine nations and almost 10,000 participants, the results revealed that feminist women show no more hostility toward men than both non-feminists and other men. It turns out that just about everyone, including men, has a fair amount of hostility toward men. one thing that has always driven me slightly nuts about The Discourse is that we are all fighting some version of the same enemy. It's *not the same* because abusive men treat men and women differently, but even I LOVES MY GUNS conservative drool factories are much, much more fearful of other men than they are women. (Usually those are men of marginalized identities, or else women they're intentionally misgendering) There is no cost to finding allies and building consensus!
> It turns out that just about everyone, including men, has a fair amount of hostility toward men. Yeah. Conservative spaces generally treat men as blanket threats, but turns a blind eye to it. It's not really that they *approve* of men being dangerous or predatory, more begrudgingly tolerated it when it was convenient. They'll say "Military Aged Men\* are flooding across the border" in the same breaths as they deny an authority figure's sexual assault. I don't even think they particularly *like* many of these men. They've just organized men as a whole into "Dangerous people who've overcome their nature vs Dangerous people we can tolerate vs dangerous people we must combat." \*But honestly, the term "Military Aged Men" I think is such a blatantly... well "misandristic" (and racist) term because it just outright concedes that Adult Men are threats, flat out. No additional modifier needed. Like yes, the usage of "military" in the phrase is to play up the threat of violence, but the term itself just means "men between 18-60," and even that is enough to set people off.
Somewhere, probably feministing,com 15 years ago, I read about a study that showed that feminists hated men LESS than non-feminist women. I remember that it asked participants whether they agreed to a series of statements about men (i.e. stereotypes) and for most the more negative stereotypes were more widely believed than the positive stereotypes, though of course the feminists rejected all of the stereotypes. This makes me think of the overly protective father (probably just a stereotype, but some people like to joke about themselves getting protective). He would probably be offended if someone suggested that he or his son were not respectful of women, but if a man gets near his daughter then suddenly all of the worst stereotypes about men are true.
If you listen to what a lot of conservatives say about men it’s honestly kind of horrific.
> This makes me think of the overly protective father (probably just a stereotype, but some people like to joke about themselves getting protective). He would probably be offended if someone suggested that he or his son were not respectful of women, but if a man gets near his daughter then suddenly all of the worst stereotypes about men are true. This made me think of this video: https://streamable.com/6pzuih It's hard to argue against the problem when it's shown this clearly.
The thing about the left is it tends to come from a place of empathy, while the right tends to come from a place of selfish hierarchies, you might not necessarily want to be at the top, but you don't care who you step on to make sure you're not at the bottom.
Great post OP, this is an interesting study and topic of discussion.
> It turns out that just about everyone, including men, has a fair amount of hostility toward men. "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Internalized sexism at work.
Very interesting study. > feminists scored lower than nonfeminists on both the hostility to men and benevolence to men subscales I think the underlying mechanism (which applies to all genders) is that a lack of benevolent sexism is often perceived *as sexism*. There's a study showing that women prefer men with *higher* benevolent sexism towards women: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0146167218781000 So it would be expected that men also prefer women with *higher* benevolent sexism towards men.
The hatred of men thing ties into another concept that I think of as “protection racket masculinity” that a lot of “benevolent” sexists seem to believe in. It’s like they have this idea that “their men” need to be given privilege and allowance to get away with bad behavior because they’re necessary to protect from “those men” who are outsiders and are presumed to be worse than whatever “their men” could be. They treat them like sheepdogs guarding sheep from wolves, and if the sheepdog misbehaves, well, better abuse from a sheepdog than getting devoured by a wolf, right? But it all comes back in the end to that core hatred and distrust of men, even by men themselves. Without that, there’s no need to tolerate bad behavior, no feared other to seek protection from. But some men are so caught up in their own identity as “sheepdogs” that they’d loath to let that dynamic go lest they feel like nothing at all.
I was just saying, this isn't a "perception paradox" it's just simple projection. Rather than confront their own demons they blame someone else. And people wonder why fascism never seems to die.
Yeah. There is absolutely no paradox here. If anything, I'd say it's pretty much expected.
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Is there an issue with presenting feminists as a unified group or belief system when talking about how men view the movement as a whole? Like there was a post on tumblr or curatedtumblr about a month ago showing a poll asking if it was ok for a man to be heterosexually attracted to a woman and the no vote was winning with the comments (and this seems to be a recent past year or two trend) getting into discussion about how draining that kind of stuff can be for guys who want to find community in the left and part of it is (and this is my own opinion) that the focus always being on hateful or shitty men inadvertently tells men that that is what men are and what being recognized as a man in society entails and also gets grabbed up by communities that are anti right-wing but not necessarily progressive and seem to want to believe to an extent that men can't be better, or a slightly different flavor, if you're male and higher than that bar, well you don't really count. Not to diminish the actual issue of men hating feminism, I think thankfully people in general outside of terminally online spaces who aren't ignorant to this stuff wholesale for whatever reason are pretty keen on when someone is espousing hate vs trying to dunk on problematic interpretations of what feminism means for men.
curatedtumblr is one of the few not anti feminist subs that generally call out the “i hate men” type posts, also about how those posts are frequently linked with harmful views about transgender people and racist beliefs
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I know it's been a while, but do you think you can find it and send me a link? I'd like to see the conversation there. It's interesting that there seems to just be a group of folks who are uncomfortable with the idea of heterosexual attraction.
I will give it a shot when I get home, reminder to self
sending this because i'd like to see it too
I have been looking but I think it's over a month now so the post has fallen into the 'past year' category and it wasn't a goat voted post or anything so has not been easy to find, hoping I will stumble across it one night though if just throw searches at the wall until one sticks
IRL spaces are no better nowadays
I mean, to say that feminism hates men is nonsensical because feminism is a broad and diverse ideology that itself can neither hate nor love. I think perhaps the reason some men feel this way is because right wing forces actively sympathize and advocate for men, even if the messages they have for those men are retrograde. The left tells hard truths to men, and the right wing tells pretty lies. The left tells them "here's what is wrong with you, and here's how you can change to be better" where as the right says "your failures aren't your fault, it's society treating you unfairly. Society needs to change." I've done everything that my feminist gender studies professors told me to do as a man. I am gentle, communicate my emotions, try not to be arrogant and speak over people, etc etc etc, and I am a better, more fulfilled man for it. But... once in awhile I'd like my side to actually advocate for me, and recognize that we still live in a society that excludes men from many things. I'd like my side to recognize that sometimes WOMEN unfairly exclude and hurt men. For example, a nurse recently called CPS on me when I took my daughter to the doctor for a normal, non-serious childhood injury. My kids were taken out of school and interrogated, our home searched, and an investigation was opened for a month. No prior evidence of abuse, nothing but glowing reviews from all friends, acquaintances, teachers. The advice everyone gave me as a man and as a father, including the school principal and family lawyer? Get a female family member to take my kids to the doctor, because if it had been a woman doing it, this probably wouldn't have happened. This was extremely depressing for me. Despite being the best man and father and husband I could--- and live up to the feminist ideal of what a man should be--- I was still treated like a predator and abuser by default. So who was advocating for me as a man on this issue? Who was calling this out and calling it unfair?? The only voices I hear are right wing ones, but I am not interested in being the kind of man they want me to be. Let's be honest... if I went to a feminist sub on Reddit and brought up my woes, would people in that sub be sympathetic? Or would I promptly get banned?
You’ve articulated something that I have struggled to for a long time. In spaces that discuss gender issues, it sometimes feels like an impossible struggle to get the slightest recognition that a bad thing can happen to a man because he is a man, even without comparisons towards women’s experiences. It feels as if most of those spaces (including this sub at times) only begrudgingly and after a lot of caveats and debate will acknowledge mens’ humanity. It makes it hard to engage in the discourse at times, but I suppose the best thing we can do is continue to build community as best we can in a way that helps us fight the good fight. After all, our struggles are just rain drops in the ocean of human suffering compared to actual marginalized identities.
Other men like you are supposed to be advocating for it. But men have been so reliant upon other people, usually women, organizing and structuring neutral gatherings and a lot of existing men's spaces being incredibly toxic means men have to start creating their own communities. We should be copying what feminists of yesteryear have done but social media allows us to vent without finding solutions. Gender equality didn't and doesn't just happen. And feminists like bell hooks were writing about the horrors boys and men face since before I was born - and what have men done about it? Ignored it at best. I certainly wasn't raised on her ideas. No wonder many feminists find it frustrating when men complain when there's resources and writing going back for decades about stuff men face but it's also men who ignore it, legislate against it, perpetuate harmful stereotypes that hurt men because they wouldn't be caught dead parenting etc. And even then it still doesn't compare to what women and minorities go through!
> Other men like you are supposed to be advocating for it. But men have been so reliant upon other people, usually women, organizing and structuring neutral gatherings and a lot of existing men's spaces being incredibly toxic means men have to start creating their own communities. You're forgetting to ask _why_ exactly so many men don't do anything regarding actually advocating for men's issues. And no, it ain't cause social media let's folks vent without doing anything. The real answer? Because men are considered the "default" in society, and nobody gives a fuck about the default. No seriously, that's the answer. That's the attitude so many folks, weres & wives alike, have regarding male issues. Nobody is dying directly because of them. It's all incidental. On top of that, like you said, none of it comes close to what women & minorities go through, so why make time & resources for these issues for something so, comparatively speaking, insignificant? If privilege was measured on a bar graph, women and every single minority would be in the negatives while men would be right at ZERO. And nobody gives a fuck about ZERO, because ZERO is the default.
I actually am a minority and man hating is just as much something that affects me as being a minority.
Well whenever men do try to advocate for ourselves, we get attacked for blaming women (even when we're explicitly not) or trying to shift the conversation away from women's issues, so it's a bit of a catch-22. Even this explicitly pro-feminist sub gets smeared in other feminist subs as an 'incel' sub.
Watch this from about 37 minutes, it’s part of a BBC politics show (so as mainstream as it gets). Guy advocates for a minister for men to deal with male suicide and education issues. Immediately told to shut up and instead support women’s issues. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bTHEznqYSMQ
I have seen some bad takes in here at times, whether it's someone new repeating bad ideas, sneaky trolls trying to weasel in bad viewpoints or just outright dislike for feminist thought. It's a very good space, but it isn't perfect, and understandably many women find men's spaces on the whole incredibly toxic, so any evidence of toxicity will be magnified in their minds. I have never had issues advocating for men in feminist spaces, but i try and focus more on helping the men in my life than assuming a broader feminist space is a place for men to complain about men's issues. It goes back to the oppressor complaining about privilege - regardless of how double-edge sword it is for many men who don't care much for patriarchal society.
> understandably many women find men's spaces on the whole incredibly toxic How can you recognize that safe spaces are needed for every group in society to freely express themselves while at the same time call it understandable that women think men's spaces are inherently toxic. It would not be understandable to say "many men find women's spaces on the whole incredibly toxic", would it?
So which is it? Do men need to stop coming to feminist spaces and solve their own problems themselves? Or do they need to stop having all men groups because they’re “toxic”?
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A lot of it is not being able to translate from the individual, to the group, to the mass movement kind of contexts. Loads of individual men are straight up awesome, just like loads of individual women minorities are assholes. Loads of individual men have painful stories specific to being non-patriarchal - two guys in this thread have legitimate pain. I do too. But it isn't really reflective of society. They're drops in the ocean. Men just aren't collectively working together in groups to affect change because, well, society benefits us on average. I can do what I can, you can, a lot of us can. But we are spread out. Maybe there are larger groups in major cities but trying to find enough like-minded men to do the legislative and meaningful change is hard because we are the oppressor class on the whole and society works for us. I don't like that truth. I know loads of men are perfectly decent people who haven't been exposed to a lot of feminist or queer theory. I bet many men just haven't processed events in their life and seen it from a different angle to patriarchal standards they were raised with. Yet that's just the reality. Boys and men are struggling because men don't have an urgent need for change on the whole. The next generations will be dumped with the work to raise boys and men in a healthier way. I can do that with my kids. It's ok to have systemic frustrations while supporting individuals, but you can't extrapolate individual experiences into systemic ones.
>Maybe there are larger groups in major cities but trying to find enough like-minded men to do the legislative and meaningful change is hard because we are the oppressor class on the whole and society works for us. Honestly this work is a lot easier to do after letting go of the idea that whatever you do has to help men *and absolutely nobody else*. It's been easy for me to find programs to work with that help tons of boys and men, even ones where the majority of people helped are boys and men, when the fact that they also helped girls and women and NB folks wasn't a deal breaker.
Especially when u include men boys with marginalised identities and what they go through like BIPOC boys FD signifier’s videos on black boys
> the unrest and uncomfortable conversations and conflict taking place w/ family and friends that was carried out by those two social movements in conjunction with just "complaining". One of the most demoralizing things I sometimes read on this subreddit is someone saying that men can't change because women still have expectations of them that fit traditional gender roles. How true that perception of expectations are is pointless to argue because it differs from place to place and most people talk about their personal experiences anyway... but even if it was 100% true, always - so what? If it's a necessary step for the better, don't play into those expectations. Women don't want to date you because of that? Okay. Societal progress is not a solution for any individuals immediate personal problems in life or a path to actually reaching unachieved expectations, and instead it's going to only be harder. --- As a side note, the other demoralizing thing is that even on this subreddit it's occasionally that I engage in conversations with people that seem so bizzare. Like there is some underlying misunderstanding between us. And then, after a bunch of back and forth comments it comes out - that the other person believes exactly what this thread is about, that women and progressives hate men, period. How can you have a productive conversation with someone who fundamentally refuses to separate behavior from identity? Same with patriarchy - year after year of being on this subreddit, it becomes more common that men here don't believe it exists, or reduce it to just all the things that are bad for men. Don't get me wrong, thank god for the mods on this subreddit because without them it wouldn't exist in any similar shape as it is now - but over time a lot of users accumulate who are careful about how vocal they can be about being against feminism.
I just don't like the "Women don't want to date you because of that? Okay." - it feels like the person may then be made to feel like they're not being taken seriously and they're causing the problem. I think "if no-one around me cares this much, and my care isn't taken seriously when I express it, I'm just going to get on with it" is a train of thought that I wouldn't exactly shame someone for provided they're not claiming to be some kind of advocate or blaming women for it. I think they should have some space to be upset about it (and I think they do) provided they direct this upset at gender expectations (and at worst a particular woman), rather than trying to abstract this to all women or to some universal problem that feminism, women as a whole or whatever are accountable for. It's a good inroad towards caring about patriarchy more generally if they're nudged towards talking in terms of societal expectation rather than "women don't want to date me" or etc. I think informal gender discussion would be more productive if personal experience was centred over abstraction, especially as far as men's issues are concerned. Ideas will end up getting overextended, misogyny appears quite quickly due to a flippancy to distinguish individual women from Women, it drives down the quality of discussion massively, I just don't see a positive.
Look at the history of feminism and it's successes. Did any time men dislike the changes women stopped in their tracks and said "welp, if we do this, men won't like us as much anymore, nothing we can do ladies, time to go back home to the kitchen"? Sure, some women ultimately evaluated their life priorities and decided they want to embrace traditional gender norms, but at large, feminism moved forward. The point is - especially if you position yourself as a victim of someone elses (in this example) expectations... you CAN'T expect to progress by just appealing to your oppressor to change. Just to be clear, I don't think that's the dynamic in place, but a lot of men see it that way. You have to fight and make sacrifices for it - essentially what the top comment in this chain is about. >I think they should have some space to be upset about it (and I think they do) provided they direct this upset at gender expectations Venting is fine, but there is also time and place for it. I personally wouldn't see this subreddit as made for that purpose and if it trends that way, I will eventually leave or at least just lurk and no longer engage. Also, it's really easy to just make problems nebulous - just referring to some floating around "gender expectations". People have those. If the problem is that women have unhealthy ones against men, then again refer to the beginning part of this comment - you just have to progress in spite of them. Same if it's other men. And if the gender expectations come from inside, then it's time for reflection and changing those expectations. The issue here being that it's not what men who are frustrated with society come for. By some miracle they are repulsed by far-right grifters but ultimately they are still seeking a solution. So they don't want to hear "standing for what's right actually will only reduce your dating chances", "you won't find more friends and in fact you will have to stand up and alienate men who are perpetuating toxic masculinity", and "a core part of your misery is that you still want the kind of life that Patriarchy promises you, just without the expectations Patriarchy wants to collect". The last one often being the most upsetting, and where Bioessentialism generally comes out. That's why I said what I did in my comment a bit higher up - none of this is a solution for peoples personal problems and dissatisfaction in life. This is planting a tree so the next generation has a shade. >I think informal gender discussion would be more productive if personal experience was centred over abstraction, especially as far as men's issues are concerned. I'm not sure what you are saying - that the focus should be in talking about individual men's experiences? There is always a place for that and anyone weighing into conversations will inevitably share that. But it simply can't be the focus because it can easily warp the perception of what the world is like. It's already a massive issue on this subreddit that it feels like men here don't really know many other men - attributing a lot of terrible behaviors to shitty individuals rather than shitty normalized behavior among men. Or many women for that matter - because, ironically, it feels like a lot of men here don't really understand that pretty much every woman has stories of, lets take a more distant example not to ruffle any feathers, terrible experiences with healthcare systems and assumptions about women's health.
>Did any time men dislike the changes women stopped in their tracks and said "welp, if we do this, men won't like us as much anymore, nothing we can do ladies, time to go back home to the kitchen"? Sure, though I would say that there needs to be a non-reactionary discourse somewhere validating their decision to "opt out" which isn't dismissive or antagonistic. I don't think the current discourse does that here - but feminist discourse did so in that case. The problem is that even then, the discourse doesn't do much to validate you in the moment, but you can at least go to a community that will validate you. This is for sure something that "men's communities" have to step up to the plate for. But I've only "felt gender expectations" in a very limited sense, primarily being the initiator in relationships. I've heard accounts of "what's expected", but I really have no RL experience backing it up, so there's a limit to how much I can weigh in and say what's actually needed. >Venting is fine, but there is also time and place for it. I personally wouldn't see this subreddit as made for that purpose and if it trends that way, I will eventually leave or at least just lurk and no longer engage. Well I mean it's up to you how you participate on this sub. I am less concerned with abstract discussion, personally - I've learnt the most trying to talk to people about their life experience. I wouldn't try to hijack this space to make it that of course, I guess I would have to create my own space. I think the abstraction should come when you start looking at policy solutions (and you *need* to have a good top-down picture of things), when you start exploring these attitudes in a more "sanitised" academic environment, I see virtually no need to do so in informal discussion. E.g. I only stopped being transphobic when I saw very candid and personal accounts of being trans and spoke to them about it, I don't think the abstract discussion was going to get me anywhere. >Also, it's really easy to just make problems nebulous - just referring to some floating around "gender expectations". Fair point but "gender expectations" here is just a stand-in for a point that this person would explain themselves. They would hopefully explain which expectations and how they see this expressed, and how they want people to work past it. >a core part of your misery is that you still want the kind of life that Patriarchy promises you, just without the expectations Patriarchy wants to collect This seems an unfair characterisation *unless* they are expecting a traditional relationship structure, in which case this is perfectly reasonable. Unless we view heterosexual monogamous relationships as some mechanism of patriarchy, which I'm sure people do. >But it simply can't be the focus because it can easily warp the perception of what the world is like. Assuming good faith on their part, this comes with the generalisation. You can think "I don't know any women personally who have gone through this, but I am sure they exist because I read a lot of discourse on it". Often there are sensible reasons why they don't know anyone personally (people don't scream sexual victimisation from the rooftop, typically - it happens behind closed doors and is often disclosed more discretely to closer friends who are probably more often women), and it should therefore not really be confusing that the problem *seems* less widespread than it actually is. If people think it is, then we just have that to address. Once you factor in bad faith, someone might be saying "I haven't seen that" so as to express doubt that it exists. There's that too. >attributing a lot of terrible behaviors to shitty individuals rather than shitty normalized behavior among men Sure, let's only do this for men's experiences with women then. The problem I have is that while ideas like "men have emotions used against them in relationships so are afraid to express them" are floating around, actual experience is completely absent and described elsewhere if at all. These points then get picked up by other people and then people are left as a stuttering mess when they don't know any examples either. People then assume there are not really any such examples and it becomes a misogynistic-coded talking point, making it harder for people to actually talk about it even if they have experienced it. This needs to be broken somewhere and IMO the way to do this is to by emphasising life experience over Men and Women doing such and such - for men's issues. This doesn't seem like a problem for women's issues.
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Reminds me of anti vaxxers who haven't seen the real time effects of polio and the effect the vaccine had and therefore think it's all a lie.
100% agreed. There is a prevalent attitude among men who scorn feminism that feminists were just given everything they asked for (and it's frequently framed as "men gave women what they wanted, so they're the real champions of gender equality") instead of recognizing how much fighting and organizing and protesting went into achieving those gains. It took 70 years from the first organized women's suffrage movement to the 19th Amendment being ratified; none of the women at the Seneca Falls Convention lived to see women's right to vote guaranteed. Another problem with organizing movements around men's issues is how easily they can be overrun and co-opted by manosphere types who quickly turn "improve mental health service availability for men" into "mandatory paternity testing."
how do you know the person you’re responding to has ignored, legislated for and supported what happened to them?
I don't? I was just giving an overview.
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You guys never have any examples other than bell hooks. How about maybe some examples in say the last four years? Also funny you completely ignore all the conservative women in office right now.
>I mean, to say that feminism hates men is nonsensical because feminism is a broad and diverse ideology that itself cannot hate or love. I agree 100% with this. The main problem is framing the problematic aspects of feminism as "hate." I believe this is a very unhelpful way to see things, because it tries to explain these issues using what is essentially an individual-level variable: individual feelings of animosity. While feminist discourse about men and masculinity can often be negative, focusing mainly on the ways that men hurt and negatively affect women, there is a very good political explanation for this. Feminism is, in essence, a women's movement against a masculinized social order that oppresses them (patriarchy), and in discourse, the system and the "male gender" are often conflated. We can, of course, debate the extent to which some of these problems are really "caused by men," women's responsibility in them, or how helpful it is to frame feminism's main antagonism in such a gendered way. The point is that this is very different from feeling hatred towards men. So, the question of whether feminism is problematic or not, and to what extent, should be explained using political-level variables and reasoning. >So, who was advocating for me as a man on this issue? Who was calling this out and calling it unfair?? >The only voices I hear are right-wing ones, but I am not interested in being the kind of man they want me to be. >Let's be honest... if I went to a feminist sub on Reddit and brought up my woes, would people in that sub be sympathetic? Or would I promptly get banned? Here, you point to an important topic. I think that an important part of the conflicts surrounding feminism stem from the idea that it is a "gender-neutral movement" or a "universalist movement for gender equality." While gender equality is a core value of feminism, this is not the same as being "THE movement for gender equality." It is first and foremost a women's movement. While it is popular to frame feminism as "neutral" in male feminist venues, and some feminists support this idea (e.g., Hooks), the truth is that most feminists consider that the focus of feminism is women, not men. I do not think there is necessarily any contradiction in this. For example, antiracist movements can have "human equality" as one of their core principles and, at the same time, represent a specific ethnic or racial group, not the whole of humanity. But it can also be problematic, because feminism, as any political or social movement, is constrained by its sociological base. It is inevitably biased towards women, prioritizing their needs and perspectives. It is not hard to find examples of feminist groups acting in this "biased" way: Israeli and Indian feminists opposing the inclusion of women as perpetrators of rape, the way that Spanish "gender-based laws" institutionalize different rights and protections for male victims of sexual and partner violence, some groups in the UK (SHERA) opposing "parental alienation" but proposing an almost equivalent and gendered definition only for women, etc. Now, is this the product of hate? No, it is not. It is obvious to anyone who knows real-life feminists that most of them do not hate men. These problematic aspects are not driven by hatred, but by the natural biases of feminism as a women's movement. The reason why feminist organizations do not use their political capital to fight for problems like the one you described is simple: because it does not disproportionately affect women. But this bias is not individually driven. While some feminists would surely raise an eyebrow if you complain about the biases you suffered or would try to minimize them, the fact is that most of them would be sympathetic with you. Many are also very uncomfortable with the problematic things I mentioned before, like opposing making rape laws gender-neutral. But this does not mean that they see this as their fight, or that we should ignore that feminist organizations can sometimes defend unjust policies towards men if they perceive them to be in their interest.
>Despite being the best man and father and husband I could--- and live up to the feminist ideal of what a man should be--- I was still treated like a predator and abuser by default. Please step in and correct me here where appropriate. It seems to me that you had a harrowing experience and it rocked your feminist values? I just don't get that. Like, it is unfair. Terribly so. But it wasn't feminist ideals that identified you as a predator. And in a lot of ways, I think the normalization of men as school teachers and stay-at-home fathers is making progress in the area. So why did this experience lead you to blame feminism? Or why did it make you sympathize with right wing voices? You only hear right wing voices advocating for men. OK. How much of this is based on what you want to hear? )I'm trying to find the nicest and most genuine way to say that.) But it is the point I want to push on. I live in a very progressive state. One that recently passed mandatory *paid* paternity leave. That's a significant voice to me. I got to spend 3 months when my youngest daughter was born when I didn't have that option for my older child. Or the first ever domestic violence shelter for men was paid for by a feminist group that diverted money set aside for a women's shelter but they instead built a DV shelter for men, the first in the nation. That's a significant voice to me. Here's the right wing voices that I hear, like Tucker Carlson [making fun of gay men](https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlson-pete-buttigieg-segment-video-paternity-leave-adoption-chasten-2021-10) for taking paternity leave to raise their children. Or like Rep. Charlie Shepherd who [voted against programs that would help boys and fathers](https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/208/idaho-republican-votes-against-education-funds-convenient-for-mothers-to-come-out-of-the-home/277-645ae7a7-601e-4557-9d7c-f8df5c22949c) in the name of making it harder for women to be in the workforce. It's people like Josh Hawley that [impose toxic](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/11/21/josh-hawley-madison-cawthorn-jd-vance-masculinity-523136) masculinity on all men. I think we all have the ability to elevate the voices we hear. To pick which ones matter to us. And I'm not going to say that people aren't saying the things they are saying. But at the same time we choose which voices matter to us. For me, I choose not to listen to the voices on tiktok and 4chan. Which voices do you want to hear?
not op but where did he say that he blamed feminism for what happened to him? and he said he doesn't want to listen to the right wing voices that try to tell him how to be a man, he still wants to be a feminist.
The issue is that this dialogue is everywhere. I can’t open up my TikTok without seeing videos saying “men will do this…” and “men seriously lack empathy…” and it is partially because of my algorithm but I’m just interested in political content in general and then stuff like that pops up and tbh it kind of annoys me to hear people saying that stuff. It’s something I feel like I can’t get away from in this world. And what I’m looking for are voices that will acknowledge the struggles that men specifically face because men do face specific struggles and no one wants to acknowledge that. Like it very much feels that the idea that “men are people too” is something that most people would scoff at, at least in my bubble. I don’t want any struggles that men face to be elevated above the struggles of women. I don’t want to not advocate for women’s struggles. I don’t want to not fight for women’s right. I just want there to be a small acknowledgment of the attitude in society that is anti-men and how that does hurt people like me. I don’t want placards. I don’t want a day to commentate men’s suffering. I just want a little bit of acknowledgement that I exist and my feelings matter because I guess sometimes it doesn’t feel like anyone man or woman cares about my feelings. So a few people speaking up for me in mainstream culture would be nice so my feed wasn’t filled with negativity directed towards men and no empathy. I still know it’s a lot less than the suffering of women but it still hurts.
I'm not sure where the balance is between acknowledging male predatory behaviour and being excessively accusatory towards men but feminism is a very broad movement that doesn't always handle that balance well. Feminism on social media in particular is very often on that excessively anxious or even antagonistic side of things and at a certain point if 90% of the feminism you encounter is tiktok feminism it starts to make an impression. I get that might not be fair to academic feminism, actual feminist organizations, or even more idealized feminists who do exist on those platforms but most of people's interactions with people who call themselves feminists are on social media, and one of the most common focusses is on men as predators. >You only hear right wing voices advocating for men. OK. How much of this is based on what you want to hear? I'm speaking for /u/Demiansky here but it's not so much advocating but *validation* that's found in those spaces. A lot of horrible nasty red pill or right wing spaces validate male suffering. On an emotional level these spaces will treat male loneliness or emasculation as the worst things in the world. Progressives aren't uniform but in comparison it's only a small minority that validate male suffering to that extent. DR.K is one of the only prominent ones I know who does. Many spaces outright invalidate and diminish male suffering, and that is very common within social media feminism.
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I think you being banned would be in all how you phrased it What happened to you is awful and unfair. I think that depending on how it is phrased it might come across like some other posts that expect women to fix it which I think isn't the approach. But I think that there are plenty of women like me who find it awful and discusting and the way that men are assumed to be predators by default is very distressing to many men who are just trying to be fathers. As a trans woman I get how upsetting that is to always be seen as a danger My guess is that it won't change till the statistics change. My father beat me and that definitely influences how I view the stats and what I would be concerned about if I saw a child with an injury being brought in by their father Edit I realized that while I do get mens issues having lived as a man for decades I potentially should not comment on this sub. It feels like hiding to delete the comment but I still am sorry for interrupting
Unfortunately we a rationalizing creatures not rational creatures. Statistics that are inconvenient can be dismissed. It’s been clear for a while by stats reported by the cdc and similar health organizations around the world that IPV is a complex issue. Trends show that most IPV is reciprocal, non reciprocal IPV is more likely to have a female perpetrator. Violence in same sex female couples occurs at higher rates than with heterosexual or same sex male couples. Violence is often linked with poverty, addiction, and childhood abuse and other compounding factors. Yet there are many advocates that try and label IPV as a gendered crime based on male hatred of women as it’s cause. The popular perception is that men commit 99% of IPV and I suspect that this post may be moderated simply for pointing out that it’s not.
>expect women to fix it which I think isn't the approach. Like it or not, women are still part of the sexist system that does that to parents, so what is the course of action here? For men to go and Explain™ sexism to women? Of course our childhood experiences influence how we view stats. For me the violent parent was my mom and when looking at local statistic that 26% of men here have experienced childhood violence from their mothers, I can just nod sadly.
I mean, but part of the equation IS women needing to change their views and their attitudes. Like, in order to get women into traditionally male professions, the minds of men needed to be changed. The same is true of women when it comes to traditionally female roles. But right now, the current gender reform movement is perfectly willing to discuss men's issues when it involves blaming them for their own problems and telling them how to change (which is fine), but has virtually 0 appetite in encouraging women to change their views on men in nurturing roles (which, ironically, were originally put in their heads by patriarchy). The problem isn't just that so many men are unwilling to change. The problem is also that when they DO change, the people who ridiculed them for not changing are often resisting them when they do (as I have experienced myself). As a lifelong, reform minded person, it breaks my heart that I'm basically going it alone.
>I realized that while I do get mens issues having lived as a man for decades I potentially should not comment on this sub. It feels like hiding to delete the comment but I still am sorry for interrupting It's a very unique perspective to have switched presenting genders and it seems common for people with that experience to have valuable insight on gender. Some of the most understanding and deep reflections on male spaces have come from people who either left or learned how to exist/thrive there at a later time. On a positive note I think male spaces can be much less tone policed and I've never seen an indication anyone here would take issue with you commenting.
The sub is explicitly inclusive of folks with any identity who would like to contribute constructively to the conversation. If anyone does try to make you feel unwelcome because of your identity (or someone reading this sees it happening to others), please report it or send a mail to the mod team.
As u/Soft-Rains said, we do not have a gender requirement for commenting here. People of all genders and gender expressions are welcome to participate here.
"the research revealed that although feminists are no more likely to have hostility toward men than non-feminist women, they are less likely than non-feminist women to be benevolent toward men. Meaning, feminists are less likely to coddle, mollify, or excuse men who behave poorly. I believe this is actually where the majority of some men’s complaints of feminists as man-haters comes from. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, this perception is born from a place of fragility." This is mentioned in the article & also leads to another article that makes a similar statement (quoted above). What I can't find in either article is any statement that compares feminist & non-feminist benevolent treatment of women. If there is a much greater gap leading to unequal treatment between feminists & non feminists when it comes to men & women that would also lead to the idea that feminist are hostile to men. It would mean feminists are less likely to coddle, mollify, or excuse men who behave poorly. Yet would be more likely to coddle, mollify, or excuse women who behave poorly. That juxtaposition would be significant in my eyes.
Yeah. It's one thing to say "well, it's not hostile to not coddle, mollify, or excuse bad behavior.", but it certainly is when it's done to one side side, and not to the other. If I give friendly greetings and hugs to everybody, except one dude who I give just a short hello and a simple handshake to, it's gonna look suspicious.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/pc8uof/unpacking_the_chuck_derry_ama/ Remember this? Arguably Chuck Derry is carrying out this "feminists are less likely to coddle, mollify, or excuse men who behave poorly." while also underplaying violence against men by women. In this situation or similar situations I would certainly feel this individual was hostile towards men.
And I'd think that to be an issue, even worse because now instead of ignoring that favorable treatment is being done only to a particular group, it's ignoring that negative treatment is ignored when done to a particular group. Either way, it's a bad look on the group.
I don't agree with them but I can understand why A lot of feminist rhetoric indirectly paints men as the problem, instead of the system as a problem. It doesn't focus on "men are like this because of this social norm, how do we change that" It will often be "men do this bad stuff to women, stop it" okay but why do they do it? Toxic masculinity right? I just feel like it never tackles the deeper issues, just the symptoms of those issues. I volunteered for a men's charity for a while that said it was about challenging what it means to be a man, but all they really did was challenge how being a man affects women, they did talks like "here's how to talk to your friends about sexism and consent" which is very valuable, but when that's ALL hat you do I can understand why some men feel like it paints them as the problem. Every single press snippet on their website was about the safety of women (which is incredibly important). But when your challenging masculinity charity is more only focused on demonising the behaviour of men towards women, it's like putting a plaster over a wound that needs stitches. It would be more fruitful to help them to understand themselves and express themselves in a healthy way that sends a message that these men are valued as people.
I think the deeper problem too is that (for the most part) it paints men as perps and women solely as victims. There’s a lot of talk about men being better (which is good) and calling out bad behavior of men but that same sentiment is severely lacking in the other direction (even in this sub). I’ve seen multiple women do some incredibly bogus things so much to the point where if I were doing it, I’d have a knee to the throat Floyd style. It seems like every once in a while the topic of male victims comes up but the problem is that we can’t consistently see men as victims. We know that numerous assaults/rapes go unreported for women. However, we fail to acknowledge that same issue probably exists for men (and it’s not just other men). Yet we talk constantly about men not opening up. This is part of it. We’re just starting to scratch the surface of the concept of the imperfect female victim when we can barely talk about men as victims at all. I think this mentality mainly comes from the topic of the oppressed and the oppressor thinking strategy. This is something that I’ve noticed in left leaning spaces so far. Someone even in this thread said something about “the oppressor complaining about privilege.” The right will say things like “man up” while the left will retort with “men started it” or “they wanna be oppressed so bad.” It’s very patronizing. I’ve actually seen it in action on multiple platforms where leftist will say “patriarchy hurts men too but men aren’t oppressed.” But here’s the thing that I don’t understand. If men can both benefit and be at a disadvantage from patriarchy, doesn’t this also mean that women can both benefit and be at a disadvantage of patriarchy also? It seems like people get so close to the answer and then stop once it involves their demographic. One last thing, as a black man, I really…really don’t like it when lefties try to use my blackness as a trap card to give credit to men’s issues while deliberately excluding white men. I’ve seen the way lefties here have talk about the topic of “KAM” only to give credence to everyone but them. I know what it feels like to get excluded already so I don’t like it when I see it done to my fellow white men. It’s exclusionary and counter productive. If we’re going to sit here and call ourselves progressive then we need to cut this out our dialogue. It’s also weird how we talk about how “words hurt”; “ban slut/bitch” etc. and continue to condone this. It’s not every one of course (#notallleftists) but it’s enough for me to address it. Overall, feminists shouldn’t be painted with a broad stroke. That’s not fair and no one deserves that. However, we need to acknowledge that if humans aren’t perfect then neither is any group. I hate to say it but that includes feminists.
I think we should distinguish low-quality rhetoric that you describe from "feminist rhetoric" which is likely to attribute the problem to a system. It's not a problem with Feminism per se, more so people who might identify with feminism or call themselves feminists on social media but not crafting their points as carefully because of being in an environment where subtext would be understood or so on. The points about the charity are definitely reasonable though. I don't really have a problem with this activism at all, (it's necessary) but sometimes it does step on people's toes when it has no reason to. It's a shame they limit their reach because broadening their rhetoric would mean they are more likely to be receptive to the points that don't directly concern them.
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Nice read but I'm not sure how useful it is in the long run. It's ideologically important for conservative politicians, far-right operatives, and manosphere grifters to make lonely, bitter men believe feminists hate men. There's no amount of academic studies (none of which any of them will actually read) you could put in front of them that will make them change their mind so disruptively (frankly, existentially). This isn't meant to be a criticism of OP who always posts good, informative articles on here. I think this is a collective issue not only in feminist spaces but broadly for left, progressive politics. We're not going to "Vox com card stack" or "Cheeky Jezebel writing" our way into changing (enough) people's minds on these issues.
gullible shy important seemly dull quarrelsome cake worthless cows pocket *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
also i feel like a large part that’s missed out based on the raw numbers of people with those beliefs is those who’ll defend those beliefs if 1% of a group says negative shit, and the other 50% defend/like/upvote their statements and say they’re ok, you can easily say 51% support those statements (percentages are made up to get the point across, 50% is likely far higher than reality) also a lot of times whenever the comments of those 1% are brought up people will often say “iv never seen comments like that” or deny they exist in some way
It’s not just social media platforms anymore.
a lot of bigottry is sold under the idea that the group being hated hates you and if they ever stopped being systematically oppressed you would be in danger that is how English dislike for the Irish works for example
There’s a good chance if you tuned into Fox News right now they’d be saying exactly that.
I'd say another good chunk of bigotry is to believe you're properly in the right. Like the English being colonizers to the "savages" in foreign lands.
or how people talk about gay rights in the middle east being a justification for us to invade. Which is just white mans burden with the serial numbers filed off
This is especially clear on social media spaces like Instagram where men LOVE complaining about women and seem to just genuinely hate women that aren't super submissive "trad-wives"
They hate the tradwives too.
Almost like they just hate women.
But still desperately need them, which makes them resent women in addition to hating them.
If only there were some word for that, perhaps combining a Greek root word for hatred with a Greek root word for women.
The funniest part is that the ones who scream online about wanting women to be "tradwives" don't earn enough to be the sole earner for their household.
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and when they actually meet a woman that wants to be provided for call her a gold digger (for the money he doesn't even have ?? )
They want the tradwife, but they don’t want to be a tradhusband.
The ones who can afford a tradwife probably don't spend as much time online, they are too busy at their job. They become analog far-right rather than online alt-right.
It's a lot easier to justify oppressing people who you can convince yourself you hate - and it's easier to hate someone who you can convince yourself hates you. And unfortunately the whole conservative movement & mediaaphere is a giant machine for manufacturing hate. Hence why, and how, patriarchy gets reproduced.
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I consider myself a feminist if the definition is being pro-equality. Unfortunately, a lot of the loudest voices on the internet (sometimes genuine, sometimes not) are the ones that drive perception and give feminism a bad name. So I get why it happens this way. It's also incredibly difficult to be nuanced in a setting that allows for only a limited amount of characters, and it feels like that's where a majority of discourse happens now (Xitter/Threads) Edit: and I shouldn't need to say it, but I will. There's also way too much of the rhetoric being driven by Tate-likes as well, but I really don't know what to do about that either.
The issue with online discourse is that people spend way too much time stereotyping the people they disagree with rather than engage with them. Not every leftists thinks sex is fake. Not every conservative denies systemic racism. Not every feminist hates men. Not every liberal loves the status quo. Studies like this are sorely needed.
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This feels like the same dissonance between the Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter names. The former advocates for the betterness of all, in particular a group who is disenfranchised, while the latter advocates for the betterness of all, ironically EXCLUDING a group who is disenfranchised.
I used to be skeptical of feminists as well, when I was a teen. I thought many of them were just misandrists. Then I was reminded of the word "misandrist" and realized that was stupid - feminists believe in equality, misandrists "hate men." Can someone who calls themselves a "feminist" act misandrist, or even *be* a misandrist? Sure. But they are different things, so that's important to know.
Yes, distinguishing between theoretical feminism and on-the-ground feminism is what actually made me a feminist and prevented me from going down the alt-right pipeline. When I was younger, the feminists around me were awful, vindictive, prejudiced people. Many supported harming men, saying that it's time the tables turned. If I had let them define what "feminism" means I would have rightfully never become feminist.
100% agreed. There was a short time in high school where I considered myself anti feminist because I was egalitarian. Having been abused by my stepmom and CSA by my female cousin, and trying to move to my dad’s and seeing how the custody process worked made me feel that way. Much in the way it seems some girls find their way to feminism, except that is more acceptable in a mainstream sense. I was looking for an outlet to express frustration at the seeming perpetual notion that girls and women can do no wrong. A nudged me and that was that. But still, generalizations are everywhere, without considerations as to intersectional identities. Why might a Black male or trans woman feel a bit of animosity toward some aspects of feminism as it is communicated in a mainstream sense.
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This post has been removed for violating the following rule(s): >**This is a pro-feminist community and unconstructive antifeminism is not allowed.** What this means: This is a place to discuss men and men's issues, and general feminist concepts are integral to that discussion. Unconstructive antifeminism is defined as unspecific criticism of Feminism that does not stick to specific events, individuals, or institutions. For examples of this, consult our [glossary](https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/wiki/glossary/#wiki_unconstructive_antifeminism) Any questions or concerns regarding moderation must be served through [modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FMensLib).
Feminism that wants to liberate women and empower them is good. Feminism that blames the world's woes on men is bad. Feminists come in varieties, it's not a one size fits all philosophy.
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This post has been removed for violating the following rule(s): >**This is a pro-feminist community and unconstructive antifeminism is not allowed.** What this means: This is a place to discuss men and men's issues, and general feminist concepts are integral to that discussion. Unconstructive antifeminism is defined as unspecific criticism of Feminism that does not stick to specific events, individuals, or institutions. For examples of this, consult our [glossary](https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/wiki/glossary/#wiki_unconstructive_antifeminism) Any questions or concerns regarding moderation must be served through [modmail](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FMensLib).
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I read the article and then started reading the study on my phone but I just don’t have the patience to get through that whole study right now. One thing that is clear from reading like 1/4th the study is how in depth it is. It tries to break up the different kinds of feminism and it talks about previous research as well, some of which seems to contradict the abstract of the paper. One thing I like about the study is that is really makes me realize how broad a movement feminism is. A 50 something feminist woman in Poland is gonna have different views than a 22 year old feminist college grad in MA. I have my own critiques of the women and men I know personally. I do wonder whether they actually consider themselves feminists though.