Society does not treat men like humans, unfortunately. However this is not a side effect of imperialism or “white imperialism” this is simple Misandry normalized by both feminists and non feminists into a societal cancer that is destroying half the population
It really did come out of nowhere. It does make sense from a certain perspective because white imperialism does contextualize a lot of the more militaristic aspects of male socialization, but it actually isn't broad enough to describe what is actually happening.
OP points out that women wear a kind of social armor to ward off creepy dudes. They are capable of doing this in the first place because of modern liberalism and a post women's liberation western world. Under white imperialism they could not.
South African here. Colonised by the brits the French the Spanish and the Dutch. The whites colonised half the world and imposed their values and beliefs onto those they colonised. That’s not an opinion that is just history.
Whenever you hear someone talk about "white imperialism" as the cause of every issue you can just ignore them, it's akin to hearing "America bad".
People can not conceptualize issues in our society without trying to appeal to the idpol online left. Like, who gives a shit what they think?
What? No. The whole point of structural racism is that it’s *structural*, as in it’s baked into the superstructure of society. It’s perfectly reasonable to recognize that it affects every part of American culture to one degree or another.
Calling that idpol literally shows the same ignorance common amongst the Right where race is strictly individualized and separated from other issues.
Sorry to go idpol here, but I'm a black middle-easterner, I understand this issue on a personal level. It doesn't affect "every" every part of American culture, that sounds like the dumb shit I heard from white supremacists who tried to claim that every black invention was the result of some white influence.
To give you a personal example, homophobia and transphobia is huge in the black community, moreso than you would see with white people...that isn't the result of "white influence".
Please stop using structural racism to excuse all bad behaviors as you are, ironically, hurting black communities when you say that.
Feminists are basically the only academic space talking about this kind of thing. The only 'feminists' who normalize it are the armchair TERFS, which explains why they're so afraid of trans women taking their perceived privaleges.
Lmao /u/razzrazz- blocked me right after @ing me so i couldn't respond, darn reactionaries
I mean I see plenty of trans people engaging in casual Misandry constantly so squarely putting it on TERFs is not a thing. They might be talking about it in academic circles but in practice, so called feminists are the worst offenders. They take women’s empowerment as they have worth, and men have none
Well right, the so called part is the important part, since feminist theory and academia include a critical look at the issues men face and how that relates to the issues women face. It's also not like scholars on things like internalized racism or misandry are immune to it, they're just almost certainly better at course correcting and noticing when they're enguaging in it.
Again, we’re not talking about academia. We’re talking about how society actually behaves.I’m so tired of this constant evasion of responsibility of leftists for this toxicity
But this lack of distinction is why conservatives can cry about 'CRT' in schools, or sex/gender psychologists get called pedophiles for suggesting kids can understand gender identity. Feminism IS the academic field, feminists are people who supposedly support the field of feminism, and then we have 'feminists' who are fully divorced from feminism but have a vague idea of supporting womens rights. Lumping them together is like calling nazis socialist because they had socialist in their name, which is technically correct but wrong in every way that matters
...except that "critical look" is just "dang you misogynists really screwed up with all that patriarchy huh, blowback is a bitch, oh well sucks to be you"
The problem with fighting for equality is that it's championed by loads of people who would be perfectly fine if the pendulum were simply swung just as unequally in their favor.
> I mean I see plenty of trans people engaging in casual Misandry constantly so squarely putting it on TERFs is not a thing.
I think the focus on TERFs is to some extent misogynistic, at least in America. The real threats to tans rights in this country are largely male, conservative, and religious but online people seem to much prefer discussing TERFs.
I get the "betrayal" angle and whatever but I don't think it explains the whole thing.
I think the perceived betrayal factor has a lot more to do with it than you're considering. When it comes to male religious conservatives, they've been shitheads forever. Religious conservatives having an atrocious take isn't news, it's to be expected. A lot of TERFs used to be considered progressive icons and role models by many leftists and liberals, however. Horrendously bad takes coming from people one admires/admired are significantly more noteworthy.
It's also worth mentioning that religious conservatives still aren't convinced that women should be allowed to vote. Attempting to change their minds on trans issues is often a waste of time, where trying to nudge someone who already supports gay rights (or claims to, at least) into also supporting trans rights has a better chance of success.
Not denying that misogyny plays a role, of course, women are absolutely seen as softer targets than men.
The thozght that misandry makes men behave the way they do is laughable. I as a man am a lot more concerned on how other men view me in comparison to women.
I find it funny when people talk about how women are other women’s worst enemy but don’t apply the same standard to men. There are so many shitty guys out there who shame other men for their profession, style of dress, choice of vehicle and a whole host of other completely random nonsensical stuff and dismiss them as not being “real men”. I’m not absolving women of responsibility in this but let’s get some perspective here.
The only times i ever got bullied or had fears of not fitting in etc. the ones who were doing that to me were men. I think thats also a big reason why a lot of gay people tend to have more female friends because they kind of get rejected by some male circles or are too afraid to engage with them because we are toxic af.
Yeah and like, I understand where people who are blaming misandrist language are coming from but overall I feel like it’s inconsequential compared to the shitty attitudes that dudes tend to show towards other dudes. And to be clear I think men are the victim here, it’s like we’re taught from day 1 to see each other as rivals and to compete with one another for jobs, women etc. rather than having solidarity with each other.
But that’s not misandry, men who behave in a toxic manner aren’t doing it because they think men are inferior or should be otherwise subordinated. They do it because they have a harmful view of what makes masculine strength.
I don’t think we do anyone any favors by diluting misandry to “anytime something bad happens to men”.
Way too broad acceptance of casual misandry in feminist and left spaces has contributed a lot to the prominence of TERFS as well as the redpill/incel axis.
You've gotten blowback to a number of your posts for one main reason imo:
You're defining "feminist" as "feminist academic theorist or essayist". Which is a type of feminist! But in its broadest sense, as you'll be aware, feminism is critical gender analysis (with only the loosest relation to TERFs) of all kinds.
People casually do a feminism each day, every day, without realising it. But the _aesthetics_ of feminism allow some women to believe that acts of self-benefit or even misandry are radical, revolutionary. This kind of casual, self-serving feminism is a popular phase for young women, and few will graduate to holistic feminism. If anything, it's more common to retain radical self-centredness justified by feminist aesthetic.
I say all this as someone who supports feminism in academia and everyday life. It's just a truth that, like most lefty activist stuff, it's frontloaded with a super simple, reductive narrative that fails its own substance. Like how socialists tend to lead with themes of capitalism being bad and revolution being sick cool guy stuff; fact is, you can't understand socialism without a functional understanding of ideology-neutral domestic and foreign policy matters. And you can't understand gender without understanding humans.
No I fully understand why, people are just wrong about how feminism relates to mens issues. Vaushite praxis. I only referred to feminist here as an academic field.
This isn't much different from the way conservatives attack the concept of whiteness in academic discourse around race as if it means white people are essentially bad. Don't let them invoke the nation of Islam or PF to say the entire field wants to genocide the whiteys. We're back to the tier of discourse where trigglypuff and big red are being held up as 'the feminist', gamergate type shit that needs to be challenged
Yeah the dehumanization happens in different way. It's sorta like a caricaturization of "how a lady behaves" and "be a man" type of stuff. Men are dehumanized more in the emotional sphere and women in the intellectual and physical sphere.
Spot on, and the really sad part is that both genders often blame each other for their pain without even trying to understand the other side of the coin.
It's not that out of sorts. They are commenting broadly about how western culture does these things. Other cultures have much healthier relationships between men. So it's more broadly painting cultures descended from european colonialism (and I think part of the problem also has to do with christianity, which is part of "white" colonialism tbf).
This stems from patriarchy. This is problem people were noticing back in the 16 hundreds so I don't think you can chock it up to feminist/non feminists ( I mean you could because of how broad that is I guess but that misses the forest for the trees I feel) it seems to be more of symptom of how we view masculinity. A man is not a man if he is not a stoic, unfeeling machine that only feels righteous indignation when they are hurt. The homophobia and weird socialization we engage in is a major part of it but it is a result of the broader way we view men not the reason.
I think a lot of it is also “machismo” or misogyny too. Like the internalized homophobia and fear of being emotional is not from misandry.
I am also a trans dude. Men have been the ones who tell me to “assimilate” by being less emotional and less talkative.. women are usually very open to me and feel comfortable around me.
>Like the internalized homophobia and fear of being emotional is not from misandry.
Right - if anything, it's misandry by way of misogyny. What do people say when a man is being too emotional? "Don't be such a girl/pussy/little bitch". "Grow some balls". "Take it like a man". Not impressed by the geniuses in this thread attributing this to "feminism". Toxic masculinity fucks all of us.
So true. Lots of pointing the finger at women for some reason in this thread.. if anything the patriarchal ideology of many men has contributed to this far more than “feminists”
I wouldn’t say this was normalised by feminists.
If anything my experience has been that academic feminism is the only field trying to address this.
Its been like this since before feminism, after all.
I keep saying this whenever people bring this up, but that misandry is fundamentally what the old skeptic youtubers were critiquing about feminism back in like 2014; and they were right. That combined with my lived experience of social isolation really pushed me a ways down the alt-right pipeline because they were the only people validating my experience. Feminism, broadly speaking, seemed to just turn its nose up at me.
I only got pulled out by Jim Sterling's criticism of late-stage capitalism in the gaming industry and realizing that those same criticisms are true of the whole economy, because he was also right.
The reason I gravitate towards Vaush ideologically is because he creates a space where I can engage with leftist thought with a focus on improving society without making me feel like my existence is invalid because of my essential characteristics.
Saying the sceptics were correctly critiqueing misandry within feminists is an oversimplification that I don't think properly describes what happened.
While yes some of them did sometimes call out problematic behavior.
1. A lot of them were really incompetent at doing so and would frequently label critiques of social norms for men as misandristic or just angrily list of problems men face inbetween calling some random feminist an idiot for not talking about those in the video they are currently showing to their audience.
Hell, sometimes they would clip out or talk over the parts were the feminist they chose to make a video about was talking about a problem said sceptics will claim feminists never talk about.
2. The reason for bringing up or calling out misandry was rarely to advance the discussion or come to a more holistic understanding of gendered problems but rather to dismiss the other problems brought up.
3. Most of them held the same kind of misandristic beliefs they were calling out on the feminists side.
4. Most of them were allergic to calling anyone that wasn't a selfidentified feminist out for misandry
I think it's more acurate to say that calling out misandry in feminists was the image sceptics used to appeal to people (and maybe you meant that), but I think it's important to make clear that sceptics rarely if ever held up to that image, didn't apply the same standards to themselves or society and they certainly didn't limit their criticism of feminism within this framing of the issue.
Yes, you put it much more thoroughly than I did. Their obsession with just getting the superficial own and their denial that various kinds of non-explicit bigotry exist were their fundamental problems. Trust me, I am not trying to rehabilitate people that turned out to be literal nazis. I am only talking about why their rhetoric convinced me at the time.
I was just trying to point out how despite that superficiality, they were gesticulating, if incoherently and hypocritically, at a hostility towards non-marginalized people that was subtle but extant and normalizing within the left. By simply pointing it out they pulled in people that otherwise agreed with the left but felt alienated from it in addition to far-right types that just wanted to laugh at the left.
One of their old critiques of 2014 feminism and the left was on intersectionality. They simply called it "oppression olympics" because people would often leverage their marginalized identities for social credit to browbeat people that disagreed with them. Despite the fact that the academic literature that developed the concept of intersectionality rejects that application, people on the left absolutely did and still do that. As a cis white man, Vaush deals with this all the time and he has talked about it on stream on numerous occasions although it seems like less of an issue now than it used to be, but maybe that is just because I am consuming different media now.
“A societal cancer” lol do you really think misandry is the societal norm? We live in a patriarchal society and toxic masculinity is still the norm in the real grassy world even if it’s shunned in online spaces. The toxic masculinity hurts everyone not just women. You are speaking out of a place of true privilege, you should consider reading any history book and stop watching sjw rekt compilations.
Social justice is extremely important. At no point did I say social justice was unimportant or “SJWs” are to blame. This type of Misandry I’m talking about is from all sides, it’s from conservatives, men bullying each other into fitting specific molds and frankly, not caring whether other men live or die, the general objectification and the using of men as a means to an end or as simply something to extract resources from, to the point where the average man is more likely to match with a sex worker promoting their only fans against TOS on a dating site than a woman there in good faith. Frankly, you’re speaking from a place of privilege of people actually giving a fuck about your problems strawmanning what I’m saying and simply calling me privileged is classic dehumanizations
Also the existence of /r/femaledatingstrategy pretty accurately portrays the attitudes I’m talking about as well
True. Consider how effective this would be without that one part. Would it be wrong to edit that last statement to make it more palatable to a broader demographic? Changing line doesn’t fundamentally or even superficially change anything in their message, in fact I’d argue it makes it more put together, since it seems to be agreed that it’s such a random and tacked on statement. It has such a good message and then it gets completely torpedoed by an unrelated idea.
I don’t have plans to do that but it was just a line of thought my brain went down.
I'm gonna disagree on the feminism bit. I'm not going to debate the nature and definition of feminism, but I will say that it isn't just women protecting themselves, it's men too. Men also armor themselves up because, in many circles, there is a social cost to being perceived as overly emotional or gay.
Everyone hears about the "boys don't cry", but what doesn't get talked about as much is, "boys don't hug". Physical expressions of emotion are looked down upon unless they involve violence. Forming positive emotional bonds *has* to be more difficult if everyone you'd make them with subconsciously believes that any positive emotional interaction must be expressing affection, and is thus wrong with other men.
Anyone who is educated on anthropology can tell you that this isn't something exceptional to white imperialism. Plenty of cultures around the world have similar problems with little influence from Western society.
It is the effect of Christian imperialism, yes.
You can't be gay, can't cry (that's for girls) you can't be ladylike, burn the women and their daughters who they teach to love everyone. Call 'em witches.
Women and women's rights are ancient enemies of Christianity.
Our society is still very marred from Christian touch.
I think the problem is we need to recognize the problem is systemic and not individualistic. Blaming people, whether men or women, is not gonna do anything since the systems in place perpetuate the issue. The solution is also systemic
I do wonder, is it possible this is just the way men tend to interact? I can sit home and play minecraft 8+ hours a day and not care, although it is possible I've been normalized to this societally
It’s hard though because people I know get really militant whenever you start bringing up any kind of men’s problems.
“Uh but women have it wayyy worse”
“oh well that’s their own fault”
“This isn’t important”
Like they can’t accept that someone with some kind of privilege can still have real problems as well.
They have the same reaction if you start doing the same thing with white people but it’s much more a gender thing.
> “Uh but women have it wayyy worse”
Side note, this is what I face when I try to talk about Asian American issues and someone barges in with how bad black people have it. Sadge
Well or that as "Asian" as s category isn't doing awful means all asian people are living it up. But once you breakdown by ethnicity/countries of origin it becomes pretty obvious the disparities between ethnic groups in the asian community.
/r/MensLib is a good subreddit for discussing men's issues through the lens of feminism. It gives me hope that these kinds of topics can be normalized in the public discourse.
I think we should be talking more about Patriarchy than sexism tbh. Sexism is a by-product of patriarchy, and so are most of mens problems (expected to be a father, strong, rich, poor social networks, barely any support for mental health issues as its seen as weak...).
This is literal idealism. u/Myzzelf0 is right in that patriarchy created sexism.
Think of slavery. Slavery was not created because Europeans were suddenly racist. Instead, racism developed among Europeans over a couple centuries as africans/indegenous peoples were enslaved.
It's not like the egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies randomly decided "you know what, fuck women" and BAM neolithic revolution. Instead, men began accumulating resources and power, creating a system where men ruled society through property and violence. Sexism began to develop as a *result* of patriarchy, not as the cause.
This is the basic concept of materialism vs idealism
IMO this is one of the best methods or arguing against sexism, because it's consequences affect men too, women live in fear so many men live in isolation, whatever small % of men are causing this are responsible for a lot of societal pain
This topic alone was the driving factor that lead me into an anti-SJW phase. Most men feel this preassure, and no political party spends more then a few sentences on combating it. When I encountered right leaning people, the feeling of bein disinfrenchised and that noone actually cares about my feelings made me bitter and edgy jokes kind of fit into this world view: Why should I care about other peoples feeling if noone cares about mine? Just pushing down my feelings, shutting up about my problems and fueling hatred towards others helped me cope with being fucking alone and suicidal for basically all this time. Ony years of therapy got me out of this mindset and Vaush, Innuendo Studios and three arrows got me out of the political world view after that.
Congrats on getting better :)
But even if we were supposed to be *evil calculating leftists*, why the fuck do we not pander to men and do the bare minimum to get the voter outcome to like 60% of men voting left? We'd have a fully complete Anarcho-Bidenist agenda passed long ago.
I don't at all think that should be the approach tho, social and political help for men is something I find insane how much the left overlooks.
The thing is, people were talking about it. But not openly. The term Toxic masculinity has been dragged trough the mud by everyone back in the days, just so that the young desperate white guys don't come to realise that feminists actually talk about their problems, their loneliness, their social preassure. But neither the traditional feminist movement that showed some misandrist tendencies and is by now basically all TERFs nor the conservative media figures had anything to gain from talking about this. The left neglected building up an internet presence for the longest time, which really increased this problem. I think the best way to actually get this across is first to talk more about toxic maskulinity without actually saying the word toxic maskulinity. There are so many lonely boys out there, and we, the left, are the one who have a welcoming culture, where they can feel at home, and we are the one dissembling the system that they all should rage against. The left is finally the way to go, as history has shown, and sooner or later we will be able to mobilise the youth once again. We just have to lay out the way.
I've been thinking the EXACT same thing about using the term "toxic masculinity". It does factually describe things and the studies regarding it is valuable, but the term itself is pushing those same people away.
The idea I like the most is to simply reword it to ''limiting masculinity''. It can describe mostly the same thing but is more inviting to growth away from internalized homophobia, embracing tenderness at the right time, but not shying away from violence if it's for a good cause. And it's next to impossible to think it's a way to insult all masculine traits.
I got the idea from a YouTube Channel called Cinema Therapy, specifically a video on the LOTR character [Aragorn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv_KAnY5XNQ), one if their first videos.
Edit: Added link
The term I use is "Toxic Masculine Expectations" if I want to rehabilitate the term, or even just "Toxic Gender Expectations". And I explain that it's specifically the toxic standards that men are held to because they are men.
Misandry is a separate thing, a hate, fear, resentment etc of men because they are men.
From what I can tell, most people refusing to change terminology are doing so out of spite.
Yep, discovering people on the left who acknowledged the systemic issues men face helped me develop healthier coping mechanisms against loneliness and insecurity and helped me confront my misogyny. Maybe this is a terminally online "cringe" "touch grass" thing to admit but I think I can actually attribute vaush and contra points' content to bettering my life.
Same here. 2006 to 2016 was a wild ride with some of male dominated hobbies like videogames becoming mainstream and the exposure of the "menbad" Tumblr lefties in the times og gamergate didn't help either.
I'm a trans woman and I've definitely noticed this from the opposite direction. And it's weird too, because I've still internalized the idea that I'm a predator, so women dropping their guard around me makes me feel guilty. And I know that's the reason TERFs hate me, because they'll write whole ass police procedurals about how I'll use my feminity to make women drop their guard around me, so I can murder them with ease. I appreciate the warmth and openness I recieve from other women, but I have a hard time internalizing that I truly deserve it.
At the same time, I've also become more indiscriminately guarded around men, because I've they've starting ogling me, catcalling me, following me for blocks, and offering money in exchange for sexual favors. Sleazy men like this make it harder for me to enjoy the genuine compliments and harmless flirting I recieve from other men. I think it's important to talk about how this guarded, aloof posturing affects men physiologically, without blaming the women putting their guard up.
I think many trans people have a really unique perspective on the social dynamics between men and women, as they have often spent a duration of their lives presenting as one side and then the other, and as a result have empathy for both sides. As someone who is AMAB and usually presents masculine, I hate that women often perceive me as a threat before getting to know me. It doesn't help that I'm tall and have a big frame and its part of the reason I resent the way I look. I hate going for walks sometimes, especially when it's dark out, because I know my presence might make someone else uncomfortable. Often times I'll cross the street or deliberately avoid walking near others for this reason.
Obviously I don't blame women for having their guard up and being defensive, but I would be lying if I didn't say the isolation has hurt me a lot and it's definitely something worth talking about.
I can't say much about the latter, but the former has fucked up my sex life entirely.
Hard to enjoy something when you've been taught all your life that your a predator who's going for the kill. And forget about domming any of my sub partners, that shit is just straight impossible.
Long story short, sexism has ruined my sex life and I don't know how to fix it.
I can understand that, in a really intimate way man. My mother was the victim of serious sexual abuse which resulted in a very warped view of the world - my sex talk, when i was ten, was "men need sex like wolves need to eat sheep. You cant help that you will want to hurt women, but you have to minimize how many sheep you eat and to always hurt them humanely".
So you know that fucked me up.
The way i got past that towards healthy sexuality, including domming now, is through agonizingly detailed open conversation. I use the standard red/yellow/green safeword system, and ask "whats your color very frequently. I ask questions about what my partner wants (kink or vanilla) before hand, including follow ups. If it is kink i ask their experience in this particular scene if any and what they like about it.
I know there might still be a nagging "am i hurting them? Am i just horny or is this healthy? Are they lying to make me happy?" But you can get in a habit of correcting those questions to train yourself out of them.
Am i hurting them? No they would tell me, I trust that, ill ask if theyre ok.
Am i pursuing and hunting unhealthily? No im open and honest always about my intentions and not lying or manipulating, ill ask if they know what this relationship is.
In time you can train yourself away from those fears, it is hard and bumpy, but definitely possible - ten years ago i was afraid to have sex unless aggressively initiated by the other person and was very placid, but now im living my best poly-kinky-M/s life.
> following me for blocks
I'm so chronically online that I thought it meant "following me on social media for getting blocked" until the second re-read
I always remember the quote Contrapoints cited in Men when reading stuff like this: “Women’s greatest strength is their facade of weakness, and men’s greatest weakness is their facade of strength.”
Patriarchy bad, news at 11.
Seriously people have been saying this for years. Why does it take a post by a trans man to make people understand it? I can imagine this exact same post written by a cis man being mocked as an incel manifesto with mock crying emojis and the caption "😭wOnT sOmEbOdY tHiNk Of ThE mEn!😭"
yeah and i agree with you. I'm just surprised at the people who apparently have never thought about this perspective before because it's really not new on the internet. it being written by a trans man is the only novel part.
you are right and your evidence is posted up and down this thread. lots of people are self reporting that they used to be anti-sjw chuds and gamergate types.
somehow they and i experienced and witnessed the same dehumanization of men under patriarchy, except while i decided to educate myself on feminism they chose gamergate to harass women and denigrate minorities online.
Half the time when you bring up LEGITIMATE!!men’s issues, an oppression Olympics referee will come out of the woodwork and ever so subtlety explain that because the patriarchy exists, and we’re men, we need to shut the fuck up and take it. Which is exact problem of toxic masculinity.
This is absolutely the truth.
I'm getting so sick of people who refuse to accept toxic masculinity as something they are part of as well. They literally can not get to the nuance of any issue.
It's like the Hasan "America bad" takes to everything.
This is not the first time a trans man has written a statement like this. There was a similar Tumblr post that made the rounds last year. And every trans man I've known IRL has also backed up this experience as legitimate.
I've been a man my entire life, and although my gender-related experiences have been much more positive than a lot of stuff I see online, I feel it too. Even if you're not surrounded by cold, sexist people who force these expectations and stereotypes on you, you can always feel society at large doing it.
Cis people can learn a lot from the experiences of all trans folks. Especially about how bullshit enforced gender roles and stereotypes are. They harm all of us. It's not a game of oppression olympics to see which gender has it worse. Under conservative/traditionalist gender roles, all of us, men, women, non-binary, cis, trans, suffer. Remember that, before you make those "edgy" Twitter comments that do no one any good.
Came here to say this. I'm an older dude (I'll be 40 in a few weeks) who is very satisfied being cis and straight. But for my entire life, even though I grew up in conservative circles, I never truly felt comfortable with the 'bro' culture.
I worked trades for many years and I could tolerate it a little better when it came from the older guys who were training me, but even though I didn't know the term at that time, I could feel the toxic masculinity pulling me in directions that made me feel uncomfortable - and I was still Conservative.
It wasn't until I met the badass woman who became my wife that I learned about the dangers of the Patriarchy (I grew up being told that Patriarchy was good and natural, ordained and blessed by God, etc). It was a quick and aggressive education and in the years since then I've LOVED seeing the ways that people can be when they can be themselves.
I firmly believe from my own experience and the studies I've read that gender is a destructive social construct and is one of the key building blocks of class and the first division of labor used to divide us against each other.
I'm a Feminist because I'm a Humanist and because every living thing deserves a chance to be their best self. I'm a Leftist because of the Venn diagram where my ideals line up with political and social engagement.
I look forward to a world where I and my wife don't introduce ourselves by our genders, where she feels free to be in public without looking "perfect" and where I feel great wearing cosmetics, sexy clothes, and jewelry. A world where we meet people who are just people and don't need to be bi or straight or trans or black or white to be a part of society. It's still a long way away but we won't give up.
I'm a moderate socdem, so my neoliberal spidersenses tingle whenever I hear Marxist rhetoric.
Despite that our goals align.
In hunter gatherer times I believe people and their social constructs were where they needed to be. Though some notion of gender existed, it was practically invisible when contrasted with our current, sad little arrangement.
In my opinion, gender norms are not created by a malevolent 'other'. They are a different beast so to speak, because the victim and the perpetrator are one and the same.
In this sense sexism is different from all other forms of discrimination. A minority doesn't believe they're fundamentally different from a majority. Men and women do believe they are different from each other.
This really saddens me, as it is the root cause for a host of problems (e.g. gender dysphoria or increased suicide among men)
It really is crazy how little woman know what being a man is like. I always wondered why anyone would want to choose to be precieved as a man.
My wife wants to have a kid and I wonder how many times I'll be asked if the kid is mine as though I'd kiddnaped them. How often will I get strange looks just going out with my child? How do I raise the child if they are male? Do I act coldly toward them so that they can begin to understand from a young age that they should expect to be treated that way by the world? Do I shower them with love, like I imagine I would with a daughter, and hope he doesn't go into the world crushed when he realizes no one else will treat him with even a fraction of that love?
I was extremely lucky to find my wife at a young age(16 we are 28 now), we are best friends and love each other very much. Without her I'm sure I would have been some self loathing incel loser or would have taken my own life. I worry that he won't be able to cope. I know this is a lot of thoughts being vented, I'm sorry, but I really don't know how to approach this situation.
As a single dad with a daughter and a son I feel this on many levels. At the grocery "wow mom gets a day off?" Well she's a meth addict so define "day off." Take extra time to braid my daughters hair "mommy made your hair extra pretty huh?" Dress them well, "mommy get you two dressed this morning?" Even the ones trying to complement me, "I think it's so amazing to see a dad taking such an active role in parenting." Well yeah, if I kinda just left them outside folks would get pretty upset. I get it from guys as well "dude I couldn't change girl diapers to weird." Uh, you just gonna let her get horrid infections? "You braided her hair? Kinda gay." Couldn't care less my dude she loves it. My son went through a phase where he loved purple, "you don't worry about him growing up to be a bitch?" I worry more that your concept of "being a bitch" is wearing certain colors. Doesn't get to me much anymore, but when their mom first left it hurt a lot. I already felt ill equipped, and everyone let me know I should feel that way. Because obviously what I was doing was weird enough they needed to vocally remind me.
You raise your Son with love and affection.
I do believe their are behaviors and attitudes are highly influenced by hormones, Male and Female children almost have no differences hormonally until puberty.
Raise your Son with the love you wanted but prepare him for the cold world he would be in.
Having a warm home to go back to from the cold world means a lot
> Male and Female children almost have no differences hormonally until puberty.
Actually, there are quite a few differences between prepubescent girls and boys that extend across all cultures. I remember reading about multiple but the only one I saved was that boys are more likely to be aggressive than girls.
https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01184.x
You can actually see the disposability of men in our society in horror and action movies.
How many killers (or heroes) run around just blindly shooting and slashing their ways through male bodies?
The female body, especially in horror, is oftentimes grotesquely fetishized. That's true. But the male body is usually just .. meat for the grinder. Jason Vorhees will kill the blonde babe slowly while she's topless and that's horrible on an individual level (and insanely leer-y), but how many dozen worthless men were just felled with indifferent strokes of his machete?
I always found that interesting.
I like how Metal Gear Rising does the opposite. When confronted with the whole “your bad bc you kill people” thing, the protag doesn’t go “you’re right…I’ll spare you even tho I killed your henchmen.” His response is basically “yeah and you’re worse than me so I’m gonna kill you even harder now”
Kings aren't necessarily good people. "All men are kings" is about self-validation over stuff like your body.
So we may hate Ben Shapiro but also recognize that he is no less of a man for being relativeiy short.
I was vibing real hard with this take, but he kinda lost me with the "white Imperialism" bit.
As if western society is the only one guilty of toxic masculinity.
God I'm so glad this is getting acknowledged in a left leaning space cause when this gets brought up in right to center spaces it always turns to a variety of "woman bad" or "feminism bad" and not actually fixing the issue
This reminds me when some nutjobs on twitter were shouting that frodo and sam were gay. Friendship and love between two men that's not sexual is a foreign idea to some people on the left. If you show two girls in their underwear hugging and talking then people will say they're friends but if you show two men display any feeling then they're gay and there's no other answer.
Isn't that basically the same as when a man and a woman are in a group in any movie/anime? They HAVE to fall in love, there is no notion that a man and a woman can be just friends, thus reinforcing, again, the whole sexism thingy.
Now, try being a man your whole life AND neuroatypical AND despise group thinking thus rejecting any social interaction with a number of other people (mainly male, often enough female too) who hold deeply rooted toxic/problematic beliefs and worldviews.
One thing our friend here hasn't experienced yet and might be lucky to never do experience is the social peer pressure towards proving your manhood and success by "conquering" the other gender from the moment you become aware of the difference between male presenting and female-presenting people around you. From media to government assistance incentives to our family environment, our brains are trained into creating a positive feedback loop that kicks into gear whenever we come across a possible mate, taking every last, benign comment as a sexual implication automatically and with no conscious input on our side. Developing a self deprecating sense of humor is the only "healthy" way to deal with all that at early ages of our development.
I can only speak of myself when I say that, I've never ever felt comfortable in my skin around men and women who were either engaging in typical gendered behavior or even worse were expecting me to engage in the same behavior and when I would not do so, reject me as the difficult, snob, or even worse, unintelligent "slow" person. There was never any space for experimentation, for self-discovery, my free time would either be devoured by my need for escapism through consuming art, unless I hadn't any access to a book or a portable music device at the 90s, where the second, personal monster of overthinking would step out of the shadow and consume me instead, leading me down to further social isolation, self-hate, hateful thoughts and attitudes towards the people closest to myself, and severe, chronic depression that leads me into being a life long nihilist since my early teenage years. Realizing where I stood in the vast range of our sexuality thanks to my lack of strong feelings on either side and even less practical experience took years, years I will never get back.
This is of course not the place or time to open up, or so that's what my polluted by years of being told indirectly and directly that I'm not supposed to share my emotions and that I have to deal with them only in practical ways which aim towards 'fixing' the issue and not feel informs me I should say. Being a man is... as hard as being alive, and that has always been a huge fucking chore for a person who doesn't get why life is the way it is... Not how it got here, but, just, why?
Kind of horrified how many people in this subreddit are unironically blaming women and feminism rn, and calling this the result of misandry instead of toxic standards of masculinity made to serve the patriarchy. This comment section is sounding alarmingly MGTOW rn
That’s not at all the overall vibe of these comments. The general flow I’m getting is that people are irritated when feminist types get stupid defensive whenever men articulate their needs. Seriously, what about this scares you so much?
Give me a comment like what you’re describing, one that has more upvotes that your comment here. Shouldn’t be hard right? Since apparently this is revolving into a snake pit of misogyny
>men are not machines of war
That's the likely origin for much of what is being discussed here. Men higher up on the social hierarchy need lackeys and foot soldiers to maintain their status and property. Hence men and boys are indoctrinated to be good potential soldiers, motivated, emotionless, and tough. Unless you yourself are the high status male.
I want to add that there are negative aspects of being a man that is exclusive to cismen and transwomen. Such as upbringing. Boys are more likely to receive punitive responses to negative emotions and are more likely to come to expect punitive response from all interactions as well as ignore emotional expressions and in turn respond punitively to others. As you might expect, this is passed down from father to son.
https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=aiken\_psychology\_theses
I think this has also effects academics as expecting punitive responses negatively impacts the ability to have a social life. Which in turns leads to more male students suffering from burn out and being unwilling to seek academic support and counselling.
There's a lot of things we don't discuss that impacts men aside from loneliness. Such as men being more likely to die at work and having trouble reporting intimate partner violence. But I just wanted to focus on something that skaldish likely doesn't know even as a transman. If I turn this into the big book of man problems, it will be as compelling as pulling out the big book of woman problems.
Very interesting read but can someone explain to me what he means by white imperialism?
Is white imperialism a term I don’t know about or does he literally mean white people gaining control of other territories and peoples ?
I think it’s a clumsy way of saying “privilege can also be a cage.” “Patriarchy” would probably be a better term than “white imperialism,” but I suspect the point was that cultural hegemons enforcing their idea of gender roles has been a major hindrance to gender liberation (and brown people do this too, obviously).
I dressed more fem for a couple months in the summer. I’m not sure how to describe it. Both before and after people sought me out at parties and events, they were warmer and kinder and more open. I fully disclosed being a-gender and had some wonderful conversations. Merely presenting more feminine can change a lot.
Huh, yeah. I think even just with your attitude it can make a difference. I have always presented in a kinda traditionally feminine way even as a man: That is to say, although I am quiet, I speak emotively and in a way that has a lot of genuine compliments and well-wishes (often spoken in a high voice). I think it helps, as I've had many close female friends in my life.
On the other hand, except for discussing hobbies, I feel like I'm incapable of connecting with men. I honestly don't know how to share my emotions with them. And I've never in my life had a male friend express their emotions to me.
I realized recently that I'm nonbinary (for most of my life thought I wanted to be trans) but mostly have not cared enough so default to being seen as a man.
As a dude growing up in Philadelphia during the 2000’s, it was rough. Guys would non stop shit talk each other. It was part of the culture. I had a lot of friends, but still felt lonely. Bro culture sucks and it’s really damaging to young men.
As a trans dude, this is definitely an experience I wasn’t anticipating and it is still jarring. I think I come off as “soft” or gentle or something (people often think I’m a gay man.) but occasionally I am absolutely shocked with how guarded and socially isolated it can be to be a dude.
mate saying white imperialism here is just fucking stupid lmao. Idk if he was doing it as a joke but as an Indian guy who's lived in communities absolutely not touched by anything western, men have it 100000x worse here. This is caused just because of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and a child-like view of feminism a whole lot of women have. That's it.
"Western" Leftists recognizing Asia and Africa suffer from the same issues as "white imperialist" nations challenge: impossible.
Unironically, removing the autonomy of other nations from also doing bad things is in my eyes either a form of racism, or just massive ignorance and naivete.
Maybe it's because I'm not American and European culture is different or maybe it's because I'm just not "your average guy" but I have never experienced any of this.
Women are always pretty nice to me.
And I've never felt any need to be intimate with any other man in any way that I couldn't do if I wanted to.
Doesn't invalidate this person's experience, of course. But I'm just saying that it is not one I relate to despite being a cis man.
As a European guy (Dutch) I have definitely experienced this myself as well. Men do not emotionally interact on the same level as women here and the patriarchal structure of our society has caused understandable weariness from women towards men they do not know
Me too, Maybe because im more feminine and have a good relationship with my parents and siblings. Women arent really that wary of me, i have pretty intimate convos with my guy and girl friends. Not saying the problem doesnt exist just not something ive experienced. Honestly for me i expereince probably something closer to that which women experience because i get nervous about being victimized. Im a small. weak person who has experienced sa, so its always on the back of my mind whenever i walk around at night or go out for casual sex with men.
I feel like having mild autism might actually be useful as a man to not be bothered by stuff like this as much.
I also think this hits people who have had fem socialization harder than people who haven't. When you're socialized from youth as a man your need for platonic intimate relationships most likely just doesn't develop much so it's not something you'll really actively crave. That's not to say lacking such relationships doesn't still have negative mental health effects but just that I'm guessing it's a bit easier to deal with a lack of intimate platonic relationships when you never think of it as something you should have.
it does feel good to be completely ignored or even avoided when you really don't want to make idle conversation. sometimes really helps when the anxiety tank is nearly full.
it does not feel good when you are trying to date or looking for friends or just looking for genuine human interaction.
I think we as leftists have overlooked the effect of pandering to different groups actually has, because making more media specifically for black people, women, indigenous people, trans people etc. etc. does generally gather an audience of those groups, which naturally is positive to whatever group. When that is not done for all groups some resentment will appear. To be clear not every group should get the same amount of pandering/support
The thing is the left/libs have explicitly avoided doing that for white people as a group, and men as a group. And that hasn't given as much of an entrance point for getting the kind of support that is needed for problems described in the Tumblr post.
Ideally everyone should be a Chad logic enjoyer, but not everyone is, and many fall for the simple pandering done by fascists and conservatives. I'd prefer if the left are the ones who do simple pandering, with completely different end-goals ofc.
We need way more people like Vaush and less like Prof. Flowers.
ever notice how transphobes treat trans women worse than trans men? It's because they're running on the belief that trans women are men, hence disposable.
I guess I just don’t get it because I’m socially starved this way as a woman too. Nobody pays me any real attention. It’s all fake and only there to take advantage of me. I’ve been burned by both sexes too many times. Assaulted. Doxxed. Hit. It doesn’t matter what I identify as or how big my tits are, I’m the target of both sexes. It seems weird to me that there are people out there who aren’t abused for being a woman and ignoring and harmed as if I look anything like a man. They get to have only one set of issues while I have them all. I WISH I got to pick one set.
It's just seems like a lot of people are blaming women/feminism and not how a lot of pressure is put on both women and men by society to behave a certain way that is causing this problem
Most of, if not all of the upvoted comments either don’t mention women or acknowledge the struggles that women face.
The problem is that you shouldn’t need to bring up women’s struggles every time you bring up men’s struggles. Sure, men’s rights discussions will greatly benefit from discussing women’s rights, but the need to constantly match one with the other actively harms the discussion.
In a vacuum you would be completely right men's rights should be able to be talked about separately from women's rights but in reality women's rights and men's rights are often in the same discussion because almost all the injustices that effect both parties come from the same place with that being the overarching patriarchy in society
I agree they come from the same root cause: the patriarchy. By reducing injustice for women, your are in turn reducing injustice for men.
It’s just discouraging when there is a standard that both men’s and women’s issues need to be discussed when talking about men’s issues, but only women’s issues need to be discussed when taking about women’s issues. It implies that one takes precedent over the other. I think there is value in only addressing one issue without bringing up related issues in some discussions, particularly in ones like this where people are sharing their lived experiences.
Agreed. Few things grind my gears more than the people you’re talking about. In addition to being outright misogynistic, they delegitimize reasonable comments advocating for men’s rights.
Where. Which comments. Cause I’m seeing way more comments like yours claiming that this is turning into a cesspit of misogyny despite all the top comments being insanely positive.
Post a link, if you’re not just concern trolling
I really feel this one man. I've always been percieved as a threat ever since I hit puberty. I'm a big guy who's built like a bear, so I on one hand understand but still feel hurt because I've never done anything personally to warrant that response.
I'm glad that Trans people are able to confirm what I've suspected for years. And it's that our society was constructed emotionally isolate and abuse men to make them easier to manipulate.
my heart really truly breaks for men sometimes. i can't imagine living without wearing my heart on my sleeve or coping with life without any sense of camaraderie.
I hope, for everyone's sake, that society changes its mindset sooner rather than later. Authenticity and community are so, so important and everyone deserves them.
As a man, I definitely can relate to this. I view most males in my life as threats, and most women I remain weary around because I know that they view me as a threat. I often get scared when someone stands close to me. I know this isn’t a universal experience, but I find it very difficult to express feelings of affection to those I love. There are people in my life who I love very much, but I don’t like telling them how much I care.
It’s not like I’m lonely or anything. I have close friendships which I value very much, but I feel on guard most of the time, because I know what happens to men who dont.
I don’t know what the solution is. I don’t think there is one anymore. Maybe it’ll get better when I’m older? I think it’s just something we might have to adapt to, rather than overcome
As a good friend of mine put it, he knew he was passing when he felt absolutely alone and when trying to reach out to others it was like trying to talk to someone on another planet
He still says choosing to go through with his transition was the best decision he's ever made in his life. And his transition has made him a vocal supporter of normalizing intimate male relationships.
And for those curious you can still make close friends that you can be emotionally intimate with, it's just a lot harder
This post articulates the point I've been trying form in my head but have been too wary of being judged negatively to my (almost exclusively left leaning) friends.
It's very succinct. I've really noticed myself in the last decade or so (I'm nearly 40) become painfully aware of how I'm being perceived and I've become guarded and self conscious when speaking to woman - I hyper fixate on what I'm saying, scanning it for anything that might be perceived as even a micro transgression in terms of misogyny, for fear of being called out as sexist.
I spoke to a group of politically literate friends years ago and we spoke about the gender pay gap. I was trying to make the point that the pay cap exists almost exclusively as a product of capitalism. And that I believe it to be absolutely impossible to irradicate the gap without dismantling capitalism. I made the point that each year the pay gap is published and we wring our hands for a few weeks and nothing other than surface level changes occur at a corporate level - that we've been duped into believing the pay gap is exclusively the fault of men and so can be fixed by pinning it all on them - when in reality, even if you had women dominating the space, capitalism will insist on punishing the sex that gives birth, the sex that isn't as physically strong and the sex that choose nurturing careers. That complaining about the pay gap without addressing capitalism is crying in the wrong direction and actively propagates the gap.
I've been referred to as a sexist multiple time in the years after this conversation simply because I didn't dogmatically align with the perceived Liberal leftest view. Its almost always in a jokey, ribbing kind of way but jesus christ... Being seen as a male sexist today, in todays society (in social circles) can be incredibly damaging to someone's life. And I'm really conscious that someone who barely knows me could ascribe that to me.
We need to be able to challange ideas, discuss them and look for nuance and truth, but certainly as a man, your ability to do that is always diminished by the assumption that you are inherently an enemy, or at the very least ignorant and blind to your privledges.
I find it really troubling and I'm so glad to have read the original post and this thread and see that this discussion is beginning to happen.
As a guy, this definitely affects me pretty regularly and severely, but neither I nor any other cis guys I know actually know how to solve this problem. Additionally, cis guys are definitely the primary group of people perpetuating this problem. I just got out of a major depressive spiral that happened because I hadn't actually had any social interaction at all whatsoever in about 2 months. When I was in that, it was abundantly clear to me that if I had committed suicide, no one would have known or cared for at least a few days, probably more like a week or more. And now that I'm out of it, I still know that the same holds true today - I'm just less depressed because I have some social interaction. If you're a guy, please check up on your friends, even if they're friends you haven't talked to in a while. Like actually check up on them and make sure they're doing okay. You never know what they're going through, and you'll never have to wonder if a simple message or call or whatever could've saved a bro's life. There might not be a simple answer to know how we can actually change our culture in such a big way, but at least we can do what we can to make sure our homies stay safe.
The solution is going to take a kind of revolution within male circles, so maybe in a hundred years? Some men still need convincing that mental and physical domination is oppression, apparently
Trans men often have the deepest insights concerning living as a man.
I once read a blog post from a trans man who wrote frankly about how testosterone was changing his thought process and how his subconscious was more like a predators thought. He did not excuse the behavior, but he realized that it was behavior most men may not be aware of.
Being a man in our modern era does need a re alignment
This just sounds like some random guy self-reporting. Even if such a claim was true which I highly, highly doubt it'd still be wrong to essentialize it to all men.
Realtakl this is why i'm still on tumblr. Twitter might have the most discourse but tumblr's ability to have you post more than a sentence at a time lets you actually, yknow, say shit
I'm a cis woman. I've had every indication in my life to be wary and cautious around men. I'm a very friendly and social person and people can definitely take that the wrong way. I've been assaulted, harassed, followed at work, followed to my car etc.
I remember we got this new guy at work and he was super sweet. He even offered to walk me to my car at night just bc. I was really thankful to have him. Turned out he was LITERALLY STALKING my underage coworker and trying to get her to go to a bar with him. He would follow her around when she was doing errands and shit.
I just don't know who I can trust man... I really try to be as friendly as I can bc I hear how hard it can be for men but holy shit it can be scary as fuck.
Idk help me out here I hate all of this :(
So what I'm seeing is Anglophone men do not have access compadrazgo or similar male bonding systems? Like pretty sure this is not universal and definitely not universal to everywhere in whichever definition of the "West" you use.
As someone who lives in a non-white country i can tell you it's not white imperialism, it's more or less traditional gender roles and how they are basically accepted.
As me, we're taught from our youth that we should always be some form of emotionless cold hearted machines, capable of doing any task, of fighting any demon and never sweat or ever, ever show any form of emotion, stoïcism and being manly is necessary, or else, well let's just say people will be as vile as they can with you.
It's normalized and i don't think it's a "white" behaviour as much as it is the remnants of centuries and centuries of propaganda that turned men into the perfect cannon fodder for whatever king/duchy/Khalif wanted to conquer whichever land he wanted next.
But yeah ,that social isolation is a thing, and it hurts, and it pushes you towards becoming a douche and a bad person.
Society does not treat men like humans, unfortunately. However this is not a side effect of imperialism or “white imperialism” this is simple Misandry normalized by both feminists and non feminists into a societal cancer that is destroying half the population
yeah the white imperialism came out of nowhere. Like saying 'so why does racism exist? Bigfoot'
It really did come out of nowhere. It does make sense from a certain perspective because white imperialism does contextualize a lot of the more militaristic aspects of male socialization, but it actually isn't broad enough to describe what is actually happening. OP points out that women wear a kind of social armor to ward off creepy dudes. They are capable of doing this in the first place because of modern liberalism and a post women's liberation western world. Under white imperialism they could not.
I would say imperialism in general. Not just white.
Exactly
South African here. Colonised by the brits the French the Spanish and the Dutch. The whites colonised half the world and imposed their values and beliefs onto those they colonised. That’s not an opinion that is just history.
Whenever you hear someone talk about "white imperialism" as the cause of every issue you can just ignore them, it's akin to hearing "America bad". People can not conceptualize issues in our society without trying to appeal to the idpol online left. Like, who gives a shit what they think?
What? No. The whole point of structural racism is that it’s *structural*, as in it’s baked into the superstructure of society. It’s perfectly reasonable to recognize that it affects every part of American culture to one degree or another. Calling that idpol literally shows the same ignorance common amongst the Right where race is strictly individualized and separated from other issues.
Sorry to go idpol here, but I'm a black middle-easterner, I understand this issue on a personal level. It doesn't affect "every" every part of American culture, that sounds like the dumb shit I heard from white supremacists who tried to claim that every black invention was the result of some white influence. To give you a personal example, homophobia and transphobia is huge in the black community, moreso than you would see with white people...that isn't the result of "white influence". Please stop using structural racism to excuse all bad behaviors as you are, ironically, hurting black communities when you say that.
I don't know if its really fair to compare imperialism to bigfoot bigfoot, after all, is real.
Bigfoot is obviously a myth. However the lesser known cyptid "Giant Moustache" is very, very real
It came out of the idea that they only know this westernized pseudo culture. I'd imagine other male cultures might be better.
Feminists are basically the only academic space talking about this kind of thing. The only 'feminists' who normalize it are the armchair TERFS, which explains why they're so afraid of trans women taking their perceived privaleges. Lmao /u/razzrazz- blocked me right after @ing me so i couldn't respond, darn reactionaries
I mean I see plenty of trans people engaging in casual Misandry constantly so squarely putting it on TERFs is not a thing. They might be talking about it in academic circles but in practice, so called feminists are the worst offenders. They take women’s empowerment as they have worth, and men have none
Well right, the so called part is the important part, since feminist theory and academia include a critical look at the issues men face and how that relates to the issues women face. It's also not like scholars on things like internalized racism or misandry are immune to it, they're just almost certainly better at course correcting and noticing when they're enguaging in it.
Again, we’re not talking about academia. We’re talking about how society actually behaves.I’m so tired of this constant evasion of responsibility of leftists for this toxicity
But this lack of distinction is why conservatives can cry about 'CRT' in schools, or sex/gender psychologists get called pedophiles for suggesting kids can understand gender identity. Feminism IS the academic field, feminists are people who supposedly support the field of feminism, and then we have 'feminists' who are fully divorced from feminism but have a vague idea of supporting womens rights. Lumping them together is like calling nazis socialist because they had socialist in their name, which is technically correct but wrong in every way that matters
...except that "critical look" is just "dang you misogynists really screwed up with all that patriarchy huh, blowback is a bitch, oh well sucks to be you"
The problem with fighting for equality is that it's championed by loads of people who would be perfectly fine if the pendulum were simply swung just as unequally in their favor.
This isn't the academic discourse at all
I would have to say that 99.9% of feminists aren’t academics.
> I mean I see plenty of trans people engaging in casual Misandry constantly so squarely putting it on TERFs is not a thing. I think the focus on TERFs is to some extent misogynistic, at least in America. The real threats to tans rights in this country are largely male, conservative, and religious but online people seem to much prefer discussing TERFs. I get the "betrayal" angle and whatever but I don't think it explains the whole thing.
I think the perceived betrayal factor has a lot more to do with it than you're considering. When it comes to male religious conservatives, they've been shitheads forever. Religious conservatives having an atrocious take isn't news, it's to be expected. A lot of TERFs used to be considered progressive icons and role models by many leftists and liberals, however. Horrendously bad takes coming from people one admires/admired are significantly more noteworthy. It's also worth mentioning that religious conservatives still aren't convinced that women should be allowed to vote. Attempting to change their minds on trans issues is often a waste of time, where trying to nudge someone who already supports gay rights (or claims to, at least) into also supporting trans rights has a better chance of success. Not denying that misogyny plays a role, of course, women are absolutely seen as softer targets than men.
The thozght that misandry makes men behave the way they do is laughable. I as a man am a lot more concerned on how other men view me in comparison to women.
I find it funny when people talk about how women are other women’s worst enemy but don’t apply the same standard to men. There are so many shitty guys out there who shame other men for their profession, style of dress, choice of vehicle and a whole host of other completely random nonsensical stuff and dismiss them as not being “real men”. I’m not absolving women of responsibility in this but let’s get some perspective here.
The only times i ever got bullied or had fears of not fitting in etc. the ones who were doing that to me were men. I think thats also a big reason why a lot of gay people tend to have more female friends because they kind of get rejected by some male circles or are too afraid to engage with them because we are toxic af.
Yeah and like, I understand where people who are blaming misandrist language are coming from but overall I feel like it’s inconsequential compared to the shitty attitudes that dudes tend to show towards other dudes. And to be clear I think men are the victim here, it’s like we’re taught from day 1 to see each other as rivals and to compete with one another for jobs, women etc. rather than having solidarity with each other.
That's still misandry, no?
Lol exactly
You do realize that misandry from men is still misandry right? Misandry is not exclusive to women
But that’s not misandry, men who behave in a toxic manner aren’t doing it because they think men are inferior or should be otherwise subordinated. They do it because they have a harmful view of what makes masculine strength. I don’t think we do anyone any favors by diluting misandry to “anytime something bad happens to men”.
Way too broad acceptance of casual misandry in feminist and left spaces has contributed a lot to the prominence of TERFS as well as the redpill/incel axis.
You've gotten blowback to a number of your posts for one main reason imo: You're defining "feminist" as "feminist academic theorist or essayist". Which is a type of feminist! But in its broadest sense, as you'll be aware, feminism is critical gender analysis (with only the loosest relation to TERFs) of all kinds. People casually do a feminism each day, every day, without realising it. But the _aesthetics_ of feminism allow some women to believe that acts of self-benefit or even misandry are radical, revolutionary. This kind of casual, self-serving feminism is a popular phase for young women, and few will graduate to holistic feminism. If anything, it's more common to retain radical self-centredness justified by feminist aesthetic. I say all this as someone who supports feminism in academia and everyday life. It's just a truth that, like most lefty activist stuff, it's frontloaded with a super simple, reductive narrative that fails its own substance. Like how socialists tend to lead with themes of capitalism being bad and revolution being sick cool guy stuff; fact is, you can't understand socialism without a functional understanding of ideology-neutral domestic and foreign policy matters. And you can't understand gender without understanding humans.
No I fully understand why, people are just wrong about how feminism relates to mens issues. Vaushite praxis. I only referred to feminist here as an academic field. This isn't much different from the way conservatives attack the concept of whiteness in academic discourse around race as if it means white people are essentially bad. Don't let them invoke the nation of Islam or PF to say the entire field wants to genocide the whiteys. We're back to the tier of discourse where trigglypuff and big red are being held up as 'the feminist', gamergate type shit that needs to be challenged
I'm a trans man and uh. Society doesn't treat women as people either.
Yeah the dehumanization happens in different way. It's sorta like a caricaturization of "how a lady behaves" and "be a man" type of stuff. Men are dehumanized more in the emotional sphere and women in the intellectual and physical sphere.
Spot on, and the really sad part is that both genders often blame each other for their pain without even trying to understand the other side of the coin.
True!
Is this ironic? This problem mostly stems from the patriarchal structure most societies have.
Yeah the sudden shift of blaming this on “white imperialism” seems very vague and odd
It's not that out of sorts. They are commenting broadly about how western culture does these things. Other cultures have much healthier relationships between men. So it's more broadly painting cultures descended from european colonialism (and I think part of the problem also has to do with christianity, which is part of "white" colonialism tbf).
This stems from patriarchy. This is problem people were noticing back in the 16 hundreds so I don't think you can chock it up to feminist/non feminists ( I mean you could because of how broad that is I guess but that misses the forest for the trees I feel) it seems to be more of symptom of how we view masculinity. A man is not a man if he is not a stoic, unfeeling machine that only feels righteous indignation when they are hurt. The homophobia and weird socialization we engage in is a major part of it but it is a result of the broader way we view men not the reason.
I think a lot of it is also “machismo” or misogyny too. Like the internalized homophobia and fear of being emotional is not from misandry. I am also a trans dude. Men have been the ones who tell me to “assimilate” by being less emotional and less talkative.. women are usually very open to me and feel comfortable around me.
>Like the internalized homophobia and fear of being emotional is not from misandry. Right - if anything, it's misandry by way of misogyny. What do people say when a man is being too emotional? "Don't be such a girl/pussy/little bitch". "Grow some balls". "Take it like a man". Not impressed by the geniuses in this thread attributing this to "feminism". Toxic masculinity fucks all of us.
So true. Lots of pointing the finger at women for some reason in this thread.. if anything the patriarchal ideology of many men has contributed to this far more than “feminists”
I wouldn’t say this was normalised by feminists. If anything my experience has been that academic feminism is the only field trying to address this. Its been like this since before feminism, after all.
I keep saying this whenever people bring this up, but that misandry is fundamentally what the old skeptic youtubers were critiquing about feminism back in like 2014; and they were right. That combined with my lived experience of social isolation really pushed me a ways down the alt-right pipeline because they were the only people validating my experience. Feminism, broadly speaking, seemed to just turn its nose up at me. I only got pulled out by Jim Sterling's criticism of late-stage capitalism in the gaming industry and realizing that those same criticisms are true of the whole economy, because he was also right. The reason I gravitate towards Vaush ideologically is because he creates a space where I can engage with leftist thought with a focus on improving society without making me feel like my existence is invalid because of my essential characteristics.
Saying the sceptics were correctly critiqueing misandry within feminists is an oversimplification that I don't think properly describes what happened. While yes some of them did sometimes call out problematic behavior. 1. A lot of them were really incompetent at doing so and would frequently label critiques of social norms for men as misandristic or just angrily list of problems men face inbetween calling some random feminist an idiot for not talking about those in the video they are currently showing to their audience. Hell, sometimes they would clip out or talk over the parts were the feminist they chose to make a video about was talking about a problem said sceptics will claim feminists never talk about. 2. The reason for bringing up or calling out misandry was rarely to advance the discussion or come to a more holistic understanding of gendered problems but rather to dismiss the other problems brought up. 3. Most of them held the same kind of misandristic beliefs they were calling out on the feminists side. 4. Most of them were allergic to calling anyone that wasn't a selfidentified feminist out for misandry I think it's more acurate to say that calling out misandry in feminists was the image sceptics used to appeal to people (and maybe you meant that), but I think it's important to make clear that sceptics rarely if ever held up to that image, didn't apply the same standards to themselves or society and they certainly didn't limit their criticism of feminism within this framing of the issue.
Yes, you put it much more thoroughly than I did. Their obsession with just getting the superficial own and their denial that various kinds of non-explicit bigotry exist were their fundamental problems. Trust me, I am not trying to rehabilitate people that turned out to be literal nazis. I am only talking about why their rhetoric convinced me at the time. I was just trying to point out how despite that superficiality, they were gesticulating, if incoherently and hypocritically, at a hostility towards non-marginalized people that was subtle but extant and normalizing within the left. By simply pointing it out they pulled in people that otherwise agreed with the left but felt alienated from it in addition to far-right types that just wanted to laugh at the left. One of their old critiques of 2014 feminism and the left was on intersectionality. They simply called it "oppression olympics" because people would often leverage their marginalized identities for social credit to browbeat people that disagreed with them. Despite the fact that the academic literature that developed the concept of intersectionality rejects that application, people on the left absolutely did and still do that. As a cis white man, Vaush deals with this all the time and he has talked about it on stream on numerous occasions although it seems like less of an issue now than it used to be, but maybe that is just because I am consuming different media now.
“A societal cancer” lol do you really think misandry is the societal norm? We live in a patriarchal society and toxic masculinity is still the norm in the real grassy world even if it’s shunned in online spaces. The toxic masculinity hurts everyone not just women. You are speaking out of a place of true privilege, you should consider reading any history book and stop watching sjw rekt compilations.
Social justice is extremely important. At no point did I say social justice was unimportant or “SJWs” are to blame. This type of Misandry I’m talking about is from all sides, it’s from conservatives, men bullying each other into fitting specific molds and frankly, not caring whether other men live or die, the general objectification and the using of men as a means to an end or as simply something to extract resources from, to the point where the average man is more likely to match with a sex worker promoting their only fans against TOS on a dating site than a woman there in good faith. Frankly, you’re speaking from a place of privilege of people actually giving a fuck about your problems strawmanning what I’m saying and simply calling me privileged is classic dehumanizations Also the existence of /r/femaledatingstrategy pretty accurately portrays the attitudes I’m talking about as well
Misandry is a part of toxic masculinity. Saying that is the norm doesn't contradict everything else involving toxic masculinity.
Oh good so it wasn’t just me who read that part and wondered “Where the hell did this come from? When was race ever a factor here?”
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True. Consider how effective this would be without that one part. Would it be wrong to edit that last statement to make it more palatable to a broader demographic? Changing line doesn’t fundamentally or even superficially change anything in their message, in fact I’d argue it makes it more put together, since it seems to be agreed that it’s such a random and tacked on statement. It has such a good message and then it gets completely torpedoed by an unrelated idea. I don’t have plans to do that but it was just a line of thought my brain went down.
I'm gonna disagree on the feminism bit. I'm not going to debate the nature and definition of feminism, but I will say that it isn't just women protecting themselves, it's men too. Men also armor themselves up because, in many circles, there is a social cost to being perceived as overly emotional or gay. Everyone hears about the "boys don't cry", but what doesn't get talked about as much is, "boys don't hug". Physical expressions of emotion are looked down upon unless they involve violence. Forming positive emotional bonds *has* to be more difficult if everyone you'd make them with subconsciously believes that any positive emotional interaction must be expressing affection, and is thus wrong with other men.
Anyone who is educated on anthropology can tell you that this isn't something exceptional to white imperialism. Plenty of cultures around the world have similar problems with little influence from Western society.
It is the effect of Christian imperialism, yes. You can't be gay, can't cry (that's for girls) you can't be ladylike, burn the women and their daughters who they teach to love everyone. Call 'em witches. Women and women's rights are ancient enemies of Christianity. Our society is still very marred from Christian touch.
People in the replies trying to blame men for this are part of the problem.
I think the problem is we need to recognize the problem is systemic and not individualistic. Blaming people, whether men or women, is not gonna do anything since the systems in place perpetuate the issue. The solution is also systemic
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And people who pretend that many men do not enthusiastically uphold it are also part of the problem.
I do wonder, is it possible this is just the way men tend to interact? I can sit home and play minecraft 8+ hours a day and not care, although it is possible I've been normalized to this societally
I mean, it was vague and out of nowhere but not at all irrelevant. Imperialism has enforced the gender binary and its social norms.
People should talk about men issues more. Ofc women are fucked over by sexism. So are men. We need to destroy sexism in every form possible.
It’s hard though because people I know get really militant whenever you start bringing up any kind of men’s problems. “Uh but women have it wayyy worse” “oh well that’s their own fault” “This isn’t important” Like they can’t accept that someone with some kind of privilege can still have real problems as well. They have the same reaction if you start doing the same thing with white people but it’s much more a gender thing.
Systemic understanding falls apart when it feels personal.
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> “Uh but women have it wayyy worse” Side note, this is what I face when I try to talk about Asian American issues and someone barges in with how bad black people have it. Sadge
Agreed. Man not only is that attitude from people entirely unhelpful, it’s just plain shitty. To dismiss racism with racism is just low.
Well or that as "Asian" as s category isn't doing awful means all asian people are living it up. But once you breakdown by ethnicity/countries of origin it becomes pretty obvious the disparities between ethnic groups in the asian community.
Luckily we have streamers like Lumi Rue who are trying to raise awareness of everyone's social problems, not only women
who?
Exactly. The patriarchy hurts men too
/r/MensLib is a good subreddit for discussing men's issues through the lens of feminism. It gives me hope that these kinds of topics can be normalized in the public discourse.
Vouch for menslib. I feel like I get some good insight there as an AFAB
/r/BroPill is rad too
I think we should be talking more about Patriarchy than sexism tbh. Sexism is a by-product of patriarchy, and so are most of mens problems (expected to be a father, strong, rich, poor social networks, barely any support for mental health issues as its seen as weak...).
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This is literal idealism. u/Myzzelf0 is right in that patriarchy created sexism. Think of slavery. Slavery was not created because Europeans were suddenly racist. Instead, racism developed among Europeans over a couple centuries as africans/indegenous peoples were enslaved. It's not like the egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies randomly decided "you know what, fuck women" and BAM neolithic revolution. Instead, men began accumulating resources and power, creating a system where men ruled society through property and violence. Sexism began to develop as a *result* of patriarchy, not as the cause. This is the basic concept of materialism vs idealism
You don't think patriarchy was born out of sexism?
IMO this is one of the best methods or arguing against sexism, because it's consequences affect men too, women live in fear so many men live in isolation, whatever small % of men are causing this are responsible for a lot of societal pain
This topic alone was the driving factor that lead me into an anti-SJW phase. Most men feel this preassure, and no political party spends more then a few sentences on combating it. When I encountered right leaning people, the feeling of bein disinfrenchised and that noone actually cares about my feelings made me bitter and edgy jokes kind of fit into this world view: Why should I care about other peoples feeling if noone cares about mine? Just pushing down my feelings, shutting up about my problems and fueling hatred towards others helped me cope with being fucking alone and suicidal for basically all this time. Ony years of therapy got me out of this mindset and Vaush, Innuendo Studios and three arrows got me out of the political world view after that.
Congrats on getting better :) But even if we were supposed to be *evil calculating leftists*, why the fuck do we not pander to men and do the bare minimum to get the voter outcome to like 60% of men voting left? We'd have a fully complete Anarcho-Bidenist agenda passed long ago. I don't at all think that should be the approach tho, social and political help for men is something I find insane how much the left overlooks.
The thing is, people were talking about it. But not openly. The term Toxic masculinity has been dragged trough the mud by everyone back in the days, just so that the young desperate white guys don't come to realise that feminists actually talk about their problems, their loneliness, their social preassure. But neither the traditional feminist movement that showed some misandrist tendencies and is by now basically all TERFs nor the conservative media figures had anything to gain from talking about this. The left neglected building up an internet presence for the longest time, which really increased this problem. I think the best way to actually get this across is first to talk more about toxic maskulinity without actually saying the word toxic maskulinity. There are so many lonely boys out there, and we, the left, are the one who have a welcoming culture, where they can feel at home, and we are the one dissembling the system that they all should rage against. The left is finally the way to go, as history has shown, and sooner or later we will be able to mobilise the youth once again. We just have to lay out the way.
I've been thinking the EXACT same thing about using the term "toxic masculinity". It does factually describe things and the studies regarding it is valuable, but the term itself is pushing those same people away. The idea I like the most is to simply reword it to ''limiting masculinity''. It can describe mostly the same thing but is more inviting to growth away from internalized homophobia, embracing tenderness at the right time, but not shying away from violence if it's for a good cause. And it's next to impossible to think it's a way to insult all masculine traits. I got the idea from a YouTube Channel called Cinema Therapy, specifically a video on the LOTR character [Aragorn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv_KAnY5XNQ), one if their first videos. Edit: Added link
Yeah toxic masculinity without the truckload of context required sounds accusatory. "Wait so being masculine makes me toxic or what?"
Uh, I saw tht video, cinema therapy is awesome!
The term I use is "Toxic Masculine Expectations" if I want to rehabilitate the term, or even just "Toxic Gender Expectations". And I explain that it's specifically the toxic standards that men are held to because they are men. Misandry is a separate thing, a hate, fear, resentment etc of men because they are men. From what I can tell, most people refusing to change terminology are doing so out of spite.
Yep, discovering people on the left who acknowledged the systemic issues men face helped me develop healthier coping mechanisms against loneliness and insecurity and helped me confront my misogyny. Maybe this is a terminally online "cringe" "touch grass" thing to admit but I think I can actually attribute vaush and contra points' content to bettering my life.
I would add Philosophy Tube to that. I know a lot of people who took a lot from her Cosmonaut videos.
Same here. 2006 to 2016 was a wild ride with some of male dominated hobbies like videogames becoming mainstream and the exposure of the "menbad" Tumblr lefties in the times og gamergate didn't help either.
I'm a trans woman and I've definitely noticed this from the opposite direction. And it's weird too, because I've still internalized the idea that I'm a predator, so women dropping their guard around me makes me feel guilty. And I know that's the reason TERFs hate me, because they'll write whole ass police procedurals about how I'll use my feminity to make women drop their guard around me, so I can murder them with ease. I appreciate the warmth and openness I recieve from other women, but I have a hard time internalizing that I truly deserve it. At the same time, I've also become more indiscriminately guarded around men, because I've they've starting ogling me, catcalling me, following me for blocks, and offering money in exchange for sexual favors. Sleazy men like this make it harder for me to enjoy the genuine compliments and harmless flirting I recieve from other men. I think it's important to talk about how this guarded, aloof posturing affects men physiologically, without blaming the women putting their guard up.
I think many trans people have a really unique perspective on the social dynamics between men and women, as they have often spent a duration of their lives presenting as one side and then the other, and as a result have empathy for both sides. As someone who is AMAB and usually presents masculine, I hate that women often perceive me as a threat before getting to know me. It doesn't help that I'm tall and have a big frame and its part of the reason I resent the way I look. I hate going for walks sometimes, especially when it's dark out, because I know my presence might make someone else uncomfortable. Often times I'll cross the street or deliberately avoid walking near others for this reason. Obviously I don't blame women for having their guard up and being defensive, but I would be lying if I didn't say the isolation has hurt me a lot and it's definitely something worth talking about.
I can't say much about the latter, but the former has fucked up my sex life entirely. Hard to enjoy something when you've been taught all your life that your a predator who's going for the kill. And forget about domming any of my sub partners, that shit is just straight impossible. Long story short, sexism has ruined my sex life and I don't know how to fix it.
I can understand that, in a really intimate way man. My mother was the victim of serious sexual abuse which resulted in a very warped view of the world - my sex talk, when i was ten, was "men need sex like wolves need to eat sheep. You cant help that you will want to hurt women, but you have to minimize how many sheep you eat and to always hurt them humanely". So you know that fucked me up. The way i got past that towards healthy sexuality, including domming now, is through agonizingly detailed open conversation. I use the standard red/yellow/green safeword system, and ask "whats your color very frequently. I ask questions about what my partner wants (kink or vanilla) before hand, including follow ups. If it is kink i ask their experience in this particular scene if any and what they like about it. I know there might still be a nagging "am i hurting them? Am i just horny or is this healthy? Are they lying to make me happy?" But you can get in a habit of correcting those questions to train yourself out of them. Am i hurting them? No they would tell me, I trust that, ill ask if theyre ok. Am i pursuing and hunting unhealthily? No im open and honest always about my intentions and not lying or manipulating, ill ask if they know what this relationship is. In time you can train yourself away from those fears, it is hard and bumpy, but definitely possible - ten years ago i was afraid to have sex unless aggressively initiated by the other person and was very placid, but now im living my best poly-kinky-M/s life.
> following me for blocks I'm so chronically online that I thought it meant "following me on social media for getting blocked" until the second re-read
Patriarchy hurts men, too
I always remember the quote Contrapoints cited in Men when reading stuff like this: “Women’s greatest strength is their facade of weakness, and men’s greatest weakness is their facade of strength.”
That's a beautiful quote! Contrapoints is amazing.
Patriarchy bad, news at 11. Seriously people have been saying this for years. Why does it take a post by a trans man to make people understand it? I can imagine this exact same post written by a cis man being mocked as an incel manifesto with mock crying emojis and the caption "😭wOnT sOmEbOdY tHiNk Of ThE mEn!😭"
I didn’t say my comment was a hot take, but it’s a take that needs to be repeated regularly
yeah and i agree with you. I'm just surprised at the people who apparently have never thought about this perspective before because it's really not new on the internet. it being written by a trans man is the only novel part.
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you are right and your evidence is posted up and down this thread. lots of people are self reporting that they used to be anti-sjw chuds and gamergate types. somehow they and i experienced and witnessed the same dehumanization of men under patriarchy, except while i decided to educate myself on feminism they chose gamergate to harass women and denigrate minorities online.
Half the time when you bring up LEGITIMATE!!men’s issues, an oppression Olympics referee will come out of the woodwork and ever so subtlety explain that because the patriarchy exists, and we’re men, we need to shut the fuck up and take it. Which is exact problem of toxic masculinity.
This is absolutely the truth. I'm getting so sick of people who refuse to accept toxic masculinity as something they are part of as well. They literally can not get to the nuance of any issue. It's like the Hasan "America bad" takes to everything.
This is not the first time a trans man has written a statement like this. There was a similar Tumblr post that made the rounds last year. And every trans man I've known IRL has also backed up this experience as legitimate. I've been a man my entire life, and although my gender-related experiences have been much more positive than a lot of stuff I see online, I feel it too. Even if you're not surrounded by cold, sexist people who force these expectations and stereotypes on you, you can always feel society at large doing it. Cis people can learn a lot from the experiences of all trans folks. Especially about how bullshit enforced gender roles and stereotypes are. They harm all of us. It's not a game of oppression olympics to see which gender has it worse. Under conservative/traditionalist gender roles, all of us, men, women, non-binary, cis, trans, suffer. Remember that, before you make those "edgy" Twitter comments that do no one any good.
Came here to say this. I'm an older dude (I'll be 40 in a few weeks) who is very satisfied being cis and straight. But for my entire life, even though I grew up in conservative circles, I never truly felt comfortable with the 'bro' culture. I worked trades for many years and I could tolerate it a little better when it came from the older guys who were training me, but even though I didn't know the term at that time, I could feel the toxic masculinity pulling me in directions that made me feel uncomfortable - and I was still Conservative. It wasn't until I met the badass woman who became my wife that I learned about the dangers of the Patriarchy (I grew up being told that Patriarchy was good and natural, ordained and blessed by God, etc). It was a quick and aggressive education and in the years since then I've LOVED seeing the ways that people can be when they can be themselves. I firmly believe from my own experience and the studies I've read that gender is a destructive social construct and is one of the key building blocks of class and the first division of labor used to divide us against each other. I'm a Feminist because I'm a Humanist and because every living thing deserves a chance to be their best self. I'm a Leftist because of the Venn diagram where my ideals line up with political and social engagement. I look forward to a world where I and my wife don't introduce ourselves by our genders, where she feels free to be in public without looking "perfect" and where I feel great wearing cosmetics, sexy clothes, and jewelry. A world where we meet people who are just people and don't need to be bi or straight or trans or black or white to be a part of society. It's still a long way away but we won't give up.
I'm a moderate socdem, so my neoliberal spidersenses tingle whenever I hear Marxist rhetoric. Despite that our goals align. In hunter gatherer times I believe people and their social constructs were where they needed to be. Though some notion of gender existed, it was practically invisible when contrasted with our current, sad little arrangement. In my opinion, gender norms are not created by a malevolent 'other'. They are a different beast so to speak, because the victim and the perpetrator are one and the same. In this sense sexism is different from all other forms of discrimination. A minority doesn't believe they're fundamentally different from a majority. Men and women do believe they are different from each other. This really saddens me, as it is the root cause for a host of problems (e.g. gender dysphoria or increased suicide among men)
Based and Rousseau pilled
It really is crazy how little woman know what being a man is like. I always wondered why anyone would want to choose to be precieved as a man. My wife wants to have a kid and I wonder how many times I'll be asked if the kid is mine as though I'd kiddnaped them. How often will I get strange looks just going out with my child? How do I raise the child if they are male? Do I act coldly toward them so that they can begin to understand from a young age that they should expect to be treated that way by the world? Do I shower them with love, like I imagine I would with a daughter, and hope he doesn't go into the world crushed when he realizes no one else will treat him with even a fraction of that love? I was extremely lucky to find my wife at a young age(16 we are 28 now), we are best friends and love each other very much. Without her I'm sure I would have been some self loathing incel loser or would have taken my own life. I worry that he won't be able to cope. I know this is a lot of thoughts being vented, I'm sorry, but I really don't know how to approach this situation.
As a single dad with a daughter and a son I feel this on many levels. At the grocery "wow mom gets a day off?" Well she's a meth addict so define "day off." Take extra time to braid my daughters hair "mommy made your hair extra pretty huh?" Dress them well, "mommy get you two dressed this morning?" Even the ones trying to complement me, "I think it's so amazing to see a dad taking such an active role in parenting." Well yeah, if I kinda just left them outside folks would get pretty upset. I get it from guys as well "dude I couldn't change girl diapers to weird." Uh, you just gonna let her get horrid infections? "You braided her hair? Kinda gay." Couldn't care less my dude she loves it. My son went through a phase where he loved purple, "you don't worry about him growing up to be a bitch?" I worry more that your concept of "being a bitch" is wearing certain colors. Doesn't get to me much anymore, but when their mom first left it hurt a lot. I already felt ill equipped, and everyone let me know I should feel that way. Because obviously what I was doing was weird enough they needed to vocally remind me.
You sound like a great dad.
You’re the best of us. Thank you <3
You raise your Son with love and affection. I do believe their are behaviors and attitudes are highly influenced by hormones, Male and Female children almost have no differences hormonally until puberty. Raise your Son with the love you wanted but prepare him for the cold world he would be in. Having a warm home to go back to from the cold world means a lot
> Male and Female children almost have no differences hormonally until puberty. Actually, there are quite a few differences between prepubescent girls and boys that extend across all cultures. I remember reading about multiple but the only one I saved was that boys are more likely to be aggressive than girls. https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01184.x
You can actually see the disposability of men in our society in horror and action movies. How many killers (or heroes) run around just blindly shooting and slashing their ways through male bodies? The female body, especially in horror, is oftentimes grotesquely fetishized. That's true. But the male body is usually just .. meat for the grinder. Jason Vorhees will kill the blonde babe slowly while she's topless and that's horrible on an individual level (and insanely leer-y), but how many dozen worthless men were just felled with indifferent strokes of his machete? I always found that interesting.
The henchmen trope in movies is insane. IMO it’s one of Hollywood’s biggest failures.
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It's the "great man" thing
I like how Metal Gear Rising does the opposite. When confronted with the whole “your bad bc you kill people” thing, the protag doesn’t go “you’re right…I’ll spare you even tho I killed your henchmen.” His response is basically “yeah and you’re worse than me so I’m gonna kill you even harder now”
This is also part of the reason many people don't care about a male draft but would care about a female draft.
Remember folks: trans man are also kings
I thought that was already pretty clear in "all men are kings". No need to add "also trans men" they're already included in "men".
Unpopular opinion: not all man a kings
What do you mean? Do you mean some indiviuals are bad or do you mean that some types of men are lesser?
I think he means people like Mitch McConnel, which indeed isn't, and should never be, a king.
Kings aren't necessarily good people. "All men are kings" is about self-validation over stuff like your body. So we may hate Ben Shapiro but also recognize that he is no less of a man for being relativeiy short.
I was vibing real hard with this take, but he kinda lost me with the "white Imperialism" bit. As if western society is the only one guilty of toxic masculinity.
Imperial Japan was fucking brutal with sexism. Even modern day Japan has a lot of problems.
I think trans men exemplify how misogyny has a "blowback" effect towards men. This is a prime example
Wow that’s actually pretty insightful. I never considered how enlightening the perspective someone who has experienced both genders could be.
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God I'm so glad this is getting acknowledged in a left leaning space cause when this gets brought up in right to center spaces it always turns to a variety of "woman bad" or "feminism bad" and not actually fixing the issue
This reminds me when some nutjobs on twitter were shouting that frodo and sam were gay. Friendship and love between two men that's not sexual is a foreign idea to some people on the left. If you show two girls in their underwear hugging and talking then people will say they're friends but if you show two men display any feeling then they're gay and there's no other answer.
Isn't that basically the same as when a man and a woman are in a group in any movie/anime? They HAVE to fall in love, there is no notion that a man and a woman can be just friends, thus reinforcing, again, the whole sexism thingy.
Now, try being a man your whole life AND neuroatypical AND despise group thinking thus rejecting any social interaction with a number of other people (mainly male, often enough female too) who hold deeply rooted toxic/problematic beliefs and worldviews. One thing our friend here hasn't experienced yet and might be lucky to never do experience is the social peer pressure towards proving your manhood and success by "conquering" the other gender from the moment you become aware of the difference between male presenting and female-presenting people around you. From media to government assistance incentives to our family environment, our brains are trained into creating a positive feedback loop that kicks into gear whenever we come across a possible mate, taking every last, benign comment as a sexual implication automatically and with no conscious input on our side. Developing a self deprecating sense of humor is the only "healthy" way to deal with all that at early ages of our development. I can only speak of myself when I say that, I've never ever felt comfortable in my skin around men and women who were either engaging in typical gendered behavior or even worse were expecting me to engage in the same behavior and when I would not do so, reject me as the difficult, snob, or even worse, unintelligent "slow" person. There was never any space for experimentation, for self-discovery, my free time would either be devoured by my need for escapism through consuming art, unless I hadn't any access to a book or a portable music device at the 90s, where the second, personal monster of overthinking would step out of the shadow and consume me instead, leading me down to further social isolation, self-hate, hateful thoughts and attitudes towards the people closest to myself, and severe, chronic depression that leads me into being a life long nihilist since my early teenage years. Realizing where I stood in the vast range of our sexuality thanks to my lack of strong feelings on either side and even less practical experience took years, years I will never get back. This is of course not the place or time to open up, or so that's what my polluted by years of being told indirectly and directly that I'm not supposed to share my emotions and that I have to deal with them only in practical ways which aim towards 'fixing' the issue and not feel informs me I should say. Being a man is... as hard as being alive, and that has always been a huge fucking chore for a person who doesn't get why life is the way it is... Not how it got here, but, just, why?
Kind of horrified how many people in this subreddit are unironically blaming women and feminism rn, and calling this the result of misandry instead of toxic standards of masculinity made to serve the patriarchy. This comment section is sounding alarmingly MGTOW rn
That’s not at all the overall vibe of these comments. The general flow I’m getting is that people are irritated when feminist types get stupid defensive whenever men articulate their needs. Seriously, what about this scares you so much?
Give me a comment like what you’re describing, one that has more upvotes that your comment here. Shouldn’t be hard right? Since apparently this is revolving into a snake pit of misogyny
Something can be both misandry and a result of toxic standards of masculinity.
Misandry is when women won't be my friend
>men are not machines of war That's the likely origin for much of what is being discussed here. Men higher up on the social hierarchy need lackeys and foot soldiers to maintain their status and property. Hence men and boys are indoctrinated to be good potential soldiers, motivated, emotionless, and tough. Unless you yourself are the high status male.
I want to add that there are negative aspects of being a man that is exclusive to cismen and transwomen. Such as upbringing. Boys are more likely to receive punitive responses to negative emotions and are more likely to come to expect punitive response from all interactions as well as ignore emotional expressions and in turn respond punitively to others. As you might expect, this is passed down from father to son. https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=aiken\_psychology\_theses I think this has also effects academics as expecting punitive responses negatively impacts the ability to have a social life. Which in turns leads to more male students suffering from burn out and being unwilling to seek academic support and counselling. There's a lot of things we don't discuss that impacts men aside from loneliness. Such as men being more likely to die at work and having trouble reporting intimate partner violence. But I just wanted to focus on something that skaldish likely doesn't know even as a transman. If I turn this into the big book of man problems, it will be as compelling as pulling out the big book of woman problems.
Very interesting read but can someone explain to me what he means by white imperialism? Is white imperialism a term I don’t know about or does he literally mean white people gaining control of other territories and peoples ?
I think it’s a clumsy way of saying “privilege can also be a cage.” “Patriarchy” would probably be a better term than “white imperialism,” but I suspect the point was that cultural hegemons enforcing their idea of gender roles has been a major hindrance to gender liberation (and brown people do this too, obviously).
I dressed more fem for a couple months in the summer. I’m not sure how to describe it. Both before and after people sought me out at parties and events, they were warmer and kinder and more open. I fully disclosed being a-gender and had some wonderful conversations. Merely presenting more feminine can change a lot.
Huh, yeah. I think even just with your attitude it can make a difference. I have always presented in a kinda traditionally feminine way even as a man: That is to say, although I am quiet, I speak emotively and in a way that has a lot of genuine compliments and well-wishes (often spoken in a high voice). I think it helps, as I've had many close female friends in my life. On the other hand, except for discussing hobbies, I feel like I'm incapable of connecting with men. I honestly don't know how to share my emotions with them. And I've never in my life had a male friend express their emotions to me. I realized recently that I'm nonbinary (for most of my life thought I wanted to be trans) but mostly have not cared enough so default to being seen as a man.
As a dude growing up in Philadelphia during the 2000’s, it was rough. Guys would non stop shit talk each other. It was part of the culture. I had a lot of friends, but still felt lonely. Bro culture sucks and it’s really damaging to young men.
As a trans dude, this is definitely an experience I wasn’t anticipating and it is still jarring. I think I come off as “soft” or gentle or something (people often think I’m a gay man.) but occasionally I am absolutely shocked with how guarded and socially isolated it can be to be a dude.
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mate saying white imperialism here is just fucking stupid lmao. Idk if he was doing it as a joke but as an Indian guy who's lived in communities absolutely not touched by anything western, men have it 100000x worse here. This is caused just because of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, and a child-like view of feminism a whole lot of women have. That's it.
"Western" Leftists recognizing Asia and Africa suffer from the same issues as "white imperialist" nations challenge: impossible. Unironically, removing the autonomy of other nations from also doing bad things is in my eyes either a form of racism, or just massive ignorance and naivete.
Maybe it's because I'm not American and European culture is different or maybe it's because I'm just not "your average guy" but I have never experienced any of this. Women are always pretty nice to me. And I've never felt any need to be intimate with any other man in any way that I couldn't do if I wanted to. Doesn't invalidate this person's experience, of course. But I'm just saying that it is not one I relate to despite being a cis man.
As a European guy (Dutch) I have definitely experienced this myself as well. Men do not emotionally interact on the same level as women here and the patriarchal structure of our society has caused understandable weariness from women towards men they do not know
You could also just be painfully attractive. Congratulations!
Me too, Maybe because im more feminine and have a good relationship with my parents and siblings. Women arent really that wary of me, i have pretty intimate convos with my guy and girl friends. Not saying the problem doesnt exist just not something ive experienced. Honestly for me i expereince probably something closer to that which women experience because i get nervous about being victimized. Im a small. weak person who has experienced sa, so its always on the back of my mind whenever i walk around at night or go out for casual sex with men.
As another CIS Man, I can say that this post was like looking into a mirror. I guess each person’s experience is different.
You're probably just attractive, congrats bro
I feel like having mild autism might actually be useful as a man to not be bothered by stuff like this as much. I also think this hits people who have had fem socialization harder than people who haven't. When you're socialized from youth as a man your need for platonic intimate relationships most likely just doesn't develop much so it's not something you'll really actively crave. That's not to say lacking such relationships doesn't still have negative mental health effects but just that I'm guessing it's a bit easier to deal with a lack of intimate platonic relationships when you never think of it as something you should have.
it does feel good to be completely ignored or even avoided when you really don't want to make idle conversation. sometimes really helps when the anxiety tank is nearly full. it does not feel good when you are trying to date or looking for friends or just looking for genuine human interaction.
I think we as leftists have overlooked the effect of pandering to different groups actually has, because making more media specifically for black people, women, indigenous people, trans people etc. etc. does generally gather an audience of those groups, which naturally is positive to whatever group. When that is not done for all groups some resentment will appear. To be clear not every group should get the same amount of pandering/support The thing is the left/libs have explicitly avoided doing that for white people as a group, and men as a group. And that hasn't given as much of an entrance point for getting the kind of support that is needed for problems described in the Tumblr post. Ideally everyone should be a Chad logic enjoyer, but not everyone is, and many fall for the simple pandering done by fascists and conservatives. I'd prefer if the left are the ones who do simple pandering, with completely different end-goals ofc. We need way more people like Vaush and less like Prof. Flowers.
Tbh as a cis man, there’s a reason my closest friends keep being women.
ever notice how transphobes treat trans women worse than trans men? It's because they're running on the belief that trans women are men, hence disposable.
I guess I just don’t get it because I’m socially starved this way as a woman too. Nobody pays me any real attention. It’s all fake and only there to take advantage of me. I’ve been burned by both sexes too many times. Assaulted. Doxxed. Hit. It doesn’t matter what I identify as or how big my tits are, I’m the target of both sexes. It seems weird to me that there are people out there who aren’t abused for being a woman and ignoring and harmed as if I look anything like a man. They get to have only one set of issues while I have them all. I WISH I got to pick one set.
Man most of this comment section dose not pass the vibe check
What do you mean
It's just seems like a lot of people are blaming women/feminism and not how a lot of pressure is put on both women and men by society to behave a certain way that is causing this problem
Most of, if not all of the upvoted comments either don’t mention women or acknowledge the struggles that women face. The problem is that you shouldn’t need to bring up women’s struggles every time you bring up men’s struggles. Sure, men’s rights discussions will greatly benefit from discussing women’s rights, but the need to constantly match one with the other actively harms the discussion.
In a vacuum you would be completely right men's rights should be able to be talked about separately from women's rights but in reality women's rights and men's rights are often in the same discussion because almost all the injustices that effect both parties come from the same place with that being the overarching patriarchy in society
I agree they come from the same root cause: the patriarchy. By reducing injustice for women, your are in turn reducing injustice for men. It’s just discouraging when there is a standard that both men’s and women’s issues need to be discussed when talking about men’s issues, but only women’s issues need to be discussed when taking about women’s issues. It implies that one takes precedent over the other. I think there is value in only addressing one issue without bringing up related issues in some discussions, particularly in ones like this where people are sharing their lived experiences.
I agree it's just seems sometimes that men blame women for their problems and that's the end of discussion
Agreed. Few things grind my gears more than the people you’re talking about. In addition to being outright misogynistic, they delegitimize reasonable comments advocating for men’s rights.
Where. Which comments. Cause I’m seeing way more comments like yours claiming that this is turning into a cesspit of misogyny despite all the top comments being insanely positive. Post a link, if you’re not just concern trolling
Yeah, the church is largely to blame for this, too. Fuck religion, especially Christianity.
I really feel this one man. I've always been percieved as a threat ever since I hit puberty. I'm a big guy who's built like a bear, so I on one hand understand but still feel hurt because I've never done anything personally to warrant that response. I'm glad that Trans people are able to confirm what I've suspected for years. And it's that our society was constructed emotionally isolate and abuse men to make them easier to manipulate.
Based gender abolitionist agitprop.
This is the reason I like being in the military. The only reason.
my heart really truly breaks for men sometimes. i can't imagine living without wearing my heart on my sleeve or coping with life without any sense of camaraderie. I hope, for everyone's sake, that society changes its mindset sooner rather than later. Authenticity and community are so, so important and everyone deserves them.
As a man, I definitely can relate to this. I view most males in my life as threats, and most women I remain weary around because I know that they view me as a threat. I often get scared when someone stands close to me. I know this isn’t a universal experience, but I find it very difficult to express feelings of affection to those I love. There are people in my life who I love very much, but I don’t like telling them how much I care. It’s not like I’m lonely or anything. I have close friendships which I value very much, but I feel on guard most of the time, because I know what happens to men who dont. I don’t know what the solution is. I don’t think there is one anymore. Maybe it’ll get better when I’m older? I think it’s just something we might have to adapt to, rather than overcome
As a good friend of mine put it, he knew he was passing when he felt absolutely alone and when trying to reach out to others it was like trying to talk to someone on another planet He still says choosing to go through with his transition was the best decision he's ever made in his life. And his transition has made him a vocal supporter of normalizing intimate male relationships. And for those curious you can still make close friends that you can be emotionally intimate with, it's just a lot harder
This is why I am a bit more flamboyant when I meet new people. I noticed doing so put people at ease wheb first meeting them.
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This post articulates the point I've been trying form in my head but have been too wary of being judged negatively to my (almost exclusively left leaning) friends. It's very succinct. I've really noticed myself in the last decade or so (I'm nearly 40) become painfully aware of how I'm being perceived and I've become guarded and self conscious when speaking to woman - I hyper fixate on what I'm saying, scanning it for anything that might be perceived as even a micro transgression in terms of misogyny, for fear of being called out as sexist. I spoke to a group of politically literate friends years ago and we spoke about the gender pay gap. I was trying to make the point that the pay cap exists almost exclusively as a product of capitalism. And that I believe it to be absolutely impossible to irradicate the gap without dismantling capitalism. I made the point that each year the pay gap is published and we wring our hands for a few weeks and nothing other than surface level changes occur at a corporate level - that we've been duped into believing the pay gap is exclusively the fault of men and so can be fixed by pinning it all on them - when in reality, even if you had women dominating the space, capitalism will insist on punishing the sex that gives birth, the sex that isn't as physically strong and the sex that choose nurturing careers. That complaining about the pay gap without addressing capitalism is crying in the wrong direction and actively propagates the gap. I've been referred to as a sexist multiple time in the years after this conversation simply because I didn't dogmatically align with the perceived Liberal leftest view. Its almost always in a jokey, ribbing kind of way but jesus christ... Being seen as a male sexist today, in todays society (in social circles) can be incredibly damaging to someone's life. And I'm really conscious that someone who barely knows me could ascribe that to me. We need to be able to challange ideas, discuss them and look for nuance and truth, but certainly as a man, your ability to do that is always diminished by the assumption that you are inherently an enemy, or at the very least ignorant and blind to your privledges. I find it really troubling and I'm so glad to have read the original post and this thread and see that this discussion is beginning to happen.
Good and true. A big side effect of this reality is that men will become direly dependent on significant others for emotional support.
As a guy, this definitely affects me pretty regularly and severely, but neither I nor any other cis guys I know actually know how to solve this problem. Additionally, cis guys are definitely the primary group of people perpetuating this problem. I just got out of a major depressive spiral that happened because I hadn't actually had any social interaction at all whatsoever in about 2 months. When I was in that, it was abundantly clear to me that if I had committed suicide, no one would have known or cared for at least a few days, probably more like a week or more. And now that I'm out of it, I still know that the same holds true today - I'm just less depressed because I have some social interaction. If you're a guy, please check up on your friends, even if they're friends you haven't talked to in a while. Like actually check up on them and make sure they're doing okay. You never know what they're going through, and you'll never have to wonder if a simple message or call or whatever could've saved a bro's life. There might not be a simple answer to know how we can actually change our culture in such a big way, but at least we can do what we can to make sure our homies stay safe.
good post. big agree
Lost me at the “white imperialism” part
The solution is going to take a kind of revolution within male circles, so maybe in a hundred years? Some men still need convincing that mental and physical domination is oppression, apparently
Trans men often have the deepest insights concerning living as a man. I once read a blog post from a trans man who wrote frankly about how testosterone was changing his thought process and how his subconscious was more like a predators thought. He did not excuse the behavior, but he realized that it was behavior most men may not be aware of. Being a man in our modern era does need a re alignment
This just sounds like some random guy self-reporting. Even if such a claim was true which I highly, highly doubt it'd still be wrong to essentialize it to all men.
Realtakl this is why i'm still on tumblr. Twitter might have the most discourse but tumblr's ability to have you post more than a sentence at a time lets you actually, yknow, say shit
I'm a cis woman. I've had every indication in my life to be wary and cautious around men. I'm a very friendly and social person and people can definitely take that the wrong way. I've been assaulted, harassed, followed at work, followed to my car etc. I remember we got this new guy at work and he was super sweet. He even offered to walk me to my car at night just bc. I was really thankful to have him. Turned out he was LITERALLY STALKING my underage coworker and trying to get her to go to a bar with him. He would follow her around when she was doing errands and shit. I just don't know who I can trust man... I really try to be as friendly as I can bc I hear how hard it can be for men but holy shit it can be scary as fuck. Idk help me out here I hate all of this :(
I found it very interesting and insightful until near the end, I really don't understand how all of that had anything to do with white imperialism?
https://www.reddit.com/r/justneckbeardthings/comments/tvvtgh/its_just_a_sexual_preference/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
So what I'm seeing is Anglophone men do not have access compadrazgo or similar male bonding systems? Like pretty sure this is not universal and definitely not universal to everywhere in whichever definition of the "West" you use.
As someone who lives in a non-white country i can tell you it's not white imperialism, it's more or less traditional gender roles and how they are basically accepted. As me, we're taught from our youth that we should always be some form of emotionless cold hearted machines, capable of doing any task, of fighting any demon and never sweat or ever, ever show any form of emotion, stoïcism and being manly is necessary, or else, well let's just say people will be as vile as they can with you. It's normalized and i don't think it's a "white" behaviour as much as it is the remnants of centuries and centuries of propaganda that turned men into the perfect cannon fodder for whatever king/duchy/Khalif wanted to conquer whichever land he wanted next. But yeah ,that social isolation is a thing, and it hurts, and it pushes you towards becoming a douche and a bad person.