I think unfortunately the one theme we are missing and the one most important is solidarity.
In my experience, everyone is focussed on their community and furthering their cause. Rightly so in many cases.
One of the starkest I always felt was when talking about men, children and family courts. When I discuss this online, and even occasionally IRL with feminists. The conversation usually is one of acknowledgement of a problem followed by a cold “we’ll support that when we get the things we need”. It’s a cold brutal unsympathetic view that doesn’t help that feeling of isolation and hardens that “us vs them” division. Many feminists don’t see that the division sewn is intentional, to stop us uniting and fighting for the rights of the working class. Be it trans rights, gay rights, women’s rights, freedom from racial discrimination and men’s rights. They are human rights. We have to stand shoulder to shoulder and make our voice heard in support. We also have to hope that folks from other groups will support us.
There is nothing more isolating than fighting in the corners of others and then when the time comes get a cold rejection when they come for you. It pushes folk to these liars and snake oil salesmen from the right. We need to remove that oxygen from the fire so those bigoted views can wither and die. Right now, we’re losing that battle. DEI initiatives are being rolled back. Under the guise of fighting positive discrimination, they take more. The destroy awareness of bias, fair selection processes and opportunities for all.
I fear that the true strength of men fighting for fairness is you need to fight for others, extend the olive branch of friendship and then hope when we fight some will join us even if at times it feels like we will fight alone.
I’ve lost bigoted anti-trans friends who’ve swallowed the snake oil but to some, I’ll always be seen as a part of the patriarchy, purely because of my gender. So will our sons. I hope they don’t have the same experience of where they cross from innocent child to evil propagator of the patriarchy despite doing nothing wrong other than being born male and becoming an adult.
While there are some points worth discussing in the article, I want to raise an issue with the community itself, since it’s actually fairly adjacent.
If you look through it, majority of posts in the community that calls itself “Men’s Liberation” is really not about, well, men’s liberation. It’s about how men should adapt to the realities of modern feminism, without getting a set at the table to discuss how it affects them and what they would’ve done differently. It just straight up mirrors feminist talking points and rephrases them to have “men” in the name.
This is very much why feminism is often hated: not because it gives women seat at the table, but because it takes the seat away from men, while vaguely claiming they have power elsewhere (but do they?).
Don’t get me wrong: feminism tackles important questions, but it always looks at issues through the women’s perspective, which might miss the unique circumstances men find themselves in and their angle with the issues raised. Since the community claims to come from the men’s side (it’s in the name), I find it deeply disingenuous and concerning.
If I’m not mistaken, this was the initial concept behind the community, no? The idea that this “manosphere” bullshit is a response to the erasure of men in the misguided attempt to bow to third (fourth now?) wave feminism.
In a nutshell, the plot of feminism got lost in the greater society as a whole finally trying to adopt some of its principles via straight up virtue signaling.
—fuck I can’t think of the phrase people use—value posturing? Ethics acting? I’m sure you all know the phrase I’m searching for, right wingers popularized it.But point is, it’s true. And yes, it happens on the white left, but its most devious incarnation is in corporate America. Putting a woman of color in your ad is not equality. Taking aunt jemima off your bottle isn’t erasing racism. It’s just lip service to something akin to progress to boost their bottom line.
So in this world of a bunch of meaningless putting women in the spotlight to say they’ve done it, young men are feeling like they don’t matter. So when you have the liberal world saying “shut up now, a woman is talking,” young men don’t hear “okay, it’s on my generation to take this and smile because there is a long history of women not getting a seat at the table.” Young men hear the most misguided of the fourth wave feminists shouting “men are pigs” and “oh a woman killed her husband? Good, one less man in the world,” and they don’t see much pushback on it. And their brains aren’t fully developed, so they don’t understand that this behavior, in context…well, it’s still very stupid and wrong, but they see society writ large mostly embracing this or laughing it off.
So what do they do? Where do they turn? To the people telling them that women, actually, are the ones who are trash and they need to shut up and get back in the kitchen. Because, to their eye, the world does seem to be trying to go out of its way to “oppress” men. When you hear those fucksticks say “white men are the most oppressed group,” young men don’t understand why that should be laughed off. Because, again, their young brains aren’t developed and hey don’t have centuries of history understood. They hear one side saying “whatever it’s just some white man,” and they hear the other saying “it’s okay to be a man, it’s actually great and you deserve everything.”
Who the fuck do we think they’re gonna listen to?
The term you’re looking for is ‘virtue signalling’. It’s a shame it got assigned a political bias, because it’s a handy term for what makes rainbow capitalism so infuriating.
Another big point that needs to be made is that engagement driven social media algorithms have pushed the most controversial content to the top, giving it an oversized representation. Then there are also those with vested interests in preventing unity who are more than happy to jump on any opportunity to stoke division.
The article gets so close to fully getting it but then misses the point in an attempt to identify a common enemy.
White male privilege was the bribe that was given to the group in exchange of accepting a shit deal (being a worker under capitalism) as long as that group helped enforce an even shitier deal to the rest.
Now that bribe is gone, so it’s actually a shittier deal than before (similar to what everyone else has, maybe worse cause of the stigma).
Men aren’t thinking, oh what’s the ideal solution. They are thinking, we did the right thing and agreed on equal rights, but you (feminism) didn’t fix the shit deal, so I don’t want more of your solution.
Imo, the solution to the shit deal wasn’t feminism, it was socialism (which includes equal rights for all humans).
I think this is by design, the owners knew feminism wouldn’t change their system of oppression much, so they let that one go through and crushed socialism in the process.
but you (feminism) didn’t fix the shit deal,
I’m just curious where feminists are in power. Maybe in some nordic countries - but than again those have rather high living standard and economical equality. Big corporations pandering to LGBT and co, does not really count.
I think this article does a great job talking about there isn’t enough examples and models of an non-toxic masculinity out there. Women are told and have examples about many different ways to be women. Thanks to work of female feminists for years being childless, a stay at home mother, working a “feminine” job, working a “masculine” job, etc. are all valid options for women and are celebrated by women.
For men there is celebration of only one kind of man. We need more examples and celebrations of the varieties of men out there. I think this is especially true for straight men. I think straight men should borrow some of these examples from both the Gay community and from women. I personally as a straight man have found a lot of acceptance and value from how Gay men value diverse bodies types of men. I find it validating to me own experience and women are starting to do the same. We as men need to start celebrating each other in the ways that women do. After doing this enough and making it safe enough for women to join in a lot of good examples can be set for young men to see there are multiple celebrated options of masculinity. I think it might be hard for straight men to understand they are not the best at this and we should follow the lead of other but it is best course of options.
I think people who ask generalized questions like, “Why does group X have irrational opinion Y about subject Z?” should instead engage with individuals about why they feel a certain way on a specific subject. I think they would find that people make up a full spectrum, opinions are more diverse than the right one and the ridiculous one, and people don’t personify two extreme opposing memes.
I mean, women do their part to contribute to consumerism.
The main reason why guys want money is so they can be more appealing to women.
But that’s not women’s fault, that’s patriarchys fault for instilling into men on a deep cultural level that they need to make money to “provide” and then capitalism exploiting us workers so hard that that “providing” goal is impossible for a lot of us.
A lot of men deal with that insecurity by entering hustle grindset mindsets. Others get taken advantage of by right wing groups and say it’s women’s expectations at fault, not understanding that feminism also combats that expectation.
The point being, patriarchy binds us all, men and women with its expectations, and capitalism has made meeting those expectations impossible for a lot of people resulting in a double wombo combo of fucking men over.
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You dont know what feminism is nor what it says about men and capitalism (a lot. Like a fuck ton. Like the entirety of feminist thought is based on male and female liberation and how capitalism enforces patriarchy)
But you havent read any feminist theory. You have a vague idea of what feminism is that you have taken in via osmosis and cultural rhetoric. I can tell you for certain that you do not know what feminism means.
That makes talking about it kinda hard. Not only am I having to explain a complex ideology to you and what it has to say about other complex ideologies but I am having to work through your false consciousness created by those oppressive ideologies. That creates a difference in language that makes talking directly about these topics hard because you think you know what the words I’m saying mean. You have a concept of them in your head. But you are wrong. It’s really hard to get past that.
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I do not argue with people who come into a conversation in bad faith. There is nothing to be gained, and only time and mental health to be lost.
Basically, I don’t want to talk to you.
It’s not their fault insomuch as they can’t think for themselves, I’ll agree with you there.
But the agreement stops when you blame the patriarchy over consumerism. No, this generation has been convinced to sell itself out to the lowest bidder. Average women are proud consumers that want to live like instagram models. Any kind of modesty is shunned in their social circles. It’s drowned out by “look at this new thing I bought! Please praise me for spending money!”
The sex speaks for itself. Men have a ridiculously easy time getting laid if they have money, even if they’re pieces of shit in every other way.
I should also note. The concept you are referring to as “they can’t think for themselves” is called False Consciousness. The idea that oppressive systems like patriarchy and capitalism create this sense that you are acting with complete free will but you actually are following a set of expectations and thoughts and even language that feedback loops on itself in a never ending reinforcement loop.
It’s like, your right at the core of what your saying. There is truth there. But you use such anti women language rather than targeting the systems, ideologies and incentives that make both men and women this way.
complete free will
Hyperbole.
It’s a spectrum, for sure. I wouldn’t be who I am without the influence of others.
That said, women are way more likely to go along with what the crowd (their peers) is doing than I am. If they disagree with the crowd, they are way less likely to put those disagreements into action than I am.
They cannot think for themselves and it’s encouraged by those who refuse to acknowledge it. It’s not a problem unique to women, but they suffer from it more than men because women have been conditioned to operate as one unit.
You are still just complaining about the intersection of patriarchy and capitalism. What you are saying is feminist theory. We are still in agreement here, though I disagree with the way you word it.
For example. You say that the average women wants to live like Instagram models. You are right, but that is due to patriarchy creating the cultural expectations that men are unable to meet in the modern world due to capitalisms squeeze. It is women simply trying to meet their side of the expectation.
Feminism is in part about how patriarchy binds both genders by expectations. People generally focus on the way it binds women. However it fucks men over as well. We are expected to have money, we are expected to “provide” weather in the classical sense of a family or in the modern sense of just having the money to meet consumerist whims, it doesn’t really matter which one your talking about, it’s still patriarchy.
When patriarchy is normally discussed it’s about how men are privileged and women are oppressed. And while even as a, as the incels like to say, “low value man” you do have some societal privileges, it is very often ignored that patriarchy oppresses us men as well for not meeting those expectations. In this case, having money. Which we don’t because capitalism funnels money into fewer and fewer hands, making fewer and fewer men able to achieve those expectations.
I hope I explained this well and didn’t talk in too many circles. Like I said. Wombo combo of capitalism and patriarchy that tag team to fuck over men.
You are right, but that is due to patriarchy creating the cultural expectations
This is where we disagree, and it’s not just the words that we use. Women are greedy, too. They like the nice things men buy them. They don’t care about the true cost of consumerism because they’ve been conditioned to ignore it.
It is women simply trying to meet their side of the expectation.
This is why I agree with you insomuch as women aren’t able to think for themselves. I don’t put that expectation on them. People richer than us do. Even though I’m able to rise above their influence, the average person cannot. This goes doubly-so for women because women have been encouraged for generations to function as one entity as much as possible.
That’s still not disagreeing with me though. You are agreeing fundamentally with what I am saying, but you don’t understand what the words mean. You have a false consciousness of your own that is at this moment blocking you from understanding what mean by “patriarchy”.
The only difference in what we are saying is that you don’t know the big fancy words and theory backing it up and instead replace it with anti women language that you have picked up and understood. At the core, past the language and operating on pure ideas, we are saying the same thing.
It is disagreeing, though. You’re saying that women can’t rise above the expectations put on them by “the patriarchy.” I agree that women, on average, cannot think for themselves.
It’s not the fault of the patriarchy that women like expensive things and are willing to reward males who buy them things with sex. Women themselves encourage this behavior.
Trying to absolve them of any responsibility is just contributing to the culture of treating women like children.
With attitudes like I see you displaying, I wouldn’t sleep with you either. Listen to yourself and the words you use. That’s not thinking for yourself, that’s focusing on perceived others’ faults in order to take zero responsibility for own faults.
I hate none of the three.
Then you don’t know what capitalism is.
Or perhaps I just think differently than you.
Probably both.
I do not think it’s worth acknowledging a difference in opinion when the problem at its core is the difference in what those words mean. I don’t think we have a difference in opinion. I think he does not know what I or the article mean. If someone could just find the words to tell him in a way he understands then I feel we would be surprised to see that no disagreement existed in the first place.
Now to find the words…
I think you may have better luck by adopting the Mr Roger’s style of communication.
Telling someone they don’t know what a word means probably is going to make them become defensive and bounce off instead of engaging with what you’re saying, regardless of you being correct.
We hate Babylon, actually, and all the stupid things that money makes people do to each other because they forgot what it means to actually live as a real person in the real world, instead of chasing clout inside systems designed to ensure the house always wins, regardless of which banner it happens to be flying today, be it feminist, Marxist, capitalist, socialist, or whatever other asinine idea people who produce nothing real come up with to explain why someone else is to blame for the shit state of affairs.
And no, we very definitely do not hate women. We do very much hate what this shitty world turns women into, which is why we have worked ourselves to death to protect them from it in past generations. But that peace was broken, and now there’s going to be hell to pay.
You hate “what women are turned into”???
What a pathetic excuse. Shameful, even.
Unfortunately, the homogenization of women works against them when they’re all conditioned to be proud consumers living vicariously through those richer than them.
Willfully conditioning yourself to be special and small minded is an act of weakness. Your open jealousy of the wealth of others reeks of fear and shame. If all you desire is power over another, you sacrifice any power over yourself. There is no strength in desiring to cause harm, and that is the only thing you will find on this path.
What do you have to offer other than malice?
Edit: Your assumption that women only want riches and wealth proves that your views are rooted in hatred of capitalism. Oops.
🥱
Yeah, no. You might want to look into a ‘crab mentality’ and see how much you and your peers exhibit it.
Gonna block you now.
What is this community about? I have read the sidebar, but I have not understand it…
Put simply, this is a place for criticism of the oppressive gendered expectations placed on men with a focus on intersectionality.
