Sexism and Men's Issues

Again, I've found that people are more willing to talk depending on how you bring your points to the table. As I said, I'm able to get a dialogue more when I say "this issue affects you too, and let me tell you why" instead of "but this issue is holding back THIS issue". As I said, the latter is just playing Oppression Olympics.

I think you guys have become a bit too determined to provide a "balanced view". Balance isn't important. Balance is an illusion. An example I've used before is if Hollywood said tomorrow, "if we get 10,000 signatures on this petition, we'll making seven big budget movies with Asian protagonists" and having every other underrepresented race actively hinder that petition because it doesn't help them. That would be just as short-sighted to me as what you're doing.

I'm sorry, but so?

Let's take the concept of the Scary Black Man. Tons have been written on it. Most black people know that it's a terrible stereotype and I, personally, have had to live with it my entire life. But, at the same time, there are rappers, wannabes, and real hoodlums out there who not only don't care, but actively promote that sort of life as "keeping it real".

The fact that people of a purportedly oppressed demographic exist which deny the purported oppression isn't anything new. Some people have different experiences or honestly do not even recognize it. I bet right now if I asked a bunch of black people where the Black Is Bigger in Bed stereotype came from, quite a few would swear it was truth.

Feminism is trying to be more approachable. That's apparently what "Fourth Wave Feminism" is all about.

And again, being "anti-feminist" doesn't seem to be helping much. Because, as I've said, there have been a ton of legitimate issues brought up in these various threads that have nothing to do with countering feminism or feminists and just being "Me Too" about a lot of other issues. Even in these threads, which are specifically about men and their issues, we spend a hell of a lot more time reading blogs about how feminists screwed up or whatever than talking about actual issues.

No it isn't. She flat out said that the only way men would oppress their wives, mothers and daughters is if they were sociopaths. Which is strawmanning. Because, as I hoped I proved, men very much did things like sell their daughters and sisters into servitude or slavery, divorce their wives for failing to produce sons, and things of that nature. Mothers did the same thing. It was, for a long while, just how society worked. Sociopathy had nothing to do with it.

edited 17th Apr '13 1:01:37 PM by KingZeal

On a semantic note:

Revisionism is valid history - challenging previously understood norms. See The Origins of the Second World War by AJP Taylor for a good example. Holocaust denial etc is historical "reductionism" or "denialism".

edited 17th Apr '13 12:49:55 PM by Achaemenid

Schild und Schwert der Partei

Ah. You're right. Thank you for that.

Is that suprising when everything MR As say that isn't about about feminists gets ignored?

Of course not. But I don't see what that has to do with the ethicality of an action.

edited 17th Apr '13 1:11:22 PM by Kzickas

I'm saying that separate but equal is NOT radical feminism. Separate but equal isn't really equal, so it would end up being just a change in masters. As I said, in a hierarchical society like ours, equality, not a change of masters, is the most radical idea out there. In my opinion, true radical feminism, would attempt to create full equality or even destroy the social differences between man and woman so that not only are both treated equally and the same but that the two groups are barely recognized as different.

Ignored? No.

Overshadowed? Yes.

I have linked several feminists blogs in this thread, at least one of which identified as Fourth Wave Feminist. You essentially dismissed all of them by saying they are MR As.

I'm pretty sure the definition of "radical feminism", as opposed to other kinds of feminism, is the belief that men and women are inherently too different for equality to be a meaningful measure. Whether you consider the name misleading is up to you.

I said they seemed more like MR As than feminist blogs. Particularly in tone and the way they antagonized other feminist issues. I've worked with fourth-wavers, and I've never seen that behavior before. The details about the blogs elude me now, but that was my observation.

Just identifying themselves as something doesn't make them that thing.

edited 17th Apr '13 2:33:26 PM by KingZeal

If anything, I think we're saying the former and others are assuming the latter.

Wanting signatures for a petition for more Asian protagonists wouldn't be an issue. Making the claim that Asians were the only race unfairly treated in Hollywood would be an issue.

That's our issue. Women have the floor in every single issue there is and that's fine. That's great! They're entitled to their say. It's when the issues facing women are the only ones considered important that there's a problem.

Also, that point about "actively hindering" the petition because it doesn't help us? Actually a very accurate description of the way feminists put a clamp on domestic violence shelters for men and creating more jobs for men when they were hit by the recession. And before you say it, yes, it's more important to tackle those issues than blame feminism for them but getting to the roots of the reason why those issues aren't taken seriously is also important.

Well, in this case though — sorry that I didn't provide context — Gabrielle Toledano was writing about how game companies wanted to hire more women but there were so few in STEM fields and other areas that they could recruit them from. Goering fully supported feminism and #1ReasonWhy but said that she didn't want to see it being used for the wrong reasons (blaming men). They were both determined to get to the roots of the problems faced by women in the industry but not at the expense of others, something I don't see feminists often doing. I do agree that Christine Phelan's experiences didn't match other women in the industry's ... but I couldn't I say the same about the other women? That Phelan's experiences not matching theirs is an indicator of the industry not being as sexist as they claim?

It's possible for the stereotypes you mentioned to be embraced by the stereotyped group ... but because I didn't provide context (and I can get links if you want), it's not the same thing.

Genuine question; even if there were some MRAs who blame everything on feminism — and I'm sure there are a few, even if the majority of the movement doesn't do that — how is that different from feminists who blame everything on the patriarchy?

She was denying patriarchy existed, I'd like to point out, for a reason you just said; it was just how society worked. That's a statement I can get behind. To say that it's just how society worked is to acknowledge that it was the unpleasant values of its day and we have a problem with it now because of Values Dissonance. To say that it was patriarchy is to conjure up a bad guy to blame society's problems on.

I'm getting interested in those fourth waves you mention. Opposition to those parts of feminism or self-identified feminists who are simply being sexist is a must for me to accept any feminist group.

Here's a news report on the recent Toronto protest that's been making the rounds;

@Zeal: I'm a Fourth-wave feminist. And I think that Foruth-wave feminism, at least under that label, is dead in the water. It's an ex-parrot. It's a non-factor. I'm not saying that the ideals that drive fourth-wave feminism, that is, an increased commitment to intersectionality , a reality-based view of gender relations and a commitment to fighting gender binary tropes and stereotypes.

My point of view is that there's very little movement towards those ideals among the feminist community at large, and in fact, there's significant movement AWAY from them. As that, again, from what I've seen, is that most fourth-wavers have abandoned the feminism label all together and now identify as egalitarians. Which actually makes a lot of sense once you realize that the term "feminism" in and of itself reinforces the gender binary kyriarchy. Same with patriarchy, even if you don't mean that term in a way that does. (For example the people who call the gender binary patriarchy)

But on the latter that's just bad communications.

Not to overload the post, but I'll just give one example of something I observe as a negative ideological movement, and that's the concept that power dynamics are unidirectional. This is a growing (again, from my point of view) way of thinking that not only makes it impossible for feminism to ever hope to address the issues facing men in particular, but it means that true intersectionalism goes RIGHT out the window.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

Then you need to communicate your points better, because that's not how it's coming across.

And again, that's your mistake. Separating "their" issues and "our" issues and trying to figure out which is more important is exactly Oppression Olympics.

Yes, I've seen this. That doesn't mean doing the same exact thing will make anything better.

Do you have a link to any of this? Or any books/transcripts? I'd like to see it before I comment further.

I could swear I've said over and over that it's just as mistaken. If one person is doing something suicidal, is it justified if someone else is doing the same thing?

So your argument is that patriarchy (a system where men oppresses women) can't exist if women are also participators? Okay, let me once again explain why that argument doesn't work.

The African Slave Trade. Who were enslaved by this? Blacks, right? So, who were the ones who enslaved them? Whites, right? So that's part of the reason we consider Blacks the oppressed race and Whites the oppressors, right? Okay, well how about this: Black people also enslaved Black people. Both in Africa and in the Americas. African slave trade, throughout pretty much its entire lifespan, largely consisted of Black people who sold other Black people to work as slaves. For the most part, this was to whites in Europe and the Americas.

But also, Black people bought Black slaves. For example, in Haiti, it was common practice for Black people of slave origin to sometimes work their way out of slavery and buy slaves of their own. Why did they do this? Because that's just way things were done. Few successful businesses in the Americas could prosper without slaves, and Blacks who had any sort of power at all needed those slaves to be on the same level as whites.

But going by your argument, that automatically means that Blacks were not oppressed, right? Because Black people also participated, and it was just how the world worked.

@ Karmakin: I'm a bit lost by your post. I get the part about FWF being dead in the water, but everything else didn't really come out clear to me.

edited 18th Apr '13 8:26:16 AM by KingZeal

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?421777-Minorities-and-Other-Issues-in-Comics-Thread-Community-IV/page753

or basically: "It's like..what white supremacist groups are but for men? Right?"

Such an enlightened bunch.

I wouldn't expect much objective discussion of gender issues among the Western comic book fan base, no offense to the artistic medium meant. It shares a lot of psychological problems with the video game industry that results in the most ignorance voices - both among fans and creators - tending to get the most visibility.

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

They're pretty much the exact opposite... everyone who doesn't fall in step is either a rape culture defender, a bigot, or just plain racist.

Just browse through some of the hot item topics, it's fun to see people locked in a circle jerk.

Yeah, if whites were more likely to be victims of violent crimes, lived shorter lifes, faced harsher sentences, did worse in education and were seen as violent and barbaric, instead of the other way around. Jeez, I'm always stunned when I hear this comparisons, despite men facing much the same problems as other disadvantaged group, to different extents.

I do see this a bit differently. Sure, there are extreme views on both sides, but rather moderate views are largely thrown on the same pile as actual hate, just for disagreeing with the mainstream.

Indeed. CBR is about as enlightened as my grandfather's views on the Chinese.

Zeal, do you honestly believe that all the hostility towards men's rights activism is because of their portrayal? Not the general attitude that men can't possibly be discriminated against? Or that if they are, they should just "man up" and deal with it?

Let's try to break this down then:

• Separating our issues from their issues is a problem ... even though I've said several times that they're the same issues and what we actually want is them to be treated equally.
• Figuring out which is more important is Oppression Olympics ... but that only really works if one is considered slightly important and the other is considered REALLY important. As it stands, men's issues aren't given any importance at all while women's issues are. And again, we just want them to be equally important.

Basically, if men's issues aren't considered important but complaining about their lack of importance is Oppression Olympics ... you might as well be saying "you're unequal but you're not allowed to complain about it". We just have to sit back at take it because we're shamed with "Oppression Olympics" when we don't.

Alright:

• Gabrielle Toledano - Forbes
• Christine Phelan - FMV Magazine (gender stuff at the bottom).
• Janette Goering - Gamasutra (Blog)

Fair enough ... but I still maintain that MRAs blaming feminism isn't as widespread as you claim and there are certain issues where that blame is justifiable.

No, I didn't say that ... I do think something similar, however, that I'd like to demonstrate with this video on the class system, by John Cleese and The Two Ronnies.

You don't really need to watch it — I'm not a big fan of John Cleese and I've seen far better sketches by the Two Ronnies — but basically, patriarchy theory is a gendered version of the class system ... but the class system still has to fit in with it. If the patriarchy exists, it'd presumably consist of individuals in John Cleese' and Ronnie Barker's positions in that video, each acting in ways to oppress the men beneath them.

But what if women were added to the video? If women were in each position too, there would be women better-off than some other women and worse off than some other women ... but there would also be women better-off than some of the men and worse-off than some of the men.

For patriarchy to exist in the terms that you describe it, there'd have to be a clearer trend than this of men oppressing women. As it stands, there are oppressed men, oppressed women, unoppressed men and unoppressed women. Because of the class system rather than patriarchy.

[[quoteblcok]]Zeal, do you honestly believe that all the hostility towards men's rights activism is because of their portrayal?[[/quoteblock]]

Yes.

I'm really tired of repeating myself. I've said that this is definitely part of the problem, several times. But, the way MR As try to fight back is not helping.

If you believe the issues are the same, then stop jumping in naysaying whenever someone complains about, say, the portrayal of women in fiction. "But men get sexualized too" is not solving that problem. It's deflecting "their" problem with "ours".

If you truly believe they're the same problems, then what's the issue with just saying, "yes, let's absolutely fix that"?

That's still oppression olympics.

To keep reusing the same example, I believe equal representation for asians and blacks is important for diversity in fiction. I'm not going to stop anyone who wants to represent asians better, even if at the same time those people oppose representing black people. When you do that, it's not about equality. It's about tit-for-tat.

It's oppression olympics whenever it's brought up as a counterpoint to womens' issues. Nothing more.

For example, the Uo T talks aren't oppression olympics. The protests are.

Thank you.

Well for one, class system has been—for a large part of history—determined by your gender, the same way it was determined by your race. In an oppression system, there has be a centralized ideal which is both perceived and real. For example, political power. What creates oppression is not how much of it a group has, but how many restrictions are placed on acquiring, using, or keeping it. For example, it was very possible for Blacks in Atlantic Slave Trade to become wealthy. It was just unlikely due to the restrictions that prevented them from acquisition, from use, and from retention. You can't point at a wealthy black person, even one with their slaves and show them as an example of how much oppression there isn't. By the same token, throughout the vast majority of history, women have been prevented from things like landownership, voting, agency in the household, and often basic forms of human rights. You can't look to women who subverted that system as proof that oppression didn't exist any more than the existence of upper-class black people means there was no racism.

Even cases where gender roles were intended to be essentialist (men fight, women stay home), this almost always had the effect of lessening the power women had. Even the Ottomans and Imperial Chinese, when using slaves of both genders (one to fight, the other usually for sex and day-to-day labor), had a large amount of systems in place to reward particularly useful male slaves. These almost NEVER existed for female slaves.

From other whites.

Due to whites expecting whites to be tougher.

Which, again, would be opposed by whites.

Again, because whites themselves crafted the stereotype.

Everything you just mentioned would only apply if it were women doing those things to men. But it isn't. It's men doing it to men far more often. Which still makes it a patriarchy—just one that the unfortunate are on the wrong side of.

edited 18th Apr '13 11:16:06 AM by KingZeal

Because it doesn't sound like it would work? If a problem affects two groups, and people are talking about fixing it for one of them, why should I expect them to come up with a solution that will do anything for the other group?

It really sounds like you're saying that it's bad to even suggest that there's intersectionality at all...

"So... the time has come for you to meet your demise..."

I said no such thing.

I'm pretty sure Guest said something in regards to that already, repeatedly. Also, it's caring about men is not mutually exclusive with caring about women and you do very much sound like deflecting when criticizing people for bringing up men's issues. Logically, the correct response to "this problem affects a larger group than you think it does" is to regard the problem as greater, not smaller. There are certainly some individuals who do try to distract from the problems at hand, but again, I don't think Guest is one of them. I see a distinct disconnect between your two paragraph. First you claim that exceptions don't prove that a group isn't oppressed, then you dismiss male oppression because of a select few exceptions. Yes, I do know there are differences between both of those statements and I'm not going to call you a hypocrite. However, it needs to be noted that the mentioned men always had risks involved for them and those risks usually didn't disappear after they "made it". It worked the other way around as well: a man in a high position could easily lose all of it. In ancient Greece, for instance, men could be voted into public office against their will and executed if they did a bad job. That's pretty much the gist of it: men faced high risks and high rewards, women faced few risks and few rewards. Men didn't have more choice in the matter than women did. So, blacks killing blacks in gang violence is not an issue?

Edit: It should also be noted how a) male stereotypes and b) female stereotypes are also perpetuated by women. For someone wanting to push for female agency, you sure do push back against female responsibility.

edited 18th Apr '13 1:03:23 PM by Besserwisser

I haven't done any such thing. Several pages of discussion went on without me objecting to anything, until it suddenly became more anti-feminist rhetoric.

No comment.

No I didn't.

Yes. Which was one of the reasons the system was so oppressive to women. If a woman's husband lost his power or wealth, most of the time she could not assume it on his behalf. It was usually either taken by the ruling class (typically men) or to his sons (again men). There are some exceptions, but by and large, women had no say in the matter.

Of course it is. However, it's also a sign of eurocentrism.

Black people killing black people is a symptom of a racist white-supremacist society. Men killing men is a symptom of classist patriarchy.

No I don't. I've flat out said it is. But the major oppressors on both side are men. Men kill men. Men force men to suck it up and act tough. That's what makes it a patriarchy.

edited 18th Apr '13 1:36:26 PM by KingZeal

@6397: You're still coming across that way.

"So... the time has come for you to meet your demise..."