Sexism and Men's Issues

Would like some stats, but off hand, I can believe this exists and is a problem.

I agree that everybody has to be in line for the same thing, and this is much more sensibly phrased than the usual phrasing of this point, which typically amounts to, "More women need to die!"

Men should stop working incredibly dangerous jobs, then. This is more an issue of getting your own house in order; there's not a lot women can do to fix this problem for you other than dying more frequently, and that's a pretty ridiculous demand to make of anyone.

You know, I think I finally put my finger on why MRAs think false reporting is such a huge issue. Recent discussion on false reporting and how you can identify it as such brought to mind a key point: there is a lot of murky ground between proven false reports and rape convictions. A lot of cases go unproven either direction;

While most of us interpret this gray area to be a combination of the difficulty in proving rape - it often turns into a "He said, she said" case - as well as the lack of prioritization that the law places on prosecuting it, mixed with a gender bias that favors alleged rapists over their victims, MRAs instead interpret that grey area to be entirely the result of false reporting. If you assume that any rape claim that does not end in a conviction is the result of a woman crying wolf, then I suppose false allegations do look like a much more serious issue than they actually are.

This is one I've heard about more than experienced, as I've actually been involved in two separate instances of a domestic disturbance, and in both times, the male and female party were treated fairly. I wonder if perhaps the complaint is outdated, but am also content to say that maybe this just isn't an issue where I live.

Nitpick: this is two separate issues, actually. The belief that men can't be raped or abused isn't about the idea of women as victims, but instead about the cultural belief of men as insurmountable walls of power, capable of slaying any dragon and overcoming any obstacle.

The cultural bias of women as victims has its own set of issues, of course.

This exists. To quote Dan le Sac, "Thou shalt not think that any man over the age of 30 who plays with a child that's not his own is a pedophile; some people are just nice."

I'm unclear on these issues.

"Cater to stereotypically female styles of learning"? Um...what?

...maybe you should have quit while you were ahead. Your misogyny is starting to show.

This is hilariously wrong.

Well, this started out well enough with only the occasional dabbling into misogyny, but it's now just devolved into typical MRA whining that women plot to control men through the mysterious and hypnotic power of their vaginas. A for Effort but C for the result. This guy should check his hate, go calm down, and then try and give it another go when he's less fired up on the anger.

edited 3rd Apr '14 8:24:51 AM by TobiasDrake

How was I generalizing anything more than you did with your talk about men's groups and women's groups? This attitude seems to be fairly widespread within feminism, considering how feminists have opposed, ridiculed and threatened people who tried to get help for men, especially male domestic violence victims.

If they do recognize that men have issues at all, they will usually not call it female privilege, whereas if it would happen to women it would be male privilege. You yourself have done so in the past, if I remember correctly.

Feminists in India lobbied for rape being legally considered only if the perpetrator was male, in the UK they tried to advocate for abolishing women's prisons when judges already receive directions to go easier on women, throughout the world the have been the primary opponents of domestic violence shelters for men and this is only direct advocacy, their language can be worse than anything you will find within the MRM.

NOW, the biggest feminist organization in the US, is opposing joint custody laws, which are favoured by the majority of Americans.

Yeah, I know I should probably look through them at some point. I'm just not feeling in the mood to be disappointed again.

The link I talked about was by laculus. CALM actually looked alright from what little I saw, even if their advocacy is rather limited. They at least not mention the common feminist counterpoint that women somehow attempt more suicides.

The ones I'm worried about most aren't radfems, who are extremists you find in any movement, but the policy makers who are actively and successfully trying to discriminate against men.

Edit: You offer very little information as to what you think is wrong on a lot of the points you're complaining about.

edited 3rd Apr '14 8:39:36 AM by Mastah

Since few people seem to have read that link I keep posting, here's a rundown of the quality men's-issues organisations it mentions:

• The Good Men Project, a nonprofit organisation geared towards helping men navigate the pitfalls of modern masculinity. It's chiefly a discussion site, but also provides funding for youth mentoring and legal support for at-risk men (with a particular focus on improving the American prison system, which they recognise as a men's issue because the US prison population is overwhelmingly male). Caveat - Hugo Schwyzer and similar, related weirdness.
• The Fatherhood Institute, a UK nonprofit think-tank devoted to advising and otherwise aiding fathers, from the really basic 'I have a child now OH SHIT WHAT DO I DO' questions to lending couples a hand so that whichever one wants to can be an earner or a carer (translation: making househusbands' lives easier and more feasible if that's how they want to spend their time). They run courses for fathers, lobby for laws that would make life easier for fathers (for example, they're campaigning for an exemption to the much-hated 'bedroom tax' for separated parents because economic insecurity has been found to disproportionately reduce the amount of time divorced dads can spend with their kids), and so on.
• CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, another UK charity that focuses on combating our high rate of male suicide. It runs a suicide hotline in addition to working with local government organisations on a wide range of men's mental-health issues.
• AMIS, Abused Men In Scotland, a political pressure group working on behalf of battered men that also runs an emergency hotline and face-to-face services for victims.
• The ManKind Initiative, AMIS's south-of-the-border cousin. Same as above, with additional education and training services. Caveat - is much more closely associated with the nasty side of the men's rights movement than the above charities, not least because its founder was an outright stay-in-the-kitchen misogynist.
• AMP, A Men's Project, a directory of Internet resources for men, which covers just about everything under the sun. If you have a problem pertaining to masculinity, these guys can point you in the right direction.
• The Men's Project (not to be confused with the above), a counselling service for men in Canada, which deals with everything from present family dysfunction to helping its clients get past childhood abuse.

edited 21st May '14 7:45:13 AM by Iaculus

Too general. Specifics and sources please.

Specifics, please.

An example, please?

I have nothing to say against calling that out.

According to this, they were trying to shut down some women's prisons during a trend where imprisonment was skyrocketing without curbing offenses. According to the link, the goal was to not rely on incarceration and instead focus on reducing offenses.

That said, I do think it's terrible that feminists aren't trying to abolish men's prisons as well.

Oh wait, yes they are.

You're being general again. Specifics, please.

Yeah, and for good reason by the looks of things. Their basic argument (found here) is that a negligent parent that was negligent throughout a marriage should not by default receive the same custody as a parent that has cared for the child.

They stress that, by and large, men tend to be the negligent parent.

Hashed that out with Besserwisser last year. It looks pretty solid.

The funny thing is that as far as I know both genders socialize mostly homosocial.

edited 3rd Apr '14 9:15:45 AM by blauregen

To anyone who has to have it explained why things like

are short-sighted at best and downright ignorant at worst, is so far off the deep end of the Misogyny Pool that trying to convince them otherwise is an effort in futility. This guy reeks of a lot of bitter resentment towards women for not having sex with him at the drop of a hat.

The entire second half of the list is a snowball rolling downhill and picking up more and more hatred towards women as a whole and their perceived crimes against the male gender. It started out well enough, but then it turned into the classic MRA persecution "We are the TRUE victims!" complex.

As for this one,

Anyone who honestly believes the media is not already heavily shifted towards providing entertainment, escapism, and role models for males is just downright delusional.

edited 3rd Apr '14 9:56:53 AM by TobiasDrake

This is pretty much the poster child for a purely feminist organization posing as a men's group. From their introduction:

Appearently men who are victimized by women need not apply. At best one can say how they have limited advocacy.

These ones are better. They recognize the problems which their services have and they consider male victims as well as female perpetrators. I especially like the second one actually providing data on victims other than police reports, which AMIS just fails at.

We already talked about Erin Pizzey. Earl Silverman also stated feminists as his major problem with getting recognition for male domestic violence victims.

Do you really have to go out of your way to defend the notion that prisons need to be closed purely because of the gender of their inmates?

This argument only works if you consider a negligent parent to be the default in divorce cases. If there are reasons why one parent should not be awarded custody of the child, then judges have the right and responsibility to refuse it to that parent. The way it is now, joint custody is barely considered as an options, which can even result in the father gaining sole custody when he wanted it to share it with his wife, which is one story I heard of.

I can see how you think there are a lot of male role models in the media, however I do think a lot of them aren't especially good. This is even an argument I heard feminists make, that society teaches men in a way that is harmful to themselves and others.

I will give credit to that point, and it does fall under the Patriarchy umbrella that many feminists such as myself like to talk about; instilling values such as White Knighting, programming young males to expect that being helpful to a woman is the signing of a contract obligating her to have sex with him, A Man Is Not A Virgin, Rape Is Funny When Its Female On Male, etc. The media is a major component to the self-reinforcing nature of the Patriarchy.

Still, I wouldn't say that a lack of male role models is the problem, but rather that the many, MANY male role models that exist are sending the wrong messages.

edited 3rd Apr '14 10:06:12 AM by TobiasDrake

Would you mind explaining your reasoning? If you never try, than you can never succeed. As long as you remain polite and calm, most people will be willing to led a ear to what you say.

edited 3rd Apr '14 10:07:49 AM by Cylink

Isn't that kind of the same as saying there are few good male role models?

Dudes and dames, could we please, please, PLEASE stop with the "men have it worse", "women have it worse" back and forth? This is meant to be a safe-space to focus on men's issues and how to fix them. And other MRA's: stop blaming Feminist's and/or women for men's problems. The problems come from centuries of men (and women) in power deciding and enforcing gender roles. Not that we should hate the wealthy/powerful :P.

Again, what feminists? Erin Pizzey has already been addressed, where she clearly said radical feminists. Again, why are we conforming all of them into one uniform group?

That's a gross over-simplification of the actual position. As I stated with that link, the problem they are combating goes far beyond "let's shut down women's prisons".

Except that the alternative is a negligent parent getting custody of the child by default. The opposition to this does not eliminate joint custody from being a possibility; it simply removes the assumption that just because you contributed to making a child that you automatically get custody.

No, it's not. It's saying that there are tons of good male roll models, but because men make up the majority of people portrayed in fiction, both hero and villain, that as a result men get a far more diverse portrayal than women who tend to be merely defined by their femininity in fiction.

There's a superabundance of males in fiction. That's the issue.

Now we would have to decide whether radical feminist are representative for feminism and have widespread support and similarly whether the misogynist, conservative MRA are representative for the men's movement and have widespread support.

It reminds me of some atheist vs. christian discussions on social justice, where the atheists kept pointing to rightwing fundis, the christians, who mostly completely agreed about the social justice matters, disowned the fundis and the atheists insisted that they have definition power over who is christian and who is not. It was funny

edited 3rd Apr '14 10:26:16 AM by blauregen

Bingo.

Thank you. Considering how fast all MRA's are categorized as misogynist and when counter examples of feminism are brought up, there is instant NAFALT... yeah. How about applying the same standards?

edited 3rd Apr '14 10:34:19 AM by Mandemo

Isn't it funny that they rather argue about male rights instead of acknowledge actual attempts to help male rights such as the video Gabrael posted about giving male rape victims a voice, how the media does have just as many positive male role models as negative, and how just because a man helped make a baby doesn't mean that they are automatically a father and how the cycle of male parental abandonment can contribute to sexist attitudes...

Again, I'd like to point out that not all people who back men's rights are like that, I actually gave the video Gab linked to a because I think it's a great thing.

Don't worry, I was referring more to this particular thread than anything else.

Nothing of this stops it from being grossly sexist and you defend this. Or if you don't, please clarify. There are also the recommendation judges in the UK get to basically go easy on women, when leniency towards female criminals and/or going too hard on male victims is still a major problem in the justice system.

Automatically is different from default. Nothing about the current system has some inherent prevention of bad parents getting custody but it does make it excessively hard for a child to continue contact with both parents, which by any indication is the preferable course. I'd rather have the risk that a court messes up by giving partial custody to a parent which might not be the best than having it almost guaranteed that a child will lose one parent after divorce.

If you have 10 good role models among 10 that's vastly different than having 10 among 100. Chances are boys won't see every single one of them, so if good male role models are rare, that is a problem. This is just a semantic argument based on the fact that you don't like who made it.

Edit: I usually don't comment much on that because there's not much to talk on it. It's great, nobody says it's not great and that's it. The words of the rapists is something that was known to me already anyway.

edited 3rd Apr '14 10:53:23 AM by Mastah

Mastah, I want you to rethink what you said about how a bad parent should be involved instead of a good parent being left out.

1) we do have failsafes so good parents who are trying will be involved with their children. Now if the joint custody option isn't being taken advantage of I want more investigation. It's common knowledge that joint custody is a viable legal option. So I don't buy that men don't know they don't have that option. But I am open that in some areas they may not feel empowered to demand it. So we can have that conversation, but you need to offer more proof that a majority of good guys are getting the shaft.

2) As a child psychologist, I say that a bad parent needs to be kept away from a child at all costs. Period, Stop Sign. The end. Children are not pets. Children are not toys. Children grow up into adults and even before adulthood they have intense capabilities to hurt and impair others and themselves. No. That is something that needs to be avoided at all costs.

Ok. Personally I find Paul Elam and Co rather ineffective as far as helping men goes. As an exampele AVFM boasted for months about the 5000$-6000$ they managed to collect for the Earl Silverman Center Project. I am pretty sure I could have gotten a minimum of ten times this sum with a kickstarter in four weeks, if I only had promised to make a regular youtube series about it. And aside from this and I think a few lectures for the libertarians, I don't see them doing much more than ranting. I credit them partially with consciousness raising. The ruckus they produced helped to bring a few issues like the systemic nature of domestic violence or that women are occassionally perpetrators of sexual assault and men victim, or the discrepancy in judicial treatment of men and women a little more into public consciousness.

On the other hand we have pretty loud people who call themselves feminists who deny the above points completely. I don't think they are mainstream, but everyone has their hardcore-ideologues. We also had groups labeling themselves feminist more or less picketing MRA speakers or destroying, in my opinion, pretty harmless posters with MRA messages. Whether this is legitimate or not is a matter of opinion. I am more on the side of Voltaires biographer in this matter. But denying that it happens doesn't help much.

edited 3rd Apr '14 11:11:24 AM by blauregen

Well, for the record, I don't find this to be sexist for the same reason that I wouldn't find a campaign that focused on male rape victims sexist. Focusing on fixing one group's injustices isn't sexist as long as those problems actually exist. By the logic you're using, every MRA campaign that focuses exclusively on men is sexist.

Also, as I pointed out, there seems to also be a movement to shut down men's prisons. What's your argument to that one.

And Polarstein covered your other reply better than I could.

As I've mentioned, I try not to generalize either group, but let's get something clear here. If you're arguing that you don't want feminists or MR As grouped into one mass, then from here on out, don't do that to feminists either. And call out every single person that does either.

You can't ask us to generalize one and specify the other any more than you can complain about others doing the same.

edited 3rd Apr '14 11:19:05 AM by KingZeal

This. Saying there need to be more good male role models in fiction is missing the point and instead trying to make the entertainment industry even more male-dominated than it already is. What there need to be are fewer bad male role models drowning out the good ones.

Alright.

As I asked in my first post, I'm unclear what he means by "stereotypically female styles of learning". This is where things start going downhill, as I'm genuinely uncertain whether or not to be offended by this statement. It sounds misogynistic as hell, coming off as, "Education is broken because women exist," but I'm not really sure what he's trying to say at all.

This is a common complaint for males who are antisocial, have poor social skills, shy, or otherwise have had little luck with the courtship process. Feeling embarrassed or even getting laughed at sucks, but it's not "society condemning men for approaching women". Do you want to know what being condemned for making an approach is like? Try being a woman and doing it.

Women are slut-shamed into submission for being assertive with the courtship process. The immediate assumption is that if you're asking a man out, you are a whore and should be ashamed of your aggressive, unlovable ways. Men have all the agency in courtship, because they have the societally-given right to approach or not approach. Women, conversely, only have the societally-given right to accept or refuse; and for anyone who's been humiliated by being rejected, try being a woman and refusing, because that's where the stream of angry, bitter remarks like, "She must be a lesbian!" "She's too stupid and/or ugly for me anyway!" etc. start coming out.

There are a lot of unfairnesses in the courtship process, but summarizing those unfairnesses as "forcing men to approach and then condemning them for it!" is just ignorant. I'll cut him slack and say this is ignorance talking, not malice; he's so focused on his half of the equation he can't see the other side of it, and he seems like someone who hasn't had a lot of success on his half.

Two sticking points here: one is "Societal standards" and the other is "without sensible cause". For the former, he's not talking about alimony laws or the like, he's talking about the social expectation that men should take care of their wives, the mothers of their children, and the like, except that he goes on to say, "without sensible cause" so he's not talking about cases where the man has a deep personal relationship with the woman he's supposed to financially support.

So he's basically just saying that men are expected to throw money at any woman they meet just because she's a woman, which is just silly, really. At this point, he's anger-vomiting words at the keyboard. Like 12, this seems more personal bitterness over romantic misfortune than anything else.

Like 11, I'm not sure what he's really trying to say here. Is he upset that there aren't enough female villains, or that there are too many male villains, or what? What portrayals "would not be acceptable of a woman", and acceptable by who? Again, like 11, I'm more confused than anything because it really sounds like he's just complaining, "There isn't enough women-hate in the media!"

We've talked about 15.

Pressure by who? There are a lot of societally-acceptable roles for men. Like, nearly all of them. Even nerds have become societally-beloved; today, the only roles that we discourage men from are traditionally female roles, and if he was complaining about men not being allowed to be homemakers or caretakers or the like, then he would have a point, but that's not what he's saying; he's saying that men have very limited choices in what roles they can fill, and must fall into one of two categories. That's just untrue.

This is where it starts really getting bad. This is an abortion argument, and one I've heard many times: that men should have a right to tell women that they can or cannot have that baby. He phrases it in a more hostile and actually heavily objectifying manner - "Disregard for the reproductive rights of men" - but that's what this argument is.

No, men, you do not have a right to any part of a woman's body, her womb included. You do not have a right to tell her she cannot have that baby, and you do not have a right to tell her that she must have it. It's her body. She's the one who is going to be carrying that baby for the next nine months, or she's the one who's going to have to have someone reach up inside of her and pull her child out through her vagina. Even if all else about the reproductive process were equal, even if parenting rights and alimony rights and everything were perfectly equal, this one fact would still be true: her womb is hers and nobody else's.

This entire argument rolls into a classic misogynist viewpoint: the idea that women use their evil, malicious vaginas to lure and ensnare poor, innocent men into their deceitful webs. If you decided to f*ck her without a condom, you knew the risks. If she lied and said she was on birth control, or if she actually was on birth control and the birth control failed, you still elected to roll those dice and not wear the condom. If the condom broke, then you have more of a case, and should probably get the same kind of special consideration that rape victims have on the abortion topic, because that sucks, but you should not be considered the standard.

Consent to sex may not equal consent to procreation, but you made the choice between those when you injected your semen into her womb, which is not a required part of recreational sex. Keeping your semen out of her is how a male can veto the reproductive process while still enjoying sex, but once there is a child growing inside her body, she is the only person with a right to decide what's to be done with her womb.

At this point, he's just ranting. There is a world of difference between treating men as "potential" rapists and "actual" rapists. The former just encourages women know self-defense and be prepared to protect themselves if needed. Sadly, the former is constantly mistaken for the latter by angry, bitter misogynists.

The question I ask is, what change is he trying to push for? That women no longer be taught to protect themselves? That women not carry pepper spray in their purse? If he's just saying that women should be willing to talk to and socialize with men, well, mission accomplished a LONG f*cking time ago.

His victim complex is showing here.

And his victim complex gets even bigger here. Now he's not even addressing issues that affect men, but is instead railing against the evils of the feminist movement and how men are persecuted by the horrible bitch-monsters of the female gender.

Which finally ends on an MRA classic: the complete dismissal of the entire notion of Patriarchy based on a deliberate misinterpretation of what Patriarchy represents.

Also, I caught that "caused originally by biological roles", which is typically the MRA way of saying, "Nature says shut the f*ck up and get back in the kitchen".

So, in summary, where the first half of the list was pretty decent, once the second half starts up, he seems to get sidetracked by bitterness and resentment about women not keeping their half of the 'Nice Guy' "I'm nice to you, so you owe me sex" contract, then just rolls downhill into a domineering, misogynistic mess that's focused more on how women need to shut up and spread 'em.

edited 3rd Apr '14 11:26:13 AM by TobiasDrake

It's hard to pursue a legal option if the courts are biased against you. This isn't simply a case of fathers not pursuing joint custody options, they are just unlikely to get it if they try. The number of men who want joint custody is higher than the ones who receive it, even with the ones who only receive joint custody because they are unable to achieve sole custody.

Which is something you can solve by having a judge decide if a parent is bad for the child, which will be the case in a family court. Heck, by your logic parents shouldn't even start bringing up their children together because one of them might be abusive. This would be even more problematic considering we don't have a judge involved until someone reports it. Yet, somehow children growing up with both parents generally end up better psychologically. Funny that.