MOD NOTE: Please note the following part of the forum rules:
The initial OP posted below covers it well enough: the premise of this thread is that men's issues exist. Don't bother posting if you don't believe there is such a thing.
Here's hoping this isn't considered too redundant. I've noticed that our existing threads about sexism tend to get bogged down in Oppression Olympics or else wildly derailed, so I thought I'd make a thread specifically to talk about discrimination issues that disproportionately affect men.
No Oppression Olympics here, okay? No saying "But that's not important because women suffer X which is worse!" And no discussing these issues purely in terms of how much better women have it. Okay? If the discussion cannot meaningfully proceed without making a comparison to male and female treatment, that's fine, but on the whole I want this thread to be about how men are harmed by society and how we can fix it. Issues like:
- The male-only draft (in countries that have one)
- Circumcision
- Cavalier attitudes toward men's pain and sickness, AKA "Walk it off!"
- The Success Myth, which defines a man's desirability by his material success. Also The Myth of Men Not Being Hot, which denies that men can be sexually attractive as male beings.
- Sexual abuse of men.
- Family law.
- General attitudes that men are dangerous or untrustworthy.
I could go on making the list, but I think you get the idea.
Despite what you might have heard about feminists not caring about men, it's not true. I care about men. Patriarchy sucks for them as much as it sucks for women, in a lot of ways. So I'm putting my keyboard where my mouth is and making a thread for us to all care about men.
Also? If you're male and think of something as a men's issue, by golly that makes it a men's issue fit for inclusion in this thread. I might disagree with you as to the solution, but as a woman I'm not going to tell you you have no right to be concerned about it. No "womansplaining" here.
Edited by nombretomado on Dec 15th 2019 at 5:19:34 AM
HGW XX/7
A nice butterfly
Yes, you are. Now back to the topic at hand.
"Yup. That tasted purple."
FATAL Survivor
I've been listening to NPR more frequently and just noticed that they've been doing an ongoing series of stories called Men In America (#meNPR) that are very interesting and perhaps would be perfect fodder for discussion here.
Google "NPR Men" for the series (subtitle All Things Considered explores what it means to be a man in America today.)
edited 23rd Jul '14 3:13:37 PM by Cyran
"That wizard came from the moon!"
The Mistress
Someone said something dumb on the internet. Everyone else seems to think it's dumb. End of story. Not news.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
The Mistress
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yeah, you are right.
I don't like how all including the term "sexual abuse" is used. The way it's phrased I've been a "victim", which is imo pretty insulting to actual victims.
[edit]
Just to make it clear, "actual victims" do exist, I just think the 1 in 6 number is bogus.
edited 26th Jul '14 1:00:41 PM by Uchuujinsan
Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/
Depends on your selection criteria. The topic is highly politicized, and it doesn't help that sociologists have to rely on means like quantitative statistics and inductive reasoning, that in hard sciences would be on the fringe of acceptable methods.
I found the article mainly interesting because of the described reactions.
All I know is, my gut says maybe.
Are you disagreeing with this definition?
because that seems a pretty legit definition to me.
Raven Wilder
How exactly do you define sexual contact?
"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko
The linked bit in the linked thing includes two example questions.
Plus it's performed by someone who seems to have solid credentials. here's the ones they give.
I am an independent consultant in several areas (e.g., forensic, see Professional Services), and a Clinical Instructor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry of Harvard Medical School.
So I trust their definitions.
edited 26th Jul '14 2:16:26 PM by Silasw
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
"Parenting Rewires the Male Brain"
I thought that was already known? A friend of mine who studied biology mentioned something similar a few years ago.
@Silas W
While I can say that from what I read here
I like the guy. But he also mentions himself that the definition is controversial. It's pretty clear what his position is.
Note this:
And I can tell you that I know the difference between what some academic considers abuse in a paper, and what I would call abuse.
edited 26th Jul '14 9:06:04 PM by Uchuujinsan
Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/
I'm sure you can tell the difference, but I'm asking you to explain the difference to me, since I (not being a mind reader) don't.
Nvm:
edited 27th Jul '14 4:58:18 PM by blauregen
All I know is, my gut says maybe.
Ahr river
The trivializing is a two way issue though. if you only use it for the worst of the worse, people who are deeply affected by more "minor" encounters will feel like they have no right to complain or call it rape.
Read my stories!
The solution is to use more precise language, i.e. qualify what you are talking about. For child pornography there exists the COPINE scale and we can use a similar scale for (sexual) abuse.
Basically, don't remove details about the severity of the different experiences when reporting your research.
[edit]
Some things I want to add.
I have other issues with this approach as well. For example the way the statistic is created denies people the ability to define their own experience as harmless. Maybe you should leave that to them. People who are seriously hurt by "minor" stuff won't be negatively affected by that at all.
And I want to tell a little story. I stumbled upon an organization for victims of sexual abuse, founded and led by a guy with the following experience: When he was ~12 he was sexually abused in the church, a man abused his trust to get him to do sexual acts. With 16 he experienced the same thing with the same guy (don't ask me how you can think that your trust got abused the first time, and still trust him the second time). That's bad. It's sexual abuse. So, this guy is leading an organization for his interests that occasionally gets cited by media as an authority, demanding action, political consequences etc. An activist. Compare it to this. In therapy forum for traumatic experience, a woman tells her story. She got continuously raped by her father since she was 13. She moved out with 18. Her father came to the place where she was living, forced entry, and raped her again when she was 23. She told her story because she had trouble with her daily life and asked for help how she could manage it. Definitely not an activist.
I'm telling you this story to make one thing clear. If people have seen the bottom of human experience, they are content with being able to manage their daily lives. They normally don't have the strength left to start activism, or to join in drawn out discussions about it. If they do mention something, their different perspective - sometimes contradicting activist narrative - often gets ignored. Or they get asked questions where answering would be to painful. So they drop out of the discussion again. People with moderate experiences and their supporters, and this is just my opinion, seem to unintentionally use - and abuse those that have experienced the worst, presenting those experiences with their own conclusions, not caring if the people who actually had these experiences would agree with the conclusions.
A different story. Discussion about child pornography laws. Should they be more strict? A woman/girl whose rape as a 12 year old was taped and used as pornography makes a comment. "If it could help prevent what happened to me from happening again to others, I'm fine with it being distributed" Disagreement. She answers. Someone says she thinks this because her experience damaged her mentally. She doesn't answer. She disappears.
Her opinion never gets mentioned again.
Let's get back to the 1 in 6 number. Or the 1 in 4 number for college women. Who is the focus here? Those statistics simultaneously evoke the emotional response of the worst kind of abuse, while those who experienced that abuse disappear in the masses and don't actually get heard.
Add to that that the majority of the people who are categorized as sexual abused, while they wouldn't even call it that way themselves - this is starting to get almost cynical.
[edit2]
In the end, I want people to make clear who they are talking about. And who they are not talking about. People with "moderate" or "light" experiences deserve and need help. You can try to help. But you shouldn't lump all groups together.
edited 28th Jul '14 3:10:28 PM by Uchuujinsan
Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/
FATAL Survivor
When Circumcisions Trasmit Herpes--We Need to Talk About It
We had that discussion here too. The consensus was that whatever is done to girl's genitals is evil, but this is ok. In fairness, we can't really criticize rituals of that particular religion in Germany.
And that's how they do it in South Africa.
And something completely different:
edited 29th Jul '14 11:33:44 PM by blauregen
All I know is, my gut says maybe.
Pronounced YAK-you-luss
As I recall, the thing was that circumcision tends, on average, to be a much less extreme procedure with lower health risks than FGM (where removal of the clitoral hood, the closest equivalent, is rarely, if ever, performed alone). This method sounds like it's rare and optional enough to easily discard, though.
FATAL Survivor
via College Humor: The Real Reason You're Circumcised
And religious ritual or not, I'm not sure how that makes it okay to have some guy sucking blood out of an infant's open wound and in turn give them herpes.
"That wizard came from the moon!"