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
FUCK that shit. When I go for my daily jog, I look around at houses. I look at gardens, windows, architecture, upkeep (or lack thereof) largely because there ain't shit else to do when walking around, and because the houses look rather nice.
And I tend to jog in neighborhoods near where I work, because it's safer than where I fucking live (read: not poor and not disproportionately black). I've seen looks from the locals, and I've had people nervously get out of my way and/or clutch their purses. It's fucking annoying.
Any day now, some asshole could turn my name into a hashtag and walk because people think me jogging in a nice neighbours instead of the crime hellhole where I live makes me "suspicious". You have no idea how much that pisses me off.
And really, I don't know if a black woman would be leisurely strolling around anyway. Because, you know, "Why was she out here alone?" and all that? Black women, especially, get so much harassment on the street that I can't see this happening the same way simply because we teach women to be scared.
edited 30th Aug '14 7:49:02 PM by KingZeal
Jupiterian Local
Nor is the Martin case related to sexism and men's issues.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
What makes you think he attacked anybody? As Drake said above, that is fuzzy. Are there some other facts you're considering?
If "Why are you following me?" is what you're calling an "attack", then yeah, this kind of applies to me, because I would ask that question.
edited 30th Aug '14 9:04:42 PM by KingZeal
lol
Yeah, at best Martin's case is an issue of minority tension. At worst it's about media manipulation. Very little of it has to do with being male.
lol
lol
Queen of Good Things, Honest
Yes, the facts as to who started the fight are fuzzy at best. The closest thing to an eyewitness account as to how it began was the voices heard over the phone by Martin's friend. Zimmerman has his own testimony as to how it began, but he could hardly be considered an unbiased party.
I will say that, regardless of who started it, the point at which your adversary is screaming for someone to help is the point at which you should consider the fight won and back off. If Martin had killed Zimmerman rather than the other way around, he wouldn't have been acquitted because he long crossed the boundaries from reasonable self-defense; Zimmerman was no longer a threat to him, and he was continuing to beat him anyway.
edited 30th Aug '14 9:25:36 PM by TobiasDrake
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Siiiiiiiiiiiip
It's a racism thing at best. I'm not sure why it's being discussed here. There's a Racism topic anyway. I'd ask a Mod if it's okay to move it(since the previous topic was locked about the Case).
...It's weird having so many websites and no way to properly display now, lol.
Raven Wilder
The argument is that it's specifically black males who are presumed to be dangerous criminals by police officers and neighborhood watch types, and that a black woman in the same position as Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown probably wouldn't have been treated with the same suspicion and hostility.
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Though the poor lady who got shot through the door whilst asking for directions would seem to be a data-point against that.
Nameless Hero
Ok, I shouldn't have chosen a specific case. But far more men are murdered than women. My question is- is it sexism when one man decides to attack/kill/mug another man over a woman? And yeah, women are killed, but that doesn't negate the fact that way more men than women are killed each year and that men are generally seen as more of a threat than women (of any colour). There should be an outrage at the disproportionate amount of dead or injured dudes, but a murder/beating/mugging seems to only be a tragedy when it's male-on-female.
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You kind of answered your own question. Men killing other men over a woman; might help if they didn't see women as property to be won.
Also: it's fallacious to group every murder together simply by gender. Motivations and context are far more important.
No, the other one.
Men Are the Expendable Gender. It's not like the trope is drawn out of thin air.
I wouldn't call it only a tragedy only if it's male-on-female killings, even as far as media is concerned, but there's definitely a tendency in that direction.
Sure, it'd probably help if they didn't do it for a woman, but it's not like that excuses the sexist view of the deaths.
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Half the point of that trope, and the reason it exists historically is that women are thought of as delicate and to require protecting and keeping out of danger. Or harmless and ineffective. Or both.
I don't understand why it keeps being brought up in terms of how negative it is for men, and how positive it is for women. It's not. It's certainly not the latter.
The idea that women are powerless, delicate, innocent, etc. is putting them up on a pedestal in a lot of ways. But it kinda doesn't actually value them as people.
I mean, yes, it's absolutely an issue that hurts men.
edited 31st Aug '14 2:05:31 PM by unnoun
Queen of Good Things, Honest
Yeah, a more accurate description of that trope would be Men Are Fighters, Women Are Loot.
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The Mistress
Can we please not descend into Opression Olympics again?
...sorry, I am just getting frustrated with how often we have to recycle this conversation.
edited 31st Aug '14 2:09:50 PM by SaintDeltora
"Please crush me with your heels Esdeath-sama!
It's more like Women Are Prizes,Men Are Street-rats...so yeah Men Are The Expenable Gender is a positive in a way....if you consider a turd better than diarrhea rather than looking at the picture.
And said mentality seems to then go Up To Eleven once race comes into the picture.
But I see no point in trying to somehow divert this away from the idea that just maybe being a man was part of why Michael Brown died to "Pfft as if! It was clearly entirely because he was black" to what appears to be a disgusting Appeal to Worse Problems concerning how the whole thing could possibly be worse.
Also with Renisha Mc Bride, it could've been anyone killed that way,the problem with that case lies more in the issue of Gun Control and 2nd Amendment
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter
Gender and race issues are intersectional. Men's issues vary based on race, nationality and religion. No two groups deal with exactly the same issues.
And it's incorrect to try and separate the Martin incident into a race issue that also happens to be a Men's issue. It's a Black Men's issue, which is a different ballgame.
It's a class issue as well. I'm not solely referring to the Martin situation, but the notion of a man taking another man's life over material possessions of dubious importance in the grand scheme of things is troubling, to say the least. There are some important historical relationships to be noted between the rise of the middle class, the evolution of conceptual masculinity (perhaps most noticeably during the Victorian period and the subsequent Industrial Revolution) and the belief that a real man protects his domain and the stuff within that domain.
edited 31st Aug '14 11:02:10 PM by Aprilla
Nameless Hero
"Men are expendable" does hurt dudes, as explored here: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/cc-the-disposability-of-boys/
Yes, part of it's patriarchy, another part is due to the simple fact that more boys are born than girls each year. And there is misogyny in male expendability, but lets please not derail with how it hurts women or whose hurt more by the expendable male attitude.
Also, I looked at an abuse victim advice leaflet and was surprised by a few things: there's an advice line for male, gay, bi and transgendered victims, and the hotline for helping the abuser was gender neutral! Men don't get the same financial or accommodation support as women, but still- what a leap forward in our cultures view of abuse and masculinity. FYI, I live in the UK. What's the situation for male victims in other countries?
If we're not going to derail this topic with oppression Olympics, it would help not to frame the problem as one which undervalues males specifically.
That comment is for the thread in general.
edited 1st Sep '14 7:29:39 AM by KingZeal
Jupiterian Local
More boys are born than girls, but men have shorter life expectancies for various reasons, so globally women have superior numbers.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
If anyone here wants to laugh at/be horrified by a bonafide misandrist, check this craziness out. We've had a few quotes from her in the past, and she's a genuine nutjob.
edited 1st Sep '14 10:19:23 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Unreasonably Quirky
...because it is? How can you possibly say that being seen as expendable isn't negative?
Okay, which would you rather be; belittled and deprived of your agency, or dead?
Alternately, let me put it this way. Would you rather be Princess Peach, or a freakin' Goomba?
Yes, this is a double standard that hurts both men and women. But to claim that it somehow hurts women more or that it doesn't hurt men at all is ridiculous.
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From the initial call.
In addition to being black, he was also a teenager in a hoodie walking around "staring at houses" and, at one point, stops and stares at Zimmerman - presumably because he noticed he was being watched, which is a totally understandable and human behavior. Then the kid takes off running, and Zimmerman is told to stop following him, with which he allegedly complies. Zimmerman then agrees to meet with the officers when they arrive and gives directions to where they can find him.
Meanwhile, Martin was on the phone with a friend, in a conversation that doesn't have a transcript available due to not being a dispatch call, Martin reported being scared of the "creepy ass cracker" following him, and trying to run home.
The facts are unclear as to who started the fight, as it looks as though both involved parties were just trying to exit the situation - Zimmerman to where he's supposed to meet the cops and Martin to his father's townhouse where he was staying - but Martin's friend heard the start of it on the phone, when Martin demanding, "What are you following me for?" and Zimmerman responding with, "What are you doing here?" Once the fight started, however, eyewitness accounts report that Martin dominated it pretty well, getting on top of Zimmerman and slamming the back of his head against the curb. Zimmerman shouted for help several times and, when none came, resorted to his gun.
While the events were likely racially charged - Martin outright calls Zimmerman a cracker and Zimmerman says something on the dispatch line that begins with "Fucking" and probably doesn't end with anything polite - there was more to it than just that, and had Martin been a woman, I expect it still would have ended the same.
edited 30th Aug '14 6:44:40 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.