Sexism and Men's Issues

And it will drive people towards either depression or desperate actions.

This and that. And that as well.

edited 20th Oct '16 9:12:48 AM by Quag15

Doing nothing and not having a job aren't always the same thing, one can be a productive member of society while not having a job/having a job that isn't particularly well paying.

I get what everyone is saying about feeling like a burden, I do, but can you guys honestly tell me part of why "being a burden" is hitting you so hard isn't because you on some level feel that as either "the man to the house", or one of them you feel like it's your responsability to bring in money in a way that you wouldn't if you were female?

Nobody likes being unemployed and not contributing to the family, but it hits men that bit harder because we're told from such a younge age that we're meant to be "the man of the house" and a breadwinner.

Honestly, my family isn't doing that well in this economy, we can get by but it's still hitting us, not being able to contribute isn't helping.

And it isn't the the women are contributing and I am not, it is everyone is and I'm not. I want to do things of my own, I want to go out make my own money and spend it on myself and things I like but I can't. I can't get out and ask my relatives for money because I know they can't afford to spare any, even if they are willing to give me some and go through some necessities themselves to make me feel happy, there still that guilt for not contributing while everyone is making sacrifices and you are having the good life.

I didn't find anything to do with my spare time besides spending time on my computer and drowning myself in preparatory books and video classes.

It also really feels good to have some agency, to earn your money and spend it how you want it to, it really feels good to work on something you care instead of a job that you clock in already thinking about the time to clock out and it feels really fucking good to know you're at least not a burden to anyone else.

I got it lucky, my family can afford to have me, I know a lot of people who can't afford that because their family can't afford having someone not contributing or that they don't have someone to support them at all.

I still have hopes of getting something better in the future and I am still in the process of getting an employment in something I'd like to be doing, but there are a lot of men out there who aren't, a lot of men who eventually end up thinking everyone would be better off if they were dead and a lot of men who don't see a future where they want to be in because they have no prospects for themselves, some end up swallowing the bullet or jumping a bridge, while others just waste themselves away with booze and drugs and then some forgo trying to be someone decent and choose crime, either out of desperation because they can't even provide for themselves or because they want to have anything resembling agency.

No really, one of the reasons why a bunch of youngsters gave to reporters and researchers for why they joined the gangs was because they didn't feel like they had other options besides being unemployed or stuck on a dead end job.

analysis

Though if I may, if you're physically able to do it, food service is decent pay, even if it's a shit job. I mean tip- receiving full-service restaurant work.

It's physically and sometimes emotionally exhausting but it pays well and can keep you afloat 'til you find better.

If where you're living is so hard hit that there aren't even those kinds of jobs, then I dunno.

It's not about what the women in your household are doing, it's about what you're doing, the comparative isn't if you'd feel less shit if the women in the household weren't contributing, the comparison is if you'd feel less shit if you were a women who wasn't contributing.

Would hypothetical female you feel as depressed and beat down about not being able to chip in? I'd wager no, hypothetical female you would still certainly feel shit about it, but not to the same extent, because a female you would not have been raised with the same social expectation of being able to contribute and having to contribute.

Full pay plus tips service work in the food indstury tends to be pretty hard to find unless you have experience in the food service industry, normally you'd need to spend time either working back of house, without tips or bellow minimum wage.

edited 20th Oct '16 10:45:34 AM by Silasw

I'd caution away from using "toxic masculinity" as such a wide reaching catch-all term. If the net is too wide, the term looses meaning and sense, and instead starts to serve the purpose more of relegating "men's issues" into a convenient box.

Also a lot of this also deals with capitalistic ideals and whether the solution to all of this should be to move towards socialism or even full communism, but that's not a debate for here and now.

Having two brothers (I'm the youngest one) took me off the pressure to be 'the man of the house', and if I was a woman, I would still feel like a burden, considering my sister's relative success (and women in Portugal are on average very, very hardworking and outgoing nowadays). And she's also the one who tends to remind me more constantly of my need to get an internship or a job, to boot.

I do recognize I've been a bit lucky/sheltered, since my family's Catholic education protected me from attitudes such as 'you gotta leave the house by the time you're 18' or 'pull yourself by the bootstraps' or whatever other uncharitable attitudes exist in predominantly Protestant/post-Protestant countries (I'm generalizing, but you get the point).

edited 20th Oct '16 11:21:17 AM by Quag15

Like, I know you're really proud of your Catholic heritage and all, but can we not turn this into a pissing contest about Catholicism vs Protestantism and how great Catholicism is or how shitty Protestantism is every time you bring it up?

Speaking as a lifelong atheist here.

edited 20th Oct '16 11:43:33 AM by AlleyOop

What is a bit worrisome is that atleast in the next few decades more and more jobs will be taken up by mechanical/robotic works rather then human workers so it's very likely that this problem will get much worse before it gets any better as the jobs that people need to support their families will all be taken then by more efficient bots.

So if we don't change our cultural values now on what it is to be a man then in those times we are going to see a lot of problems in the future. A lot more men offing themselves, nasty riots, criminal networks getting bigger, you name it.

edited 20th Oct '16 11:56:29 AM by Ecrivan

This is the first time I've ever seen anything close to that attiude from him. And even then, he's not wrong.

Fine. I apologize for the rude generalization.

(Keep in mind that I could never in all honesty say that Catholicism is flawlessly great, though - it too has some problems/issues to deal with)

edited 20th Oct '16 12:08:00 PM by Quag15

Sorry if I came off as rude about it myself.

Glad to know we're on good terms.

To get back to my earlier point... I think that certain cultural atittudes such as 'work harder' (instead of 'smarter') of 'pull yourself by your bootstraps' are holdovers from past decades (where there used to be more economic stability, as a way to counter the Soviet Union's appeal, for example) and certain iconic ideas such as the 'American Dream'. Attitudes which don't take into account that men from lower economic strata (and even some men from certain middle class background), no matter how hard (or how many hours) they work, they'll ultimately not improve (with the occasional exceptions here and there) their economic situation and will feel like they'll only have dead-end jobs to work with.

How do we tackle this? Lower hours per week/day for everyone? A bigger paternity license/leave (for men who have children take care of or are planning to do so)? Universal living income/wage? A different form of education, more suitable for the post-industrial era we live in?

edited 20th Oct '16 12:15:17 PM by Quag15

This is a valid observation, part of being a man is that you're not dependent on others, but ESPECIALLY women because it is viewed as emasculating.

Ex: A girl having to rely on her boyfriend for financial support vs A man having to rely on his girlfriend/wife for support.

The two are liable to feel shitty in both situations but the man especially is probably gonna feel worthless.

As of right now there has been optimistic estimates that universal income/support in the future might help the problem. Especially when more and more jobs get taken by a robotic work force. At that point we might actually be able to do the jobs we enjoy while surviving rather then doing the jobs we hate too survive.

That is a more optimistic look into the future though....

I remember that, after graduating from college, I lived at home with my folks for several years, until I had a job with which I could afford to support myself. I didn't date at all during that period, because my feeling was "I'm making hardly any money, who'd want to date me?

It's not just a matter of male perception in these things, but of societal perception, and particularly female perception. Women help to perpetuate the notion that a man has to be successful, has to be a breadwinner, has to make more money than his wife/girlfriend etc, a lot more than they seem to think. A lot of the social/ dating complaints that women profess to have (at least online) about men seem to stem from men's slowly disassociating themselves from the things that have traditionally made them attractive to women. "No, I don't want to be a hard-driving alpha male, I just want to support myself and play video games."

One benefit of universal income is that it would allow for more stay-home dads and overall dedicated parenting. I believe when it was implemented in Canada a lot of women chose to stop working so they could take care of the kids, while the men went off to work for salaries higher than the minimum guaranteed. In today's climate, if the women has the higher degree then it would make plenty of sense for the father to use that time to care for the children instead of working for little extra benefit as a Mcdonald's janitor.

The Australian premiere of "The Red Pill" has been cancelled after an "overwhelmingly negative reaction" by the customers of the cinema chain that was to screen it.

David Futrelle on why that is a bad idea. Read: Free (in as much as it's wrong to be banned from a forum for posting cuckold porn doujins) Speech Crusaders.

In case you missed it, why people despise the "documentary" in question.

...A pro-MRA documentary? Pardon me while I fall on my knees and give thanks to the world that that piece of shit has been shot down. Paul Elam (AKA "The Worst Human") has quite enough press already without an entire propaganda film being dedicated to his vileness.

I wouldn't be so quick to push for its restriction.

For starters, this is literally restricting the freedom of expression of a group that believes that freedom of expression is being restricted by the "SJWS". It would prove their point.

From what I've heard of the film itself, it's a bit too sympathetic, but ultimately it isn't the worst possible thing, and really just raises the questions that should be asked with regards to men and feminism while ignoring how the Mens Rights movement (TRP isn't even brought up in the film proper, which is hilariously misleading) doesn't really solve those issues. Yes, the feminist ideology covers both men and women. No, the feminist movement doesn't cover both men and women. Yes, any theoretical Men's Rights movement doesn't have to be about hating women. No, that doesn't mean that the points that actual MRAs bring up are invalid.

Ultimately it's just a power play. A film made by a director who starts out sympathetic to one side, loses support from said side when their opinion begins to shift, and gets funded all the way through by various well-meaning figures within the opposing side. It's free advertising for Milo and his cronies, and they didn't even have to do much. Opportunists by nature.

Personally, I can see the basic premise behind TRP, but it goes way off the deep end way too quickly. That is to say, the dating system's ultimately biased towards douchebags. It isn't because "women don't know what they want" as the group claims, but because ultimately it's a system that benefits folks that are resistant to rejection and have high self-worth, be it through sincere confidence or pure ego. This is an alright article that explains what I'm talking about with a lot more words, for people who like that sort of thing. And as long as we uphold concepts like "people should be free to love who they want" and "no one is obligated to sex" and other such basic human rights the system will always be in place.

Of course it's easy to say that you never even needed the treasure at all Captain Blackbeard, and that the real romance was the self-confidence you made along the way, but in practice gaining genuine self-worth is a lifetimes worth of work, and most people tend to settle for romance in lieu, consequences be damned.

edited 26th Oct '16 5:50:41 AM by InAnOdderWay

Yeah, I heavily disagree with pulling it from the screens. said everything I would've but better.

Or maybe it was just simply banned because like most of ultraconservative produced movies, as a film, it's just not good.

Also it's not pulled because of censorship, but because the free market made it so. I.E. it's not popular so the cinema said "fuck it."

I mean, knowing these kind of people, you can't argue against the Free Market™

I got dumped by my girlfriend yesterday on precisely these grounds. "You haven't done anything *wrong*." and "You're a very nice guy" and "You'll make someone very happy someday" were proffered, word for word. It couldn't be more clichéd.

My heart aches. I feel guilty and ashamed of my Nice Guy-ness. How will I ever find a woman who can love a clingy, over-sensitive, smothering, craven, fragile, emotional pansy of a man.

I've tried to be tough, to establish boundaries, to stand up to my partner when they act childish, selfish, or cruel, to be comfortable with the idea of them going away. And it works at first, but it's a performance. As soon as I start getting comfortable, start feeling safe, start feeling attached, I revert to my old habits, rooted in two decades of upbringing. Easily guilted, easily shamed, easily frightened.

If I ever get married, I'll be a Henpecked Husband, always chasing after my wife's approval, always going out of my way to do the right thing, all the while taking petty, passive-aggressive revenge by all kinds of small, pathetic rebellions.

I'm a fucking cliché. And I'm doomed to always repeat the same mistakes.

Please elaborate on this bit?

Or maybe it was banned because it's in f*cking Australia, which has far stricter restrictions on media than some other countries do and no one should at all be surprised that a pro-hate documentary is unwelcome in a nation that's regularly trigger-happy about banning content deemed unsavory.

Australia does not have a First Amendment. They never have. They are under no political obligation to give Redpillers a soapbox.

edited 26th Oct '16 9:23:05 AM by TobiasDrake

Like the time they tried to ban porn with small breasted women because under the lawmaker's logic it encourages pedophilia?

I've been through that this year, but it was I who ended the relationship, mostly because my ex was counting on guilt tripping me to stay with her and maintaining the relationship was devolving into something that would become abusive given enough time.

edited 26th Oct '16 9:29:21 AM by AngelusNox