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
I agree.
I liked it better when Questionable Casting was called WTH Casting Agency
Professional Forum Ninja
This is incredibly recent so there isn't an actual news article for it, but:
Popular Gaming forum Neo GAF has been shut down after the site owner Evillore was accused of sexual harassment during the #Me Too! campaign.
Here's a Reddit post detailing everything.
Got a reliable version that isn't KiA, considering that subreddit's notorious allegiance with alt-right politics and witchhunting of sites perceived to have leftist bents? For whatever reason Reddit, particularly the altright boards, has a bizarre obsessive grudgewank against Neo GAF, despite most of what I've seen on that website not being all that political, aside from only the occasional really obnoxious Soapbox Sadie. Usually it's like a slightly less idiotic Game FA Qs.
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
Thanks. Most likely it'll just be an ownership transfer and things will return to normal, I'll be surprised if something more elaborate takes place. As for the Naughty Dog harassment linked earlier, that's really awful, but unsurprising given the news about Nick Robinson a few months back.
edited 21st Oct '17 8:46:44 PM by AlleyOop
Professional Forum Ninja
United Earth
This feminist documentarist met the MRA IRL, interviewed them, and, from her description, she seems to have only met and talked to people who were listing legitimate men's issues grievances like the ones we've discussed here rather than spending all their time complaining about feminists.
edited 16th Nov '17 2:39:56 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
A procrastination in of itself
I swear we’ve had discussion before about how videos should have full context, not a cliffhanger description that just annoys people who can’t watch the video.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
Ah yes, that pile of shit.
You don’t even have to put in that tiny bit of online legwork to suspect that something’s hinky with Jaye’s film. (It’s a Kickstarter job, and A Voice for Men and Reddit’s most misogynistic MRA subs were active in the campaigns.) Jaye acknowledges in the opening and closing minutes that MR As sometimes spew nasty garbage online, but she never presses them on this in her many interviews. Instead, she lets them moan about how hard it is to be a dude in 2016, endorsing their anecdotal complaints about unfair family courts, incidents of men being tricked into being fathers, and — I didn’t quite follow this one — one father’s conviction that the women who had custody of his son were systematically trying to make the boy fat. That story drags on forever, and Jaye cuts from it to footage of herself tooling around in her car, driving past a Supercuts.
Like many amateurish Kickstarter docs, The Red Pill doesn’t always have visuals worth regarding on a screen, but I do cherish one flourish: an animated sequence of falling snowflakes, each with a different MRA complaint printed on it, meant to illustrate the movement’s diversity of grievances. There’s “Misandry”! There’s “Restraining Orders”! Even the metaphor is hilariously white.
Some of the men’s complaints are upsetting for the reasons that the men think they’re upsetting. There’s no doubt that men do sometimes suffer mistreatment from the courts or from the women in their lives. What the film and the movement fail to demonstrate is any kind of systemic cause. Instead, the author of men’s troubles here is always that vague bugaboo feminism, which we’re told is designed to silence its opponents. (Is it even worth pointing out that being criticized for what you say is not the same as being denied your right to say it?) Jaye renounces her own feminist past toward the end of the film, the announcement delivered over video of her typing, then looking at a computer, then driving around some more.
Jaye does film some feminist protesters at MRA events, letting them swear on camera a lot, trying to paint them as unreasonable — even as she elides the deep, disgusting, public unreasonableness of MR As like Elam, who once claimed online that young women walk through life “with the equivalent of a I’M A STUPID, CONNIVING BITCH — PLEASE RAPE ME neon sign glowing above their empty little narcissistic heads.”
Oh, bother.
The Red Pill is such bullshit. It's shit like this and the hashtag that shall not be named that pretty much turned me off the MRA movement forever. Not that I was ever really into it either.
And the comments under that vid starring the feminist-turned-MRA-shill made my blood run cold. These people are actually taking her seriously. They actually think she's anything but an MRA propagandist. And it's got nearly 350,000 views and 2000 likes?! WTF!
edited 16th Nov '17 2:44:27 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
United Earth
Oh. I'm sorry, I should have looked for more context. From her description, she seems to have only met and talked to people who were listing legitimate men's issues grievances like the ones we've discussed here rather than spending all their time complaining about feminists. I thought she was a legitimate filmmaker and that maybe the MRA name could still be salvaged. Then the quote ![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
came up and I realized she either didn't do her research, was deliberately obfuscating, or had an Antichrist/Heidi Turner breakdown and got suckered into becoming one of them.
I'm sorry, guys. Forget I brought it up.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Oh, bother.
Ugh, I feel dirty for viewing it for as little as I did.
The moral? Just because someone is on Tedx Talks, doesn't mean they will say anything worth hearing.
It's a nice thought, but let's face it. The MRA name is pretty much permanently tainted.
edited 16th Nov '17 2:52:47 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
That is the entire point of the YouTube MRA cesspool: if they try hard enough, people take terminally intellectually dishonest individuals like her and Christina Hoff Sommers seriously.
It's been done plenty of times in this very thread too.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
Oh, bother.
Stuff like this fills my heart with dread. I'm not kidding.
United Earth
Well, it's like neo-nazis and such. If you ignore subtext, take them at their word only when they're speaking in public, and ignore all the nasty stuff they say to each other, then they sound reasonable. Or at least like they have a few defensible concerns.
edited 16th Nov '17 3:07:09 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Oh, bother.
...Are you serious?
It's not "subtext". It's loud honking text like "Jews will not replace us".
Bringing this back to MR As...take Paul Elam. Founder and Publisher of the MRA blog A Voice For Men. In one of his blog posts on the site, he posted this garbage:
"“I find you, as a feminist, to be a loathsome, vile piece of human garbage. I find you so pernicious and repugnant that the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection.”"
That's not subtext. That's him screaming out loud "I want to hate-fuck feminists to death!"
These people are not the brightest. They aren't that good at hiding their true selves. You don't actually have to look very hard to see just how utterly loathsome they are. If people don't see it it's because they don't want to see it. Most ignorance is willful.
edited 16th Nov '17 3:12:49 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
United Earth
I know. I meant in interviews with mainstream media, televised political debates, and stuff they expect mainstream normies to watch.
Funnily enough, in blog posts, fora, imageboards, comment sections, and even their own youtube materials the like, they tend to behave as if they weren't in public where anyone can see what they're saying.
Don't be hyperbolic. He's screaming out loud that he gets aroused by making his perceived enemies miserable. That's not the same thing as literally wanting to Mr. Garrison them. I mean, I don't believe that's at all improbable that they want to do exactly that, I just don't think it's what the quote you're quoting is literally saying.
edited 16th Nov '17 3:21:47 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Oh, bother.
I still don't get why people haven't yet wrapped their heads around the fact that shit online is available to the public. Facebook posts, tweets, blogs, etc.
There aren't that many interpretations of "the idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection." Even if he doesn't literally want to rape feminists to death, hating someone so much that just thinking about doing horrible shit to them arouses him...that's really not much better.
When a woman (the writer of the article I linked earlier) pointed out his post, he tried to bullshit an excuse like "it was the heat of the moment" and "it was just satire" (total bullshit). It's as if he didn't realize she could have read his blog in preparation for the interview.
edited 16th Nov '17 3:27:19 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
You don't believe that they'd ruin your day too if given the chance?
Remember who you are. Where you're from. Excusing or buying into their garbage will only make you a less dignified Ernst Rohm.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
United Earth
Oh, I most certainly believe it. I just happen to be a bona-fide, born sucker. If I don't have previous experience of a specific speaker lying, and the first thing I come across from them is reasonable enough, my reflex is to pay attention to the reasonable-seeming stuff and engage with that without looking further into that person's context and background. You know, like normies do.
This might be a good opportunity to discuss why Ad Hominem is actually a valid debate approach and that who someone is and what they intend to achieve with their arguments is indeed reason enough to dismiss them and not engage with them at all.
True, but we were discussing subtext vs. literal text. The difference here is academic, but I happen to be a pedant as well as a sucker. In fact, one enables the other.
edited 16th Nov '17 3:44:25 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Unreasonably Quirky
Yeah, that reviewer sounds totally sympathetic to men's issues.
As loathsome as MRAs can be, I don't see too many other people speaking up about female-on-male abuse, female-on-male rape, boys falling behind in high school and college, or the stigma surrounding men in childcare professions. Seems to me we have to either put up with their misogyny or let all those problems go untreated.
edited 16th Nov '17 5:45:10 AM by TyeDyeWildebeest
I love to learn, I love to yearn, and most of all... I love to make money.
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
And this justifies letting the well be poisoned by MRAs because?
Easy on the false equivalences, hotshot.
edited 16th Nov '17 5:53:53 AM by Krieger22
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
That argument might hold water if the MRAs expressed even the slightest interest in addressing any of those societal problems rather than maintaining the 'natural' order of things where The Man rules and everyone else submits.
A procrastination in of itself
X3 You see MRA’s talking about such issues? Because all I see them doing is bitching about feminists and hurling abuse at people.
As for groups looking out for men that aren’t MR As, there are a few, we used to have a list floating around this thread.
The two I remember off the top of my head are the Man Kind Initative (a male domestic violence charity in the UK) and the Campaign Against Living Miserably (a men focused mental health charity in the UK), who I know leaflet UK universities to offer mental health support to younge men.
A lot of people aren’t sympathetic to Men’s Issues, it’s a serious problem that’s made worse by MR As acting like Men’s Issues are caused by feminists and would be solved if we rolled back Women’s Rights.
edited 16th Nov '17 6:03:52 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
United Earth
According to that woman, in her interviews, that's exactly what they did. Talk about those issues.
Maybe they only do it when they're trying to make themselves look legitimate to an ignorant public, but that proves they talk about legitimate stuff at least some of the time.
Of course, pointing out a problem isn't much help if the proposed solution is Stupid Evil such as rolling back women's rights.
edited 16th Nov '17 6:13:15 AM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Unreasonably Quirky
What did I say that was a false equivalence?
Yes, a few. I remember CALM being mentioned in this thread once, and I think I've seen the subreddit r/menslib cited as a good example. But a few scattered groups with little visibility or power can only do so much when the dominant viewpoint is that men have no gender specific problems whatsoever.
Precisely my point.
I love to learn, I love to yearn, and most of all... I love to make money.
Those Terry Crews tweets back there reminded me: WMATA has had signs all over its stations for a while now saying "you have the right to speak up against sexual harassment" with a woman featured on it. Recently, a variation of those signs featuring a man has been popping up, which I thought was really cool of WMATA to do, to acknowledge that men are sexually harassed, too.