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
Disagreeing with patriarchy theory or feminism in general is not misogyny. Misogyny is the hatred of women. One of the things many people find problematic about some feminists is their tendency to label anyone who disagrees with them as bigots. "You're not a feminist? You must hate women!"
Here's the book titles from Wikipedia, by the way;
The Myth of Male Power
Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say
Father and Child Reunion
Why Men Earn More
Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men?
Not really seeing the misogyny here.
Sorry, but I couldn't let this slide. Has anyone here made any misogynistic remarks? Or is disagreeing with you enough to label someone as a bigot?
edited 3rd Jan '13 5:34:29 PM by Talby
Oh, dear...oh, oh, dear...
Guest, kiddo, you might want to re-check the first page. This thread exists because I started it. As you may recall, I'm a pretty outspoken feminist. I use words like "patriarchy" and "male privilege" and everything.
edited 3rd Jan '13 7:24:37 PM by Karalora
Sexism against women is a men's issue. As long as misogyny is a common thing with any level of acceptance, men will always be subject to a curse. Because neither misogyny nor misandry is truly justifiable, at its core, but, of everything in the world, misogyny is the only thing that even comes close to justifying misandry, and misandry is the only thing that even comes close to justifying misogyny. There will be men's issues as long as there are women's issues, and there will be women's issues as long as there are men's issues - and believe me, we will be miserable as a culture as long as that is. When will we achieve true egalitarianism? I don't know. I hope to live to see that day, but I don't think it will come until everybody alive today is dead.
I'd say I'm being refined Into the web I descend Killing those I've left behind I have been Endarkened
The world sometimes surprises you. I thought Apartheid wouldn't end in my lifetime when I was growing up in the middle of it. Oops. Got that wrong.
I was just as wrong with the USSR going on well into my adulthood. <shrugs> Sometimes, when change comes, it's a paradigm shift of epic swiftness.
Or, takes half an age of build up to a swift end in a kind of panic.
Going back a bit, but...
I'm reminded of a talk that was given at my college a while back by one Dr. Paula Rodriguez Rust
in which she referred to this sort of issue. The following is just a paraphrasing of what she said (as I wrote it in a paper I turned in for one of my classes regarding it):
edited 3rd Jan '13 10:35:48 PM by 0dd1
Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.In regards to Register-Her, the site's slogan is 'Fuck Their Shit Up'. Are you guys seriously saying it doesn't promote Internet vigilantism? Besides, let's just assume for a moment that they're totally right about every one of their false rape accusers being an evil, scheming harpy out to make a buck off honest men. They're still putting blog posts and joking Facebook comments (such as the girl who described her political affiliation as 'kill all men hail Satan') on the exact same level.
Paul Elam is a scary fucker, and I'm kind of disturbed that he's being so strongly defended in this thread.
What's precedent ever done for us?Misogyny has many definitions besides "hatred" of women. It's common hate group tactics to play semantics whenever someone mentions racism, classism, sexism, whatever. People will say things like "using the word 'nigger' or 'kike' isn't racist because racism means to think they're inferior, and I don't think niggers and kikes are inferior".
Patriarchy denial is considered sexist because it's defending androcentrism, which is what most people mean when they speak of "male privilege". The assumption that male concerns are the default is a major problem in many, many areas of life, which is the entire point of privelege and patriarchy theory.
And to indicate why some people might think of those books as sexist, let's alter them slightly:
The Myth of White Privilege
Blacks Can’t Hear What Whites Don’t Say
Why Whites Earn More
Does Civil Rights Discriminate Against Whites?
The one I left alone was "Father and Child Reunion" because that doesn't really have a good analogy in race. But everything else? What you see there is exactly the type of crap that went on prior to and during the Civil Rights Movement
◊ in order to create backlash against it. It preys upon mens' fears that feminists are really just evil nazis out to get them, rather than actually addressing the issues that are being brought up.
Like I said before, the problem with mens' rights is that it rarely ever comes up unless people want to use it as a means of stonewalling womens' rights.
Farrel has also said some rather strange stuff
in the past about incest.
As for Paul Elam, the guy wrote this
. Do I need to say any more here?
edited 4th Jan '13 5:06:01 AM by Iaculus
What's precedent ever done for us?![]()
If women were disadvantaged in every respect compared to men, then your comparison would be apt, but they are not. Men still commit suicide at a significantly higher rate than women. Men are far more likely to be victims of violent crime. The vast majority of homeless people are men. Men and boys consistently under-perform in education compared to women and girls. Are these trivial issues that can be safely ignored?
The comparison to race and the civil rights movement just doesn't work.
Just in case the Joe Pesci reference wasn't obvious, I was saying I find Paul Elam to be a dangerous and unstable person.
edited 4th Jan '13 5:30:24 AM by Talby
@Death Pidgeon: I realized what you meant when I saw your post before the one I responded to, which i missed the first time around since I was typning my own post when you posted it.
Notice how your name wasn't one of the ones he mentioned? I doubt that was a coincidence. Using words like patriarchy or male privilege isn't the problem.
@King Zeal: If white people dropped out of school more often than black people, served longer sentances for the same crimes or were more likely victims of violence I'd ask what we could do to deal with the problems white people face. In reality of course it's the other way around, it's black people who experience those things. And men, which is why I dismiss any discussion about the suffering of white people but I don't dismiss the discussion about the suffering of men.
The comparison to race and the civil rights movement just doesn't work.
That isn't what anyone has said. However, the things you mention still have little to do with distancing from privilege. Blacks commit more hate crimes proportionately than white people, but that doesn't automatically eliminate the existence of white privilege. Of course men have issues, and I've mentioned several in this thread. The problem is that these issues are constantly brought up to circumvent discussions about feminism rather than being brought up on their own.
Men having problems doesn't disqualify them as a privileged group.
See, the attitude that whites don't have it as bad as black people is a relatively new viewpoint (and one that is still contested to this day). White privilege is something that was laughable in the days before the Civil Rights era, because anyone who brought it up would have to explain why a white person who has a job to do, has property to maintain, and looks after the welfare of their family could possibly have it better than a lazy negro who doesn't have any of those things.
Similar, but not identical conditions now exist in the discussion of male privilege. Yes, men are subjected to more violence, are more often homeless, and are conscripted into military service, but this is a consequence of the assumption that men are tougher. If men are supposed to be tough, then by needing help, they are automatically disqualified from receiving it.
edited 4th Jan '13 6:51:32 AM by KingZeal
They are brought up on their own. You probably see them more often because feminism has a much larger base than MR As and when feminists get called out after saying something unsupported it's far more notable than someone on the internet saying something unrelated to feminism about men's rights. It's an uphill battle for the MRM and that shouldn't be held against them.
edited 4th Jan '13 6:18:50 AM by Besserwisser
Except most of the time it has nothing to do with feminism saying something unsupported. It has to do with MRA groups wanting to conflate the argument with a "me too" oppression olympics.
No you don't. For example, the very fact that women have often had to use a Mustache Du Plume (even as lately as JK Rowling) in order to be taken seriously as anything other than romance and suspense authors is a problem. So is Hollywood's blatant discouragement of The Bechdel Test. As is comic books' assumption that female heroes don't sell unless they show T&A.
Those issues have nothing to do with which sex has it worse. Again, that's just oppression olympics.
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Old news, we already talked about it. Interestingly enough, from what I heard the SPLC later clarified their statements and said they weren't saying A Vf M and other MRM sites they mentioned were hate groups.
edited 4th Jan '13 6:29:48 AM by Besserwisser

The SPLC isn't perfect, they could be wrong. Labeling A Vf M as a hate site wouldn't be wrong, but it would be using the term somewhat more widely than is usual. If that standard was applied across the board a lot of other sites would count too, and a lot of feminist sites. Naming and shaming is a tactic A Vf M learned from feminists. For exemple SRS is always threatening to out people from r/mensrights. Labeling r/mensrights a hate site however does not describe the discourse I have seen there at all.
edit: Daily Dot says the SPLC told them it doesn't consider r/mensrights a hate group, while containing some misogynists. A fair description in my opinion. I don't know enough about Daily Dot to say if they're reliable, but they look alright from a quick google.
http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-mens-rights-hate-group-splc/
edited 3rd Jan '13 5:21:36 PM by Kzickas