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
R.I.P. Kabosu, AKA Doge
(Sigh) Fetishizing entire groups of people is never okay.
There's a reason why my HGS Author Avatar:
...hates the fetishization of foxes some furries make. It's a metaphor for this kind of thing.🤷♂️
Edited by CosmosAndChaos on Jun 25th 2023 at 10:25:34 AM
I'm neutral about the meme, but she was beautiful.
R.I.P. Kabosu, AKA Doge
Sorry for double posting, but saw some comments that some women made on Twitter when a man almost was raped where they victim-blame him as sarcasm for when some men victim-blame women. Then a woman in another forum said: "They can't take exactly what they've been dishing out. Lol". Sarcasm or not, victim-blaming rape survivors is never okay. You fight fire with water, not gasoline. Imagine if men said similar shit about female dv survivors like "She's a loser who can't control her husband".
Edited by CosmosAndChaos on Jul 4th 2023 at 4:43:31 PM
I'm neutral about the meme, but she was beautiful.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Indeed, also "fighting fire with fire" requires one to actually fight fire. Unless the dude in question was infamously misogynistic or opposed to Me Too! that's just supporting the hurting of a random person because they have the same gender as some bad people (and that's not even mentioning that not all anit-woman victims blamers are men- many women are quite happy to shame female rape victims).
Really it's no different from how misogynists might laugh at the victimization of a random woman because they associate all women with their 'SJW' strawman. It's vile collective blame and hasty generalizations.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 4th 2023 at 1:38:52 AM
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
The Wandering Geek
Speaking of sexism, how much do you support the findings that a sexist person is likelier to be a racist person too?
Every time someone claims to be realistic is a dour cynic in disguise.
Well, both are part of right-wing word view, so it happens very often I would say.
The Clown is in town (*he*/she/they)
I think it's the fact that the more you believe the "SJW's" to be in the wrong, the more likely you are to adapt hateful ideologies.
The left are part of the LGBTQ+ community? Then that community is in the wrong!
They are in favour of BLM? What for? The left is obviously wrong so that movement must be wrong too!
And so on and so forth.
Due to unfortunate events, i will continue to exist until further notice. (also i'm fluid now)
The They who said it
Bigotry is comorbid with other bigotries as a general rule.
You're never going to really find someone who only has a problem with, say, specifically trans people, or specifically black people.
The Clown is in town (*he*/she/they)
I mean, with the trans panic i'm sure there are those influenced into only going for trans folk. However, i would not be suprised if they began to be even more hateful later down the line.
I fortunately have seen those who are just genuinely curious about the situation, but yeah.
Due to unfortunate events, i will continue to exist until further notice. (also i'm fluid now)
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
If a person is inclined to condemn whole groups for who they are and look down on "others" for being different, that person will be inclined for all kinds of bigotry. If you lack empathy for other people, you generally lack it for anyone not in your immediate social circle.
Surrounded by weirdoes
Pretty likely, they don't even have actual empathy for the people around them, but fair point.
Wake me up at your own risk.
Anka Aquila
Conversely, if people are capable of having empathy and curiosity for other people, it should be easier to get them to open up to a wider world.
Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.
The Wandering Geek
Moving to other countries for instance would help that.
Every time someone claims to be realistic is a dour cynic in disguise.
Pretty likely, they don't even have actual empathy for the people around them, but fair point.
This doesn't seem too realistic, bigotry isn't a mind-virus that turns people into sociopaths. It's about blunting empathy towards the target group, not eliminating it entirely.
A bigoted person can still be generally decent to their own immediate family unit or other people within the in-group. As a Georgian I've known people with fairly bigoted beliefs towards LGBT people who were genuinely kind and honorable to 'normal' people. Unfortunately it's not as simple as bigots being a hive mind of pure evil who can easily separated from 'normals'. Anyone can have some degree of bigotry if placed in the proper circumstance and sufficiently primed.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
The Wandering Geek
And to deprime them is to get properly interact and listen to the group they target?
Every time someone claims to be realistic is a dour cynic in disguise.
Yeah bigotry is more a set of belieft that deshumanize people, even bigot can have empathy toward the hated target as long the target behave in a "Normal way" for them and you can see a lot of tortured logic about this with the "Love the sin but not the sinner" and sort of "I think you are a weirdo but I love you".
So spartan is right, is not exactly a ether or neither situation, the issue become thorny when eventually one party demand something of another(which is going to happen anyway)
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Certainly bigots will easily fall into hating people outside their group for all sorts of reasons, but it is by no means a hard rule.
I recall hearing about a Vietnam war vet who, because some of his squadmates were black and saved his ass more than once, virulently hated those who were racist to African Americans, and would denounce and threaten anybody he heard using the N-word. But despite that, he hated Asians, and always used slurs to refer to them.
Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.
That is another thing to note. Human behaviour is not consistent. We can predict things based on precedent, but due to this inconsistency it is never a hard rule.
On the topic of bigotry magnetism, I was going to write a longer post, but I think I actually one reason in particular they'd tend to overlap.
You know how we talk about intersectionality? Women's rights, men's rights, ethnic minority rights, gay rights, trans rights all interconnecting?
I'd argue that intersectionality exists on the opposite end too. Let's use the extreme example of National Socialism:
- Nazis view the world through the lens or racial conflict. The world is just a conflict of races that are always competing for dominance. An individual's highest loyalties should be towards their race and the goal of giving their race power over other races.
- What does this mean for men? It means that men need to be "strong" at all times to assert their race's dominance above others, and they must not pursue individual desires. Those who do not do this are race traitors.
- Where does this leave women? Well, a woman's role is to produce offspring of their race who can help dominate over other races. Women therefore cannot be allowed reproductive control, because reproduction belongs to the race. Women who fail to conform to this are innately race traitors.
- Where does this leave homosexuals? Well, homosexuals are weakening their race for the same reasons a woman who chooses not to reproduce are. Therefore, they are race traitors.
- What about religious minorities? One's religion represents their culture, belonging to a religion produced by another race makes one less loyal to the culture of their race and therefore a race traitor.
As you can see, to the Nazi, these are essentially intersectional issues.
"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"
The Wandering Geek
White supremacist Chauvinistic Sexist Queerphobic fundamentalists, got it.
Every time someone claims to be realistic is a dour cynic in disguise.
Is more than people do not value consistency as much as we think we do, we can make exceptions and often have blind spot when emotion overide us because it feel better that way and that can even apply to bigorty
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Princess Weekes discusses the case of the Menendez brothers who were incarcerated for killing their parents, whom they claimed had been abusing them since they were children. Weekes discusses how people's views on abuse, especially in regards to men, influenced the outcome of the trial and how they were mocked. The section of the video @17:27 is particularly illuminating as she points out that none of the men in the jury believed the boys were sexually molested while the women did.
Edited by windleopard on Aug 12th 2023 at 9:22:11 AM
Oh, bother.
It's sad how little this surprises me.
Edited by M84 on Aug 12th 2023 at 4:35:35 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
A procrastination in of itself
It’s a depressing testament to man’s inhumanity to man that male abuse victims are more likely to get sympathy and support from women than from other men.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
R.I.P. Kabosu, AKA Doge
Well, yeah. Most of the time, cause I've seen women saying men "deserved" to be physically abused by their wives, and that they must have "done something wrong". While I've seen men saying that if the genders were reversed, people would view the victim as a victim.
Edited by CosmosAndChaos on Aug 12th 2023 at 3:45:44 PM
I'm neutral about the meme, but she was beautiful.
...I sometimes hate it when I'm right.
Every time someone claims to be realistic is a dour cynic in disguise.