It's kinda exhausting seeing progressive language constantly used to rag on men. I want men to be anti-racist / feminist / LGBT allies / etc. I get that there are a lot of problems with many streams of masculinity and people who have been hurt by those have a right to complain, but goddamn. I would not expect lots of women to be attracted to a movement that constantly complains about women.
That's why a lot of people oppose third wave feminism. It stop being about uplifting women and about pushing men down to achieve the goals. It forgot that the original goal was to raise the standards for everyone to equality.
A lot of males face issues that women face as well. But when there's a portion of people basically saying you're scum for being born a man.... It's very tiring and eventually it starts to feel like "well if you don't care about me, why should I keep caring about you?"
when there's a portion of people basically saying you're scum for being born a man
There is no way of changing these people’s minds, they invariably tend to be zero-sum absolutionists. Any attempt to prove them otherwise will only trigger their victimization complexes.
The only effective strategy is to not engage in the first place, to avoid having anything to do with them even if they are blood and especially if they can be easily avoided.
Unfortunately, this attitude is also held by the vast majority of vocal feminists… which, if you are actively dating, ought to make this one of the first red flags you should be looking for to make women self-select themselves out of contention.
After all, you don’t want to be with someone who hates you for what you are. Leave those venomous vipers on the branch, where they belong.
And yes, this entire strategy works equally as well in the other direction, for women. The difference is that women are far more effectively avoiding men with these red flags than men are at avoiding women with these red flags. Far too many men are far too thirsty to think straight where women are concerned.
I've heard similar things from women when I was in college, and not someone joking around or being ironic.
This whole thread seems filled with people who view men as victims of something. They aren't.
This is a thread of men supporting each other emotionally, and venting about how society largely disregards any problems that affect primarily men. There are a few shithead bigots who are gonna try to shove in their vile opinions, but they're all pretty down voted and a small minority. All the top level discussion seems pretty reasonable to me, and venting about the very thing you're doing with this statement.
Men, as a group, are not general victims of anything they didn't choose.
I don't think the young men in Russia who were forcefully conscripted and sent to die in the Ukrainian war (or a Russian prison) chose to do so. You can't just generalize the struggles of an entire demographic and brush them aside as their fault. It reminds me of the rhetoric of women being sexually assaulted because they dressed a certain way. It's extremely sexist and gets us absolutely nowhere, only pushing people further into extremes.
Men, in general, have higher job mortality rates, higher suicide rates, shorter life expectancy, and higher homelessness rates to name a few things. None of us "chose" this. However, because the problems affect men they're often swept aside.
You can benefit from a system in some ways while still being a victim of it in others. I completely agree that much more work needs to be done for women and people of color, and that there are much worse/more skewed injustices that they face (which is why that's where society's focus is/should be right now). However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't acknowledge the struggles men face when they're brought up.
If men feel like their struggles are not being acknowledged enough, all they have to do is acknowledge them. I mean, we do live in a pretty patriarchal society.
Someone, somewhere, says this unironically. If you want to avoid pedantic arguments about the meanings of words, use "virtually no one in real life says this." When you say "no one says this," two or three examples of people saying it is evidence against you. When you say "virtually no one says this in real life," those two or three examples become evidence that it's hard to find people actually saying it
The problem is people like Ethan (as well as many feminists) dont understand what privilege theory actually is.
I think its always best to explain it with disabilities first.
Like you, as an abled body person, have certain advantages in life over someone who has to use a wheelchair. Even if the guy in a wheelchair becomes a multimillionaire tech CEO and you are homeless, you still have that "privilege" over him in that the world is built to suit you much more than it is him as wheelchair access is often an after-thought , you have more potential job opportunities than he does and people consider you "normal" vs the guy in the wheelchair always being associated with his disability.
You do not automatically live a life of luxury just because you have the "privilege" of an able body, just like with male privilege, or white privilege or any other privilege. It just means you have less obstacles getting in the way of your success.
Yes but a lot of people seem to think that if you have less obstacles in your way that means that no one should be concerned about the obstacles that still are in your way.
Just because life is theoretically more difficult for one class of person does not mean that another class of person cannot be allowed to also experience difficulties.
People who were not privileged use it as a weapon to hit everyone else over the head, even when it's inappropriate. Especially when it's inappropriate.
People who were not privileged use it as a weapon to hit everyone else over the head, even when it's inappropriate. Especially when it's inappropriate.
I think it's important to state that isn't not people who aren't privileged in general that do this but a very small minority. And its often people who are actually very privileged that try to leverage the one aspect in which they're not, that do this.
Please remember that the nature of the internet means you see the loud and angry people (as well as trolls) what more often than anyone else.