Damn sucks to live with people who are upset your children born are the wrong gender.
This was originally a reply to a comment but I thought it’s important enough to reply to the post too:
The issue isn’t masculinity or how it can be toxic (to even suggest it is insulting imo).
The issue is:
Society does not value men!!!
That’s it, it’s not complicated at all. It’s not this weird problem with masculinity.
Society does not value men inherently like women (as in for just existing), it values the benefit they can provide.
This has been the case in all of human history. The difference now is that we no longer prepare most/all men to be able to provide the most value they can.
I always thought the solution was to value men inherently too. But that means saying a “you go bro” to incels and other “low value” men.
“Testosterone and it’s consequences have been a disaster for the human race…”
It seems like you have fallen for a very common misconception about testosterone
The title and some comments read like a revelation of people who, without looking into it, assumed feminism is for women or is anti men and are surprised that the movement actually wants to free everyone from the cycle of abuse.
If feminism wasn’t women centric, it wouldn’t be called feminism, it would be called humanism or just equality.
How can a movement centred around women empowerment also empower men?
Some people read the above and see it possible, some, like me, see it as an oxymoron.
If it’s just a label, then just rebrand it…
Every movement has a canon: the core principles behind it, a mythology about its history, and the textbook statement of its objectives.
Every movement also has a reality. Thousands or millions of people with their own ideosynchratic beliefs forming a complex social web. Within this web, a vibrant biosphere of memes [0] develop, spread and evolve on this social web. A movement is simply a name we give to a cluster of memes within this complex web. It is not any of the myths we tell about it; those are merely particular memes holding the cluster together.
The author of this article is a self described liberal feminist. She identifies a change that occurred within her bubble of feminism, where it became increasingly anti-man.
To be clear, that is not all the author says. Once she gets to the “Let’s talk about how the patriarchy harms men and boys” section, she stops the meta conversation about the movement itself, and spends the rest of the article discussing mens issues directly.
However, to your comment, and the first part of the article, maybe we need to stop hiding behind the mythology we tell ourselves about feminist; and start recognizing that the “feminist” portions of the social web are still susceptible to anti-feminist memes.
[0] in its original sense; as a direct analog to the genes of biology.
That’s petty and sexist as fuck. Literally the perfect example of toxic masculinity
It is the equivalent of only using soaps labeled “for men”
Do you need things gendered correctly for you to use it? Maybe your gender should’ve fought for equality first then. Maybe then you can have your Malenism or whatever you’d want it to be called
Please make an effort to understand the point someone is making before attacking it.
Except movements are often named after the oppressed group. Black Lives Matter, for example, doesn’t really want cops to only stop killing Black people. Black people are just disproportionately impacted.
Feminism is about raising up women’s status in society. That benefits men in the process though.
The problem is that the “Kill all men” extremists are often the loudest which causes many to think that feminism in general is like that.
Yep. There’s an unfortunate amount of people who cloak themselves under the guise of being a feminist, or claiming to care about women’s issues, that could be more accurately referred to as misandrists.
It’s my belief that there’s a heavy overlap between these people and TERFs. With TERFs hating trans women in particular (notice how prominent TERFs like JKR never seem to talk about trans men? It’s always “men in dresses infiltrating women’s public toilets”, which amusingly is also pushing the misogynistic idea that women are delicate fragile flowers that eternally need protection in every aspect of their lives).
But why? Why trans women in particular? Because not only do these TERFs view trans women as men, it’s worse. They view trans women as men infiltrating their women-only “club”, and that’s something they don’t tolerate.
It’s unfortunate that terminally online minorities within movements that screech the loudest can have such a profound effect on the image of that movement. I think it’s also a big part of why menslib movements struggle. People hear anything to do with it and their brain is clouded with preconceptions like angry incels, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, etc. People who often purport themselves as activists of men’s rights, when in reality they’re usually either grifters or people yearning to be back in the 1950s.
I hope more people will talk about this. In the near future I’ll be writing a study of this, hoping it’ll reach at least somebody.
