Please note: This post contains my own emotions and thoughts. I did not write this post to be inflammatory or cause drama. Also contains SA
I 100% believe the left can only succeed if we accept all people, regardless of identity. This includes men. I also believe that the only way we can keep young men from going alt-right is empathy for their plights.
That said, I’ve been dealing with a lot of irrational anger towards men as a group even though I don’t want to be. Every time I read/listen to opinions by men on women’s issues it drives me up the wall. It makes me so mad. These people have mothers, daughters, wives, friends who have most likely experienced assault or rape and they can’t even be assed to believe women when they talk about their experiences.
It makes me angry that men have to be center of everything. I’d be so embarrassed if I interjected “what about meeeeeee” every time someone talked about their own issues. It makes me wonder how self-centered you must experience the world to do this.
I read a comment the other day by a woman on reddit. She wrote something a long the lines of “It took me 50 years of life experience and raising a daughter to realize that most men do not like women”. I think I agree. I especially find porn extremely telling of this. As someone in their 20s I do notice how boomer men treat me like a stupid child, but have no issues sexualizing me.
Thoughts?
“Ok… But have you considered my anger towards women?” - reddit dude
I’m a man and I’m sorry to say that I kind of agree with you. There are exceptions but most of the men who voice their opinion on feminism and gender issues seems to be viewing it as a zero sum game where women can only be liberated at the expense of men.
Most of those men seems to take any critique of patriarchal structures personal and will try to shift focus for instance by making a discussion about how women feel unsafe meeting men on the street at night be about how insulted they feel by being perceived as dangerous and how they have never themselves done anything mean to women.
I see this as an instance of the liberal fetichation of personal responsibility. The liberal explanation for why things happe is that they happen because individuals deliberately choose to make them happen. So when someone is talking about oppression of women their brains short-circuits into perceiving it as an accusation against them personally.
men who voice their opinion on feminism and gender issues seems to be viewing it as a zero sum game where women can only be liberated at the expense of men.
Is this not true though? Not in the way that conservatives think because they’re dumb. But isn’t the goal of feminism to eliminate the patriarchy? Because the reality is that men have privilege in the patriarchy. Life easier for CIS Men at the expense of women (and trans and non-binary and everyone else) and this needs to change. I don’t know what a post patriarchy world looks like, but it can’t have the current advantages men have over women.
The patriarchy, like all coercive hierarchies, uses repression to maintain its order. There will be individual ways that men will lose ground by giving up their privilege and there will be some men for whom this will be a net loss, but I believe that those men will be in the minority. Lifting that repression will involving making men more emotionally literate and healthy on average. It will also involve a lot of people who would live as men under current society to be able to live as other genders. And the empowerment of our women comrades in one area leads to a mutual empowerment.
Yeah lots of the gripes that the MRA/incels/malechuds have stem from their role/responsibility within the patriarchy (having to make the first move, having to be ‘strong’, ‘good’ chin, etc) Patriarchy hurts men too, cause at the end of the day its a capitalist tool of maintaining power, so if you don’t start with power(most men) it will oppress you.
I don’t know if there is a solution. There are so many aspects to this problem, and most solutions will bring about more violence against women in the process.
There’s so much to this, and it hits differently in different demographics. Different reasons for resentment. Some who need to be approached with humor as a dialectical tool, others who need to be bashed in culturally (which there isn’t much hope of turning barstool sports into a feminist media apparatus, so there goes that), some who can be re-educated, and others who are beyond redemption.
All in all, I can’t offer much hope because women’s liberation must come as a result of men losing power and influence. I have seen glimpses of this in the black community here, and so much of this Latin America. It would be interesting to study situations like Appalachia where women have been forced to be the bread winners, decision makers, and bear all of the familial load because men have checked out or died from drug overdose. They have no political power and little financial power, but it seems they are less disrespected from a misogyny point of view. This doesn’t solve SA matters of course.
Idk. Rambling now
I like this post a lot. It reminds me that men on the left need to use their privilege to talk about this stuff with men. It can be really, really awkward to be in a male only environment and call out sexism but I have never regretted it. Only regretted not calling out more. And really regretting the shitty things I’ve said in the past, teenage boys are gross monsters.
Women and non-binary and trans folks could probably do communism if there were no CIS men, but here we are instead.
Yeah, I get that. Whenever I need to renew my faith in humanity, I browse r/menslib for a bit. That subreddit is full of good dudes who can actually discuss men’s issues in a healthy way.
Pretty much spot-on. Men, especially white/white-passing, affluent men of above-average intelligence, are raised to assume they’ve got it made, because they’re on top of the hierarchy. Once they hit adulthood and are tossed into the machine, they’d rather take the anger that generates and pass it down the chain, as though this will somehow propel them upward. They’ve internalized the hierarchy to the point where they don’t even perceive it as anything other than natural.
I haven’t devised a solution, but I think it helps to be aware of the conversation’s context between general and specific. In general, women experience more severe oppression, but the young male hears this and testifies about the oppression he experiences as an individual. But rather than try to deal with his emotions and feelings on an individual level, he instead attacks the generalization, because it’s the only way he can justify his feelings of oppression being significant when he’s not part of the group in question. So he’ll turn around and seek solace with people who pat his ego as an individual, via spurious/made-up statistics about how he’s really part of the more oppressed group.
They’ve internalized the hierarchy to the point where they don’t even perceive it as anything other than natural.
Good post, but this right here especially is true. It’s why a lot of “good intentioned” liberal men still end up acting shitty towards women who assert themselves.
