I think this article does a great job talking about there isn’t enough examples and models of an non-toxic masculinity out there. Women are told and have examples about many different ways to be women. Thanks to work of female feminists for years being childless, a stay at home mother, working a “feminine” job, working a “masculine” job, etc. are all valid options for women and are celebrated by women.
For men there is celebration of only one kind of man. We need more examples and celebrations of the varieties of men out there. I think this is especially true for straight men. I think straight men should borrow some of these examples from both the Gay community and from women. I personally as a straight man have found a lot of acceptance and value from how Gay men value diverse bodies types of men. I find it validating to me own experience and women are starting to do the same. We as men need to start celebrating each other in the ways that women do. After doing this enough and making it safe enough for women to join in a lot of good examples can be set for young men to see there are multiple celebrated options of masculinity. I think it might be hard for straight men to understand they are not the best at this and we should follow the lead of other but it is best course of options.
there needs to be real accountability for the impact of men like rogan, tate, musk, trump
This is definitely needed.
I would like to point on that these men are purposely trying to many people as possible to play their game since they know they can win. So recruiting men to think and act like them is their own point. Its helpful to note that all these “successful” people are all benefiting from the system that exists today that we are not. They need us more than we need them
The article gets so close to fully getting it but then misses the point in an attempt to identify a common enemy.
White male privilege was the bribe that was given to the group in exchange of accepting a shit deal (being a worker under capitalism) as long as that group helped enforce an even shitier deal to the rest.
Now that bribe is gone, so it’s actually a shittier deal than before (similar to what everyone else has, maybe worse cause of the stigma).
Men aren’t thinking, oh what’s the ideal solution. They are thinking, we did the right thing and agreed on equal rights, but you (feminism) didn’t fix the shit deal, so I don’t want more of your solution.
Imo, the solution to the shit deal wasn’t feminism, it was socialism (which includes equal rights for all humans).
I think this is by design, the owners knew feminism wouldn’t change their system of oppression much, so they let that one go through and crushed socialism in the process.
but you (feminism) didn’t fix the shit deal,
I’m just curious where feminists are in power. Maybe in some nordic countries - but than again those have rather high living standard and economical equality. Big corporations pandering to LGBT and co, does not really count.
Feminism has a lot of narrative power, and the whole middle management not just of individual companies but society as a whole is, by now, female-dominated.
If you’re getting laid off chances are a women wrote the reports that the layoff was based on, and a woman is signing off on your severance package. You go to the dole office and – yep, a woman works your case. Chances also aren’t too terrible that, above the layer of the predominantly male C-suite, there’s an heiress to the empire because generational capital accumulation doesn’t discriminate.
So, in a nutshell: Much feminist messaging can easily come across as HR telling a male truck driver “our boss is a man, therefore, you’re fired”.
Whether that power base can actually be, realistically, mobilised, is another topic. I guess academia in principle serves the place for middle management that unions play among workers but it’s a tough cookie no matter which side you look at. Doubly fucked in places like the US where middle management is even more prone to the temporarily embarrassed billionaire fantasy. And somehow I ended up at class analysis. Honestly, wasn’t intentional.
What do you mean by female-dominated and do you assume that every women is a feminist?
If you’re getting laid off chances are a women wrote the reports that the layoff was based on, and a woman is signing off on your severance package. You go to the dole office and – yep, a woman works your case. Chances also aren’t too terrible that, above the layer of the predominantly male C-suite, there’s an heiress to the empire because generational capital accumulation doesn’t discriminate.
So, in a nutshell: Much feminist messaging can easily come across as HR telling a male truck driver “our boss is a man, therefore, you’re fired”.
Whether that power base can actually be, realistically, mobilised, is another topic. I guess academia in principle serves the place for middle management that unions play among workers but it’s a tough cookie no matter which side you look at. Doubly fucked in places like the US where middle management is even more prone to the temporarily embarrassed billionaire fantasy. And somehow I ended up at class analysis. Honestly, wasn’t intentional.
Sorry it might very well be my bad English, but I don’t get your point at all.
I mean that a lot of the typical jobs women take up are in some form of middle management. It’s not rare to see 70% or more women working in those areas.
Separately, feminism has lots of narrative power.
My overall point here is not that feminism didn’t or doesn’t do what it could to fix the deal for men, too, it might not even be possible, my point is that there’s a female power base that men, especially young and low-class ones, experience as being capable of doing so.
My overall point here is not that feminism didn’t or doesn’t do what it could to fix the deal for men, too, it might not even be possible, my point is that there’s a female power base that men, especially young and low-class ones, experience as being capable of doing so.
Thank you for rephrasing and clarification. I think I can see your point now. And I would even agree that there is a perception that feminist or liberal leftist ideas are dominating general spaces, since corporations we pandering pretty hard in those direction. But I think if one looks at where the actual power in society lies - it’s clearly not with the liberal left and even less with feminists.
I mean DNC consultants could not have pushed the “Bernie Bro” narrative and things could look vastly different right now, but that would have contradicted their class interest. But they’re also not leftist, at least not in my book.
I’m really sorry, I don’t know why but again it’s kind of difficult for me to get your point.
I think this is by design, the owners knew feminism wouldn’t change their system of oppression much, so they let that one go through and crushed socialism in the process.
This was definitely the strategy and it wasn’t an acceptance of feminism but a much limited feminist rights. These were limited to the rights to vote and work from other rich white families (i.e. from their own wives and daughters.) . From the earliest days feminism included socialistic elements with many of same people interacting in much in the same way civil right organization had socialist elements. The powers at be simple found the easiest path and did it. Moreover, they tried to highlight the most extreme man hating elements to isolate men from joining the cause.
it’s wild to me how many people think socialism and feminism are somehow at odds rather than exactlyein lock step, two aspects of dissolving the torture that’s inflicted through all of the hegemony. we want to dissolve the hierarchies of gender, race, class, and nationalities and create a society where everyone celebrates each other. feminism, socialism, integration, and solidarity are all the same goddamn movement. none of them are distractions from eachother. they’re all different sets of messaging to help reach people where they are.
I get why its difficult to understand at both because the systems in place force a scarcity mindset where everything is “either or” and its never “both”. Once you start thinking in an abundance mindset and see that the restrictions are artificial a whole world of differences appear. Once the veil is lifted for aspect everything comes clearer. You can see this in why the Patriarchy fights all of the movements because they know to they are the same behind the scenes. Its obvious once you start studying the history of feminism, queer rights and civil rights that the same people had similar ideas and were inspired by similar ideas and methods. But it takes some time to look through what you are told is a “natural system”. So natural that it needs constant propaganda to support it
Wow great read
I think unfortunately the one theme we are missing and the one most important is solidarity.
In my experience, everyone is focussed on their community and furthering their cause. Rightly so in many cases.
One of the starkest I always felt was when talking about men, children and family courts. When I discuss this online, and even occasionally IRL with feminists. The conversation usually is one of acknowledgement of a problem followed by a cold “we’ll support that when we get the things we need”. It’s a cold brutal unsympathetic view that doesn’t help that feeling of isolation and hardens that “us vs them” division. Many feminists don’t see that the division sewn is intentional, to stop us uniting and fighting for the rights of the working class. Be it trans rights, gay rights, women’s rights, freedom from racial discrimination and men’s rights. They are human rights. We have to stand shoulder to shoulder and make our voice heard in support. We also have to hope that folks from other groups will support us.
There is nothing more isolating than fighting in the corners of others and then when the time comes get a cold rejection when they come for you. It pushes folk to these liars and snake oil salesmen from the right. We need to remove that oxygen from the fire so those bigoted views can wither and die. Right now, we’re losing that battle. DEI initiatives are being rolled back. Under the guise of fighting positive discrimination, they take more. The destroy awareness of bias, fair selection processes and opportunities for all.
I fear that the true strength of men fighting for fairness is you need to fight for others, extend the olive branch of friendship and then hope when we fight some will join us even if at times it feels like we will fight alone.
I’ve lost bigoted anti-trans friends who’ve swallowed the snake oil but to some, I’ll always be seen as a part of the patriarchy, purely because of my gender. So will our sons. I hope they don’t have the same experience of where they cross from innocent child to evil propagator of the patriarchy despite doing nothing wrong other than being born male and becoming an adult.
What is this community about? I have read the sidebar, but I have not understand it…
Put simply, this is a community dedicated to criticism of the gendered constraints placed on men.
As an outsider: “Feminism for men”. It currently exists as a counter to Men’s Rights, which was a movement deemed “too problematic” by the Feminists. Whether it is too problematic is something I’ll leave up to the reader. I for one think they’re just really good at trolling (and sometimes they were assholes).
Put simply, this is a place for criticism of the oppressive gendered expectations placed on men with a focus on intersectionality.
Were the MAGA shitheads to suddenly realize the real reasons why they are angry, there would be a chaotic overthrow of society. That’s probably also not what we want. We want an ordered change to the system. But given that we can’t do that without class solidarity, the chaotic overthrow would also be acceptable.
I hate none of the three.
Then you don’t know what capitalism is.
Or perhaps I just think differently than you.
You think differently because you don’t understand what you are thinking about. You think you do, but you don’t. It’s called false consciousness. Which our world is full of as oppressive systems such as capitalism naturally make use of false consciousness.
This is to say, you don’t know what capitalism is.
Let me try this again in light of trying to meet you where you are at instead of just saying “wrong” and moving on.
What do you think the article meant by its title? What do you think it ment by “capitalism” so we can be on the same page.
Am I needed in this discussion? I thought that you can read my mind when you’re so confidently educating me about my own views.
Or just try not to be on the same page at all. Also okay.
There’s no easy way to tell someone on the Internet that they are wrong without sounding patronizing. All I can say is that I genuinely want to try and explain something to you that you clearly do not understand. I would like you to understand. I would like for us to be able to talk about this topic. I mean this with love and sincerity. That’s the best I can do.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted for a difference in opinion, I think we should try to converse with people who have different views, lest we are just an echo chamber.
With that in mind, do you support the current version of capitalism which is very laissez faire? Or are you in favour of the system if it is regulated more than we do now.
He’s being down voted because he had an uninformed and uncritical response to a valid point. Not because of a difference in opinion but because he entered a conversation with the sole intent of saying “not me”, clearly showing he didn’t even begin to engage in any way with the topic.
It is disingenuous to call it a difference in opinion.
However, conversation is good, and I appreciate your attempt at getting him to put some more thought into the topic. It’s something I need to be better at myself rather than being snippy.
In that spirit of conversation I do wanna say that I think focusing on different versions of capitalism misses the point of the topic as well. It isn’t about laissez faire vs more regulated systems. It’s that the incentives regardless of the specific system of capitalism seek to squeeze wealth out of every orifice. It’s a constant struggle between the oppressed being squeezed and the squeezers doing the squeezing.
What does this have to do with feminism and whatnot? Well you see, due to the endless squeezing, men have lost the ability to do the thing they have been told their whole life to do. Provide. This has happened at the same time as women and LGBT rights becoming more and more equal. Due to this, many right wing groups prey on men’s insecurity with their lack of ability to “provide” and blame that changing world on the fact women and queer folk are more open and equal.
As if putting women in the kitchen and queer folk in the closet will revert the economic status of those men back to the time when women were forced to be in the kitchen and queer folk were forced in the closet.
This is the topic. To say to all that “I don’t hate capitalism” is to fundamentally not understand the topic at all. Conversation is good, but to conversate we need to have a common topic and a common language to communicate ideas about that topic. A language that the person you replied to does not have as shown by his non-understanding of what was even said.
This is called a false consciousness. It’s a natural outcome to oppressive systems to take people within it and give them a language incompatible with people outside of that same false consciousness. Conversation becomes difficult because what I mean by capitalism and what he means by capitalism are fundamentally different.
Both I and the article are using the academic meaning. Meanwhile he thinks we mean like, Owning a house as capitalism.
As I said before, I need to be better at engaging people and being less snippy and just pointing and saying “your wrong and here’s why”. Meeting people where they are is my goal but I’m not quite there.
Anyways, good luck with your attempt. Sorry that I talked so much. Please take it with genuine love that I want to give it with.
Thanks for the reply. I will respond to this at some point today, just a little busy right now and don’t want you to think I just ignored your insightful response.
Take your time. Ill be here, willing to talk the best I can.
He’s being down voted because he had an uninformed and uncritical response to a valid point. Not because of a difference in opinion but because he entered a conversation with the sole intent of saying “not me”, clearly showing he didn’t even begin to engage in any way with the topic.
I agree with this and I should have been a little more critical in my reply to them.
It is disingenuous to call it a difference in opinion.
Apologies, this wasn’t my intention and I will try and communicate better in the future.
However, conversation is good, and I appreciate your attempt at getting him to put some more thought into the topic. It’s something I need to be better at myself rather than being snippy.
I appreciate you pointing this out and also recognising that you have room for improvement in this regard. Not too many people admit to these things.
In that spirit of conversation I do wanna say that I think focusing on different versions of capitalism misses the point of the topic as well. It isn’t about laissez faire vs more regulated systems. It’s that the incentives regardless of the specific system of capitalism seek to squeeze wealth out of every orifice. It’s a constant struggle between the oppressed being squeezed and the squeezers doing the squeezing.
What is the alternative though? As in not against learning about alternative systems. You could argue that for all of capitalisms failings it has advanced us a civilisation very quickly, whether that is a good thing or not is hard to say.
What does this have to do with feminism and whatnot? Well you see, due to the endless squeezing, men have lost the ability to do the thing they have been told their whole life to do. Provide. This has happened at the same time as women and LGBT rights becoming more and more equal. Due to this, many right wing groups prey on men’s insecurity with their lack of ability to “provide” and blame that changing world on the fact women and queer folk are more open and equal.
I agree completely with this assessment.
As if putting women in the kitchen and queer folk in the closet will revert the economic status of those men back to the time when women were forced to be in the kitchen and queer folk were forced in the closet.
It’s always been the case, not that it’s acceptable, that the media and people with power like to keep us hating each other. Class war not culture war.
This is the topic. To say to all that “I don’t hate capitalism” is to fundamentally not understand the topic at all. Conversation is good, but to conversate we need to have a common topic and a common language to communicate ideas about that topic. A language that the person you replied to does not have as shown by his non-understanding of what was even said.
This is called a false consciousness. It’s a natural outcome to oppressive systems to take people within it and give them a language incompatible with people outside of that same false consciousness. Conversation becomes difficult because what I mean by capitalism and what he means by capitalism are fundamentally different.
Both I and the article are using the academic meaning. Meanwhile he thinks we mean like, Owning a house as capitalism.
I guess this leads to the question above, what would another system look like and how would we get there.
As I said before, I need to be better at engaging people and being less snippy and just pointing and saying “your wrong and here’s why”. Meeting people where they are is my goal but I’m not quite there.
I don’t know! You have responded to me in an engaging manner and gave me food for thought and way I can communicate better online.
Anyways, good luck with your attempt. Sorry that I talked so much. Please take it with genuine love that I want to give it with.
I have ADHD, I am an expert at talking too much. 😉
Appreciate the reply. I should really learn how to do the quote thing your doing so my reply can be more accurately interpreted.
Anyways, I want to focus on your question. The obvious answer is communism, socialism, ect. A concept alot of people don’t understand is that Marxist theory does not see capitalism as this evil thing that has invaded our lives, but as a natural progression of human economic development. Marx says that the formation of a communist society must first progress through capitalism and industrialization as the benefits of those systems set the stage that makes communism even feasible.
The part that gets people confused is that outside of theory and in real life, never has a industrialized capitalist society progressed to communism. Instead all attempts were pre industrial feudal or near feudal revolutions who attempted to leap frog over capitalism straight to industrial communism.
This history has resulted in many many different forms of communist thought. Maoist, leninists, trotskyist, stalinists, and so on. But we are not talking about those. I want to hard focus in on Marxism as just a foundational idea, because holy shit you have no clue how influential Marx was to like, our understanding of sociology and economics.
That is all to say, I do not have a silver bullet answer for you on “which system” and “what exactly that looks like”. There’s a lot of different possibilities, and as we get increasingly into late stage capitalism, our ideas about communism change to meet the world we know. Marx didn’t know what a fucking Uber eats was ya know lol.
The best answer I have for you is to genuinely and with an open mind free of pre considered notions (as best you can for that impossible task) try and read The Communist Manifesto. I guarantee it’s not the book you think it is.
However please also temper expectations. It’s a foundational text. Talking about some base concepts. It will not hand you a silver bullet but Instead will just fill you with the feeling that we can do better than what we currently are. I am going to put a quote from disco Elysium, wonderful game, in here about the feeling of understanding this and what it can do to you.
“0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov (game stand in for Karl Marx) fucked him over personally with his socio-economic theory. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world.”
Again I am quite busy so a reply will take me some time, just wanted to let you know again.
As for the quotes. You can use “>” without the quotation marks. Followed by a space and the text you’re quoting. For more you can search the internet for Markdown syntax. You can do italics and bold and lots more.
men’s liberation
feminist community
lol, is this some kind of joke? That’s cultural appropriation.
It’s a community to discuss men issues predominantly through the lens of feminism. Care to explain the joke?
Men’s lib, as in the term at least, is as old as second-wave feminism. This is a place to talk about men’s issues that doesn’t bash feminism. At least not more than feminism bashes itself, that is, which can be a lot. Also not a place to be a pickme.
While there are some points worth discussing in the article, I want to raise an issue with the community itself, since it’s actually fairly adjacent.
If you look through it, majority of posts in the community that calls itself “Men’s Liberation” is really not about, well, men’s liberation. It’s about how men should adapt to the realities of modern feminism, without getting a set at the table to discuss how it affects them and what they would’ve done differently. It just straight up mirrors feminist talking points and rephrases them to have “men” in the name.
This is very much why feminism is often hated: not because it gives women seat at the table, but because it takes the seat away from men, while vaguely claiming they have power elsewhere (but do they?).
Don’t get me wrong: feminism tackles important questions, but it always looks at issues through the women’s perspective, which might miss the unique circumstances men find themselves in and their angle with the issues raised. Since the community claims to come from the men’s side (it’s in the name), I find it deeply disingenuous and concerning.
If I’m not mistaken, this was the initial concept behind the community, no? The idea that this “manosphere” bullshit is a response to the erasure of men in the misguided attempt to bow to third (fourth now?) wave feminism.
In a nutshell, the plot of feminism got lost in the greater society as a whole finally trying to adopt some of its principles via straight up virtue signaling.
—fuck I can’t think of the phrase people use—value posturing? Ethics acting? I’m sure you all know the phrase I’m searching for, right wingers popularized it.But point is, it’s true. And yes, it happens on the white left, but its most devious incarnation is in corporate America. Putting a woman of color in your ad is not equality. Taking aunt jemima off your bottle isn’t erasing racism. It’s just lip service to something akin to progress to boost their bottom line.
So in this world of a bunch of meaningless putting women in the spotlight to say they’ve done it, young men are feeling like they don’t matter. So when you have the liberal world saying “shut up now, a woman is talking,” young men don’t hear “okay, it’s on my generation to take this and smile because there is a long history of women not getting a seat at the table.” Young men hear the most misguided of the fourth wave feminists shouting “men are pigs” and “oh a woman killed her husband? Good, one less man in the world,” and they don’t see much pushback on it. And their brains aren’t fully developed, so they don’t understand that this behavior, in context…well, it’s still very stupid and wrong, but they see society writ large mostly embracing this or laughing it off.
So what do they do? Where do they turn? To the people telling them that women, actually, are the ones who are trash and they need to shut up and get back in the kitchen. Because, to their eye, the world does seem to be trying to go out of its way to “oppress” men. When you hear those fucksticks say “white men are the most oppressed group,” young men don’t understand why that should be laughed off. Because, again, their young brains aren’t developed and hey don’t have centuries of history understood. They hear one side saying “whatever it’s just some white man,” and they hear the other saying “it’s okay to be a man, it’s actually great and you deserve everything.”
Who the fuck do we think they’re gonna listen to?
The term you’re looking for is ‘virtue signalling’. It’s a shame it got assigned a political bias, because it’s a handy term for what makes rainbow capitalism so infuriating.
Another big point that needs to be made is that engagement driven social media algorithms have pushed the most controversial content to the top, giving it an oversized representation. Then there are also those with vested interests in preventing unity who are more than happy to jump on any opportunity to stoke division.
