The Feminist Case For Men’s Rights

Martijngamer · 2022-08-14T13:51:44+00:00

Unfortunately the feminist movement has tended to neglect this, assuming that if women are the losers from a patriarchal social order, then men must be the winners.

Intellectually, feminism has the right focus on the injustices caused by organising society around essentialist ideas of gender. But as a political movement for change it has neglected to advance that analysis to its logical conclusion.

If you ever need three sentences to describe why you don't support feminism (as a political movement).

phileconomicus · 2022-08-14T12:31:56+00:00

Argues that our society’s reliance on narrow, arbitrary, and dysfunctional gender roles and rules reduces the freedom and flourishing of both women and men. Hence, all the feminist arguments for liberating women from their grip also apply to men (and not against men, as is sometimes supposed). We are all victims of a system that has to change.

uptheline-83 · 2022-08-14T13:15:33+00:00

Some feminists did (and some still do) say that the liberation of men relies on the liberation of women. They would say feminism needs men and men need feminism. I suppose I'm here because I part company with the feminists who say "feminism is about the dismantling of male privilege. If you want to talk about how gender oppresses men differently you're not a feminist".

Blauwpetje · 2022-08-14T16:15:20+00:00

It’s literally the ‘patriarchy hurts men too’-narrative. Most feminists actually support this and state men would actually be happier if they gave up their ‘gender role’. This doesn’t work and never worked. It ignores a lot of cultural and biological dynamics, f ex that less masculine men are tolerated by many people, but considered less attractive by most women, even feminists. And it ignores that the last half century, men have been harmed more by feminist laws and propaganda than by traditional roles.

iainmf · 2022-08-15T01:48:23+00:00

I recall someone saying that men's rights should be the fifth wave of feminism, but I can't see how feminism could ditch the misandry in the movement.

Here's a quote from the Men Engage Alliance, a group of hundreds of feminist organisation 'working' with men and boys:

Critical Dialogue on Engaging Men and Boys in Gender-Justice

This report was developed by MenEngage Alliance, based on a 3-day online dialogue held in April 2016 in which 134 people from 39 countries participated.

…

There was disagreement about how and why men are or should be motivated to be involved in work on women’s rights and gender justice. Some contributors were clear that we should not highlight the benefits of gender equality for men themselves, because they should not be doing this work out of self-interest, and need instead to learn to give something up. They argued that, in their experience, men involved in gender justice work are doing so because they care about other people’s lives, and about the pain and the suffering women experience because of sexism. They stressed that it should be altruism that is fuelling the commitment to change. We should be careful about prioritizing men and boy’s sense of comfort with this work, or their centrality to it.

…

I would suggest that we do not need to engage men and boys by first convincing them that gender justice is in their own best interest. In many ways, it is not. And it does not address the individual’s reality that they will have to give some stuff up, if men and women are to be really equal.

Chuck Derry - Gender Violence Institute, USA

…

It was noted that economic insecurity could destabilize gender power relations and lead to violence or create a backlash from men as they lose some of their power and privilege. This is key to addressing the growing number of regressive groups of ‘angry men’, and to understanding their ‘pain’, whether this is real pain or simply the loss of privilege. Some contributors saw it as important to understand men’s needs and vulnerabilities and the links to socio-political developments in order to prevent men from undermining women’s rights and gender justice.

As you can see, even when feminists 'engage' with men and boys, their goal is to change them. They don't care about men and boys as human beings, only as barriers to women's rights.

Raining_Hope · 2022-08-14T16:58:03+00:00

How 'bout we stop trying to fit it into a feminist box, and just say what the issues are that would help both sexes. That way it's not about being pro feminist or not, but us about looking at practical issues and resolving them. If it's an actual issue then stop trying to push it as a feminist thing, because that's getting in the way. If the issues relating to men are different, (many of them are) from what women face as issues, then it's better to focus on those as their own thing instead of trying to merge them in a movement that has a lot of distrust already for not valuing men or treating them well.

RockmanXX · 2022-08-14T19:27:22+00:00

violence (which also makes for a much higher suicide success rate)

The Female Suicide attempt rate stats are inflated by counting acts of non-lethal self-harm by women as "Suicide Attempt" and also by counting multiple attempts by the same woman, this creates the illusion of more women being suicidal. You're also ignoring the fact that men are less likely to admit self-harming or attempting suicide, which further skews the stats.

It is by now well known that women are punished for non-gender normative ‘unfeminine’ behaviour, such as appearing more concerned with their career

No they're not, stop lying. This is not the 1950s or Afghanistan, we live in an era of dual income households.

Title	The Feminist Case For Men’s Rights
Author	phileconomicus
Upvotes	48
Comments	32
Date	August 14, 2022 12:27 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/wo5874/the_feminist_case_for_mens_rights/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/the-feminist-case-for-mens-rights.1127320 https://theredarchive.com/post/1127320

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