When Did You Become Aware?

thepogopogo · 2023-02-09T07:31:25+00:00

For me it was being called antisemitic (my grandma was Jewish) when I started advocating for male genital mutilation to be treated equally to female genital mutilation. I ended up in other men's rights spaces, but a lot of them were advocating for more neoliberal capitalism, which has been punishing working class men in my country for 40 years. The only reasonable way forward was finding you guys...

Blauwpetje · 2023-02-09T13:51:17+00:00

I was at a meeting of the PSP women, a radical leftist but non-communist group. I thought it normal that men were welcome, but the introduction stated that women couldn’t reach equality without the support of men (which is true, but it was said as if that was a sad fact and they’d rather have kept the men away). Worse were all the speeches and songs that shamed and ridiculed men and especially straight male sexuality. The whole spirit of the evening was: we don’t hate men, as long as they’re perfect, obedient allies and don’t even suggest anything that looks like sexual desire. From then on, I felt more like a critical than a fanatical feminist. But once this little leak had crept into my feminism, over the years it deflated until nothing was left.

nineteenletterslong_ · 2023-02-09T16:13:23+00:00

patriarchy never made sense to me.

in my personal experience women have always been reactionary and right-wing even when they're nominally left wing.

all the parents i know who insist on taking their children to church are women.

when a school introduces a program or a teacher proposes an initiative teaching typically male things like building machines it's always the girls and mothers complaining that girls shouldn't be made to do it because it should be for males, never the boys or the fathers. the result is usually that the program is canceled because you can't have only boys doing it either.

however, when high schools introduced courses on domestic economy to relieve some pressure on women to do chores inside the house, no man complained it was for women.

it was always quite obvious to me that it's women who enforce gender roles.

when i discovered america, i couldn't distinguish feminism from the right wing, and i was shocked to find out feminism was considered left wing equality. when i listened to american women prescribing traditional gender roles for women i first thought they were all conservatives. i had to be told that in most cases they were actually feminists.

take these statements as examples:

-if you're not making at least 60000 dollars a year by the age of 27 you shouldn't call yourself a man.

-if you're below 6 feet you're not a real man.

-a real man protects his woman even with his own life.

-a real man doesn't complain. boo hoo waa waa cry me a river. who cares if you're not making ends meet by working two jobs. the problem is the individual, not society.

-real men don't make compromises, they conquer. i don't want a weak man. we need strong men. modern men are weak and are failing women.

are these ideas feminist or right-wing? in my experience, it only depends on who's saying them. if a woman is saying them they're feminist, if a man is they're right-wing. most times i've heard them from feminists

RockmanXX · 2023-02-09T14:34:07+00:00

I think sadly as long as the negative association with male issues and the Far Right continues, no progress will be made

Men's issues are exploited for personal gain by the grifters BECUASE the Feminists leave zero space for men's issues on the Left.

ProgressiveDudebro · 2023-02-09T15:14:41+00:00

It was in college and grad school for me. I considered myself a feminist until I was about 20/21, but it was reading feminist theory and encountering out-of-touch middle class feminist activism - that had nothing to do with the world I came from or the world most people regardless of gender lived in - that really alienated me and made me start paying attention to men's issues systematically.

I read a lot of the mythopoetic men's movement stuff. That movement was weird and odd in places definitely, but a lot of the core material was robust, interesting stuff. I also by happenstance found myself in the company of a lot of trans dudes who were awesome guys, and I found a lot of inspiration in how they have no choice but to wrestle with the question of "what is a man?". I noticed even years ago how they could often be treated like shit in feminist-oriented spaces, and that's only gotten worse with TERFism in ascendancy.

Unfortunately I found most men's rights spaces online to be overwhelmingly dominated by reactionary right-wing voices who were simply pushing the kind of policies that have been hurting and degrading men for decades. It's obvious how malicious actors distort and manipulate the rank-and-file of both the feminist and MRA movements.

I am really tired of being caught between two extremes. A lot of the MRA side is just pushing repackaged traditionalism, bullshit self-help and repackaged misogyny-misandry justified by extreme devotion to biological determinism. A lot of the feminist side is simply arguing for female supremacy on the basis of an imagined, pervasive social construct we can't reform, only destroy, which ends up being just as deterministic as the tradcons.

It seems to me the genuinely progressive position recognises men and woman are different due to a mix of socialisation and biology, and the challenge we have is how we work with those things to achieve genuine equality.

My politics have always been to the left because I've seen how neoliberalism and the right have hurt all kinds of people, and I've seen how progressive policies on the economy and health and education can help make the world better for us all.

And throughout my life I've noticed that most left-wing inclined guys I meet also feel discomfort about the direction of gender discourse if you talk to them about it in the right way. They don't want to be trapped by traditional masculinity but they also think masculinity is on the whole a good thing.

To me, people should be allowed to be people. I think that inevitably means men and women will engage with the world a bit differently, on average, and it's pointless to deny that. That also means it's our job to make sure no individual is disadvantaged or suffers for non-conformity, and to build structures and norms that account for differences in how men and women experience life on average so neither is disadvantaged or advantaged in life based on gender.

mbrenizs · 2023-02-09T13:06:25+00:00

I started browsing reddit when TwoX was a default sub.

It was a different place then, and much less hateful. It would pop up on the front page and often it was some general interest post, but occasionally it was some feminist article, an academic study, or complaining about men.

Inevitably in those posts, there was a ton of lies. OP misrepresents an article, somebody quotes fake statistics, commenters post blatantly false nonsense, or maybe the OP read a study's abstract and the study turns out to be crap or drew conclusions that contradicted their own data.

I gradually started avoiding TwoX stuff I saw, and it continued to get more and more toxic. Now I avoid all female-centered subs because they inevitably make me angry, and I don't want that.

Anyway, I previously thought feminism was a good default position and didn't think much about it. But seeing constant misinformation coming from it, I looked for alternatives.

shit-zen-giggles · 2023-02-09T10:20:01+00:00

Curious as to how you found this sub and became aware of male issues from a politically left perspective

I was politicly on the left already when I started to become aware of men's issues in a political sense around 2011/2012. Then "the left" completely lost any resemblance of sanity in the run up to the 2016 US presidential election. The old 'I didn't leave the left, the left left me' story that a lot of guys experienced during the 2010s.

I was on /r/MensRights for quite some time when the founder of this sub announced this sub's creation over there and invited people to join.

Punder_man · 2023-02-09T20:56:44+00:00

For me it began in High School there was covert examples of teachers having double standards for example giving a male student detention for being late to class but not giving a female student detention for being late to class.

And there was a group in my high school advocating for "Women's Rights" and "Equality" and at that age I agreed with them, Women should be equal to men. So I actively followed along and even supported them.

Then I entered the work force and got my first part time job working for a local grocery store after school on Fridays and the Weekends in the produce section

When I started the 1IC was a man and the 2IC was a woman.
After I think it was 5-6 months the man left and the woman became the 1IC
Once she had obtained that position she became abusive towards me.

Suddenly nothing I did was ever 'Good enough' despite setting up displays where and how she had previously taught me to do it in accordance with her standards.
Eventually when I started ignoring her barbs she progressed to throwing damaged / rotten fruit / produce at me and throwing empty boxes at me.

This went on for at least 4+ months until the Deli manager who had observed her abusive behavior confronted me and told me that I needed to report her or he would.
So I walked to the back office and broke down as I reported my abuse to the all female management team.

I wrote down my version of events which matched with what the Deli manager and others reported.
She was not fired but instead 'encouraged to seek employment elsewhere on her own terms' and so 3 weeks later she 'left'

It was after she left that I found out that she had been abusive towards the previous 1IC of the department and had even assaulted a customer by pushing a shopping cart into them.

This was perhaps the tipping point when I realized that society doesn't give a shit about men and will let this sort of thing happen to men without holding women accountable.
Anyway a few years ago I discovered Reddit and somehow ended up posting on the previously FeminismUncensored but now highly censored board and the final straw for me was when the topic of #KillALLMen is hate speech was brought up and many prominent feminist posters defended its use and gaslit those who disagreed with its use.. using phrases like "Its only used by Trolls" or "Its just satire"

At that point a particular user who had been censored more than a few times on that sub approached me and advised that this sub might be a better outlet.

Anyway.. that's my story.
Thanks for coming to my Ted X talk I guess?

Motanul_Negru · 2023-02-09T12:31:14+00:00

Iirc I actually searched "left wing male" on Reddit after years of feeling alienated by the domination of feminism and rampant misandry on the left, and repeated disappointment by all the supposed male advocates I found turning out to be right wing and/ or libertarian ghouls

ArmchairDesease · 2023-02-10T08:07:07+00:00

I've always been an advocate for gender equality and used to call myself a feminist. Over the years I started noticing some disturbing patterns around the topic, both irl and online.

Namely the tendency of some people instrumentally applying the notion of "equality" to narrow (and usually advantageous) goals while, at the same time, showing no desire to give up traditional gender roles in any area outside of that scope.

I approached the "Menrights" community, but I was perplexed with the simplifications and generalizations I found there. I think they are not as far right as people portray them, but there are definitely some of them who would like women to "get back to their place".

Then I approached the "Menslib" community, where I found a crowd that seems mainly concerned with solving men's problems for the sake of under-privileged groups, as if men's happiness was not an important goal by itself. Also, they over-focus on mental health and are generally suspicious against any mention of institutional problems over which individual men have no control.

This community is a good balance between these two poles. I love that generalizations are forbidden by rule. But at the same time I love that users are not worried to explore ideas which, in other contexts, might be seen as "offensive" and banned.

Acceptable_Visit604 · 2023-02-09T10:59:47+00:00

Honestly I don't look from any specific political perspective

I see men suffering, I wanna end it

But I started realizing a few momths ago

Cheesy_toe · 2023-02-09T13:39:40+00:00

I would say I'm only left wing based it's on paper values but mainstream left is another story so I don't fit in. That doesn't mean I'm now a right winger. I often see tradcons over on mensrights advocating for traditional gender roles, not men. I get that it's a neutral sub but it makes me glad that this sub exists.

burntoutpyromancer · 2023-02-12T04:06:45+00:00

For me, it really began when I transitioned from female to male several years ago. Having been born in the 1980s and grown up as a girl, I still never felt like I was inherently disadvantaged or couldn't be anything I wanted to be. I collected toy cars, played soccer, and discussed Star Trek with female classmates, and the only instance of open sexism I encountered was a physics teacher asking why there were so many girls in his class. Well, many of them went on to pick STEM advanced courses in higher grades, so they were clearly skilled and interested enough not to let that discourage them. I am sure that others have made different experiences, and it clearly depends on the country and social environment, but it made me doubt the narrative that every girl and woman necessarily (and consistently) experiences a lot of negativity and outright danger due to her gender.

While transitioning finally made me feel more at home in my body, it also made me feel pretty lost socially. Suddenly, the box into which I had to fit seemed so much smaller, the acceptable self-expression much more limited. And speaking of smaller, I had turned from a short girl into a short guy and got the full experience of that, with people openly pointing and laughing or running after me asking others to guess my height. The one redeeming moment was when at a festival, a dude about the same height gave me a fistbump out of "short guy solidarity" and shared his beer with me. Being autistic, I also had to reconsider and relearn many of the social norms I had at this point more-or-less internalised. Where to look, when and how much to smile (I was told several times that men who smile too much either come across as dumb or creepy), what was acceptable to say and what wasn't... I'm still struggling with it and keep getting reminded that a few years ago, smiling at a child or walking in the same direction as a woman would have been totally acceptable, but now, it might make me look suspicious.

Initially, my local trans support groups had been somewhat supportive, but they still only offered special classes (make-up, dressing, voice training etc.) for trans women and none for trans men. We were just expected to take testosterone and pass easily, but I still feel like we would have needed some help with similar topics - I'd never learned how to shave, struggled to find masculine clothes that fit my body, and noticed that my voice and mannerisms still made many strangers identify me as biologically female. But every time I or other trans men tried to bring that up, we were dismissed, silenced, or told that (literally) "if you have problems, that's your own fault". At the same time, the anti-male and anti-cis sentiment I'd occasionally seen online began to seep into those local groups. Seeing some trans women unironically repeat "kill all men" slogans while at the same time claiming that we now lived privileged, problem-free lives was a baffling dichotomy. [Note: By far not all trans women think this way, and there are also some trans men who do, not to forget many cis people. Please don't think of this as a generalised judgment about all trans women, many of whom are great people facing their own challenges.]

I also went back to university, studying a subject whose students were about 80% female (and professors were about 50/50 with newly employed ones mostly women). In small seminars, I was often the lone male student, and in larger classes, I tended to be one of few. I worked as a tutor for a while, and it seemed to be so normal that none of them were men that my boss introduced us to the first-semester students in the female form (my native language is gendered) and after a short pause added an "oh, and 'burntoutpyromancer'". Still, there were only support programs and scholarships for women studying that subject. When I tried to apply for another tutoring job, the professor's response continued a bolded and clearly quickly copy-pasted (there were a few words missing) message that she would give preference to women's applications; my female classmate got no such message (but she got the job). There was another class where we had to do a field study on something relating to children, and we were supposed to find a child to talk to within our social circle. When asked what we should do if nobody in our circle had a child the right age or parents would not agree to the study, the female professor casually suggested that we should "just sit around at a playground and ask mothers there". I couldn't believe how she didn't see that this was a really bad idea as a man - and also how she implicitly stated that she didn't expect any fathers to be at the playground. She also brought in some colleagues talking about their prior research, and I noticed how they consistently referred to mothers as "mommies" while fathers were always "fathers" - no "mothers", no "daddies", just "mommies and fathers". Suddenly, I doubted that all relevant studies were done completely without researcher bias.

And the few times I actually tried to open up about my own struggles or point out situations where I felt misunderstood or discriminated against, I was either met with awkward silence or dismissal; in most cases, the topic was quickly changed to women's issues. I still remember telling a generally open-minded female classmate about my tutoring application and why the response bothered me; a few minutes later, she was ranting about sexual harassment against women in the workplace, and I was left feeling confused. While the men in my life now opened up to me, admitted to feeling unwanted or disposable or struggling with their mental health, I kept stumbling across newspaper articles like the one proclaiming a need for "women-only bikeways" and "feminist infrastructure" because according to the writer, men only used bikes to cycle to work, while women used them for family purposes and other things. I looked out of the window where like every day, some fathers cycled together with their young kids and others were even baby-wearing, while other men transported their groceries in their bicycle baskets, and wondered whether I was living in some kind of parallel universe.

It was a mix of the feeling that "something's not right here" and noticing that I had developed an increasing self-hatred and desperation about my gender identity that led me to look for like-minded individuals. I was hoping to find people who would understand and not invalidate my own experiences while at the same time not falling into the same generalisation patterns and hatred of a whole gender that was bothering me, only in a different direction. It took me quite some time (and several cases where a place that initially seemed welcoming actually wasn't), but eventually, someone linked this sub in a comment, and so far it has been exactly what I've been looking for.

Pasolini123 · 2023-02-10T00:12:04+00:00

I think I'm a natural born male advocate, because some of the thoughts were running through my head eversince I can remember ;)

But there were 4 most important things, which made me really aware:

My encounter with Swedish feminism and its omnipresence in the Swedish media, (somewhere around 2006).
The fact that when I was in my early 20s, military training was still obligatory in my country. Guys, who went to college, like me, were not conscripted, but I was very affraid not to pass the exams, in which case the military would have knocked on my door.
My shock when I've read that men commit suicide at much higher rates than women, but the fact gets 1% of the attention things like "gender pay gap" get. This is maybe the only thing which has very much improved in last 5-7 years, btw.
I'm gay. I love men.

But although I've been interested in this topic since so long, I have to say that never have I learned so much about it than during the last year, since Russia's attack on Ukraine. I knew about male disposability, about gender empathy gap, about the media gone totally nuts with the "women most affected" ideology etc. Though even I couldn't believe some of the things I've read and/or observed. It is shortly after this terrible event, I mean the start of the war, that I stumbled upon this sub on reddit.

blaizken_420 · 2023-02-10T05:07:54+00:00

My father warning young me that society will not take my side if I physically defend myself from a girl.

JJnanajuana · 2023-02-10T12:22:08+00:00

I'm left leaning, but vary issue by issue.

A lot of things lead me to be left leaning and to care about men's rights.

I went to an all girls high school, then to a trade school/aprentiship where I was the only girl.

That was an odd jump, but also, not all that different.

I picked up that most of my classmates issues were the same across both, (but the young men had one conversation I'd never heard before (about whether they should card a girl if they meet them in an over 18's venue.))

We had a few months together as a class before they looked for employers for us, I was worried about not getting a job (not justifiably, just cause I was young and insecure) one of the guys in my class reassured me with my grades and mentioned that even if I had been crap, I'd get employed because my boss got extra money from the government to do so.

He was obviously right, and it was such a bad system, I could rant, but I'm sure you get it.

Then me and a few others got a job, and the company that contracted us out, sat us down and explained their policies on getting help for any workplace abuse, (legal limitations, how and when to get help, and what they would do to help even when it would be hard to) and I was awed.

I wondered if all new apprentices got the same talk or only the ones with a girl in the group, I still don't know, but either way I knew that I'd never have to tolerate the same crap I had to in high school.

They said they'd blacklist a company for the same stuff teachers watched girls do and ignored.

I've never had to use those resources.

About the same time, I had a few male friends who'd been raped as kids, and I saw how much not only going through that, but also rape generally being treated as a 'girl problem' was hurting them.

When I saw articles talking about rape that ignored male victims entirely I was in the comments going "men get raped too"

And I wasn't very clear, or articulate or, well, I didn't present it well (sorry guys)

so I got told I was a troll, told I was derailing, told that wasn't the conversation we were having and so on.

But I wasn't trolling, I was a bad communicator trying to express that they were (unintentionally mostly) perpetrating a narrative, that only women get raped, or that rape is a 'girl's problem'.

They were actively hurting my friends, who already had enough crap to deal with without adding a needless and wrong perception about their trauma to the list. And I was the bad guy for trying to lessen the blow a little.

about finding this sub and becoming more active.

The Johnny Depp trial happened... (forgot, a lot more things happened, can't list them all, one was feeling helpless to help while my mates misses beat him (didn't want the cops to take him, or to make her more angry that they came, didn't want to get beat up myself) all while being given resources I didn't need to help me out of dv)

Sadly nothing new about domestic violence and men revealed to me there, but 2 things were revealed.

1) someone linked this sub from one of the 'trial based' subs

2) I found out how bullshit and bias a lot of domestic violence 'experts' are. and their researchers papers too.

Im greatful I found you all! Seriously I needed more advocates for men, who didn't automatically shill for everything 'right wing'. So many promale YouTube things quickly spiral into full 'right wing' it was a bit nuts sometimes.

And Im so annoyed about number 2, I'm working on multiple projects exploring and exposing their BS. (it's going to take me while) I just hope I can be more articulate and better presented than I was when I was 18.

MathematicianNo4277 · 2023-02-10T16:48:51+00:00

It's a 3 chapters story.

When I was around 7 I started to say I wanted to be a girl. I was very persistent. My parents freaked out and I spent a few years in therapy to understand that I just wanted to be treated with the same empathy as girls (I was severely bulied and got nothing else than "boys don't cry" and "never hit a girl" from school staff about that. They mostly joined in on the abuse.)

When #metoo happened I had just started as manager of a social service for the poor. The reality of mutual abuse and the complete lack of ressources for homeless men while female shelters were ever more plentiful contrasted with the load of bullshit that was this "movement". I had had a few vlose encounters with false allegations at that point too. As a trained lawyer and history nerds their attacks on the presumption of innocence and attempts to redefine equality as only protecting "historically marginalized groups" did not help either.

What finally got me here was the ordeal of trying to become a parent as a gay male couple. It took us 12 years and was a humiliating and awful process. One that no woman, neither single nor lesbian could ever have to face (and no single man would even be allowed to go through). And all of that was managed by 100% female proessionnals, all acting on the certainty of their monopoly on legitimate parenthood. I needed a place to vent and here was the only forum where my experience was not minimized by the oppression olympians (fuck you r/menslib)

(And I'm an anarcho-communist so Mensrights is not quite for me.)

brymjack · 2023-02-09T07:16:57+00:00

Liberal and conservative, right and left, black and white. All are just little boxes we put ourselves and others in.

Issues are what matter. Case by case. It's not hard to find ignorant liberals or enlightened conservatives. Or the reverse. As a liberal myself, you may just find you have more in common with a conservative than you think if you just talk to them. Anyway, not trying to preach, but politics are divisive by design. Everyone goes through the same stuff, some more than others. Be well.

Dickcheese_McGee_ · 2023-02-09T23:04:10+00:00

I found this sub on r/Feminism: they were talking about subs they wish didn't exist. It popped up beside r/MensRights. I am a feminist so naturally I have conflicting ideas about this sub. I don't think it shouldn't exist though. The vibe I get from you guys is that you think that nobody should be generalized based on the population they're a part of, especially if they're only part of a population because of something they can't change, like gender, race ect. You guys don't like the association that mens rights has with the far right and would prefer that people look at these issues objectively rather than making the point of bringing the issues up to discredit women's issues. You don't like that women's issues are being brought up to discredit men's issues. You'd rather that we just focus on solving the issues instead of making it a gender war.

Sounds fine to me

You guys seem to think that feminism has run its course and is unnecessary now, which is something I strongly disagree with. Also that feminism has done more harm than good, which is another thing I strongly disagree with. Other than that I don't really see any conflicts with your ideology and moderate feminism. I don't like extreme feminism, the whole idea that men don't have issues at all

I hope I don't get banned from r/feminism lol

Willing_Cause_7461 · 2023-02-10T20:18:01+00:00

Found the sub from r/Destiny I think.

Sexism againat men? Gonna sound really childiah but I was 10 and the girls always got crisps after a GAA match and the boys only got them if they won. Gotta start somewhere I guess lol.

One_Ad_3499 · 2023-02-09T07:11:37+00:00

I am right wing classical liberal but almost all subreddits are plagued with Andrew Tate lovers and real misogynist. I must admit ive became more centrist recently because of subs like this. It so easy to move rightwards with so many SJW and woke bullshit.

I become aware because bullying i experience in elementary school and nobody gave a damn (boys will be boys), alimony always seemed unfair to me, woman when do are doing something wrong have more lenient treatment, marriage counselor sided completely with her (i have my fair share of sins in that marriage but its not all my fault) which ruined my marriage ever further. Also what about homelessness problem, man in war , prostate cancer research, young man with no meaning in their life. Thats all real problems and nobody is adressing them.

austin101123 · 2023-02-09T07:34:55+00:00

At least in high school around 2014 or so. Maybe earlier.

Edit: that's not when I found this sub. I found this sub in I think mid/late 2019. Sub was under 1000 members then.

AcidSpittingIlamaa · 2023-02-09T21:33:21+00:00

Just late 2022, I found this sub. I always had an inkling about male issues as I felt the male pressure from peers and family. I had a lot of conversations with my sister who was/is a feminist about this and she opened my eyes to feminist stances on male issues. I realised where I agreed and disagreed on the issues but never sought out spaces that could provide the same thoughts. After awhile of having Reddit this past year, checked about for any male spaces and this one seems to be on the same page with where I generally align.

jessi387 · 2023-02-11T15:02:42+00:00

I have known ever since I was 5 years old. I was raised by a single mom and 3 of her sister and grandmother. All my cousins near my age are girls. From the moment I entered into elementary school, I remember asking myself “ where are all the men? Why is there no one like me?” I began to question what my place was going to be in this world as I saw no one I could relate to. There so much more that I couldn’t possibly unpack in this comment

MaintenanceOwn773 · 2023-02-14T07:43:32+00:00

Honestly because despite gay men being more than 99% of homophobic hate-crime victims, being more shunned than lesbians by all countries in the globe, we're still portrayed by the lgbt bubble as having privilege and wicked power over lesbians because we're men, contracitory evidence will only get you abuse and humiliation.

Also the normalization of abuse and humiliation towards men based on supposed privilege.

OopsiPoopsi75 · 2023-02-15T17:37:57+00:00

Funnily enough, during the gamergate era. I was in the anti-sjw phase then but thankfully pulled out rather quickly because it went from "lol sjws and radfems say silly shit. Let's make fun of them" to something far more icky and reactionary.

I simply started to realize those content creators during that time were pushing stuff I felt in my gut wasn't how I felt of thought.

And now that genre has largely morphed into pure far right and fascist nonsense.

But one thing stuck and still sticks: SJWs and radfems DO say stupid shit.

The left has increasingly gotten more gatekeepy and puritanical - obsessed with optics and aesthetics. You can agree with a fellow lefty about 99% of things...but if you diverge, even slightly, in that remaining 1% then you're cast out, attacked, and ostracized.

Where I diverge from the left most strongly, aside from male advocacy, is how the left engages in art and media criticism.

Certain segments of the left are the wooooooorst when it comes to nuanced analysis on art.

We now have young lefties unironically calling for the censorship and banning of sex scenes in film and TV. Some even make it an issue of consent. Yes. You read that right. Not consent of the performances, but consent of the VIEWER watching the film/show.

Yo. You consented to it by pushing PLAY you fucking idiot. There is this childish and prude mindset sweeping lefties who engage in media that everything needs to make them feel safe. They don't like feeling confronted or challenged. So they make it a morality issue.

This is the internet age. You don't wanna see certain content? Look that shit up. Any trigger may may have is now one Google away. You can know the content of a film in seconds flat, in detail. Don't make thus everyone else's problem.

JT_of_NY · 2023-02-15T22:29:20+00:00

It's not a specific point of awareness. It's been a slow realization that mens' issues are never discussed properly in society. Mens' issues are either interpreted in feminism's lens or not at all. There is nothing in between.

Cnnlgns · 2023-02-18T14:09:06+00:00

I found this site today after being muted by another subreddit for questioning why my comments were being removed. They can have their echo chamber if they want it that badly.

devasiaachayan · 2023-02-19T19:05:20+00:00

I'm proud of myself for not falling into ideological pitfalls and maintaining a clear philosophy and morality, atleast after I became an adult. I was a liberal at first but then slowly became leftist as I grew up. I had to face a lot of trauma and shame in my teenage due to my gender. This didn't stop me from giving my ear to feminism though, at some point I did kinda buy into the feminist narrative of equality. Ironically what pushed me over the edge is when I started dating Women. I've been lucky to date some cool based women and got some based female friends. My girlfriend especially helped exposing all feminist lies made up by Women. Even though I cognitively understood it but I only truly understood that women are just as evil or good as Men after I started dating. They in a way helped me break down a blue pilled view point feminists create of how Men and Women socialize. But it was also a slippery slope, my girlfriends let me see the world in a more mature way but I ended up going into a rabbit hole and I became even more of a male advocate than my female friends would have liked. But due to my good argument skills I never had any problems with convincing them of problems that Men face. What made me truly based regarding men's issues was a guy called Barbarosa on YouTube, he has a channel named Bar Bar. He's sometimes sexist in his outlook but the way he identifies male problems and dissects feminism was very new and eye opening. Especially his videos about traditionalism and feminism being the same side of the two coin helped me understand feminism at a deep ideological level. I don't agree with everything he says though. This coupled with my knowledge of Marxism helped me understand the World and problems that Men face. I forgot how I found this sub, maybe a mod sent me an invite but I don't exactly remember. It was very refreshing to see a bunch of leftists who don't agree with the reactionary ideology of feminism. This sub provided me with information and sources to back up information I had already suspected and it became a pretty good space (even though mods remove many of my comments and posts) . Nowadays I try to stay away from male advocacy content as it has started affecting my mental health. I'm already pretty hopeless so this affects me.

Digger_is_taken · 2023-02-23T17:13:16+00:00

I read the myth of make power when I was 16. Didn't do much with it at the time. I was politically involved in apartheid divestment and it wasn't relevant.

Later I got involved in resisting gentrification on a local scale. I worked with a group of anarchist activists and we failed to stop the powers that be from demolishing some public housing.

After that failure the group sort of dissolved, sort of changed focus. Where we had been meeting to discuss how to support the poor people who were being pushed around, the new meetings became about navel gazing. One meeting in particular I remember being structured so that only women could talk. men were supposed to sit and listen. After 45 minutes of listening to women complain about sexist jokes I expressed anger and alienation and walked out of the meeting that was happening in my living room.

No one ever attempted to address this with me. The schism widened. most of the people in the group ended up joining a progressive student union at a local women's college. they stopped interacting with or attempting to help the disadvantaged population that we had all come together initially to support.

Title	When Did You Become Aware?
Author	Skeleton_Warrior
Upvotes	54
Comments	62
Date	February 8, 2023 11:09 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/10xe13h/when_did_you_become_aware/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/when-did-you-become-aware.1151431 https://theredarchive.com/post/1151431

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