My Thorough issue with Menslib

Ok-Energy5619 · 2024-07-03T04:52:13+00:00

Men make their own issues and contribute to them while women are innocent and never contribute to societal issues. They don’t need fixing. It’s the men.

This is always shown in media and I hate it. The last episode of House of the Dragon was so guilty of this line of thinking it's hilarious.

SpicyTigerPrawn · 2024-07-03T06:09:29+00:00

The main use for sites like that is to learn how to pick your battles and make a good point in a vague way without being too obvious or overt. The more blunt you are the more they'll push back and eventually kick you out. Stick to events and articles that draw attention to men's issues and ignore the comments about the impact on women. They're looking for any excuse to shut down dissent, so use neutral terminology and only talk about the issues men face without blaming or bringing up feminism. Today feminists say whatever outrageous shit they feel like saying, but back in the day they had to spread the word with careful phrasing. That's where the Mens Rights movement is today. We need to be blunt in places we can speak freely but sell our movement softly where being truthful offends.

eli_ashe · 2024-07-03T05:36:57+00:00

i find it regularly worth commenting to this point; they're misandrists. they hate you first and foremost.

nothing they say about men can be understood without firstly and primarily understanding that point. it is just hate. it is motivated by hate. everything they say after that is but ad hoc justifications to their emotive states of hatred.

such doesn't technically dismiss their claims wholesale, but such is the proper way to understand and analyze what they are saying.

in other words, being generous, somethings they say may be true, but even if they are, they are being motivated by hate primarily.

its like asking an anti-black racist what they think about black people. they may have something legit to say about black people, but everything they are saying is motivated by that underpinning hatred of black people.

it can be helpful to discuss the irrational particulars that stem from their hatred, but it is also important to note that fundamentally it is stemming from irrational hatred, an emotive state that technically has no meaningful supportive reason.

MelissaMiranti · 2024-07-03T07:08:51+00:00

If feminists can funnel even a few people there and away from learning about the real issues men face, then they're happy. It's all about preventing equality.

Banake · 2024-07-03T07:06:32+00:00

Sorry that they banned you for such a stupid reason.

They openly couldn’t give less of an ounce of a fuck about KAM (kill all men).

Everytime I hear this I ask if George Floyd deserved what happened to him. (In defense of intersectionals, at least they have to say something. I think that Julie Bindel or some other form of radical feminist could very well say "yes, because penis".)

ChimpPimp20 · 2024-07-03T04:10:27+00:00

Are there any other reasons you guys may dislike ML?

I feel like a way to get the public to take us more seriously is to find a way to get people on ML to realize this and voice their concerns. I haven't seen many comments complaining about this on the sub. This is mainly because you're not allowed to voice concern about the moderators in public. They called it "soapboxing." However, I feel like this is our golden ticket to get heard. Do you think there's any way we can get some of the commentors there to hear us out? I'm kinda at a loss here.

AskingToFeminists · 2024-07-03T09:25:17+00:00

This was a comment that I for some reason can't get posted on u/Soft-Rains post about Menslib so I'm making a full blown post. Sorry.

In comments on reddit, you are limited to 10000 characters per comment. I often find myself faced with the issue. I usually solve it by splitting the comment in two or three that are in a cascade of replies, usually with a note "part 1/2" at the beginning.

Extreme_Spread9636 · 2024-07-03T17:15:11+00:00

Their entire perspective of men is like a bunch of bees in a beehive. We work, provide, support and sacrifice in society without needing external motivation. They're struggling to find a reason or something to reciprocate to men without coming at the cost of women. Feminism lacks in this way a lot and MensLib constantly circles around this problem without being able to provide a viable solution, because it refuses to question Feminism, despite its various flaws.

Leinadro · 2024-07-03T21:12:33+00:00

I gave up on that place years ago after realizing they prioritize feminism over men.

Vegetable_Camera50 · 2024-07-04T01:35:08+00:00

This sub just seems like they want to walk on eggshells when discussing men's issues. Because they don't want pissed off some feminists.

Soft-Rains · 2024-07-03T08:11:39+00:00

Hey cool to see a post from my post. Cheers to a similar experience.

One thing I will say is that there are not a lot of left wing but male advocating spaces and I think r/menslib gets a lot of well meaning people like yourself go through a churn where they try to make it work because the potential is there, only to find the overcorrection and dogma stifling. It's important to separate the mods from that place and most, or at least a significant portion, of the users. The articles/posts you linked were mostly made by one power user. It depends post by post but often enough there are meaningful discussions there. Many of the frustrated users could potentially come here as a healthier alternative.

The frustration I feel is that the right has no real solutions, progressive spaces have little empathy or priority for men's issues, red pill deeply validates mens frustrations but is toxic snake oil especially in application, MRA spaces have serious issues, the academic side masculinities studies is new and barely exists. There is a giant void for empathic, systematic, and evidence based ways to address these serious and gendered problems faced by men and boys. I find this comment by /u/the-magic-sword is a great example of what I'm talking about.

We need to be able to have conversations about men's issues that don't redirect men from notions of liberation to notions of redemption. Progressives struggle because the conventional understanding of privilege is infected by Christian notions of absolute victim and perpetrator roles that don't acknowledge the ways people play both roles throughout different parts of their lives, so they can't grapple with the reality that systemically speaking, privilege is uneven and men can fulfill both roles WITHOUT falling back on another axis of identity to justify the moments where they are made less by systemic pressures.

That's why all our conversations about men's suffering seem to come back around to victim blaming the men for what's happening to them, rather than discussing the systemic pressures placed on them as a group, listening to their experiences, or being able to understand the way other groups can inflict those systemic pressures on them without bastardizing it into fascism-- which uses the systemic problems men face to convince them to grow hateful and to believe ever greater lies about others and the world around them.

In other words, men are faced with a choice between a feminist framework that acknowledges systemic pressures, but is unwilling to believe them when they're in pain, and a right wing framework that doesn't acknowledge systemic pressures, but does purport to believe them when they're in pain.

But that validation on the right is laced with fear and hatred and is designed to brainwash men into thinking that their troubles come from feminism and equality, rather than their own set of experiences that are definitely better understood through a progressive, feminist framework in the first place; if the progressive movement wasn't intent on choking that conversation out in the first place in favor of a more punitive viewpoint, that is.

It's not all doom and gloom, though, we do manage to have some of those precious conversations here where we interrogate the systemic pressures men face and the rules keep it from being colonized by fascism.

Agree that continuing to lurk in case of an interesting thread is where I'll settle. Just went to look at the top posts of the year and several were great links and/or great discussions and top comments. I'd love to see a lot of the same discussions and posts just without the embarrassingly dogmatic moderation.

Skirt_Douglas · 2024-07-03T16:18:18+00:00

Menslib has over 200k subscribers, because that’s where you go to be officially recognized as a good boy.* A lot of men of kind of sort of interested in men’s issues, but only in so far as they can still be recognized by feminists as good boys. The fact that we decenter feminists approval, well according to feminists that makes us bad, so they go around telling everyone we are bad boys. When a lot of men go asking about where they can and go advocate for men, they foolishly ask feminists for advice on where to go, because they don’t want to go again the feminist status quo, they want to “help” but only to the degree and in the way that feminists will pat them on the head and tell them they are good boys.

*Even then, the feminists still kind of resent the fact that Menslibers exist in the first place.

StarZax · 2024-07-03T13:47:10+00:00

Sounds about right, regular menslib experience

videobob123 · 2024-07-05T00:13:15+00:00

The problem is that a lot of the time, the mods there can't tell if people are criticizing the messages of feminism, or the methods. I believe in a lot of the messages behind feminism. But the methods that many feminists often use to push those messages are often completely counter-productive. If you criticize the methods, the mods will take it the same as criticizing the message.

DeadNWalkedN · 2024-07-05T03:16:17+00:00

That sub is just male feminism tbh. Feminists are famous for censoring real questions they don’t wanna hear.

2024-07-06T19:04:24+00:00

Idk what you expect when you speak to a brick wall.

tehWoodcock · 2024-08-10T01:50:33+00:00

I was literally banned for calling out people simping for dumb politicians like Kamala and Walz. They love them their genocidal Zionist kings and queens. They say they only objected to me using the term simp, but I don't buy it. Useless cowards, all of them.

And yeah, the mods there love to delete the shit out of posts that have anything of substance or is even remotely critical of women and feminism. They're maintaining a mediocre status quo and as activists they only serve to promote the popular/internet idea of what feminism is, that being something which seeks to restrict men's liberation, instead of an actual practice with real academic research behind it. They're not an actual men's liberation group or even real feminists. I can't tell if they know what they're doing or they're just that stupid, but either way it's pathetic.

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