Even when feminists actually do acknowledge issues faced by men, or how men are hurt by gender roles, they then say that it’s the result of “patriarchy”. This is a motte and bailey argument.

Regardless of what the root cause of men’s issues are, the result is the same. Men have a significantly higher suicide rate, are treated monstrously as victims of rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, and intimate partner abuse, are heavily discriminated against in the legal, judicial, and criminal justice system, and tons of other things.

Even if, for the sake of feminist’s argument, issues that affect or disproportionately affect men were completely caused by patriarchy and/or sexism against women, the issues still need to be directly addressed.

This is especially true legally. Laws and policies that discriminate against men won’t go away just by fighting for women legally. Laws that discriminate against men need to be made gender neutral, and policies and practices that discriminate against men need to be corrected and made gender neutral. Men also need to be given the same/equal parental rights, reproductive rights, right to bodily autonomy, right not to be subjected to genital mutilation, etc. as women.

So, even if we were to accept that men’s issues and prejudice against men is completely due to patriarchy, or even just a side effect of patriarchy, they won’t go away just by advocating for women / fighting patriarchy.

To use an analogy, Marxists believe that capitalism is the root cause of oppression, and is the primary contradiction. They think that all other forms of oppression stem from capitalism, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia, etc. However, Marxists believe it’s still crucial to fight against secondary contradictions, and that it’s also essential in order to truly overthrow capitalism, and to be able to achieve upper-phase communism. Most Marxists criticize class reductionism, which is the belief that we need to focus just on class, and that all other forms of oppression will be effectively combatted and eliminated indirectly, just through fighting capitalism.

With this analogy, I am not saying feminism is like Marxism or that feminists are Marxists. It’s just that the idea that feminists should just address women’s issues, and that men’s issues will be solved just through this, reminds me of class reductionist Marxists. It also reminds me of something called “White Feminism”, which are expressions of feminism that ignore other forms of oppression, and ignore how women of other identities (such as women of color) can have different experiences in some ways.