I Think We Strayed Away

griii2 · 2026-03-18T11:18:44+00:00

I completely disagree with your arbitrary definition of systemicity.

There are laws and regulations that discriminate against men, is that not systemic enough for you?

Largest international organisations in the world, including UN, OECD and World Bank literally falsify their indexes to hide male suffering.

The male expendability effect and female in-group bias are shape all modern societes.

If these are not systemic then nothing is.

Katastrofiaines · 2026-03-18T11:39:02+00:00

I don't know, chief. Is conscription not systemic? Is male genital mutilation not systemic? Are family court biases not systemic? Is victimized men being erased and denied support not systemic? Is the prevalent cultural attitude that it's more ok to harm men than women not systemic?

Men face plenty of very much systemic discrimination. It just isn't recognized or talked about as such. And that in itself could be argued to be systemic.

Tharkun140 · 2026-03-18T11:19:45+00:00

Culture is the ideas, customs and structures present in a society. There is no difference between "cultural" and "systemic" factors. Either you're failing to articulate yourself, or you're plain wrong.

As for feminism, it does a whole lot worse than just "ignore" or "minimize" men's problems. Right now, I'm looking up a charity that claims to fund prostate cancer research and men's suicide prevention, but has female leadership and is alleged to divert its funds to women's organizations instead. It's difficult to help men in any way, no matter how pure and innocent, without getting sabotaged by feminists in one way or another.

gratis_eekhoorn · 2026-03-18T11:16:36+00:00

The problem with feminism is not that it's not doing enough to raise awareness and fix men's issues, personally I don't even expect them to. The problem is they are activelly ereasing male victims, advocating against progress for males and engaging in hate speech.

KrvnkKev · 2026-03-18T14:13:39+00:00

I feel like we have stuck a bit too much on criticizing cultural stuff and feminism and less on structural stuff.

Feminism is the structural stuff.

Feminism is not the plucky underdog it may have once been in 1890 that its adherents like to still paint it as today; It is, and long now has been, a fully institutionalized ideology that has steadily begotten nigh incomprehensible levels of social power and influence that actively utilizes said power and influence with every economic, social, and political turn of the cogs of time.

To advocate for men without focus/criticism directed towards feminism is a Sisyphean fools errand.

Cobbljock · 2026-03-18T14:18:45+00:00

If you don’t think the problem is at least partially systemic, then I had two words for you: DoorDash Girl. At this point, since an open-and-shut case is getting reviewed by a grand jury, it looks like she’s on track to get the charges dismissed. Tell me that’s not systemic. Maybe it will play out differently, but even if she is held accountable, there’s no fucking way she gets the punishment a man would in the reverse situation. That’s a systemic problem. It’s also cultural, because there are crazies out there who still think a voyeuristic revenge-porn author is somehow the victim.

Centaur_Warchief123 · 2026-03-18T11:42:17+00:00

Is this sub getting brigaded? This is the fourth post of the exact same thing being posted in the same week.

Important_Gap8612 · 2026-03-18T11:35:32+00:00

Ah yes western society allows torture of little boys via mgm, men get forced conscripted while the women can leave the country. How do you come to the conclusion that it isnt systematic?

>nothing will get fixed until feminism is gone

This part is probably the closet thing to truth because there will be nothing changed as long as feminism actively talks about the patriarchy which is obviously meant to show men as the villain or the problem no matter how often they try to gaslight you that it isnt.

Feminism is actively lobbying to make every problem in western society a gendered problem Sa, Murder, illnesses, homelessness, suicide, war, DV etc etc etc etc

At best a feminist is a distracten at worst they are actively trying to regress men problems

If Feminist want to fight for equality but cant even drop the gendered labels patriarchy, feminism, mansplaining etc, etc etc then i have nothing to consider.

Specific_Detective41 · 2026-03-18T12:40:38+00:00

I don't know if you have noticed, but feminism isn't only online misandrists. It is a harmful ideology, and feminists have institutional power like UN women, for instance. And no intersectional feminism is not better than let's say liberal and radical feminism. At it's core all branches see men as threats and all of them believe in patriarchy theory and assume that men have power and privilege (by default).

Secondly when it concerns mens rights advocacy they would rather harrass and attack those people instead of uplifting them like Earl Silverman who tried to set up a shelter for male victims of domestic violence (without any goverment support) yet was shut down, harassed by feminists. He ended up taking his own life in 2013.

Another example like Erin Prizzey who tried to do the same and was forced of the same shelter that she founded.

AdOtherwise3824 · 2026-03-18T13:52:03+00:00

Well, the most obvious counter example to you is the Duluth model.

It is a feminist model of law enforcement and DV mitigation that any push back on leads to insane walls of justifications and threats to use it against you.

It doesn't really get more obviously systemically misandrist than that.

It is fair to say that some of the lack of support for men's issues is because of lower campaigning. Men's benevolent sexism towards women is a notable barrier to solidarity amongst men. But there is also, objectively, systemically misandrist squashing of male advocates. See the wall of male DV shelters attacked by the legal system and unofficial protest. There is space here for both.

We honestly might have different definitions of a "man-hating woman." You acknowledge the handful at marches that people ignore. However, I would argue that, while not outright hate, the lack of social policing of those genuinely hateful women shows at least complicity in hate, if not unstated endorsement. Also, hate, imo, doesn't have to manifest as cartoonishly evil calls for violence and the like. It is hateful to see men as active predators by default. It is hate to weaponize ideology against partners.

UnabsolvedGuilt · 2026-03-18T19:21:16+00:00

I’ve read EVERY reply and comment on this post. There is no “we” here if you are only superficially aligned with the left, and don’t seem to care about principally left leaning stances without pretending all the problems exclusively come from conservatives, or obfuscate the root of certain problems as if feminism or other left leaning movements have never held structural power.

You are choosing to define male systemic discrimination as non systemic and making an arbitrary distinction between cultural and systemic (even tho some of these things are first order law second order culture like conscriptions). You are electing to not resolve your contradictions due to ideological conformity even though you want ppl to take you as good faith, but you have not shown good faith at all by not engaging with points about the Duluth model or Movember or other ways men are both systemically discriminated against and have been harmed by feminist institutional power.

It is not good faith to lay all of men’s issues at the feet of conservatives. You have to engage with how the left with broadly also allows for gendered discrimination if you want to understand or critique this sub and the movement. We are intentionally left wing and do not make space in our analyses for conservatism, right wing ideals even insofar as they align w male advocacy are not something this sub makes room for, and a lot of the criticism of feminism you seem to think are problematic exist to highlight regressive hypocrisy, not to uphold regressive values ourselves and many have said as much in these replies

This reply is perfectly exemplary of that

Your last sentence is that you hope the left doesn’t get divided and we aren’t manipulated by the bourgeoisie, but the problem is we are well past that point- how you can you attempt to fix something like division without accounting for your huge perspective difference vs those of us who are operating post-division, not thinking we are on a path that can be offset. From my perspective and many left wing male advocates, you are the one currently using the manipulative language of the bourgeoisie. Even if you don’t agree w that as I imagine you won’t, you should feel compelled to explore why this perspective difference exists with out framing it as if we are all just traumatised by feminism and misogyny. I wonder if you could even steelman left wing male advocate positions

Aardwolfington · 2026-03-18T12:48:49+00:00

Feminism is not an egalitarian movement and neither is Men's rights. They are female and male advocacy movements. They are lawyers on two sides of a problem negotiating for their clients. Both genders are spouses with society, it's laws and it's rules being the marriage contract determining the expectations and obligations of both towards each other. Feminism's biggest fucking bullshit is trying to turn an advocacy movement into THE equal rights movement, instead of a negotiator for one group in the overall movement.

There is one movement, equal rights, and men and women both have full rights to advocate for their side. There will be bad actors and biases on both sides of this. It's up to the mediators between the two that see them for what they are to bring balance to this shit. But allowing either men's rights or feminists to claim to be THE egalitarian movement when one sided bias is an inherent part of them no matter how hard they try to fight it due to human nature is a mistake.

Men's rights is a reaction to feminism, because feminism attempted to steal the entire gender equality movement for themselves. Men realized without their own advocacy movement they had no voice at the table. The reason feminists are so threatened by it, is they don't want to negotiate or compromise, they want to control the whole narrative. They want to claim an inherent biased pro-female movement can be THE gender equality movement, as if we can ever achieve equality only centering the concerns of one gender and their perspective only.

The only men's rights they want to see is one that views rights from a feminist perspective not an actual equal rights one that allows for the negotiation and perspectives of both sides. They believe feminist philosophy is the equal rights movement.

rammo123 · 2026-03-18T20:42:45+00:00

outright belief in structural misandry

I don't "believe" in structural misandry, I observe it.

more of a cultural issue than systematic

You seem to have this backwards. If anything it's misogyny that is "cultural" (read: vague and unprovable) while misandry is infinitely more systematic. There are no laws that discriminate against women, company policies discriminating against women are rare and heavily scrutinised. Meanwhile, there are countless laws, policies and practices that openly and unashamedly discriminate against men.

this is a critique valid for only in the case that feminism were to be not viewed upon as an activism for women on women's issues.

We're not the ones who claim that "feminism is for men too". Male advocates would have no qualms with feminism if it strictly limited itself to female empowerment and left men alone. But they can't help themselves. There are too many feminists who think it's a zero-sum game and instinctively oppose male advocacy because they think it's anti-women somehow.

Absentrando · 2026-03-18T20:36:39+00:00

That’s not what systemic means. If you believe misandry isn’t a systemic issue, why are you here and not in men’s lib or a similar group? That’s one of the key areas we disagree

Both_Relationship_62 · 2026-03-18T21:02:16+00:00

Misandry IS systemic. Feminism is not a disease, it's only one of the symptoms.

And yes, criticizing feminism gets too much attention. Placing feminism as the main enemy somehow displaces focus. Some of us forget that we criticize not so much feminism itself, but rather its dominance, mainstream status and wide acceptance. We wouldn't bother ourselves so much by feminism if it was a marginal movement or one of several competing movements. The problem is that it monopolizes the mainstream gender discourse.

But feminism is not at the core of misandry. The core of misandry is traditional gender roles. "Women should be protected", "men should be strong and take care of themselves" — that's the beliefs that fuel it all, including feminism.

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ChimpPimp20 · 2026-03-18T20:26:54+00:00

However, this doesn't mean there is a systemic ignorance of male issues, rather, it is lack of campaigning on these issues.

I use to think this but over time (especially after what happened with the election) I've realized that in order to get the help we need, we have to get the help from feminists. However, too many of them are minimizing our issues and saying that men's issues are not systemic or are just linking men's issues to simply capitalism while leaving the women's issues unbothered by these notions. These feminists act like they're the outcast underdogs but are backed by the U.N.; RAINN, WHO, VAWA, the Council for women and girls, the Feminist majority foundation, the Istanbul Convention, the minister for women and girls, the Gender Violence Institute, academia, the DNC, etc.

You make it seem like men are being met halfway already and just need to come on over to the feminist said and make things happen. The issue is that these feminists are few and far between. Not necessarily that they all hate men but that they are mainly ignorant of men and their issues. I doubt you know this but it's not exactly easy to just start a men's group at these colleges. A lot of them get shut down. The TInman has numerous references of this happening on his reddit profile. There's even cases of housing that was supposed to be made to take care of homeless men and were protested against and were later made to house women. There's a clip of Karen Straughan at a college she was invited to that had them cramped in a small room because they couldn't get any help from the school to get better equipment as well as a better room. I've typed a bunch of stuff like this already. Just go to the systemic sexism subreddit if you want to learn more. Other than that, all you're doing is just put all of the blame on theses people because you couldn't be bothered to notice anything else going on in your bubble. Which leads us to your next statement.

Another thing is that a lot of us are falling on the social media sentiments, maybe it is due to my own experience, but I haven't seen a men-hating women.

Are you sure? I've just recently spoken to a feminist maybe a week ago about her saying the same thing. Quote:

I haven’t really seen that in feminist spaces, and I’m not sure what feminist spaces men are commonly hanging out in where they are seeing it.

When I dug further into her experiences she later admitted that she did indeed see some feminist coded locker room talk in her spaces. The problem is that she just didn't recognize it as such. She likely had been so use to them speaking ill and generalizing men that she stopped noticing it. Heck, she probably didn't even notice in the first place. Take a moment and actually sit down and think about all the things that you've heard your feminist friends say (even the supposed good ones) and flip the genders to see if it becomes offensive. I guarantee you that there's more to it. This leads me to your next statement:

Those were usually few loud women at feminist marches that often were ignored by most.

This is the problem. The feminists like to ignore bad feminists as if they don't exist. As if they can't cause any harm in any way. I've said this before but I'll say it again, it seems that feminists run with the whole "if a tree falls in the woods but no one is around to hear it does it make a sound" rhetoric but somehow apply it to feminists. The goal shouldn't be to simply ignore the bad feminists but to actually call them out. Feminists do a good job telling men to "be better" but you don't see this often with rebuking feminists. Even when you do see this, they are only worried about how it badly affects other women and trans people. Men are not included. It seems "silence is violence" doesn't apply to men still. At that point, can you really blame certain people for how they view feminism when most feminists couldn't care less about misandry?

OrcOfDoom · 2026-03-18T14:45:11+00:00

I agree.

The more people here voice active criticism for feminism in large brush strokes, the more subs like this get the criticism that all men's rights groups are just misogynists and incels.

Leave the feminists to have discourse over their own. Criticize feminists on the individual level. Engage with individuals and criticize their words and arguments specifically.

We can bring up specific instances from ten years ago until the end of time. There are countless things from history that they can bring up.

Focusing more on what we should advocate for would be more useful rather than just pointing at the other side and saying things that people can easily dismiss.

PastDifficulty7 · 2026-03-18T14:19:35+00:00

Thank you for posting. It’s getting me closer to putting a finger on what’s problematic about this sub; even if there is a lot of things I like about being here.

‘’‘I think that discourse has moved from "men having issues alongside women, caused by different reason" to an outright belief in structural misandry.’’’

I think this is close to how I feel. Comments here often feel similar to the White people who say they suffer pervasive ‘reverse racism’, because of of affirmative action. Belief in reverse racism requires a narrowed view of history and dismissal of the experiences that act constantly on a person’s life. The existence of disadvantaged poor White people is not a rebuttal to systemic racism.

It’s hard to find balance in space dedicated to an advocacy for an interest group. There are lots of systemic ways that men experience oppression because of their gender. It’s OK that this sub is focused on those. However, I also perceive that this sub is dismissive of any issues that do not pertain to our interest group. Instead of seeking allyship with other interest groups; this space is dominated by reactionary grievance.

It’s not lost on me that many of the toxic feminists that this sub is reacting to are themselves motivated by reactionary grievance. So how do we move forward?

‘’’I think that this is more of a cultural issue than systematic.’’’

It’s not that simple. Cultural norms are an important type of structural problem. To me, a large part of the problem is that repair is a sequential process; and there is no obvious place to begin when two sides feel like the other side doesn’t respect or understand them.

—————

For the sake of clarifying my own thoughts, here are some of the pillars of my current beliefs.

Acknowledge the historical weight of patriarchy, white supremacy, ableism, colonialism, and nationalism - and how these forces continue to show up institutions that affect everyone today.
Acknowledge that many men don’t experience the benefits of patriarchy; just like many White people don’t experience the benefit of White Supremacy. These aren’t fully analogous concepts, and some men are worse of because of their gender.
Fight the patronizingly low expectations that many Progressives have of men.
Point out how the dismissiveness of men’s issues is rooted in a patriarchal attitudes about a man’s worth equating to his dominance and invulnerability.
Fight like hell against conservatism that wants to distract us all from how the elites divide us and steal the value of our labor and take away our political freedoms.

Title	I Think We Strayed Away
Author	Gomic_Gamer
Upvotes	24
Comments	157
Date	March 18, 2026 10:54 AM UTC (4 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/1rx0m61/i_think_we_strayed_away/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/i-think-we-strayed-away.1575794 https://theredarchive.com/post/1575794