Are Feminists The Problem?

Mhrby · 2016-05-25T08:51:34+00:00

Basically it boils down to her pointing out 1 group of feminist celebrating an advance for men's issues and then pointing out a single guy who goes against it, and claim those isolated instances proves the blame lies elsewhere than with feminists.

And I am sure that most who self-identify as feminists will think a men's shelter is a great idea, but at the same time, many feminists are also part of creating the atmosphere that leads to them being seen as unneccessary.

Jakobias Wafford is a douche, but do feminist think his attitude is broken down or reinforced by actions such as

Popoularizing "Male Tears" mugs
Posting selfies with above mugs in response to males complaining about their issues
Silencing and shaming men for chiming in "not all men" or "men suffer too"
Campaigns about "stopping IPV against women" as opposed to just "Stopping IPV", gendering the issue
Using terminology like "mansplaining"
Promoting the demonstrable false statistics such as "1 in 5" and "77cent"

Personally I see feminism as having created attitudes like the one Jakobias holds, and then using that as a weapon to prove its not their fault

16sapphireguys · 2016-05-25T09:00:04+00:00

Honestly, by identifying as a feminist, I’m often blamed for everything. Even things that are beyond my control.

LOL! Try being a white male. Luckily I'm gay, so I do manage to win some points in the feminist's favourite game; oppression olympics. But if you're a straight white male in western society today you're blamed for the patriarchy, systemic sexism, systemic racism, heteronormativity, systemic homophobia. Any woman that is raped, any racial minority that is discriminated against or killed, any homo that gets gay-bashed...it's all because of the straight white menz.

The other day, I was on a feminist page and we were celebrating the first male-only domestic violence shelter being opened in the US.

I'm suspicious about the fact that she hasn't included a link to said page. Why, when you could easily provide evidence to support your argument do you choose not to? She obviously felt she needed to provide evidence for the one shitty comment, so why not provide evidence for all the good comments?

it’s not a woman who is upholding this stereotypical male ideal. It’s not women who are telling men that they need to be ashamed.

I'm so glad that we have a feminist to tell us this. Because men aren't able to decide for themselves what pressures are being applied from what sources. We need feminists to do that for us. It's especially helpful when they use one, very minute, poorly evidenced, anecdotal piece of information.

This article is an absolute joke, and I can only assume it's trolling.

2016-05-25T09:35:21+00:00

Yes. For women as well as men.

Women far more heavily depend on good relations between the sexes than men do.

For men to go their own way, even walk away from society, is historically supported and valid. Almost all women have based their entire lives around family and community for almost all of history. And is still that way in most places around the world.

Almost all issues faced by modern men relate to women and feminism. And to walk away from the first thing is the best way to insulate yourself from the second.

iainmf · 2016-05-25T11:32:41+00:00

Feminism is a problem. The theories that come from feminism are at best counter-productive, and at worst, harmful.

Are there feminists that are good people? Sure. Same way that there are homeopaths that are good people. But when your ideas are nonsense you can do harm even when you intend to do good.

2016-05-25T13:27:46+00:00

The Mask You Live In: One Time Pays For Naught

Most of the time, feminists insist they care about men’s issues only when they’re accused of not caring about men’s issues, even if the #feminism tag on their blog belies their claim. There’s a question I and others like to ask feminists who claim feminism helps with men’s issues; name one significant feminist initiative that was primarily or equally about men.

Well, their Great White Hope has finally come; an upcoming documentary called “The Mask You Live In”, by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, apparently about men’s gender role, and how men are compelled not to talk about their problems. I first learned about this via a tumblr post promoting it. Someone had said that some people might think it’s not feminism’s baliwick, and it totally was, guys! Tumblrfems fell all over themselves to go “look at how much we care about men’s issues!” In fact, the posts I saw had them talking more about how much they and feminism cared than actual men’s issues. Which is ironic, in light of many feminists’ insistence that male feminist allies don’t receive any reward for doing what “any decent human” should be doing in the first place.

The documentary is feminist-supported, feminist-created, and views masculinity through a feminist lens, which, as we all know, tends to be more than a little…subjective. It looks suspiciously like a serial numbers filed-off version of Toxic Masculinity, which is itself a serial numbers filed-off version of Patriarchy Theory*.

The best part is that the documentary claims to be trying to “[spark] a national conversation around masculinity”. The odd thing is that people who aren’t feminists have been having those conversations for a while now, internationally, and feminism has been doing its best to shout ‘em down and silence them. To the point of actively trying (and sometimes succeeding) to get them censored, and protesting them in real life. In fact, feminists have literally broken the law to try and stop those people being listened to, even when they weren’t MRAs. There is an entire website, Manboobz, dedicated mainly to mocking and misrepresenting MRAs. Either Siebel is really poorly informed, or actively ignoring them, which is odd when her expert Kimmel specifically refers to several of those other folks in Guyland, albeit in a disparing manner. Maybe he just…forgot.

If you really want men to talk about their feelings openly to you, feminists, you’re going to have to shut down Manboobz, call out that Lindy West Jezebel article, stop opposing things like the SFU Men’s center, and stop telling men to “man up" yourselves, and that’s just for starters. You’re going to have to stand against the feminists in your own movement who are doing their best to put men in a little box and nail the lid shut. And if the box happens to be a coffin, like Earl Silverman, then it’d really be nice if you admitted that maybe, just maybe, your control over the domestic violence industry might have had something to do with Silverman beating his head against a brick wall for years and eventually having to close the one men’s shelter in Canada down. In short, you have a long way to go before you convince men feminism’s even neutral, much less that you actually want to listen to them.

It is certainly odd how feminists seldom discuss the positive aspects of masculinity; even "male privileges” are supposedly things men secured for themselves. It’s odd that so many feminists claim to have changed men’s gender role for the better, but the negative aspects are solely the fault of men. It’s odd how the first initiative to discuss men’s issues feminists widely supported is by feminists, for feminists, and says nothing in the trailer about whether women or feminism are involved in shaping men’s gender role at all, or whether men have any systemic disadvantages compared to women.

Vandechoz · 2016-05-26T08:11:02+00:00

It's very easy for a feminist to celebrate a measure that helps men with nearly zero effect on women. Come back when it's an issue where men's rights actually steps on women's privileges. As feminists are fond of saying, do they think they deserve a cookie for not being a bigot this one time?

Title	Are Feminists The Problem?
Author	zurc
Upvotes	18
Comments	6
Date	May 25, 2016 8:11 AM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/4kymj1/are_feminists_the_problem/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/are-feminists-the-problem.948873 https://theredarchive.com/post/948873

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