A helpful if flawed contribution from a feminist academic

AskingToFeminists · 2025-03-10T13:33:54+00:00

Frankly, I find it is more alike grasping at straws than anything else. It is still well within the feminist paradigm and certainly doesn't dare challenge or point at any fault on the part of feminism.

At best, it could be seen as a very vague tone shift back to a version of feminism like we could see prior 2010.

"Let's liberate men's role too and define a positive masculinity"

Sure, sunshine, we never heard that one before...

They will have to do much better than this to earn any goodwill from me.

You can tell that when the author speaks of the "need to put greater efforts in to stop the problematic narrative of manhood that is being spread on social media algorithms", they mean people like Tate, they don't mean the kind of messaging we see in Hollywood where white men are always the villain, all is the fault of the patriarchy, and just being a man is seen as toxic.

I would classify this article as a vague attempt to damage control, to go back to the kind of things feminists could say before their popularisation on the Internet made their misandry that much more obvious to everyone and their control over institutions made them feel like they could just run freely with it as much as they'd like, to the effect we now know.

Her pleas to stop talking about backlash and trying to obfuscate feminism and gender equality looks more like an attempt to get people to stop pointing out the flaws of feminism than anything else.

So, at best, this article can be perceived as the first realisation that feminism has had people pretty fed up with it, and an awkward tentative to return to the version where it was not that "in your face about its misandry", rather than a real attempt to correct the issues.

Like others have pointed out, we are still operating under the paradigm that the biggest issue concerning men is the fact that they are not welcomed warmly in female roles. When it comes to "men have some issues that need addressing", limiting themselves to that is as sure as anything else a sign that this is not an attempt to course correct, this is just an attempt to return to the previous status quo.

Men used to be somewhat pacified with promises that feminism would take care of freeing their gender roles too. We have learned, since then, and anybody who has given a few minutes considerations to men's issues know that this one actually ranks at the bottom of priorities.

ZealousidealCrazy393 · 2025-03-09T01:59:58+00:00

I did not see anything helpful in it. I found it extremely tone deaf.

Her section about men's issues is literally her just saying what men need is to be able to feminize themselves freely and do ballet.

She writes:

Boys need to be empowered to explore identities beyond the traditional mould of “being a man”.

As always, the real problem for men is being too much like men.

She even goes so far as to say, "We need to put greater efforts in to stop the problematic narrative of manhood that is being spread on social media algorithms and hack and flood these channels with more positive visions of the world," without even specifying what exact narratives she's targeting. But I'll go out on a limb here and guess she is not wanting to push back on the narrative that men are animalistic rapists, morons, and a waste of space.

The individual who wrote that article should stop talking about men and start talking to men.

1bnna2bnna3bnna · 2025-03-09T07:23:18+00:00

I don't have any problem with giving boys space to be themselves. My son is a young man with autism who is also a mathematical Wizz. Iy turns out being himself (whatever that is) is way more protective of his psychological health than being told to 'fit in it fuck off'.

I suspect the difference between you and me is I am comfortable being challenged by an article that genuinely attempts to acknowledge the differences between boys and girls and I don't need the author to agree with everything I think. I could write that article myself.

The whole opening to my comment (indeed the title) was about my concerns and qualifications of the author's argument - but I also saw something I rarely see and that was the legitimation of boys by a feminist and I welcome that - however imperfectly done.

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