Androphobia | LeftWingMaleAdvocates

[–]Egalitarianwhistle 10 points11 points12 points 3 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]C0dey -1 points0 points1 point 3 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]mellainadiba 6 points7 points8 points 3 years ago* (5 children) | Copy Link

[–]AskingToFeminists 5 points6 points7 points 3 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

[–]mellainadiba 0 points1 point2 points 3 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]AskingToFeminists 1 point2 points3 points 3 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]mellainadiba 0 points1 point2 points 3 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Blauwpetjevalued LWMA contributor[S] 0 points1 point2 points 3 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]ohgodneau 0 points1 point2 points 3 years ago (11 children) | Copy Link

[–]Blauwpetjevalued LWMA contributor[S] 4 points5 points6 points 3 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]ohgodneau 1 point2 points3 points 3 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Strikester101 2 points3 points4 points 3 years ago (6 children) | Copy Link

[–]ohgodneau 1 point2 points3 points 3 years ago (5 children) | Copy Link

TBF, men are a group of people sharing the same physical traits but otherwise differ widely between each other.

Yes! And they don't even all share exactly the same physical traits. There's so much diversity, it's absurd to generalise.

Feminists are a group of people sharing an ideology. And the ideology of "man-loathing" is almost universal.

That is simply not true. I've seen the anecdotal evidence. I've read what's on this sub (I'm genuinely interested in the topic), and I'm on reddit a lot besides, so I've seen it - believe me. The thing is, there's just as much if not more anecdotal evidence that points the other way. There's shitty people and good people everywhere. Though they are a minority, those few hateful voices are always amplified in spaces that want to amplify them - I'm sure the phenomenon is not alien to anyone who advocates for men's rights either (you get me, right?).

I won't deny that there aren't androphobic feminists, that would be ludicrous. But I'm a feminist, and many, many (if not most) women I know are as well, and we're not androphobic. Most feminists I know are even vehemently pro equality, even support men's rights and are interested in the topic as well. Again, totally anecdotal, but you get my point.

Now I'd be interested to know what, if anything, is the supposed core tenet of feminism that makes it androphobic per definition. That brings me to my next point.

Feminists are a group of people sharing an ideology. And the ideology of "man-loathing" is almost universal.

The truth is feminism is not one ideology, it has no real core tenets besides a general "equality of the sexes"-directive. It's an umbrella that encompasses many ideologies, many of which have both similar and contradictory aims, beliefs and methods. It's not a hive-mind, and we don't share an agenda. Many feminists disagree on almost everything. I could show you heaps upon heaps of evidence of feminism not being androphobic, you could come back with evidence that it is androphobic, the truth is that there is so much diversity within feminism that it's absurd to make the generalised statement.

[–]Strikester101 1 point2 points3 points 3 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

[–]ohgodneau 1 point2 points3 points 3 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

I like you. If you can wait, I would like to explain where I stand on the gender equality spectrum.

Sure! I'm very interested. I came to this subreddit to learn, and at first I was a bit taken aback by the amount of posts ripping on feminism, but I've also encountered some really insightful stuff. So, hit me!

Feminists are something different. I'm on Twitter most of the time, so I see a lot of toxic women.

Yes, they're very visible on the platform. One woman was even expelled from my old university recently because she was spouting hateful views on twitter, and she added vague threats of violence as well. She was also underperforming academically, but the threats were cited verbatim in the official decision statement, as they surpassed the right to free speech. It's incredibly sad when those people get to decide the overtone of the debate, and even sadder when they aren't put in their place. I do think that it's not a reason to just throw the baby away with the bath water, as the movement can also do so much good. As feminists it's also key that we oppose hate from within the movement, sadly this is difficult as free speech and the internet make it so that we're all just sounding off into the void most of the time. My university is a very progressive uni, offering gender studies courses (my gender studies course had men's rights included in the curriculum by the way), and they did the right thing.

[–]Strikester101 0 points1 point2 points 3 years ago* (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]ohgodneau 0 points1 point2 points 3 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

That's an interesting question! I'm not a man myself, so I want to preface this saying it's just my opinion from the outside and what I've seen from my brothers. It's a topic that has interested me a lot, because of my brother's experiences, so I have read quite a bit of research and reports, though I'm always skeptical about the scope and who writes them. I'll answer your first question here and in another comment answer the second!

Firstly, I think it must have a connection to the fact that the percentage of male teachers for all levels has been decreasing. I know it's around 20% for primary school in my country at the moment, down from 40% 25 years ago. From what I've read there is at least an issue of 1) jobs in education, at least in lower levels, being less intrinsically attractive to men (they're seen as feminine - because caretaking -, not prestigious) 2) continued relative falling of wages in education, making jobs in education more vocational and less attractive as a career and 3) because of the high percentage of women at lower levels, and the perception of education as feminine is pervasive, the work environment for men in lower education can be unaccepting and hostile, sometimes male teachers even report being faced with a high level of scepticism and distrust regarding their motivations. These a three problems that I think it's so, so important that we solve. Young boys deserve male teachers that give them someone to look up to, and we need more male perspectives especially in lower education.

Continuing on from that I think we're still treating boys and girls differently, both parents and teachers are complicit in this. Of course, this might not be true for everyone and in every case, but it would figure that we'd see the effects on a societal level.

Regrettably, it can still be observed that fields where there is a big gender disparity, the system becomes more suited to one over the other. The effects of this can be seen in medicine. Most medical studies are done with almost all male participants, even though many illnesses, health problems and medications affect female bodies differently and present different symptoms - this has led to many preventable deaths in women because of a lack of knowledge. I'd argue that we're seeing the opposite in mental health and education, where the system seems to have become geared towards girls. Although the percentage of men and women with university and college degrees is roughly the same, there is a disparity when looking at younger generations (under 35), this is where it becomes visible that men are lagging behind. (Continuing on from that there is a disparity in the starting pay for men and women - a trend that reverses at 26, when men start earning more than women. That's a different issue though.) We're clearly failing generations of men on many levels with the way education is organised.

From my own personal experience I've observed a motivational issue as well, by that I mean what a child internalises from their environment and society. We all need goals to strive for, and to feel like we're important and that what we do matters. I was encouraged to learn and study because of a sense that "we need more educated, independent and successful women" and it was made very clear to me that success would hinge on obtaining higher education, and that I should be grateful to live in a time where it was possible for me to get one. That's a higher goal, something to strive for. I think that's true for a lot of women from my generation. It seems to me that the boys have been and are being overlooked - it's simply being taken for granted that they should just do well for themselves. I've seen with my brothers that the encouragement they got was not as strongly motivated - it was mostly based on a broad "if you want to do well you have to get an education, obviously." It lacks a broader appeal, to what they might do well and a "casus belli" beyond simple self-interest. It's a deficiency in how we treat and inspire the boys - I think you have to encourage children on a deeper level.

Society in the past 30/40 years has seen a steady increase in the complexity of interactions (socially, work-related) as well as an erosion of steady jobs and income stagnation. For adults, the extreme of this is reflected both in the increase in the amount of people that get burned out, as well as in the increase in so-called "deaths of despair." What is asked of young adults has also increased. To me it seems we're better equipping girls (though they also struggle) to get help and navigate this, and we're failing boys.

Over the same amount of time we've seen a big erosion in the rigidity of gender roles, which adds to the complexity of what we're asking boys and girls to navigate. We've focused on equipping girls for this but have overlooked and failed to equip boys for what is also for them an increasingly complex society. As a society I think we're at a point where there is a big crisis over what it means to be a man. From the outside it seems that there getting mixed messages about what it means to be a man, often even completely contradictory things, but that at the same time there is one ideal way to be a man and that whatever it is, it's important to be like that. That would mean there's a lack of a sufficiently diverse (so as not to be restrictive) but still coherent, understandable idea of what it means. Those "deaths of despair" I mentioned earlier, are also more men than women, which shows the system is failing men in ways that women are apparently more equipped to deal with - the issue is obviously more complex, but I think there must be a connection.

As a side note: I've seen many people hold up the concept of "toxic masculinity" as either 1) an example of how we're teaching boys that being male is bad or 2) a marker for values that are being taught to boys that still hurt them in the long run. I personally ascribe to the latter camp, and loathe the interpretation that toxic masculinity implies that masculinity is bad. I'm not a man though, and more generally I don't like the idea that men and women should be this and not that etc.etc. I've seen one of my brothers suffer the same mental problem as me, at the same age, but he struggled much much more to get help because he wasn't shown how to or that he should (and this is what I personally mean by what we teach boys that hurts them in the long run). This affected his education badly, which is for me personally what cemented my interest in the men's rights movement (within and without feminism).

Whichever side of the debate you fall on I think it's obvious that we're failing to show boys diverse types of masculinity in a positive light. This in turn is visible in many ways: they're more likely to flunk out of school, less likely to seek mental help, less likely to go to the doctor if they've got health problems..

To sum up, I think we need more men in education. We need to make jobs in education more attractive to men, we need to actively change the hostile environment for men in education and we need to better equip schools, and youth mental help professionals, to understand what boys are dealing with and to stop failing them in giving them the support they need in an increasingly complex world. We need to make sure they get an education with male role models in schools as well as male mental health professionals in the field of youth psychology (roughly the same issues as primary education, as I mentioned before). As adults, we need to be conscious of what we tell boys about how to behave, and to stop sending them mixed messages about what it means to be a man, provide them with the freedom to choose who they want to be and adapt the system to that.

What do you think?

[–]SchalaZeal01 0 points1 point2 points 3 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Blauwpetjevalued LWMA contributor[S] 2 points3 points4 points 3 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]ohgodneau 1 point2 points3 points 3 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Title	Androphobia
Author	Blauwpetje
Upvotes	16
Comments	20
Date	April 27, 2020 6:05 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/g95wy4/androphobia/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/androphobia.1063600 https://theredarchive.com/post/1063600