When Does Feminism Actually Help Men?

SarcasticallyCandour · 2026-08-17T04:32:17+00:00

Seeing as feminists see everything as a Patriarchy where men benefit, they dont see there are any male disadvantages.

So the view is men and boys don't need any help.

Punder_man · 2026-08-17T04:49:28+00:00

The answer is: When helping men results in a benefit for women

If it doesn't benefit women, they see no reason to expend the effort helping men.
All of course while yelling from the rooftops:

"Feminism is a movement for equality!"
And
"Feminism is for men too!"

At best you'll get feminists claim that they have successfully fought for men to be "More open with their emotions" which of course is a lie because I have yet to see a single feminist call out a woman for shaming a man who is open with his emotions..

Instead they usually resort to the claim the man is "Trauma Dumping" or "Saddling women with emotional labor" or is "Treating women like they are his therapist"...

So yeah.. there's you answer..

onlinethrowaway2020 · 2026-08-17T04:24:16+00:00

No, in fact it actively hurts men & boys :(

My_Legz · 2026-08-17T08:27:31+00:00

Feminism has never been about helping men. This is a pretty recent rhetorical trick mostly used in online discourse and frankly didn't exist even 20 years ago.

Even now the "help men" line is only ever pulled out in the most spurious way where the benefit to women is clear, the harm to men is usually pretty clear but in an utopian reading it may help men after society is reformed down the line.

tldr; It's all fake. There is never any part that is about helping men

Evening_Job_9332 · 2026-08-17T06:05:06+00:00

It’s not meant to

_name_of_the_user_ · 2026-08-17T10:29:11+00:00

It's trickle down rights. Much like trickle down economy, it doesn't work. But if they convince enough people they can keep making their own lives better at the expense of those already at a disadvantage.

Langland88 · 2026-08-17T07:06:17+00:00

I asked this last year over at the r/Egalitarianism subreddit as a challenge to the Feminists. I didn't get a lot of answers and most of the answers involved something stupid like saying they're challenging notions like men not crying. I fail to see how allowing men to cry somehow helps them with their problems.

HiggsFieldgoal · 2026-08-17T04:53:32+00:00

You have to understand it is a religion. “It helps men too” is sort of a “Jesus saves” sort of presumption.

To me, it is frustrating, that such a baseless ideology could persist, least of all in academic circles, but here we are.

They believe a lot of things that are demonstrably false, which don’t stand up to the faintest scrutiny, but through which they believe men are victims of their own hand, explaining why men simply fail to… act the same as women.

There is the “gender is a construct”, parallel delusion of the same time. That is not to say that transsexuals don’t exist. They very much do, but it, ironically, diminishes their circumstance by pretending that gender is just… made up.

If it were, then transexuals would have a much easier time.

But you take that false assumption, that gender is a “social construct”, as your base false assumption. It’s false. Verifiably false. Opposed to all manner of neuroscience, biological science, and every other hard science that has studied the differences between men and women and found… lots of actual differences that reflect hormones and behavior.

You ignore all that. You start by presuming men and women would behave exactly the same, and have identical typical roles in society, if not for cultural influences… that is, to say, “the patriarchy”.

Through this lens, every dimorphism is explained, first, as with all ideology (and very bad science) with a presumption: searching for evidence, leading with what you think you already know, and confirmation-biasing your way to believe you have confirmed it… like how a flat Earther approaches astronomy, or how a Creationist approaches archeology.

But the confirmation they are looking for, the default explanation for every phenomenon through history is: male oppression of women.

Until it has been proven otherwise, that is the presumed explanation for every phenomenon, and often times even past the point it has been disproven. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.

So, they believe that Feminism helps men too, since everything is men’s fault, when men suffer it is always because of what men did.

But it is a belief absolutely entangled with a core misandry. Men are to blame for all the world’s problems, but not credited for any of their virtues.

It’s an engendering of sin itself. A religion where goodness is womanly, and evil is masculine.

Of course, it does not help men, not at all, but that’s why they think it does… because if we could purge evil from the world, men would also enjoy a nicer world.

If only all the men could abandon their “gender roles” and be exactly like women, everyone would be saved.

Specific_Detective41 · 2026-08-17T07:48:36+00:00

Never

Tr1pleAc3s · 2026-08-17T12:29:58+00:00

It doesn't if it helps men it's usually by proxy, and not intentional or can only be acheived through feminism. "Men can't cry because of patriarchy" Crying was seen as masculine in many different far more patriarchal societies, so that doesn't seem to correlate as an entailment of patriarchy.

Njaulv · 2026-08-17T18:21:24+00:00

It never does. What you are looking for is egalitarianism which means equal rights. Feminism is an ideology that specifically puts men as the perpetrator and women as the victim in every way. Just look up the Duluth Model for example.

Forackol · 2026-08-17T06:54:11+00:00

It does not help Men. Yes, progression is great but feminism is bigoted and bio essentialist (even thought they disagree with these claims), it increases the contradiction of genders. I, a genderless person, also get effected by feminism in a bad way (as every person in the world).

Feminism has brought some good things tho. I cannot deny them. But in 21th century, we need something else—postgenderism.

rump_truck · 2026-08-17T12:06:10+00:00

I can think of exactly one example: paternity leave.

If you don't want women to bear the entire burden of childcare, then you need men there, because men are the other half of the population. The obvious man to start with is the father, and he can only help if he is able to step away from work. If he has to choose between time with the child and keeping the house, he's going to choose to keep the house.

Everywhere I know of that has paternity leave, a significant portion of the push came from feminists. It wasn't altruistic, because they were doing it to help out mothers, but it did help men.

Tayaradga · 2026-08-18T01:07:50+00:00

Francis Perkins. She was a feminist back in the 1930s and she played a major role in gaining workers rights when men were dying on a daily basis or getting completely mutilated at their jobs. She also played a major role in gaining children rights for kids in school.

As of recently? Hasn't been helping men from what I've seen... Just been bashing us...

philosopherberzerer · 2026-08-17T09:26:43+00:00

I'd settle for it helping boys but even that looks like a stretch.

vikingosegundo · 2026-08-18T20:46:19+00:00

Thanks to modem feminism a small group of men has access to a lot of female sexual partners.

AutoModerator · 2026-08-16T23:22:24+00:00

Thank you for posting to r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates. All new posts are held for manual review and may take up to 48 hours to be approved. Please don’t message the moderators, we’ll make sure to review your submission as soon as possible. If this is your first post, be sure to review our rules to ensure it meets our criteria.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

ReadItProper · 2026-08-17T11:10:52+00:00

I suppose fighting "toxic masculinity" indirectly helps men by allowing men to be more open to feel and act in a natural way without having to think about the way it appears to other men that might belittle them if they did otherwise?

This feels more like an indirect bonus rather than a direct and intentional push though. The real intention behind fighting toxic masculinity is to make men not hate women as much.

One of the ways you can see that is by the fact they never really mention women's key role in this. They don't usually acknowledge how often women contribute to making men feel like shit for actually showing or talking about their feelings. They never acknowledge women really don't find it attractive when men are vulnerable. That they prefer men that are stoic, because it benefits them.

They already have girlfriends to talk to about their feelings. They don't usually want men to vent to them about their feelings. If they don't acknowledge this, how will they fight women's prejudice and toxic behavior that contributes to toxic masculinity?

United-Garbage-5808 · 2026-08-17T05:11:55+00:00

I am likely going to give an answer many of you may disagree with, but I believe it’s slowly made a generation of men become more reliable and present fathers. As women have become more involved in the work force the shouldered responsibility in the household for childrearing has now been more evenly distributed, at least for the families that care to do so. There is still a great deal of women that now have a career AND all household responsibilities, but it’s not as much as before. I personally think that’s a good thing, young boys have their father to help raise them beyond just spanking them or yelling at them when they step out of line.

Now let Me be clear, this isn’t everyone’s lived experience, but a significant proportion of men were raised with completely uninvolved fathers. I see this change as a good thing for men.

Comments