Feminism is not misandry

Jonas223XC · 2012-07-11T19:39:40+00:00

Some of you in this subreddit seem to confuse misandry with feminism

That's because when there an effort to address any of these items you mention, inevitably the opposition consists of people calling themselves feminists. Many feminists will even try to shout down these topics being raised in conversation.

The trouble with our perceptions of feminism comes from the actions of these feminists, not from any ignorance on our part. Whether or not these hostile feminists represent the majority of feminists or not, I don't know. But it sure looks that way from where I sit.

2012-07-11T18:58:11+00:00

Many of feminism's policies are misandric eg. VAWA. Feminisms dishonesty about abuse being a gendered problem and covering up of female perpetrated abuse is misandric. Feminism's activism in education is supremacist.

These are problems at the core of organised feminism and most feminists support that core.

Whisper · 2012-07-12T00:37:05+00:00

What movements are is their actions, not what they say about themselves. Feminists can chant "we are not misandric" all day, but that doesn't make it any less so.

If you want to see the truth of someone's intent, ignore their words and observe their actions.

What feminists say:

I believe men and women should be judged equally before the law.

What feminists do:

Lobby for VAWA and mandatory-arrest policies.

What feminists say:

I believe that men should have no rights that women are denied, and vice versa.

What feminists do:

Lobby for women's "right to choose" and tougher treatment of "deadbeat dads" (who had no choice).

What feminists say:

False accusations of rape should be illegal for men and women.

What feminists do:

Attempt to silence, as "victim blaming", anyone who attempts to draw a distinction between victim and alleged victim.

and so on and so on and so not.

This is just another case of NAFALT. And would you like to know why we know NAFALT is hypocrisy? Because you say it only to us. Not to the feminists you aren't like.

If feminism truly isn't misandry, why did you post this only here, and not in /r/feminism ?

Try posting it there. See how many feminists agree with any of those points. Then see if the ones who claim to actually do anything about it.

Your movement's bad behaviour has forfeited our trust long ago. You will not win it back with empty words.

villevn · 2012-07-11T20:13:07+00:00

Well, femin-ism, mascul-ism, egalitarian-ism, they're all -isms, i.e. ideologies. Why do we need that, why do people insist on calling themselves feminist / masculinist? I mean sure, the issues are important, but why do we have to make ideologies out of them? :o Human rights for everyone? Of course, but not because I'm a "masculist" / "feminist" / "egalitarian", but a normal human being! I see where the roots are, but still, calling the "equality movement" feminism is like calling the race equality movement the "black / white rights movement". It makes no sense, because the name itself is already biased towards one side! Hence if we want to move towards real equality, we have to get rid of these one-sided names and monikers.

Furthermore, ideologies are not a good thing, because they lead to all kinds of extreme behaviour "in the name of cause X". Just look at both the ultra feminists and masculinists; they're so fully immersed in their fantasy world of "feminism" / "masculism" that all men / women become the enemy, the asshole oppressors in their mind. And then you'll get the backlash, i.e. these other people taking offense to such ridiculous statements, and making their own, counter-ideology. So we have just hatred and outrageous generalizations, while the real issues have just been brushed aside.

So yeah, as long as we have the divide between "feminists" and "masculinists", there continues to be battling and over the top statements from both sides. Personally, I'm starting to be totally fed up with this gender bullshit, it's ridiculous. Most of the men and women I know are cool people, laid back, and you can have good conversations with them. No oppressing, no suppressing, no "we are better than you" mentality. Aaand then you have these stupid ideologies, which blow up everything totally out of proportion. "All the men are like this, all the women are like that, blah blah blah." I can't but wonder if they actually have anything to do with reality anymore. Thus I have no desire calling myself any -ist. I'm a man, and naturally interested in men's rights. I'm also interested in women's rights, and gay people's rights, and everyone's rights. Thus to be fair and equal, I'd have to call myself a masculist, feminist, gay rights supporter, straight rights supporter, bi rights supporter, white people supporter, black people supporter, asian people supporter, atheism supporter, etc etc. It's RIDICULOUS.

So...why can't we just drop the friggin' labels and stop this idiotic divide. After all, we're all people, no matter what our sex.

C0CKPUNCHER · 2012-07-11T18:56:14+00:00

You are at odds with the salient actions of feminism/ feminists. I have never seen the 'feminism' you believe in.

girlwriteswhat · 2012-07-11T20:36:06+00:00

> Any effort to deny men equal rights is not feminist.

No True Scotsman.

> feminism means gender equality

But what sort of equality? People are not agreeable on what constitutes equality (shock and awe). Why is this difficult? Do you want equality of treatment under the law, equality of opportunities, or equality of results? These are different, but all represent "equality". (BTW: equality of opportunities will not happen in this country while we allow parents to have such a strong influence over the rearing of their children)

ENTP · 2012-07-12T03:21:38+00:00

Yes it is.

It is institutionalized misandry.

Feminist theory insists on several, untrue, sexist, non-evidence based dogmas that demonize and vilify men.

Specifically, I reference "patriarchy" and "pervasive male privilege" in a Western context, where men are actually disadvantaged on most metrics like suicide rates, homelessness, genital mutilation, incarceration rates, sentencing discrimination in criminal court, life spans, etc, etc, etc.

Until feminism stops lying, and painting men as vicious oppressors and begins to use it's privileged position in Universities to raise awareness for male issues, and stops with bullshit, awful campaigns like "men can stop rape", and stops lying about "male privilege", and stops pushing lies about "pay gaps" (The wage "gap" was debunked by the U.S. Department of Labor in 2009), and until feminists stop pushing for gendered and sexist legislation like VAWA and feminist based law enforcment policies that hurt men (Duluth Model), it will NEVER be about equality, and will only continue to be what it is: a sexist and biased movement that only cares about women, just like its name implies.

klonozopanour · 2012-07-11T20:48:41+00:00

I believe you've got feminism confused for egalitarianism.

Feminism will always be about female supremacy as long as it's called feminism.

It's that simple.

loose-dendrite · 2012-07-11T21:08:47+00:00

I'm both a feminist and an anti-feminist, depending on if I use the ideal or the reality, respectively.

Feminism in ideal is gender egalitarianism. That's the rhetoric they use to convince fair-minded people like yourself that they are on your side. Most feminists believe it themselves. Some don't but they mostly keep that quiet for political reasons (see RadFemHub for where they don't keep quiet about it).

Feminism in practice is always at least pro-female, no matter the effect on males. This is justified two-fold:

1) Males have it better than females because males are in positions of authority (Patriarchy) so males use their authority to help other males. Males are advantaged so hurting males to help females is minor compared to the advantages males already possess.

2) Feminism's end-game actually helps males because it removes gender restrictions that stifle males.

#1 is false for two reasons. First, men are doing worse than women in most objective metrics (three obvious differences: life expectancy, university attendance, suicide). Second, men don't have an in-group bias. But women do. It follows that male-held positions of authority are extremely weak evidence of Patriarchy,

#2, though usually sincere, can't be realized so long as objective metrics are ignored or manipulated.

Hach8 · 2012-07-11T19:51:20+00:00

In theory, feminism isn't misandric.
In practice... well, isn't that the difference between theory and practice?

Feminism, by defining itself as "equal rights for women" does not logically imply that men have equal rights to what women have. It implies two things: first, that women are primarily disadvantaged; and second, that in order for their to be equality women have to be raised from their disadvantaged position.

Equal rights becomes => Equal rights where women are at a social or institutional disadvantage. This ignores any situations in which men are potentially not at a distinct advantage. This is inherently not about equality in the grander scheme, but instead becomes equality on an issue by issue basis, where issues that don't concern women are ignored by feminism, or gender stereotypes and roles are perpetuated as long as they apply primarily to men.

pg402 · 2012-07-11T20:42:28+00:00

[permanently deleted]

Faryshta · 2012-07-11T21:51:45+00:00

I honestly advice you to repost this on r/feminism r/feminisms or any other feminist subreddit and see the outcome.

Spoiler. It will be either banned by mods or downvoted by users.

Jacksambuck · 2012-07-11T23:27:36+00:00

All advocates for gender equality should come together to denounce misandry and misogyny of all forms.

Isn't that a bit broad ? There is a reason why this is called the Men's Rights movement, and not masculinism.

Most of us believe that feminism, in its endeavoars to achieve "equality", has gone far beyond correcting an injustice(not in a good way). Maybe you should call yourself a women's rights activist, except most feminists can't actually think of a single case of discrimination in law.

MRA's are trying to avoid what feminism did, which is to put the entire society (culture, art, science, video games, jokes, language) on trial when they ran out of legitimate(IMO, legal) complaints.

MrStonedOne · 2012-07-12T04:32:37+00:00

There are arm chair feminist, and politically active feminists. The two are different, and mras are only referring to the 'Politically Active Feminists'.

Politically active feminists like Rebecca Watson call mra's a joke.

Politically active feminists like Hilary Clinton say things like:

Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hillary_Rodham_Clinton#White_house_years_.281993_.E2.80.94_2000.29 (last one in that section)

Men dying? No, the true victims are the women that have to go on without them. The utter complete disregard for male humanity is disgusting, To her, men are not human, no; They are useful, things to be used, and the people who used them having to go on without them is apparently more saddening then their deaths. It's sickening. (Not to mention the disregard for the women who lost their lives in combat.)

Politically active feminists like Barbara Jordan (former U.S senator) say things like:

I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it.

There are plenty of more quotes here

Not to mention that NOW opposes father rights groups and has put out action alerts asking for information about them that could be used to politically combat them (as in, asking for dirt to be dug up on them.)

Face it; Feminism is opposing MRA efforts. And as such, have made themselves an enemy.

memymineown · 2012-07-11T19:09:21+00:00

I just wish more feminists in power were like you.

But sadly, they aren't(look at Obama's recent remarks about the schooling gap). But you can help affect change and make feminism into a truly egalitarian movement.

pg402 · 2012-07-11T20:40:07+00:00

[permanently deleted]

JockeVXO · 2012-07-11T19:53:04+00:00

I consider myself a Christian, but I don't believe Jesus Christ was the son of God, in fact I don't believe in God or any other divine creature. Makes sense?

There has never been a time when feminism was about equality. Even the "first wave" was wholly gynocentric and created female-favouring laws along with ignoring female privileges already in existance.

Feminism has always been gynocentric and more or less misandrous.

EvilPundit · 2012-07-11T20:22:58+00:00

Can we seriously start deleting these posts? I'm sick to death of feminists coming in here to say "I'm a feminist and I'm not evil. Feminism is about equality!". They're all too frequent and don't do shit for the movement.

iongantas · 2012-07-11T23:14:28+00:00

You are not a feminist.

villevn · 2012-07-11T19:45:21+00:00

You sound like a humanist. Call yourself a humanist.

Fight for equal rights for all, otherwise somebody will eventually be 'more' equal.

theozoph · 2012-07-11T22:34:56+00:00

My feminism, unlike the feminism of every feminist organisation under the sun, isn't about misandry. Please stop hurting my feelings by conflating my unique views with those of just about every feminist leader.

FTFY.

2012-07-12T00:13:54+00:00

feminism isn't inherently misandric, and even though some feminists are misandric not all of them are

problem is when a group that identifies themselves as feminists does something that hurts the rights of men, they are never really opposes/stopped by feminists, which adds salt to the wound when feminists say that "defeating the patriachy helps men and women, see?"

/thread?

TerriChris · 2012-07-12T00:41:56+00:00

Nice try.

MockingDead · 2012-07-12T00:55:50+00:00

NAFAAAALT!

ThePigman · 2012-07-12T03:00:32+00:00

I won't even bother reading past the absurd title, especially given yesterday's post in which the man labeled the "Feminist in chief" by Ms Magazine went on about how great it is that women are doing better than men in college and how he plans to further widen the gap.

oneiorosgrip · 2012-07-11T20:33:27+00:00

Feminist activism since the 60s has been about privilege, fighting not for equal rights, but for policies and laws which favor women over men, pushing protections that are only enforced for women, and penalties which are only enforced against men. Even the term itself betrays the truth of the movement's intent; if the movement were about true equality, the word would be genderless. Feminism is about female power, not equal rights.

The things you describe in your post - judging men and women equally under the law, refraining from denying one sex rights that another may possess, keeping child support non-coercive, and enforcing laws against false allegation - these are all things which have been fought against by mainstream feminist groups. NOW fought for VAWA, which takes "innocent until proven guilty" away from men accused of rape or domestic violence. Feminist-run domestic abuse advocate organizations push authorities and courts to bypass due process for men accused of domestic abuse.

This is not to say that you, personally, do not support and advocate equality, but simply a statement pointing out that your stated beliefs are not compatible with the actual fact of what feminist activism has been for the last 60 years. Your stated beliefs do not fit the label, and you cannot make others stop noticing what feminists actually do just because you want to simultaneously hold those beliefs and wear that label. It's like asking us to believe that the KKK is about equality for whites, not racism. It's not going to happen.

I challenge you to be honest. Adhere to your principles, and your beliefs, and throw off the false label, which I think you are clinging to more out of gender loyalty than because you relate to what it really means.

pg402 · 2012-07-11T20:46:40+00:00

You cannot pretend feminism has nothing to do with its "radical" elements. Feminism claims to be for gender equality. In what clear definite ways have feminist organizations worked to help men?

Feminism is strongly associated with a huge amount of intellectual foolishness. It teaches dogma not facts. It talks about patriarchy and states as a fact there are no important innate sex differences. Almost all current famous feminists are either idiots or man hating liars.

Feminism is a fundamentally pro social engineering doctrine. All of its actions point to it believing the government needs to step in to "correct" all sorts of problems. Feminism advocates equality of outcome not opportunity.

You can believe whatever you want and seem reasonable. You cannot pretend feminism is not what it is.

_pH_ · 2012-07-11T21:19:23+00:00

Don't call yourself a feminist. Call yourself an egalitarian. As soon as you call yourself a gendered noun -- feminism obviously having a focus on supporting women, the same problem exists in calling yourself an MRA -- you no longer can honestly say you want equality between sexes. The fact that feminism tries to proclaim it is the route to equality and MRA has no part in that is what causes hostility- "only the female-oriented group can fix inequalities because those stupid male-oriented groups are just going to dick it up" mentalities.

AryoBarzan · 2012-07-11T23:38:37+00:00

Feminism is HIGHLY misandric and if you spend enough time watching feminism, you'll realize very soon how hateful and bigoted it is. Also, you should probably learn what an 'egalitarian' is rather than call yourself a 'feminist'.

Mitschu · 2012-07-12T01:04:08+00:00

Feminism is often defined as equal rights for women. It is regrettable that this definition creates confusion and animosity. Logically, feminism means gender equality since women cannot have equal rights without men also having equal rights.

Feminism is often defined as whatever the feminist invoking it wants it to mean. It is regrettable that this lack of a solid definition creates confusion and animosity. Logically, feminism means "gender warfare", since the only thing feminists can agree on is that at some point or another, women had it worse, and therefore, men should pay remuneration for their suffering.

Fixed that for ya.

namewastakenlol · 2012-07-12T03:19:45+00:00

No true Scotsman. Quite often feminists support only female supremacy. Sometimes a feminist supports equality, like you.

Roddy0608 · 2012-07-12T00:39:01+00:00

Are you one of those "real" feminists?

sickpharaoh · 2012-07-12T02:19:19+00:00

Two points:

You don't have to consider yourself a feminist to believe any of these things. Simply trying to be a reasonable human being would suffice
Not everyone who calls themselves a feminist would agree with your list, and honestly, most of the modern post-feminists I have spoken with personally would probably disagree with much of it

cthulufunk · 2012-07-12T07:03:24+00:00

popcorn

2012-07-12T13:06:31+00:00

Ideally, yes. Feminism would be in line with egalitarianism (and thus not called feminism at all). In practice, however, it often does not work out that way.

2012-07-12T05:05:56+00:00

Female victims of rape who become impregnated should be compensated for abortions or the morning after pill, but if they choose to have the child it becomes their own responsibility. Sexual consent is not the same as consent to carry pregnancy to term.

Sorry, but this is absurd. If a woman who got pregnant against her will has a moral objection to abortion whether chemical or medical, then the rapist should be responsible financially. Abortion is too much of a personal choice, and rapists don't deserve special consideration.

Also, extreme pragmatism. How the fuck?

Memyselfsomeotherguy · 2012-07-12T03:44:25+00:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

ghebert001 · 2012-07-13T02:04:49+00:00

I am an MRA and I believe due to feminism and the government holding women in a higher regard than men:

men and women are not judged equally before the law.
women have rights that men are denied.
most child support is an obligation and responsibility forced upon men against their will.
male victims of rape are dismissed, mocked and trivialized. their experiences are treated as less than that of a woman's. when the male is a minor and the rapist is pregant, the underage boy is forced to pay child support.
False accusations of rape should be illegal for men and women (nothing to change here as well as the rest of what you said).

Realize that just because you are a feminist and support true equality, doesn't mean that all of feminists are with you. The ones who get to make all the rules in society sure as hell aren't.

JohnAdamZiolkowski · 2012-07-13T06:49:20+00:00

Please listen to GirlWritesWhat about her opinion of waving the flag of feminism for your egalitarian humanist goals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o-OcTSeVcs

ghebert001 · 2012-07-13T11:06:23+00:00

You and all the other "good" feminists should watch this.

DavidByron · 2012-07-13T16:32:00+00:00

I'm in the KKK and I'd just like to say that the KKK is not about racism.

rightsbot · 2012-07-11T18:52:18+00:00

Post text automatically copied here. (Why?) (Report a problem.)

Leinadro · 2012-07-12T00:35:15+00:00

In theory feminism is about equality. Problem is there A LOT of people who manage to fuck it up in practice.

Reasonable-Issue3897 · 2024-01-08T14:01:04+00:00

True feminism is misandry

sci-fi · 2012-11-08T03:52:52+00:00

...My god. A decent, honourable post in MR. Top notch OP.

Title	Feminism is not misandry
Author	pg402
Upvotes	28
Comments	271
Date	July 11, 2012 6:50 PM UTC (14 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/wecle/feminism_is_not_misandry/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/feminism-is-not-misandry.1018142 https://theredarchive.com/post/1018142

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