I think I'm suffering from internalized misandry

CapeshitterCOPE · 2020-01-06T14:48:28+00:00

Gotta love how it’s drawn by a man. Male feminists create the worst strawmen

LacklustreFriend · 2020-01-06T15:59:58+00:00

I have never been a fan of terms or concepts like internalized misogyny/misandry, and toxic masculinity/femininity. As I tend to find them reductive and often used to assign blame to a specific gender than rather looking at how society, which is created by both men and women, influences behaviour.

My preferred way of talking about the issues that underlie toxic/internalized concepts is liberation from a gender role. My understanding is that women, at least in the West, have been more or less liberated from their gender role. Men have not.

The reason you feel this way is because you are constrained by your gender role. You are still are expected to act and behave a certain way, even think a certain way. There is immense social pressure on you, normalized to the point of being imperceptible. And yes, you have internalized these expectations, but I would not called it internalized misandry, because I do not think gender roles are inherently sexist, only how they are applied.

I also want to emphasis that liberation from the male gender role does not mean you have to give up masculine traits or hobbies, or become feminized or androgynized. Liberation is about choice. It's about being free from the expectations or burdens placed on you. If you want to carry a traditional masculine life, that is your right, but you do so because you made an uncompelled, conscientious decision about your own life.

Consciousness I think is critical (in the vein of class consciousness, gender consciousness if you will). In your life, when you feel compelled to do something - or think something - particularly to do with gender, think critically about that action and your feelings. Why did you perform that action? How did it make you feel? What would have happened if you didn't perform that action? Would you have done the same if the genders of the people involved were different?

Example: Do you recall ever giving up your seat (or refused to sit) for a woman? Holding a door? Why? How did it make you feel at the time? There's no right or wrong answer, nor should you feel bad about what you did(n't) do. It's simply examining why you behave a certain way and understanding the social pressure put on you. If you understand the pressure put on you, you can make informed, purposeful decisions about your actions.

excess_inquisitivity · 2020-01-06T18:45:08+00:00

Even though I personally do not feel very strong, the assertion that I have all that privilege makes me think that I'm supposed to be strong because I am a man, and that other men are also strong. This is pretty much what feminists call "toxic masculinity", but I do not think they realize how they contribute to it.

They do.

Mary Koss, who develops sex abuse (response) policy on a national level refuses, on tape, to acknowledge that men can be raped by women.

CthulhusIntern · 2020-01-06T17:33:54+00:00

I think we need to emphasize that feminists/feminism did not create a lot of these harmful perceptions of men. One example is viewing male sexuality as inherently predatory. That did not originate with feminism, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole "dad cleans his shotgun before boy takes his daughter on a date" even predates the suffrage movement. Now, this is not to say that feminists are not completely at fault, to use that example, a lot of their rhetoric, probably not intentionally, does encourage people to fear men. I think others may be more willing to hear us out if we make sure to emphasize that these problems did not originate with feminism.

I'd like to use this analogy. Once, I had a cavity under a filling on my leftmost molar that reached my nerve. It was constant excruciating pain, I was downing Advil like it was candy, I was preferring to drink things warm, it was very unpleasant. Of course, I got a root canal. Due to how root canals work, that tooth no longer hurt. However, I then noticed some slight pain on the other side. It was hard to notice slight pain on one side when there was excruciating pain on the other, but after the excruciating pain was fixed, it was then noticeable.

Now, this analogy isn't perfect, because women still do have issues, but a root canal fixes everything, but it does help explain how looking at men's issues are not just a reaction to feminism, they just become more noticeable when women start having more equality, and that men's issues can be completely independent to women's issues, and that fixing women's issues may not alleviate these issues at all.

oldguy_1981 · 2020-01-07T04:17:37+00:00

Thank you for making this post. I mostly lurk on this sub because I rarely have something to add, but I wanted to chime in here.

All of my life I’ve been a “good progressive.” Except society has changed; the left hasn’t won any major victories and instead they’ve won tiny battles about “oppression” and the “patriarchy.” So nothing really changes except somehow I’ve been made out to be the evil white man.

At my company there is a major push for additional diversity and inclusion, to the point where Asian and white male applicants are actively discouraged (or require vastly superior qualifications) over their female counterparts. My company is not doing this because having more women in the workforce makes the company a better run organization. It’s about virtue signaling that “we’re among the good people ... now please ignore all of the other unethical shit we’re doing ...” Somehow we’ve all convinced ourselves that by being a man we have something we need to apologize for.

I believe the OPs concept of “internalized misandry” is in reality just intelligent marketing tactics from large corporate interests. These tactics have become so effective that people actually believe it. Young people are very impressionable and social media actively manipulates our world view. And now all of the justice crusaders can go on about fighting oppression and the patriarchy ... without doing any real annoying things for corporate interests (pesky things like unionization, affordable tuition, or stopping wars for oil in the Middle East).

Oncefa2 · 2020-01-06T19:58:28+00:00

A lot of the things you see from feminism can be turned around.

I wonder if we can get toxic femininity to apply to their concept of internalized misogyny lol. "That's not internalized misogyny. That's just toxic femininity."

2020-05-18T15:04:11+00:00

As I understand, feminism is supposed to help men liberate themselves from this toxic masculinity

That's the fundamental evil behind feminism, it claims to know what "manhood" is. Who are you to claim I'm "toxic" because I don't want to sit in a circle discussing mens issues?

deodranae · 2020-05-29T09:50:20+00:00

When I think of men sitting in a circle expressing themselves I think of how it’s a waste of time for the therapist They’re all lying Full of shit Dooche bags Probably committed some sort of evil scheme or crime before coming Probably have shitty stories to tell about they deep down inside have insecurities about their lives that really shouldn’t be insecurities.

ur_waifus_prolapse · 2020-01-06T14:37:47+00:00

Your idea "sounds good" in theory, but "sounds good" isn't how it works. What you're proposing is co-opting feminist affective language, and we already know what feminists think of that. It doesn't matter that your propositions are logically consistent with feminism's stated goals. The individual feminists, as people, hate all men and all masculinity, they aren't interested in listening to your story and empathising with your emotions and fixing your problems. If you feel disempowered and oppressed, at best they are indifferent to your plight, and at worst extract a sadistic pleasure from your suffering. Overcoming your self-hatred is impossible through a feminist lens and feminist friends. It would be like a black man trying to find comfort in African traditions while befriending the likes of Richard Spencer and Jesse Lee Peterson.

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