Tbf, some feminists do hate men.
Most women.
It creates such a weird environment because women bashing men has become a very socially accepted if not encouraged thing. In some cases that’s not bad, but it’s putting young men just emerging into a world of social media in a position where they feel they’re being viewed as the bad guy.
That’s why you have all these far right influencers scooping up young guys and feeding them all the validation they aren’t getting in a positive way from the society around them.
Idk I don’t have a solution but I do have a little boy and trying to teach him to navigate the world keeps me awake at night.
It creates such a weird environment because women bashing men has become a very socially accepted if not encouraged thing. In some cases that’s not bad, but it’s putting young men just emerging into a world of social media in a position where they feel they’re being viewed as the bad guy.
Women: treat young men like they’re an asshole by default
Men: act like an asshole because they’re treated like one regardless
Women: 😧
Some black people commit crimes. Some asian people are bad drivers. Some hispanics are illegal immigrants coming to steal your jobs.
If you judge everything based on a minority example, everyone around you is gonna have a bad time.
You’re comparing race to ideology. Not a fair comparison.
You can choose to be (or not to be) a feminist. You can’t choose your race.
No, their point is about people thinking all people of a group have a characteristic because some of them do.
If a black person robs your house and he says “I robbed your house because I’m black”, you’re gonna hate black people because they commit crimes. The thing is, no one says “I robbed your house because I’m black” because it doesn’t make sense and it’s not true.
However, the feminists that hate men do say “I hate men because I’m feminist”, which make a lot of men think that feminism is about hating men, before they have to chance to learn what feminism is really about. Specially considering that the “I hate men” feminists are very loud.
The name doesn’t make it easier though. This doesn’t happen in English, but in spanish (my language) when a man does sexism it’s called “machismo”. And we say “machismo” way more often than “sexismo”. To someone unaware, “feminist” seems like “the women version of machismo”.
In my opinion we should stop using the term “feminism” and change to a more accurate term that isn’t misleading. In the western modern society (not the USA, abortion banning troglodytes) women don’t really need that radical of change anymore, we’re almost there in gender equality, can’t risk going back by making young men afraid of the movement just because the name is no longer accurate.
However, the feminists that hate men do say “I hate men because I’m feminist”, which make a lot of men think that feminism is about hating men, before they have to chance to learn what feminism is really about.
Then maybe they should stop wallowing in ignorance and listen to something other than an extreme. It’s still their choice to react rather than think about their positions. Making someone else change because you’re too scared to do it first is lazy and cheap. There’s no way to scream a rational position like there is an extreme position, and you’re never going to get rid of them by reacting as they do.
Stop using them as an excuse for your unwillingness to change. They’re not at fault for your choices.
This is true, but it’s just like how the alt-right morphed. With the internet these days, and with social media more specifically, there are these identities wherein people try to out-____ each other: out-“leftist” each other, out-“conservative” each other, etc. So, with feminism, people wanted to “out feminist” the other feminists. For strangers. On the internet. To think they’re more hardcore. It’s fuckin dumb, but it’s fuckin everywhere, and within every ideology. You think women deserve equal rights? Well I believe women deserve REPARATIONS! You think women deserve reparations? Well, I hate MEN!
Similarly: “you think we should stop immigration? Well I think we should kill all non whites!”
No ideology is immune. I’ve seen it in every circle.
There will always be idiots, trying to claim an ideology for their own image, and who utterly misunderstand the idea itself. To be fair, though, some of those people just have really personal reasons for being drawn to an idea in the first place, and their emotions get the best of them. However, that doesn’t excuse the behavior. Because racists use the same logic. “I was robbed by black men…BLACK MEN ARE ALL CRIMINALS!” It’s boiler plate prejudice. Those feminists that hate men are falling into the same trap as racists. They generalize and slip under the current of hate. Now, it’s hard to start at the same place, because feminism has some logical backbone while racism doesn’t. But the catalyst is the same: prejudice and hate.
Yeah, some feminists hate men, but they’re small minded people who like the concept of claiming an ideology for themselves and who bastardize and undercut the goals. It’s sad, but it’s true. And it’s everywhere. The problem with it is that people who dislike the original, sound idea, will use those idiots as effigies to paint the entire idea with the worst brush available. It’s a shame.
I hate it, I consider myself a feminist because I want to claw the term back, not give it up to some assholes. It’s feminist to give men grace and understanding because vulnerability isn’t a feminine trait, it’s a human one. It’s feminists to demand paternity leave because new mothers shouldn’t be carrying the entire weight of child rearing along with a job while men are obligated to miss formative years of their child’s existence. Etc, etc
I wish I could push that message and blot out all the genuine misandrists (who almost invariably are also transphobic), but it’s an uphill battle when the assholes on the other side only give voice to those people to prove their point.
They used to just be on the Internet, but that brainrot is reaching gen z. Half of my younger female coworkers openly talk shit about men.(then pull the “oh I don’t mean you” card when I give them the side eye. Like that’s less offensive)
If the possibility that a man will treat a woman badly (everything between belittling and straight up murder) is high enough, it is a life insurance to expect every man to be dangerous until proven otherwise. Its the same logic as “don’t talk to cops”.
I’ve seen other men giving me answers to questions my wife asked to many times. Of course thats not dangerous, but thats still asshole-behaviour and you can recognise a whole lot of this behaviour everyday, if you just listen to your female coworkers instead of giving them the side eye. They probably wouldn’t feel the need to “not-you” you, if they KNEW you are not a possible asshole.
If the possibility that a man will treat a woman badly (everything between belittling and straight up murder) is high enough, it is a life insurance to expect every man to be dangerous until proven otherwise. Its the same logic as “don’t talk to cops”.
No, it’s not life insurance. It’s pathological paranoia that doesn’t effectively improve one’s safety. If you go through life with an incredibly simplistic model of judgement, where any interaction with men or cops is dangerous until proven otherwise, you are simply trading one set of risks for another. There are many situations where a certain cop or man could be in a position to help or protect you, and you might fail to recognize that.
If you’re not making any distinction between “belittling and straight up murder”, then you’re really just handicapping your ability to distinguish people who are actually violently dangerous from people who are just normal people. Most people act like assholes on a regular basis, but that doesn’t make them dangerous.
The fear of men is vastly over exaggerated. Men are still far more likely to be assaulted or murdered than women. Even when women are attacked, it’s rarely a stranger.
Tons of men I’ve known endlessly talk shit about women. It’s a standard feature of our species to talk shit about the opposite gender. It’s a standard of our species to talk shit in general really.
Talking shit about a person is one thing, grouping people into categories and denigrating or dehumanizing the whole category is another.
I’m not saying either are good, but the whole grouping people and creating an us vs them attitude is very harmful to society. Much more than talking shit about Joe because he’s being a dick. There are very few situations where it’s useful such as when one group by its definition harms the other, such as slave owners, corporate executives with a fiduciary duty for profit over employees and customers, etc… In any situation where there is nuance it’s best to avoid making groups.
Hate misandry or misogyny without projecting it as a feature common to all men or women or feminists even if you feel a large portion of them exhibit that feature.
I’m sure some do, but I’ve seen more examples of feminists who hate certain subsets of women then I have ones who hate men.
SPLITTERS!!!
I do find the idea of saying TERFs come across as stupid as some absurd Monty Python characters delightful.
But on the other hand, John Cleese has shared some transphobic views in the past, so using his work may not hurt the TERFs’ feelings as hoped.
Polarization doesn’t help anyone. Both groups are suffering as they retreat further and further into their own in-groups. It sucks and it takes a lot of conscious effort on all parties’ part to overcome. And unreciprocated effort feels awful and risks pushing people away at an even faster rate.
I’m not sure we’re really equipped, as a society/species to overcome that effort barrier given our current information diet (infinite) and our stupid monkey brains (very limited).
Yeah, it’s hard talking people out of Andrew tate positions when it’s so easy to point to reactionary hate and so hard to find nuanced opinions.
We really need to get to the point we recognize everyone as human and acknowledge that means we’re all flawed and biased and needy, and that’s OK because that’s what life is.
It also helps when we can learn to not take things personally. I know it would help because I have such a hard time with that. It is one of my fatal flaws. It is something I suspect I’ll always struggle with because no amount of self rationalization ever prevents that next episode of being generalized negatively and feeling personally attacked.
We’re all just pushin’ our boulder up a hill, eh?
The feminists probably do hate the men who hate feminists…… neither group seems to be very compassionate in that regard
I think k the issue with patriarchy is a class issue, not a sex issue…. We should be fighting the men at the top, not the men at the bottom…. By calling it the patriarchy we do ourselves wrong, because we lose a lot of butt hurt guys at the bottom of the ladder….
That’s like saying we shouldn’t deal with neo-nazis who aren’t in power. They’re choosing to side with evil and thus deserve equal punishment. “Oh no they might feel bad about it” good they should feel bad. They should genuinely feel bad.
The issue with patriarchy is ultimately culture’s views on gender and making artificial distinctions on who you should be, how you should act, etc. based on it – that’s what feminism is at its core, gender issues and how human psychology interacts with the social construct of gender (which is why it’s so closely tied in with the LGBT movement).
It’s hard for society to even acknowledge – let alone overcome – unfair differences in treatment based on gender, when our culture raises us to have subconscious biases on what a man or a woman should be, that men and women are two different groups with certain behavioural archetypes that they surely follow, that they must have certain behaviours based on their gender. almost everyone, despite thinking otherwise, has a deep division between their understanding of different genders and behaviours associated with gender – men can or can’t do X thing, women can or can’t do Y thing. A man who lacks trait A is weak and pathetic, a woman who has that same trait is normal, or the other way around. Women telling others not to talk over her in a meeting is bitchy, a man crying or being “feminine” (physically or otherwise) is weird (as is a woman being “masculine”); a woman who works in a trade is assumed to be unskilled and is constantly demeaned by both customers and coworkers (applies to most “male-centric” jobs), a man who works a job with children is seen as an alien and might be seen as creepy by a lot of people. Single parents experience sexism a lot in different ways, in fact the sexism can be one of the most mental health eroding things some parents face from society.
Whether you’re a man or a woman (or don’t fit either of those norms) and which gender norms you follow (or go against) is one of the most important factors in determining how others treat you. You will face a completely different treatment from the same people based on your gender alone, and people will react to the same behaviours in radically different ways based on your gender. It’s why a lot of feminists are gender abolitionists – “gender” and “sex” are ultimately dumb cultural concepts, yet they are some of the most important aspects of a person in our society and basically control how you can live your life, so we should work to get rid of the manmade concept of gender altogether (that’s the thinking, anyway).
Ultimately feminism is only one part of the “social justice” movement as a whole; where feminism mainly focuses on the gender issues (and possibly sexuality), other movements may focus more on society’s perception of race/ethnicity, class, etc. and a lot of the times these are very intertwined (a lot of research in feminism is centered on how race affects peoples’ perceptions on gender, such as doctors tending to have a strong bias against minorities based on both their race and gender, for example).
Class does play a part in it though, so feminism and leftist movements e.g. socialism often overlap. The philosophical understanding is that gender equality can’t happen under capitalism, as right-wing systems require hierarchies based on identity (including immutable traits) in order to function, so discrimination based on sex and gender is inevitable.
Explicitly calling it “patriarchy” has caused some problems, with men thinking it paints them to be the problem rather than the whole culture/society/government (and of course the ruling class), but as always the general populace misconstrues academic/movement terminology and there’s not much that can be done to help that, especially when the public has adopted a preconceived idea of what “feminism” and “patriarchy” means that they really refuse to budge on.
That’s the myth I routinely have to bust to guys I meet who hate feminists. I ask if they think women should have the right to vote. When they yes, I say that’s feminism. It’s simplistic and I usually follow up with other basic rights until I get to the contemporary issues. I say that if they want all that stuff then they are also feminists. Their reaction after this depends on how entrenched or how stupid they are.
“Feminism” is just a sloppy term. It’s “egalitarianism”: people deserve rights, your demographic shouldn’t decrease your rights. Those who you’re referring to when you use the term “feminists” will insist upon this interpretation, for good reason.
“Feminism”, as a term, conjures images of the uplifting of women, which was a potent image when women weren’t allowed to vote or work most jobs. Now, with many of those low-hanging battles won, equality is largely the case, and the image of uplifting women feels a lot more like favoritism and bias than leveling the field.
Yes there are gender specific issues, but those exist in both directions much more equally than when the “feminism” label was solidified. The goal should not be to uplift women, the goal should be to trivialize the influence of gender and sex on the involuntary conditions of life. When that results in the uplifting of women, great. But men face struggles intrinsic to being men too, and naming your egalitarian movement after femininity only deepens the divide with marginalized men.
Yeah, but no. To refuse the term feminism is like to say “white lives matter too”. Of course men deserve rights, and of course white lives matter too. But white people and men don’t need to fight for themselves.
Swing and a miss, mate. Many people who have a problem with the name feminism are nonbinary people, who want equality but have been excluded from the movement by enbyphobic women, AKA TERFs. While there are lots of feminists who say feminism also means uplifting enbies, some enbies feel misgendered by this terminology, and reality is nonetheless more complicated. But your comment reducing every opponent of the term to male privilege is perfectly symbolic of the nonbinary exclusionism practiced by many who use the term feminism, and demonstrates exactly why some nonbinary people have a problem.
I don’t think feminism is the wrong word in this case. The way men are harmed by patriarchy is directly related to how women are understood as lesser. Male only drafts, male worth based on possession of women, unequal familial rights, and harmful beliefs about men’s emotion all exists as ways to subjugate women.
For the draft and emotions, men’s “violent nature” is cultivated because “we have to protect the women.” The only emotion you allowed to have is righteous anger used to defend women. This dynamic ties neatly into men as predators. Men are naturally violent, look at how that violence protects the women, but when improperly raised they become monsters.
Men often feel as though they have no social standing if they haven’t had sex with a woman. The way that relationship is framed is often conquest and power rather than mutual connection and understanding. The truth is men would benefit far more from connection, understanding, and knowing that they can have social standing beyond fucking somebody.
Unequal family rights are directly related to the societal expectation that women are the primary care givers. Which frequently results in women working full time jobs, taking care of the children, and taking care of the house.
I don’t think the term feminism is really the problem. Billions of dollars have been spent by right wing billionaires to control this narrative. It’s no wonder young people have a skewed perception of what feminism is. I don’t think changing the term to gender equality really would have helped much.
The truth is men would benefit far more from connection, understanding, and knowing that they can have social standing beyond fucking somebody.
Please stop viewing men as defective women. Maybe fucking somebody is more important than you think. Maybe the problem is that instead of supporting men we’re telling them to stop wanting the things they want.
It’s easy to fall into motte-and-bailey reasoning though. The motte is an easily defended simple thing most people agree with. The bailey is a controversial thing you want to advance. If the bailey is debated, you can retreat into the motte and make claims that it’s simple and uncontroversial. Most ideologies or systems of thought have a core that many people agree with, and then that’s taken as approval of all its extrapolations. For example, do you believe that people should be able to decide what they use their money for? Well, then you must agree with laissez-faire neo-liberalism. Do you want children to be safe online? Then you agree that the government should inspect all your communication. Do you want everyone to be equal? Then you must agree with everything the soviet union did.
With feminism, it’s easy to defend the core ideas, but it also encompasses implementations like affirmative action which not everyone agrees with, and practices that are not about dismantling hierarchies but rather just “wanting a better seat at the table of tyranny”, to quote White Lotus.
On a personal level, I work in a female dominated workplace, where women hold all the positions of power. There’s a lot of remarks and actions that would absolutely not be ok if the genders were reversed. A constant flow of explanations why men are stupid, sexualizing male workers, “playful” sexual harassment, ridiculing men etc. Many of them are self-proclaimed feminists. And it’s cheered on and praised as a form of “girl power”. If you ask me to identify as a feminist, these are the people I think of.
I have struggled a lot with setting boundaries and not letting myself be taken advantage of, so I’m very reluctant to be a part of something that requires self-flagellation over which group of people I belong to. I agree with the core of feminism, but to call myself a feminist I’d like my voice to be as welcome as a womans voice, which is rarely the case in my experience.
I’m sorry that you’re in that situation and it doesn’t sound like they are true feminists to me.
There’s a bit of… something, irony maybe, in my experience that I’m trying to be aware of. I can’t judge a movement by the not-true-feminists while feeling hurt that I’m judged by what other men have done. Maybe there’s a difference between an ideological label and a gender, but still. It’s this generalization that feels similar. I know that when I am given compassion I am much more likely to care about others. And vice versa. Maybe I need to look past the loud not-true-feminists and try harder to see the points of the true feminists. Maybe they need to look past bad men and not treat me as a villain by default. It’s this stalemate I feel locked into.
We all live in our own little bubbles; they may not be true feminists to you, but they sound quite consistent with the people around me who describe themselves as feminists. A significant portion of feminist activists in my online bubble also seem to subscribe to the same ideas.
Except that that is the theoretical definition of feminism. Modern radical feminism (what we see around us) is hardly that
“what we see around us” – where? there are very few “modern radical feminists” in real life, they’re all on shitty youtubros’ channels and weird conservatives’ twitter feeds. i guarantee you’ve met a ton of feminists without even knowing, hell a lot of your childhood idols and role models were probably feminists (there are a lot more self-identified feminist role models than you may think).
specifically focusing on the distinction between “modern feminism” and “previous feminism” is a conservative talking point that has unfortunately made its way into common internet culture, there is nothing less righteous about the modern feminist/equality movement than before – although there are bad parts of it which still exist like TERFs. “it was okay before, but now i can’t tolerate it” is basically what righties say whenever a movement threatens the hierarchy too much and they want to make it seem “radical” and therefore “bad”. the reality is that the past of the feminist movement has had many flaws and a lot of bigotry (especially in the context of LGBT), which “modern” feminists have made significant improvements on.
And in doing so, they drill the idea of “men are at fault for existing” down the brains of little boys. I have said this before and I will keep saying it: feminism was defined as promoting women’s equality with relation to men, but it’s now about the equity women can get from men
So then do you think women’s right to their own body is not an issue we should be concerned about today? Assuming you’re from the US.
