Important clarification/FAQ
I am not calling to coddle or excuse the behavior of bigoted men in any way!
I am calling to be kind and understanding to young men (often ages 10-20) who are very manipulable and succeptible to the massive anti feminist propaganda machine. Hope this clarifies that very important distinction. :)
Very good comments that express key points:
- Detailed summary of the situation if you’re wondering what’s going on
- The rhetorical value of the bear hypothetical and what this means for you
- One example of why the long-term rhetorical value of the hypothetical is poor, in the context of intersectionality
- What does disenfranchisement mean in this context?
- The importance of not asking women to tone down their expressions of fear and frustration
- “But why can’t they just say it nicely?”
- The importance of participation in kindness toward young men, specifically outside the context of people speaking their experiences
Edit: This post has now been removed and restored twice. I want to encourage you all:
Be decent to one another
I think this post is a valuable thing given the current state of the Fediverse, please don’t fuck it up for us by being toxic in the comments.
there is only one truth, and it is that there is no gender war, only misdirection from class warfare that has monetized and monopolized even our interpersonal, romantic, and sexual connection.
when people don’t have problems, you can’t sell them solutions.
The shackles of sexism, racism, and homophobia do not simply fall off when you accept class consciousness. These are still fights for awareness which must continue to be fought. Otherwise, we risk allowing toxic mentalities into our midst, which will only serve to alienate and expel our minority brethren.
The cages built by the state which cordon us off from one another exist in the mind, but they are very real in impact. We must fight by destroying the cages in each of our thoughts, and pass our knowledge to others so they can do the same. That is the only means to stand as one.
Let’s also not forget that there are very real shackles placed on many groups - many real cages - which we must work to destroy as well.
Those who do not move do not notice their chains.
Noticing your chains and beginning to rattle them, and encouraging your peers to do the same, is the first step to releasing yourself from them, but it is not the only step.
Here’s Orwell in “Homage to Catalonia”:
“There were perhaps a thousand men at the barracks, and a score or so of women, apart from the militiamen’s wives who did the cooking. There were still women serving in the militias, though not very many. In the early battles they had fought side by side with the men as a matter of course. It is a thing that seems natural in time of revolution. Ideas were changing ready, however. The militiamen had to be kept out of the riding-school while the women were drilling there because they laughed at the women and put them off. A few months earlier no one would have seen anything comic in a woman handling a gun.”
This was in an overwhelmingly leftist camp. Orwell sees glimpses of an anarchist collective based on mutual aid popping up. Yet, sexisim clearly persisted after a period where it had been pushed aside.
These issues don’t go away just because people become class conscious.
Even if we take gender-based issues as very real (which is often not quite true since we target a demographic of literally half the planet, which is never representative), they come second to the class warfare.
A poor male worker holds way less power than a rich businesswoman.
epic intersectionality moment
If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.
I’ve got a guillotine in the garage I can break out, too, but I might need you guys to help me move it.
I don’t think this is a good example of class struggle, at least not directly. The bear meme is valid in as much as it describes one woman’s feelings, but the truth is that in 85-90% of cases, the woman knows her attacker1. The random man is simply not the issue.
The issue is power disparity. Teacher vs student, employer vs worker, landlord vs tenant. It’s difficult to reduce the power difference due to physical strength, but the others are all changeable. More (meaningful) oversight for police, better tenancy boards, and stronger unions are all examples of structures that might make it harder to victimize women.
Class struggle explains economic, and maybe political power, but those are not the only types of power in play.
And if I’m wrong? Then we’ve made a better society for nothing.
1 https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/most-victims-know-their-attacker
i fundamentally agree with you. i think it depends on how loosely you define ‘direct’. class struggle has its fingers in many pies including
- marketing saturation / materialism
- mental health availability
- quality of education
- overall day-to-day stress levels
all of which are at odds with encouraging a more empathetic, happy, and healthy population of men. people who are angry and fearful and deprived are easier to control and sell products to than people who are kind and understanding and satisfied. a higher quality of life breeds a higher quality of people and interpersonal interactions.
Social media doesn’t often reward kindness, but that’s what is needed. Show kindness to young men, when you can. They need better guidance.
So much this. ❤️ But it’s tough.
I am making this post coming out of a comment section where women expressing their most personal and horrific experiences are getting majority downvotes, while men are yapping on and on about “the problem with feminism these days” over them and getting no shortage of likes. It’s frankly disturbing to witness.
I am trying to be kind with this (and all) posts because I recognize it is what is needed. But I also fully understand the plight of other women who get frustrated or even lash out.
Take a deep breath. Listen to one another. Be kind.
Many people conflate kindness with weakness, however, in reality it is the opposite. It is easier to tear someone down, than to build something. The tendency to tear other people down comes from a need to feel higher in the social pecking order which they cannot attain with their lack of ability.
This meme is based AF
we need a nuance posting rule on the internet i think.
For every sensational shitpost you must provide at least one nuance.
honestly i would smash the subscribe button so hard on a c/nuanceposting community. verbose and carefully worded memes are my absolute jam. 😎🙂↕️
eudaimonia on dbzer0 has what is essentially the spiritual precedent to that community. You’d probably like it, it’s not super busy or anything right now, but we could always use more users over there.
No memey shit over there though, it’s pretty explicitly focused on the underlying aspects of this kind of stuff.
subscribed!
It wouldn’t work, unless it was pretty heavily moderated a la askhistorians, or what have you. You’d probably just get like, AITA level nuance shit, where people drone on about like, things that are “common sense”, or commonly accepted talking points that have the pretense of nuance, but none of the actual weight. Maybe just like, mild centrism.
The thing about valuable, nuanced thought is that it’s mildly chafing in that it’s foreign and novel, introduces something new into the mix, but not so chafing that it’s impossible to accept from the current POV. Social media operates in contextually eliminating extremes, when you automate it all, you either get a system where people only push around stuff that’s highly agreeable, or stuff that’s extremely disagreeable. Nuance is basically anathema to automated online spaces.
probably be better than extremely partisan posting alone though.
I feel like you could totally monetize nuance, i’m just not sure how you would go about it, satire maybe?
I mean something that satire gets pretty rightfully dogged for a lot of the time, as a schtick, is a lack of nuanced understanding of an issue. Like south park’s manbearpig schtick, or maybe like, I dunno, borat. Idiocracy. Office space, maybe, dunno, haven’t seen that one, don’t know too much satire. Tropic thunder, I guess, right. None of these are really nuanced portrayals of what they’re satirizing, because to do so is kind of antithetical to the genre.
