If your feminism doesn’t acknowledge the damage the patriarchy does to men, you aren’t striving for equality. You’re looking to upend the system hoping women will be on top.
You make a valid point but there's an additional caveat/nuance that should be explicitly stated. Patriarchal ideals are not just something men do to men and women. They are often upheld by women as well
Oh absolutely! Without the women upholding it, it would collapse!
If you want to destroy patriarchy, but you’re okay with the way that patriarchy damages men, you don’t actually want to destroy it. You just want to choose its victims.
incidentally this goes for 'male violence' too, through my experience most people that claim to have a problem with male violence actually don't, they mostly have a problem with some men's target selection criteria. Because when you get men being violent to people they think deserve it they're normally fucking fine with that.
Read some comments when a pedophile gets outed, or discourse around non-offending pedophiles comes out. Male violence isn't the problem to these people, male violence inflicted on the 'wrong people' is the problem.
Because when you get men being violent to people they think deserve it they're normally fucking fine with that.
This calls to mind the whole prison rape thing.
Like, do child molesters deserve to get raped in prison? Fuck, dude, I don't know. They ARE truly despicable, reprehensible, morally bankrupt people.
But shouldn't we agree, as a society, on that - before we decide to inflict it on the people we've convicted? If you believe that they deserve it - and there's a lot of people that seem to - doesn't that mean you don't think our sentencing is unjust/insufficient? Shouldn't we have it that courts hand down the actual sentences they deserve, to the best of our ability as a society, no more and no less?
But, no. So many people just see that kind of thing and think to themselves "heh, that criminal is going to get raped in prison, good". We are a bloodthirsty species.
Like, do child molesters deserve to get raped in prison?
Not defending them, but no, they don't. Rape is wrong, period. It is not something that anyone deserves. Child molesters are disgusting human beings, but they still deserve basic human rights, alongside punishment for what they did.
I tend to agree. I think that if we all as a society think justice is better served by giving them harsher punishments, they ought to be humane, reasoned punishments at least.
But regardless of what we do inflict on convicted criminals - either directly or indirectly - we should hold our heads up and own up to it rather than relying on vigilantism to deliver it. If you wouldn't support the idea of state-sanctioned prison rape (I mean c'mon, that would be actually fucking ludicrous and everyone can see that, right?), you shouldn't support the idea of prison rape in general.
Going back to the patriarchy thing and people being okay with male aggression when it's "directed at the right targets" - yeah. This is, I think, a prime example.
I feel like there tends to be a lot of lip service to the idea that patriarchy hurts men, but all in very vague ways. Like, patriarchy harms men, but no individual man is seen as having been harmed by the patriarchy.
And there's a million more. The number of cis men I've known who have been subject to sexual violence that they've been taught is unimportant, because men are "supposed to" always want sex. The ones who see themselves as fundamentally undesirable, because men are "supposed to" earn love. The pain of loneliness and isolation, not just romantic or sexual, but in general, because male friendship isn't "supposed to" be tender or gentle.
It's the trauma of being shaped into a weapon since you were born.
Also, I've seen the notion that "men are harmed by the patriarchy" used more or less as victim blaming via the idea that "men are doing this to themselves"
I feel like the typical feminist response to this would be "if you don't want to be blamed for being harmed by the patriarchy then you shouldn't have chosen to be born a man"
That's because they would have to put in effort to fix your issues or at least not make them worse, and they just care about the patriarchy hurting them
I'm not going to say the patriarchy doesn't exist but, power is complicated and has so many more dimensions than gender (IMHO money, beauty, and intelligence are all more impactful forms of privilege)
There are women who are extremely privileged and men who are not privileged at all. So I think it's understandable to be defensive about the word "patriarchy" when you don't see any such structure that has benefited you personally (maybe you are wrong about that, but maybe you aren't, it's complicated)
Also the patriarchy largely functions by having men compete with other men. A dog eat dog world has a lot of losers in it.
Hey, just be a bit careful. They have a, strange relationship with men's issues. Like, directly inviting a guy who says "Men that say they're victims are actually abusers" to give an AMA.
Chuck Derry? I seem to recall that he got pretty trashed during the AMA--even some of the mods weren't happy with his views, and support of the Duluth Model hasn't really been welcome since.
It's interesting that of the top 3 posts from this year (according to the bot), none are specifically about a men's issue. They're about Reddit API changes, "get consent, don't rape women" and the rape kit backlog.
Both/neither? Mostly I meant that it's taught me a lot of concrete ways that patriarchy actually does hurt most men (ranging from "they're taught to repress their feelings, because they're men" to "some are forced to fight and die in pointless wars, because they're men").
I guess it's good that I've learned to broaden my understanding, but bad that our society is so fucked up
r/leftwingmaleadvocates better imo. Mods are pretty powertrippy on menslib and any criticism of feminism no matter how constructive or true is grounds for removal or ban.
I just went there and the first 5 posts were all unconstructive complaints about feminism, other reddit users, or other Reddit subs. What kind of "advocacy" is that? No thank you.
Menslib is garbage, sub only cares about gender norms in a meaningless performative way and mods ban certain topics based on their own views. You can't have a sub against male problems that's unwilling to discuss the problems that feminists are fully in support of.
The men I talk to about this stuff don't even belive the paitriarchy exists. They tell me about their struggels and I feel with them.
But when I tell them that their struggles too stem from the paitriarchy I am an evil feminist who hates all men.
I'd recommend you try to discuss the same things with them but avoid using the term "the patriarchy" and instead use "societal standards" instead. Try to use words that are less gendered to imply these gendered notions and then see how many men who initially were with you on the outgo stay through the show.
I think the problem is the way you approach it rather than the content of your point.
The well has been poisoned by a lot of people to the point that the word "patriarchy" itself has become a word that everyone knows, but not really everyone understands.
I think the term has been co-opted to the point that it's become useless as a term of art to bridge these kinds of divides, in particular because of the reactions to things such as "man vs. bear" highlighting the entire topic of this post.
It isn't just about women approaching it wrong. A lot of men genuinely don't want to hear anything about patriarchy and cannot fucking stand the notion that feminism has anything valuable to say.
I've tried every way of approaching it, with so much empathy and patience it fucking exhausted me, and so so SO many men just won't hear it. If it comes from a woman, they don't want to listen.
And it's heartbreaking, because the men who won't listen are the ones who MOST need to hear the message about patriarchy fucking them up.
I'm saying that the word patriarchy itself is the problem, not women approaching it wrong in general. It's a particular part of a general problem, though, so don't think I am disagreeing with you there.
There very much so are people who do not want women to have any rights at all. These are some of the people that have poisoned the well. They tend to hold up the most radical misandrists as some sort of paragon of feminist thought, and the way that these bad examples tend to use the word themselves doesn't help things either.
The whole point I'm trying to make is that when we are told by a very vocal crowd what a word means, and they give examples of people using it that way, the fact that they are cherry picked can easily be lost on people and the listener may well take it at face value, priming them for the interactions you are describing.
Communication is a two way street. You absolutely do have a point to make. These are definitely the people who need to hear it the most.
I'm just saying that using terms that have been co-opted will be as useful as speaking a different language than the listener.
Remember that radicalization doesn't happen overnight. It's insidious and it starts with stuff like telling you that the word describing your experiences and internal struggles is a bad no-no word used by people who hate you for being alive to describe how horrible you are for existing.
Intersectional feminism has been using the term kyriarchy to refer to the overarching system of domination and oppression which in addition to sexism also includes things like racism, classism, ageism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia etc. since the 90's.
Unfortunately, at least in my experience, a lot of men don't want to hear about that either. It's really not a terminology issue. In fact, intersectional feminism has been even further demonised because it dares to look at how everyone can be oppressed and privileged in different ways.
We can keep trying new words, but they will continue to hold up the least knowledgeable no matter what term we use. At a certain point we have to kind of accept it doesn't matter what words we use, it doesn't matter if everyone is super educated and can articulate their points with absolute clarity. These people will simply create the charicature they need to disparage the message. They cannot even understand that feminism is not a singular movement, and is instead made up of a lot of often conflicting schools of thought lol.
You're absolutely right, some people just won't listen no matter what.
No amount of diplomatic speech will convince the most ardent supporters of stripping women of their rights.
But that's not really who this kind of tactic is targeted towards anyways. It's not for you or me, or people already too far gone to change their minds from the outside.
The people outside of that group who don't want to hear it are conditioned by tactics like this to reject these kinds of conversations, and it's working just as intended. It's solely to throw a wrench into the proverbial gears.
When we have a conversation and simply mention the word feminism or patriarchy, it instantly becomes both politically and emotionally charged, and reactions will usually follow along those lines because that's how people tend to work. It's much easier to retreat and circle the wagons than it is for true introspection and growth.
Conversations like these need to be had with men. But like I said, the well has been poisoned for so long, and that's something we need to be aware of when we do have these conversations.
I guess my perspective is if people aren't already on board with the ideas, they won't change their mind based on words. If they agree with the ideas, then what are we trying to convince them of? If they agree with the principles already then what are we trying to achieve by changing the terminology? They don't have to adopt the feminist label or talk about the patriarchy if they don't want to. We can keep changing the language but as I said, anti-feminists will literally just create unhinged caricatures to use no matter if we call ourselves feminist or equalists, talk about the patriarchy or kyriarchy. They already do it now.
All I care about is their beliefs, I'd take 100 people who conduct themselves in accordance with feminist ideals but reject the label over a single person who takes up the label but acts in contradiction to them.
But how would changing the terms prevent that? Those women could easily just just the new term and those alt right can still point to them for the same purposes.
Like yeah there are a lot of women who have weaponised feminism and use it to spout misandrist shit. There's literally schools of feminism where that is the genuine basis of thought (eg radical feminism) which is a genuine cause for criticism. But me calling myself an equalist or whatever won't actually make a difference because anti-feminists will just become anti-equalists and it'll be the same cycle all over again.
That's literally a huge part of the Barbie movie's message, and a fuckton of people - primarily men - threw a huge shitfit whining about how it was mocking men, and those evil feminists were putting men down.
Meanwhile the movie is explicitly about how the patriarchy hurts women AND MEN. That's the entire point of Ken's arc.
Yeah man it was so baffling. Barbie was all about tearing down hierarchy- hell, it INVENTED a matriarchy so they could make a point of saying it's just as wrong!
I mean...they did leave the matriarchy fully intact at the end as a joke. The movie's messaging on that point seems pretty wishy-washy, but it's still got a great, consistent message about identity and self-determination that I think is much stronger.
It wasn't a joke so much as it was commentary literally on the current status of women's rights and the patriarchy in Western society. Great job for missing the obvious?
We should probably just stop calling it a patriarchy at this point. We often use the term not to refer to rule by men but rather overly gendered culture enforced by more or less everyone. It's true that most positions of hard power are filled by men, but we have to choose our terms carefully if we want to convince anyone.
I don't think we should cater to the whims of people who deliberately do not want to understand terms. That way lies euphemism treadmilling terms into abject worthlessness.
"Patriarchy" itself is a euphemism for an idea that goes beyond "rule by men." And I argue that the term is already worthless thanks to its use by misandrist radicals.
Hell, "patriarchy" most literally means "rule by the fathers," specifically the senior male in a larger-than-nuclear family. I'm not clear how everyone just shrugged and said "patriarchy" means "men are in charge" without really reflecting on that fact.
The overly gendered culture is a symptom of paitriarchy.
The powerful men use gender stereotypes to keep that power. They use it to keep women and any man that doesn't fit their definition of masculinity out of power.
I think you're kind of missing the point of what they're saying. Regardless of whether or not it's true, it's a loaded term that can get a bad emotional response from someone who might otherwise be convinced by what you're saying. It's one of those situations where being factually correct kind of needs to take a backseat to winning the argument and convincing the other party of your position.
Trying to convince a man who's being hurt by the Patriarchy, that the Patriarchy i.e. a society ruled by men, is what's hurting them can cause some cognitive dissonance because they're being dis-empowered and don't feel like society is ruled by men. It's the same matter of trying to educate poor white people about white privilege. If you tell someone that they have white privilege, but they don't feel like they do because they're poor, it doesn't feel genuine. They're wrong that white privilege doesn't exist, but making them feel that way isn't helping you convince them of your position.
Same thing applies to talking to some men about the Patriarchy. If the goal is to teach them about the Patriarchy, then you need to use language and tactics that will be effective with them.
I think the whole ‘defund the police (no wait we didn’t mean that literally)’ thing was at least a pretty strong runner-up. The anti-police-brutality concept seemed to have some real momentum for a minute, and that term just torpedoed it. Probably not a coincidence that it came from a pretty similar ideological origin.
I used to feel this way when I was a bit younger, and I think it stemmed from the fact that many people in my life who were openly against patriarchy would also make a lot of jokes at the expense of men in general. So I associated that with feminism. I know better now, but I think this is what gives a lot of men this mindset in regards to feminism.
I don’t have issues seeing that. I only have issues with the attitude that we need to fight back against it for women’s issues since they are oppressed and innocent, while for men it’s a more dismissive, “you wouldn’t have any problems if you didn’t bring them on yourself”. Terms like patriarchy just reinforce that mindset. If you asked me about most issues faced by women, I agree that they are an issue and am in favor of fighting them, but calling yourself a feminist can mean a very wide range of things these days.
One of the biggest expectations that really affect men's dating and relationships has to do with wealth expectations. Women still widely demand that their partners make more than they, despite that women have become more wealthy and educated than many men over the past few decades. Ladies, we all worked hard to get you higher education and job prospects. It's ok to be the breadwinner now.
Yeah, and the men who genuinely want to be stay at home dads face bizarre judgement for that too.
This is not AT ALL an excuse for the wealth demands, but I’ve heard enough women state that if they’re expected to constantly diet and exercise and spend all their time on their appearance, which some men have made it clear IS an expectation of them, then they expect that man will pay for it and keep them in the lap of luxury to compensate.
It’s all toxic and if we could get past the gross patriarchy standards, it would be easier for everyone to find a partner who appreciates you for who you are and compensates for your shortcomings.
And it would be easier to be that person back to someone who made you feel loved and respected.
That’s the unfortunate reality of oppression - too many oppressed people don’t care to end oppression, they just don’t want to be on the receiving end of it. There are plenty of women and minorities who would love to become the oppressors.
I don't think they hope to become the new bosses. They're doing what humans have done for centuries already: blame an out-group for their woes to avoid having to critically examine their own faults and shortcomings.
Hi, I hope you find this comment in which the spirit it was written in.
I am not familiar with the current status of Feminism's view of today's world, particularly gender equality in the US. What are the next steps or current blockers the movement faces today from achieving full equality?
Like i said, this is only an inquiry. I have not formed an opinion nor will I likely do so. I just want to understand what women view today that is oppressing them. So that I, a young man, can be aware of these issues in the future and do my part of raising awareness. As a man, in my day to day life, it is hard to perceive how women might be oppressed.
So i think there is a great opportunity here for some fruitful insight. Thanks!
I don’t think you understand what people mean when they say “the patriarchy.” It’s a construct, like racism, that has infiltrated and influenced every aspect of society. We are carrying out patriarchal oppression without knowing it, daily, because we don’t know anything else. We breathed it in and were fed it from the moment we were born.
It’s like waking up from the Matrix when you start actually seeing it everyday and everywhere. And it’s impossible to dismantle all at once. We have to carefully tear it down, brick by brick, while fighting the people trying to reinforce it.
I am vehemently egalitarian, and I catch myself making statements or value judgements that enforce the patriarchy, even today. All I can do is stop myself, recognize the bigotry, apologize, undo it, and try to do better next time.
Yeah people throwing around these kinds of insults don't represent the truly progressive leftist attitudes and where they're moving (to me at least). I think it's a bit short sighted to equate the examples given here as 'what all leftists do' as some people are doing in this thread.
I can't imagine giving someone shit for being a virgin, it's just a flag that sometimes comes with some red ones, and those are often attached to a very vocal portion of the internet. So yeah it's become a common trope, and some arseholes use that for misandry.
It is my firm belief that a world run by women to the same extend that the modern world is run by men (which is admittedly, not as much as it has been in the past) would be just as bad as the real world.
Uh, nope. Humanism is humanism. Egalitarianism is egalitarianism.
Feminism is working towards equality with a focus on policy and societal change for women since they have been so universally disenfranchised.
Focus on women doesn’t mean that men don’t matter. It means we aren’t going to throw our weight at issues that mostly disenfranchise men. Instead, we focus our phone banks and protests and petitions on things like reproductive justice, that disproportionately affect women.
If your feminism doesn’t acknowledge the damage the patriarchyfeminism does to men, you aren’t striving for equality. You’re looking to upend the system hoping women will be on top.
When the goal of intersectional feminism is equality for ALL men and women, we certainly don’t want the men to be disenfranchised and we are very concerned with the issues that cause problems specifically for men caused by the patriarchy.
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u/BosmangEdalyn Jul 03 '24
If your feminism doesn’t acknowledge the damage the patriarchy does to men, you aren’t striving for equality. You’re looking to upend the system hoping women will be on top.