While no one has the time to break down all the misogynists ideas presented here, I'll give a try at a few:
Feminism is based on misandry, sexist discrimination, hate & bias
Feminism, at its core, advocates for gender equality and challenging gender-based discrimination and inequality. While it is true that individuals can hold extreme or radical views in any movement, it is incorrect to generalize these views to the entire feminist movement.
Feminism suppresses science:
Feminism does not suppress science. Feminists actively engage with and contribute to various scientific fields, including sociology, psychology, gender studies, and more. It is important to foster a critical and evidence-based understanding of gender-related issues, which includes recognizing and addressing biases within scientific research.
Feminism asserts the existence of a non-existent entity "Patriarchy"
The concept of patriarchy refers to a social system in which men hold primary power and women are marginalized. While the degree and manifestation of patriarchy may vary across cultures and societies, if you examine a list of presidents, CEOs, top academics, and billionaires it's difficult to conclude women are given equal treatment-unless you genuinely believe women are inferior, and so have achieved less.
Feminism treats women as helpless infants
Feminism seeks to empower women and challenge societal norms and structures that limit their opportunities and choices. It advocates for equal rights, agency, and autonomy for women. Feminism does not view women as helpless infants but recognizes their capacity for self-determination and capability in various aspects of life.
This comment is just nonsense. He shows why feminism is regressive and sexist. He may not have given evidence for every single claim, but he certainly gave plenty.
And showing how a movement is actually a hate movement can certainly coexist with not hating the demographic said movement claims to fight for.
From my viewing, he made unsubstantiated points almost every step of the way, ie even when he did imply evidence, he had an awful inclination not to cite it directly thus making it unlikely to be fact-checked.
could you remind me of his key points and their evidence?
First off I want to say I never said that GravyMan refuted anything, they at best provide their own experience because they do not back up their claim with anything. They made clarifying statements as to how they see feminism as a feminist because they felt bad discourse abrew (probably)
The conversation became messy then, when it's the case that OP and OP's video didn't bring evidence, and then others complain that GravyMan who contends OP's synopsis don't bring evidence. Wowsers.
Why are we then still hammering on the 2nd person, and why do we write off my paragraphs as 'boldly spewing out bullshit' as if that's an argument. I could've easily said that's what OP is saying. This gives me an inclination that you (since you made this about me being ideological) are the one stuck in your depths.
Feminism does not suppress science. Feminists actively engage with and contribute to various scientific fields, including sociology, psychology
This may blow your tiny male feminist brain, but two things can be true at once. Feminism is an ideological infestation which has made some minor contributions while simultaneously holding back research on issues including boys' underachievement in education, domestic violence against men, the sentencing gap and much more.
it's difficult to conclude women are given equal treatment-unless you genuinely believe women are inferior, and so have achieved less.
This is only difficult to conclude if you are a deeply stupid individual. Men have far greater pressure on them to succeed, and they do so in greater numbers despite being increasingly held back. They're also far more likely to fail spectacularly, ending up homeless, in prison, or killing themselves (suicide being another topic on which feminists fight the data).
"Men" do not hold power, a tiny minority of men do (and if you're talking politics, those men are ultimately beholden to an electorate that is mostly female).
It advocates for equal rights, agency, and autonomy for women.
Square that with calls to close women's prisons, give them lower sentences for the same crimes, and generally frame all their misbehaviour as a consequence of the patriarchy. Hint: you cannot.
recognizes their capacity for self-determination
Self-determination? Were you not just complaining about the lack of female CEOs? Truly, the feminist brain is not capable of self-awareness.
Women in greater numbers choose to take time off work to raise children, the effects of which you complained about just one paragraph earlier. Conversely men sacrifice greater portions of their lives working longer hours, further from home, seeing less of their kids. That's why they earn more, but it's not at zero cost and women make a different trade-off, as do men before children enter the picture (that last part should be a wake-up call, but you're too sleepy for that).
Calling people misogynists for seeing feminism for what it is does not hide the fact you're a creepy incel trying to present yourself as "one of the good ones".
This reads like rote repeat of standardised thought.
One thing sticks out though: the "no true scotsman fallacy". It is unfair to generalize a social movement based on fringe elements, which is why saying feminism is about equality is unfair. As of today mainstream, politically influential feminist organisations are successfully pushing openly discriminatory policies, with success.
That's how you have the special justice system in Spain where the right to a fair trial is essentially abolished if the alleged victim is a woman and the alleged perpetrator is a man. (Look it up!) That's how Belgium is right now putting into law that killing a woman is a more severe crime than killing a man. (Look it up if you know dutch or french) That's how homeless shelters across the world are reserved to women only by pretending that they're about domestic violence and that only women suffer that (both untrue), even though most of the homeless are men. The list goes on.
I'm sure many people who identify as feminists do not agree with these horrific, dehumanizing policies, but it doesn't change the fact that they are the direct result of the movement. All politicians who made those things happen had gone into politics through feminism. The policies made possible through feminism are more representative of the movement than any "definition" anyone likes to think is true based on their own preference.
If you believe in equality, stop calling yourself a feminist, it's empowering very nefarious people.
The concept of patriarchy refers to a social system in which men hold primary power and women are marginalized. While the degree and manifestation of patriarchy may vary across cultures and societies, if you examine a list of presidents, CEOs, top academics, and billionaires it's difficult to conclude women are given equal treatment-unless you genuinely believe women are inferior, and so have achieved less.
Ugh, new forum, same old story. And I just don't have the patience of go through yet another rabbit whole with yet another pseudo-academic online feminist.
I've done it enough that I've given up hope on breaking through all that brainwashing. I reply to you, but not for you. This reply is for anyone else reading this who still has the capability of independent thought.
"men hold primary power": There's multiple interpretation of that phrase, and feminists leverage this to both claim that patriarchy is everywhere and imply that it creates inequality in favor of men. Once you disambiguate the phrase, you quickly find out that both are rarely true at the same time.
Specifically: A) "men hold primary power" means that men as a class wield the power of how society function. They, as a class, make the rules. And they do so only understanding their own needs and desires and as a result, they rule to the benefit of men at the expense of women.
The opposite interpretation is: B) The positions of authority are held by men, but they do not wield this authority on their own behalf, they wield it on behalf of stakeholders where one the most important of which is women. As a result the authorities create a society that primarily oppresses men to the benefit of women.
So feminists like GravyMan like to go around claiming that we live in a patriarchy by mentioning male billionaires, top politicians etc... And then usually they imply that this means that there is inequality that favors men and oppresses women. They usually only imply it because this gives them wiggle room to wiggle out of the claim. Here he didn't straight out claim a direct link of inequality he just said "it's difficult to conclude [the opposite]", but that's a difficult one to wiggle out of.
So yes, obviously, the prevalence of men in positions of power implies that we live in some kind of patriarchy for some definition of patriarchy. But the question is: which definition is the one that applies to our society?
And if you look at the rates of completed suicide, the rates of homelessness, the rates of homicide victims and more recently post secondary education. Then contrast this with social efforts to help victims of violence, suicide risks, education opportunities that are gendered for the benefit of women. It becomes quite clear that we're far closer to definition B) than we are to definition A).
Furthermore, people like me, who are concerned with the general trend of callousness towards men and accompanying misleading ideology that takes away empathy and aid resources from those men, we don't like the term "Patriarchy". We see how it is misused to imply things that are not true about the way society function. And we see how it's definition is so malleable and routinely exploited to the detriment of men. So we try to condemn its use wherever we see it.
While I agree with OPs three other points. I don't generally like to spend much time on them. I think ideas are more important than labels.
And at the end of the day there is just one core concept that can unravel all of the misandry found within feminism. And I can summarize it in a simple question:
What happened to your empathy and compassion for men?
Whenever you have new people in the audience, you have people unfamiliar with the foundations, the history, and the progress. That’s just life. If you want to attract people to your way of thinking and grow the movement, you are going to have to find a way to welcome newcomers and bring them up to speed, not turn them away.
Unless you are content to just beaver away on your research, revelling in all the progress you are making and making pronouncements from on high, you will have to test your theories in the real world. That means engaging with critics, those with other theories, especially incompatible theories, and being open to learning new things, even things that might force you to change your mind.
Most importantly, you have to acknowledge that not every person who disagrees with you or questions your thesis is a bad actor. There are plenty of people who just want to learn and grow and addressing what they see as weak arguments both guides them on their journey and strengthens any arguments that withstand the test.
Especially in this case I probably judged GravyMan prematurely. He's using detailed definitions and explanations which I usually attribute to "Academic types" who have years of in depth experience in the topic and can't possibly be completely blind to the double standards present within feminism. But looking back, his statements are more like feministm 101 type statements, so it's actually believable that he just doesn't have any in depth understanding of what he's talking about.
So I definitely should have taken a far more charitable approach.
I’m not sure what to say beyond that I feel this kind of response to criticism deserves more than a mere upvote. My expectation was to be ignored or to see pushback, because that seems to be one of the more common forms of “discussion” these days.
Thanks for showing me that my own preconceptions could stand a few adjustments. :)
Getting frustrated and blunt with having to keep pointing out the blatant sexism, bigotry, and hatred in a gender supremacy group is very different from an "i'm right all the time fuck you" attitude.
Even if they look the same to the average feminist, @Dienervent's response didn't surprise me at all.
Feminism ≠ Women. It is possible to criticise an ideology without attacking the people which the ideology claims to represent.
Feminism, at its core, advocates for gender equality [...]
I'll have you know (per the dictionary definition) that Feminism actually advocates for women's rights. The difference is quite subtle, but very important.
Feminism does not suppress science [...]
... that agrees with Feminist ideology... Anything else is "misogyny", "fake news", "pseudo-science" etc.
The concept of patriarchy refers to a social system in which men hold primary power and women are marginalized. [...]
Apex fallacy/collectivism; Just because the people at the top are men, this does not mean that all men have power. After all, the vast majority of homeless are men too...
[...] challenge societal norms and structures that limit their opportunities and choices.
Such as...?
It advocates for equal [...] agency [...] for women.
We need to end infant circumcision. Honestly, what a barbaric practice to surgically alter a child’s private parts for no real benefit. We also need to teach boys consent. We can do both.
I've had the same experience with female friends I had emotionnaly supported for years disappearing the second I manifested emotionnal needs, in some cases at their request.
One of them even did the same with her own brother before me when he transitionned. Dealing with the emotions of her depressive sister was ok but soon after the sister became a brother she told me she had enough of his whining. This was especially jarring coming from a person who had spent countless nights crying on my or my husband's shoulder over some pointless drama.
I came to identify one red flag and one green flag for potential female friends (can be applied to men with some adjustments): Has "girl's nights" where only women are welcome= doesn't see men as fully human, red flag. Is "not like the other girls" = tries to distance herself from that mindset, green flag.
I know I know, "not like the other girls" has been oficially branded as mysoginy by the internet. Green flag.
This is purely anecdotal and comes from some self-reflection, but my partner and i have very different ways of expressing vulnerability.
If I turn to her and say "fuck, what a day! My computer's a piece of shit, everyone i work with is just out to make life hard for me and I didn't get to my workout because i got stuck on a phone call with clients", I may feel like i'm displaying some vulnerability but she thinks i'm just being a whiny bitch.
I don't anyone finds that style of weakness attractive, but I'm finding it very hard to break out from providing a list of complaints and instead processing how they make me feel.
I don't anyone finds that style of weakness attractive, but I'm finding it very hard to break out from providing a list of complaints and instead processing how they make me feel.
...isn't that how everyone starts out trying to share frustrations? This sounds like the exact "if men do it then it's bad" problem we're talking about
Sure, but i think there's something fundamentally childish about that style of complaint. My kid leads with "x did y to me", and if i'm being honest I often do, but I think I'd get more receptiveness if i led with "I'm frustrated because i got stuck on a phone call with my boss that could have been avoided if I'd planned better".
Not sure i've really thought this through, but my sense is that'll be received a lot better.
Your highlighting the sexism, while calling it a good thing
The point of venting is not to hedge and hem and haw about making sure you are taking personal responsibility for your own problems
And it’s something women are never expected to do when being vulnerable, but men are
That’s exactly the sexist problem
When women are vulnerable with each other, they offer support so that the venter understands at a root physiological level that they aren’t alone and that even if they can solve the problem themselves, they don’t necessarily have to.
You are suggesting men keep doing the exact opposite from fucking get go.
Men (especially according to you) have to preface their expressions of vulnerability with “this is my problem, not yours, this does not burden you in any way, I promise” and then they might get a sympathetic ear.
You’re proudly exemplifying the exact sexist problem.
So of course it will be received better, you’ve removed all the effort of being someone’s support before you started, what is there for her to complain about in your vulnerability, you were never vulnerable in the first place!
I don't think I'm articulating myself well, but that's not entirely what I'm trying to say. But I do think there's a difference between how women are vulnerable with each other and how most men are vulnerable. Can't quite put my finger on it, but the former version seems more nuanced and I think if men could be like that then it might be better
Yeah, I think the left wing generally espouses tolerance and equality, so anyone saying "hey, this group is being marginalized, we should fix that" should naturally find a home in the left wing. The right wing is more about rigid hierarchy and "this is the way the world is ordered, don't challenge it".
Extreme analogies are often used in order to wake people up to the conversation they're having (or just for fun)
She put attacker into the literal sense which people could hopefully compare to regular situations of 'person who deals harm vs person who receives harm'
I appreciate that they try to highlight some male issues. But they subjugate them to feminist ideology, which I think is the wrong approach. They control the conversation very tightly and do not allow general criticism of feminism (especially the widespread misandry), nor specific topics such as legal paternal surrender. For that reason I consider the MensLib sub "controlled opposition". Even tho many members may have the heart in the right place, there is a high degree of self-censorship going on. Or you find yourself, as I did, quietly shadowbanned.
Thank you for sharing your viewpoints (side note, this is my first time really reading reddit in a while and it's crazy how many accounts have been overwritten or [deleted]). I was active in the early redpill community, years ago, and watched in horror as it got taken over by right-wing protofascists. So I'm a little gun shy when it comes to men's spaces. I think, getting meta for a moment, there's something to be said for policing your own community a little over-zealously to keep out the misogynists...but then again, there's also something to be said for being honest in your beliefs, even if that means alienating an ally (like feminists).
I've subscribed and I'll keep a close eye on this community. You've got a difficult job; there's a lot of angry, misogynistic men and angry, misandrist tumblristas in the fediverse who would love to take over the discussion.
Hopefully it will be like the subreddits he moderated. They turned out quite nicely. Unapologetically advocating for men from an egalitarian perspective while also being unapologetic about defending against the misandrist detractors, a large number of whom call themselves feminists and leverage feminist ideology.
I'm in a similar boat as you, and watched TRP go from "this is info men need to know, and soon" to religious conservative grifters, and similarly upset about it
And then watching menslib and others get setup so men could talk in "approved" ways
But all of that makes it even more important to me not to abandon other labels to grifters. It just makes it easier for them to dissipate any momentum we might accrue for social change.
If the moderation is bad, it's a lost cause. The mod here removed a couple of comments I had calling out blatant misogyny, while leaving the misogyny. This space is doomed. I'm not wasting any more effort on it.
I have removed comments for personal attacks, as per our rules.
Where is the misogyny? I mean, it is possible I may have missed it, as I am human and fallible. But make sure to differentiate feminism from women. Feminism is an ideology, not a gender. Attacks on women as a gender will not be tolerated.
So, if you want to call out bad behavior here, call out the specific statements ("That statement is misogynistic" or "Saying that is bigotry"). Do not use personal attacks ("You're a misogynist" or basically any form of "you are X") as they will be removed.
They hosted an AMA with a guy who minimizes/denies that men can be victims of women aggressors. They tried to walk back some of the stuff he said, but didn’t outright apologize. They censor/minimize/deny a lot of other men’s issues. They are counterfeit, perhaps even a calculated disinformation campaign to co-opt the men’s movement.
Feminism is obviously NOT organized enough to do anything like that, which tells me you're too paranoid to be worth listening to. Take a chill pill dude, not everything is a conspiracy.
I’m not sure how you got that from my comment that I was talking about feminism as a whole. You asked what we think about r/MensLib and that’s what I answered.
However, I did address feminism as a whole in the post I just made in this magazine.
And here I thought you were against the whole "never say anything negative about any member of our community, no matter how wrong they are" moderation stance that most feminist communities use.
If you don't nip the "it's a conspiracy" types in the bud, you become the nazi bar. Because there's a very thin line between "it's a conspiracy", "this is all their fault", and "we should do something about those people".
Calling another community "counterfeit" and a "calculated disinformation campaign" is dangerous, inflammatory language. If the mods or the community don't call it out, it encourages worse things to be said.
Not to mention it's clearly not even close to the realm of reality. It's not a rational statement at all. Pointing that out is not a personal attack.
Anyway, I'm not signing up to fight a losing battle against incel types taking over this space, so if this is how it's gonna be, I'm out.
We don't accept calling members of this community "too paranoid to be worth listening to". That is a personal attack. And we don't call them incels either. This is a place for civil discussion. Not for calling each other names. Our sidebar specifically states: "Attack the argument, not the person."
Just curious, is it possible to see Kbin comments/posts that were deleted by a user or moderator like Removeddit for Reddit (supposing they haven't been archived to the wayback machine)?
There is modlog (linked in the sidebar), but it doesn't appear to give access to the full comments, just the first couple of lines or so, unless it's a very short comment.
You seem to have an extremely specific take on men's issues, insisting you're not one of those men's rights guys but nonetheless taking a dim view of feminism except when you deem it sufficiently egalitarian and uncritical, I dunno about grabbing the whole concept/namespace of "men" and dedicating it to that. But ya did it, so good luck with it.
What exactly should we have done then? I only claim to speak for myself; in an ideal world I would love to work with feminists, but we're having conversations here that are not permitted in feminist spaces, so we need our own space for that. I hope you'll be open minded and do a little reading here to see what we're about.
insisting you're not one of those men's rights guys
MRAs seek gender equality before the law and full human rights for men, MRAs are a branch of egalitarianism. If you think there's something wrong with that, that's your problem.
This place on Kbin already seems to have more activity than the old r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates did. That place is basically dead now. It's a shame it fractured the community, but at least this place won't be upended in the future by a greedy and clueless corporation.
Agreed. Worst case scenario if we were kicked off of here (which I don't think will happen. we're not a hate sub), we could migrate to a dedicated instance hosted by one of our own members. But I don't think that will ever be necessary.
Can't tell you how many admin responses i've gotten that said "Hate or bigotry towards men is not covered by our anti-discrimination or hate speech policies. Please read our policies before submitting a report about hate speech."
Yeah at some point I just have to laugh about it or I'd lose my mind. So seeing the destruction of Reddit is immensely gratifying. I hope all social media users migrate to the Fediverse eventually, and I also hope that more people will just publish content on their personal websites/blogs instead of posting exclusively on social media.
In my experience it’s not just emotional vulnerability, but any kind of weakness which is a huge turn off for women. Last time this happened to me was when I had Covid and depended on my girlfriend to pick stuff up from the store for me. She dumped me right after I’d recovered.
This is it (all credit to Karen Straughan aka u/girlwriteswhat on reddit):
So what you're saying is that you, a commenter using a username on an internet forum are the true feminist, and the feminists actually responsible for changing the laws, writing the academic theory, teaching the courses, influencing the public policies, and the massive, well-funded feminist organizations with thousands and thousands of members all of whom call themselves feminists... they are not "real feminists".
That's not just "no true Scotsman". That's delusional self deception.
Listen, if you want to call yourself a feminist, I don't care. I've been investigating feminism for more than 9 years now, and people like you used to piss me off, because to my mind all you were doing was providing cover and ballast for the powerful political and academic feminists you claim are just jerks. And believe me, they ARE jerks. If you knew half of what I know about the things they've done under the banner of feminism, maybe you'd stop calling yourself one.
But I want you to know. You don't matter. You're not the director of the Feminist Majority Foundation and editor of Ms. Magazine, Katherine Spillar, who said of domestic violence: "Well, that's just a clean-up word for wife-beating," and went on to add that regarding male victims of dating violence, "we know it's not girls beating up boys, it's boys beating up girls."
You're not Jan Reimer, former mayor of Edmonton and long-time head of Alberta's Network of Women's Shelters, who just a few years ago refused to appear on a TV program discussing male victims of domestic violence, because for her to even show up and discuss it would lend legitimacy to the idea that they exist.
You're not Mary P Koss, who describes male victims of female rapists in her academic papers as being not rape victims because they were "ambivalent about their sexual desires" (if you don't know what that means, it's that they actually wanted it), and then went on to define them out of the definition of rape in the CDC's research because it's inappropriate to consider what happened to them rape.
You're not the National Organization for Women, and its associated legal foundations, who lobbied to replace the gender neutral federal Family Violence Prevention and Services Act of 1984 with the obscenely gendered Violence Against Women Act of 1994. The passing of that law cut male victims out of support services and legal assistance in more than 60 passages, just because they were male.
You're not the Florida chapter of the NOW, who successfully lobbied to have Governor Rick Scott veto not one, but two alimony reform bills in the last ten years, bills that had passed both houses with overwhelming bipartisan support, and were supported by more than 70% of the electorate.
You're not the feminist group in Maryland who convinced every female member of the House on both sides of the aisle to walk off the floor when a shared parenting bill came up for a vote, meaning the quorum could not be met and the bill died then and there.
You're not the feminists in Canada agitating to remove sexual assault from the normal criminal courts, into quasi-criminal courts of equity where the burden of proof would be lowered, the defendant could be compelled to testify, discovery would go both ways, and defendants would not be entitled to a public defender.
You're not Professor Elizabeth Sheehy, who wrote a book advocating that women not only have the right to murder their husbands without fear of prosecution if they make a claim of abuse, but that they have the moral responsibility to murder their husbands.
You're not the feminist legal scholars and advocates who successfully changed rape laws such that a woman's history of making multiple false allegations of rape can be excluded from evidence at trial because it's "part of her sexual history."
You're not the feminists who splattered the media with the false claim that putting your penis in a passed-out woman's mouth is "not a crime" in Oklahoma, because the prosecutor was incompetent and charged the defendant under an inappropriate statute (forcible sodomy) and the higher court refused to expand the definition of that statute beyond its intended scope when there was already a perfectly good one (sexual battery) already there. You're not the idiot feminists lying to the public and potentially putting women in Oklahoma at risk by telling potential offenders there's a "legal" way to rape them.
And you're none of the hundreds or thousands of feminist scholars, writers, thinkers, researchers, teachers and philosophers who constructed and propagate the body of bunkum theories upon which all of these atrocities are based.
You're the true feminist. Some random person on the internet.
Admitting that they’ve applied a ‘strategy of containment’ in regards to male victims of domestic abuse so that DV appears to be a gendered problem. The paper says this was done in order to obtain funding for their organisations.
The women who reviewed and updated the sexual offences act in 2003 stated the following:
“We did consider whether there was evidence that a woman could force a man to penetrate her against his will but, although we found a little anecdotal evidence, we did not discover sufficient to convince us that this was the equivalent of rape.“
“Of all sexual offences, rape is the most serious, the most feared and the most debated.”
This pisses me off. Sexism hurts everyone. Men, women, children, everybody. Femnism shouldn’t be about punishing men, just like mens right shouldn’t be about hurting women. We’re all poeple, and we’re all in this together.
You run into a very serious contradiction in that value
What if fixing something that hurts men, hurts women?
It sounds flippant, but it's legitimately a problem men have to deal with.
As a recent example, in florida they are finally "ending" permanent alimony, and men now have their "right to retire" considered when adjusting payments.
Many, many, women depend in part or entirely on a man suffering and working on their behalf. If i want to help those men, to the perception of those women, i am harming them.
Even trying to equalize draft legislation in the states is technically "harming women"
So, given just those examples, i'm all for "harming" women, based on how they've defined it.
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