The Left Is Paying a High Price for Getting Men Wrong

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Part of the reason is that social activism that emerged in the early 20th century is structured or pivots from a perspective that a hierarchy exists and that the focus is on dismantling the patriarchy. So naturally men's issues are not considered in that framework.

It is not feminism as a whole that is the problem it is the woke elements in feminism. That element that says that all men are privileged and men are natural rapists and that men who are not sexually abusing women are hiding who they naturally are. Most feminists are not like that but the ones that are, are the loudest and are an overrepresented presence online. Also online you have women saying that s**t who had just broken up with their boyfriend and have let emotions get the better of them.

No such thing as woke feminism AS...feminism has never changed in its goals.

Last edited by cyberdora on 17 Apr 2025, 10:45 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I have been told by somebody flat-out that the men's rights movement is a hate group.

some are...not all

I said a small element of feminism. Every movement has its extremists that tarnish the movement as a whole.

You managed to turn a defense of feminism into something else.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Feminists used to be largely in favour of prohibition, when one of the main problems related to alcohol was domestic abuse by drunken husbands. Feminists have flip-flopped on abortion, because initially the concern was women being forced to have abortions; 2nd and 3rd wave feminists are mostly concerned about women's bodily autonomy being interfered with by not being able to choose to have an abortion, but first-wave feminists were more concerned about women being unable to choose to not have an abortion.

That's just two examples I'm familiar with.

I wonder how much is the result of getting men wrong, vs. how much is the result of getting men right.

!	Cornflake wrote:
	Less of the feminist bashing, please. It's clear that the premise of the thread is much more nuanced than that.

Literally no one is saying that. This is a common misunderstanding of what privilege is.

Privilege is not a linear binary system. It's an umbrella of different components. Gender, race, ableness, socioeconomic status.

A person can be privileged in one area, and not privileged in another.
A person being privileged in one area does not make them privileged in all.

Privileges don't cancel out.

For example, if a person is wealthy and black, they may have economic privilege, but that doesn't cancel out the fact that they may still face racial discrimination.

That's not true, do some actual reading on the various waves of feminism. Because there most certainly are feminist authors that say things like that. Andrea Dwarkin and Allison Jaggar in particular are nasty pieces of work. Not to mention the TERFs that only include women born women and basically everybody else isn't important or is an outright enemy.

If you can't acknowledge that those radical elements exist, then how do you have any credibility in terms of pushing back against people that notice and call that BS out?

I am going to address several issues raised in one post.

Once upon a time privilege was considered an individual thing. A person got a job over a more qualified candidate because they knew someone, a person was born into wealth etc. Then the definition was expanded to groups. IMHO the whole concept of group privilege be it male privilege, white privilege, or neurotypical privilege etc gets a real problem backwards. The problem is not privilege it is discrimination. If you are white you have less of a chance of being discriminated against and more of a chance of gaining unfair advantage. If you are black the opposite. The term white privilege implies that all white people have an underserved advantage, a negative. Believing a group as a whole has a negative characteristics is the definition of prejudice.

Prejudice and discrimination against women is more than fringe. Up until the 1960s women could not own a credit card. Until recently common plots of the movie genre known as teen comedy involved playing spying on nude women and sexual abuse of women for laughs. Even today woman's salaries are 83 percent of mens. That all can not be all explained away by maternity leave. If a man is invited to a women’s apartment he usually does not worry about getting attacked, that is not true for women.

The above does not mean that young mens problems are either exaggerated or caused by men being whiny snowflakes(although if you are defender of your traditional masculinity it is a good idea to act like a man more often). Enrollment in college has gone from majority men majority to majority women. The mental illness stats are not made up. This can not be all explained away as men not being able handle losing some of their dominant place in society. It seems that in order to mitigate the unfair treatment of women there has been overcorrection. Education becoming male unfriendly if not hostile to boys. If you are told you are a cromagnon often enough you are going to believe it. If they are not getting the message that being male is wrong in school they sure are getting it online.

Due to right wing weaponization the credibility of what I wrote above has taken a big time hit. Yes they are exploiters. In order to exploit there has to be something to exploit.

The stereotype of feminists as man haters is nothing new. That was going on when they were known as “women's libbers” in the 1970s. Then as now the supposed reason for their supposed man hating was because they were lesbians or ugly and could not get any. Yes there are misandrist elements in feminism. I mentioned earlier in this thread that most of the articles I have read about this and related topics were from women. A lot of these women described themselves as feminists.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 18 Apr 2025, 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I tend to agree that a lot of men's issues are ignored by certain feminists, probably most feminists. It goes without saying that there are different types of feminists - those who simply want the two sexes to be on an equal footing and those who indulge in some misandrist beliefs and undertones.

It is telling that the typical feminist doesn't call or refer to themselves as an egalitarian, which would be a fit if they saw themselves as being characterised by a belief in the equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people.

Most feminists in my experience believe in equality for women, but don't really care about or even are actively hostile to, equality for men. Because, as you have said MBV - the patriarchy supposedly advantages the typical man, which everyone who is the average man knows is BS. The claim that men don't have anything wanting to be equal about is common from feminist voices.

The idea of patriarchy puts forward the idea that men have inordinate social and economic power and nothing could be less true.

Take the issue of the gender pay gap for example. Most people work because they have to and because of money. Working harder or longer is actually a form of capitalist oppression and men are uniquely placed to be exploited by this form of oppression, which is demonstrated by the types of jobs men typically have and by how much time they spend slaving away in the workplace.

Earning more at work effectively means that men are worse off in terms of the amount of leisure time they have, which is what a lot of people value more than anything, and yet this fact is twisted into a narrative of female victimization, i.e,

"I am a female and I am oppressed because I don't have to work as long as men or do jobs that are as difficult as many men do and I don't earn as much as a result".

Add to that, the fact that females disproportionately benefit financially from the work of men, i.e, if you look into the statistics, women benefit far more financially from being married to a man, in typical circumstances, than men who are married to women. Earning more money as a man, for someone else, often for a woman to spend, isn't a form of power. Quite the opposite is the case!

Of course, there are genuine issues that feminists have issue with, such as unpaid, domestic manual labour that many women disproportionately bear the burden of and these are valid.

There should be a movement for men who are concerned about:

- High rates of male suicide versus female suicide
- Poorer educational outcomes for men versus women
- The dangerous work that men are expected to do and often aren't properly compensated for
- Draft registration/forced military service during times of conflict
- The disproportionate expectations of males in the dating arena versus women and the institutional discrimination against men which frames men as sexual predators/creeps/losers - if they aren't rich or have much to offer.
- The fact that men are the lowest people down the totem pole in terms of priority for social security and homelessness services
- The stigma of being open about mental health as a man, and the hypocritical advice that men receive from groups such as feminists, such as "be open with your feelings and thoughts" - but then when we are, nobody wants to hear it or we are actively censored.

Just a few things to mention!

Last edited by blitzkrieg on 18 Apr 2025, 3:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Great post blitzkrieg

Thanks Rossall!

It is a difficult position really saying what is on one's mind, with the risk of being seen as attacking a group.

To be clear, I personally don't have an issue with the elementary meaning or definition of feminism, only the implementation of the belief system by many of those who claim such a title as 'feminist'.

It seems more like sweeping generalizations and feminist bashing which CF asked us not to do.

A sweeping generalization:

There were a lot of other problems with individual points which I don’t have time to appropriately address. At any rate, to clarify another point, the vast majority of feminists are egalitarian. They just tend to focus their advocacy work on women’s issues. We don’t all have unlimited access to time and resources. Some people focus more on animal rights, children’s rights, LGBTQ rights, etc. Sometimes one can accomplish more when there’s a focus. Sometimes one’s life experiences can make one particularly passionate about certain projects. There’s nothing wrong with that.