[RD] Feminism

[Lexicus]

All they care about is the fetus, and not about whether or not the eventual child will have a chance to survive, never mind thrive.

All they care about is the votes of easily misguided anti-abortion people. They assuredly don't care about fetuses either.

My other post was to clarify who the abuser was in the (our?) scenario you laid out.

The abuser would be men as a whole.

The sentiment that men were too proud to let women fight their wars, and generally looked down upon them.

I dunno about too proud, but yes, men did not allow women to fight and generally looked down upon them. Still do generally down upon them, in my experience.

 

[Ryika]

War is a collective decision. Your attempt to claim that individuals are not responsible for their collective decisions is not going to carry any arguments for you. I am responsible for my nation's unprovoked attack on Iraq just as much as anyone else that is part of my nation. I don't massage my conscience about it by pretending I'm not, I learn from my mistake.

I agree that on a political level we have to think about it like that to a certain extend but that does not in any way translate into:

No, they are the instigators of that war and casualties of their own choices.

Because if somebody who lived 300 years ago was forced to go to war for a country that he was born into and did not have the luxury to move away from, is then forced to pick up arms or be killed by hisown people as a deserter, then he, as the individual, did not have much of a choice to do anything, other than choose their preferred method of dying.

Both can be true at the same time, an empire can make the collective decision to go to war, and the soldiers that they force to fight and die in that war can still be victims of that war, because a collective decision does not remove the will of the individual, it just overrides it on the political level.

Where did you get the idea that feminists don't care about people in Africa?

I didn't say feminists don't care about Africa (and being an MRA doesn't mean that one doesn't care about women's issues), I said that most things that feminists advocate for are things they personally are affected by in the west.

You can write whole articles about feminist issues in Africa, but then try going to any feminist online presence and take a look how much content is about the third world, and how much content is advocating for the comparably smaller first world issues. You'll see much more of the latter, and depending on what's on the news on any given day, will not see any of the former at all.

And don't get me wrong, I think it is perfectly fine for them to do that. In fact, it's perfectly natural for people to care most about things they personally had to deal with than things that they never came in contact with. But that same standard must apply to MRAs, calling their advocacy for real problems men face "misguided efforts" just because one thinks that women have it worse overall is just rude, and a standard that is not applied to feminists by the same people.

 

[aelf]

Do you claim to not share the sentiment that men were too proud to let women fight their wars, and generally looked down upon them? This discussion is no tangent - it is at the heart of your sexism problem, and the sentiment is an incorrect conjecture for a lot of humans. This is the unspoken yet persistent conjecture I am arguing against.

Ah, but you haven't taken into account Dasein and the paradox of living in relationship with other humans while being ultimately alone with the self. The patriarchy is part of the collective world of Them, which the historical Self had to engage in, being not simply a subject, and the 'Being-in-the-World' is thus immanently bound up with Them.

The people who were forced to die against their will for the winning country were certainly victims, are you going to deny that?

And so the soldiers who die in a war that their side has instigated are still victims of that war.

Yes, absolutely. And if you read what I've been saying, individual men are also victims of sexism towards women. But that doesn't change the fact that the sexism is towards women, just like how the victims who are citizens of the aggressor country don't turn their country into the victim/object of aggression. Extent of victimhood is not the determinant of who the object of sexism/aggression is (i.e. whom the sexism/aggression is directed towards).

 

[Lexicus]

A white woman killed for having consensual sex with a black man was not a victim of racism against white people.

 

[civver_764]

The abuser would be men as a whole.

Men who were sent to die are abusers? How is this not victim blaming? Can you imagine the outrage if someone said "women as a whole are abusers"? This is male-shaming in its ugliest form.

Yes, absolutely. And if you read what I've been saying, individual men are also victims of sexism towards women. But that doesn't change the fact that the sexism is towards women, just like how the victims who are citizens of the aggressor country don't turn their country into the victim/object of aggression. Extent of victimhood is not the determinant of who the object of sexism/aggression is (i.e. whom the sexism/aggression is directed towards).

Why are you so obsessed with clarifying that it is sexism against women? It's like the idea that men are victims is something you can't bring yourself to admit. Indeed, we men are conditioned from childhood against seeing ourselves as victims. Even when a policy clearly disadvantages men you claim that it is the women that are the TRUE victims. You are brainwashed by feminist propaganda my friend.

 

[aelf]

Uh, what? In the post you just quoted I clearly said men are also victims. You're clearly being willfully blind, which I guess is quite obvious from the start. Talk about being brainwashed.

 

[Lexicus]

Men who were sent to die are abusers? How is this not victim blaming? Can you imagine the outrage if someone said "women as a whole are abusers"? This is male-shaming in its ugliest form.

You misunderstood the phrase "men as a whole" I guess. It's a social/collective frame of analysis, not a way of saying "every single man..."

 

[civver_764]

Uh, what? In the post you just quoted I clearly said men are also victims. You're clearly being willfully blind, which I guess is quite obvious from the start. Talk about being brainwashed.

But you're unable to just say that men are the victims of sexist discrimination. You always feel the need to clarify that is merely a side effect of "sexism towards women", and that women are the true victims. It's utterly insulting to the men that were forced to give their lives.

You misunderstood the phrase "men as a whole" I guess. It's a social/collective frame of analysis, not a way of saying "every single man..."

Please elaborate.

 

[aelf]

But you're unable to just say that men are the victims of sexist discrimination. You always feel the need to clarify that is merely a side effect of "sexism towards women", and that women are the true victims. It's utterly insulting to the men that were forced to give their lives.

More baseless rubbish. We're specifically talking about the draft, and moreover in a historical context. Is it possible for men to be victims of sexism as a group? I think so, and I never said otherwise. Is it possible for a newly-instituted draft today to be sexist against men? Yes, I think it's possible. Maybe if, for example, the justification is that women are superior workers and therefore their lives should not be wasted in battle.

 

[Ryika]

Yes, absolutely. And if you read what I've been saying, individual men are also victims of sexism towards women. But that doesn't change the fact that the sexism is towards women, just like how the victims who are citizens of the aggressor country don't turn their country into the victim/object of aggression. Extent of victimhood is not the determinant of who the object of sexism/aggression is (i.e. whom the sexism/aggression is directed towards).

But this simply does not negate the fact that men were more seen as a expendable resource that you could throw away in battle than human beings. That, too, is sexism, it's two sides of the same coin.

"Women are too fragile and must be protected." <> "Men are expendable and exist to protect our land and our women."
The lens you're using to look at the situation just completely neglects that second part and assumes that women not being part of the draft is purely based on that first part. I do not think that's accurate.

Not quite on the topic of the draft, but the most obvious example of this kind of sexism against men are the white feather campaigns of ww1, where women, including many feminists and suffragette, shamed men into joining the army. That speaks volumes about what society thinks man's role is in all of this.

 

[aelf]

But this simply does not negate the fact that men were more seen as a expendable resource that you could throw away in battle than human beings.

Inasmuch as this is true, they were expendable because they were (common) people and not because they were men. Hence, drafting men into war was not sexism against men.

Not quite on the topic of the draft, but the most obvious example of this kind of sexism against men are the white feather campaigns of ww1, where women, including many feminists and suffragette, shamed men into joining the army. That speaks volumes about what society thinks man's role is in all of this.

That's a classic example of men becoming victims of the patriarchy. One of the most compelling arguments for feminism is that it also frees men from gendered narratives that dictate men must do manly things like fighting wars.

 

[Lexicus]

Inasmuch as this is true, they were expendable because they were (common) people and not because they were men. Hence, drafting men into war was not sexism against men.

Thank you, FFS, I don't get what is so hard to grasp about this
This is oppression of men, but not because they're men, it's not a "men's rights" issue but a "don't let society be run by militarist aristocrats" issue

 

[warpus]

I have no inclination to prioritize "men's issues" because generally speaking men are not the disadvantaged group.

Nobody's asking you to acknowledge that men facing suicide is a #1 issue for the entire planet and that we need to prioritize it over everything or anything else. That's just you making stuff up.
Okay, maybe somebody else in this thread asked you to do that, I have no idea. I haven't though, and this exchange is between the two of us, nobody else.

In some walks of life men are indeed disadvantaged, however. I don't have the energy to bring these examples up, because you are likely just going to dismiss them, and place your ideology over the need to try to help people who really need help.

 

[Hygro]

It's pretty hard to maintain your patriarchy if you train your women to fight.

 

[Traitorfish]

Well just as (some) MRAs are anti-feminist, (some) feminists are anti-MRA, often to a troubling degree.

I didn't say that MRAs are anti-feminist, I said that "Men's Rights Activism" is anti-feminism. I wasn't describing a characteristic of the group, I was giving a definition of the movement. MRAism is one of several forms of anti-feminism, one distinguished by a pedantic insistence on naive egalitarianism as opposed to more traditional chauvinism. Feminism pre-dates MRAism and exists largely independently of it, while MRAism has no meaning or definition without feminism. The number of feminists who concern themselves primarily with MRAs is small and essentially trivial, while the number of feminists who concern themselves primarily with feminists is: all of them.

Is it not possible to sincerely care about men's issues and also be critical of (certain aspects of) feminism? Why is feminism so special that mere criticism of it will get you labeled as a hateful misogynist?

It isn't. Feminists have been rigorously criticising feminism since before it coalesced into a coherent "-ism". Liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, radical feminism, womanism, the sects and divisions run so deep, many of these positions are barely recognisable as part of a whole if you're not aware of their shared origins. The difference is that, feminists are criticising feminism from an at least theoretically pro-woman position, while MRAs criticise from a position that is, if not actively anti-woman (and it usually is), exclusively pro-men, to the total disregard of historical and continuing weight of sexism in society.

Because our society values their lives more than men's.

It's capitalism, everybody is disposable.

Thank you, FFS, I don't get what is so hard to grasp about this
This is oppression of men, but not because they're men, it's not a "men's rights" issue but a "don't let society be run by militarist aristocrats" issue

This is partly what I mean when I say that MRAism is anti-feminist in essence. It's an ideology which funnels everything through the lens of anti-feminism, which seeks to find at the bottom of every social ill a cackling feminist. They're the kind of people who watch the bull-headed fascists of every nation gunning down young men like bowling pins and think "this is all women's fault".

It all looks logical.
The part I wonder is how this war stuff suddendly becomes a men-only responsibility (in this thread at least).
I'm not blind enough to not recognize that men are much more aggressive than women, but in a world where women have the exact same electoral weight as men, where do comes the double standard ?

Well, if you're looking for a defence of parliamentary democracy, you're speaking to the wrong person. But the point of Valk's original comment was only that large-scale wars are not common place, that they're easily avoided through a measure of collective reason, and that it's a bit of stretch to highlight a draft which hasn't been used in decades even to the United States is an example of ongoing sexism against men.

But this simply does not negate the fact that men were more seen as a expendable resource that you could throw away in battle than human beings.

And the women that were bombed, or displaced, or enslaved- they were seen as human beings?

 

[Ryika]

Inasmuch as this is true, they were expendable because they were (common) people and not because they were men. Hence, drafting men into war was not sexism against men.

Yeah, there is also a strong element of classism in there, but it's a mixture of both - it's because they were common people and men. Both attributes had to apply, and the element of classism does not somehow remove the element of men being the ones expected to take the role of the defender.

That's a classic example of men becoming victims of the patriarchy.

Women demanding men to sign up for the army to defend their country purely on the basis of being men, is a clear case of sexism against men. Can't get any clearer than that.

Whether that sexism ultimately stemmed from attitudes where women were seen as too weak to fight or not, whether patriarchy is responsible for these attitudes, is completely irrelevant to the fact that the end result is that you have sexism against both, men and women.

The types of sexism are not entirely the same, because yeah, I agree with you, there is an element of seeing women as incapable that is not present on the side of men, but that is countered by the fact that men are expected to play the protector, even at their own demise.

I mean even here:

One of the most compelling arguments for feminism is that it also frees men from gendered narratives that dictate men must do manly things like fighting wars.

You're basically saying: "Feminism wants to free men from sexist expectations." (a notion that I only partly agree with), but still have to phrase it in a way that completely negates the idea that men are - not can be, but are - victims of sexism under current circumstances although that is exactly what you are saying.

The way you simply can't admit to yourself that while women are victims of sexism, 'men are victims of sexism, too', and must instead reframe it to 'men are victims of the patriarchy backfiring', shows exactly why feminist theory is dangerous.

 

[civver_764]

I didn't say that MRAs are anti-feminist, I said that "Men's Rights Activism" is anti-feminism. I wasn't describing a characteristic of the group, I was giving a definition of the movement. MRAism is one of several forms of anti-feminism, one distinguished by a pedantic insistence on naive egalitarianism as opposed to more traditional chauvinism. Feminism pre-dates MRAism and exists largely independently of it, while MRAism has no meaning or definition without feminism. The number of feminists who concern themselves primarily with MRAs is small and essentially trivial, while the number of feminists who concern themselves primarily with feminists is: all of them.

This is just not true and I can tell you've never really looked into the movement beyond what you've heard from anti-MRA commentators.

It isn't. Feminists have been rigorously criticising feminism since before it coalesced into a coherent "-ism". Liberal feminism, Marxist feminism, radical feminism, womanism, the sects and divisions run so deep, many of these positions are barely recognisable as part of a whole if you're not aware of their shared origins. The difference is that, feminists are criticising feminism from an at least theoretically pro-woman position, while MRAs criticise from a position that is, if not actively anti-woman (and it usually is), exclusively pro-men, to the total disregard of historical and continuing weight of sexism in society.

What on earth is wrong with being pro-men? That is such a double standard. I don't see you complaining that feminism is "pro-woman". And your claim that MRAism is anti-woman is completely baseless.

It's capitalism, everybody is disposable.

Wow, what a cop out. We have a very real problem in our culture with men being disposable, and their feelings being ignored. Women are simply better off in this regard.

It's pretty hard to maintain your patriarchy if you train your women to fight.

I can just as easily say "it's pretty hard to maintain your matriarchy if you send the women die."

Thank you, FFS, I don't get what is so hard to grasp about this
This is oppression of men, but not because they're men, it's not a "men's rights" issue but a "don't let society be run by militarist aristocrats" issue

If it was women subject to the draft, you damn well bet it would be a "women's issue". Let's not pretend otherwise for a second.

 

[Hygro]

I can just as easily say "it's pretty hard to maintain your matriarchy if you send the women die."

What matriarchy?

 

[civver_764]

What matriarchy?

I'm not here to argue the existence of a matriarchy, just pointing out that the draft isn't any more evidence of a patriarchy than it is of a matriarchy.

 

[REDY]

I had optional subject Gender studies on the university. I know that its quite common in the west, but not in my country. My teachers somewhat agreed that biggest victims of patriarchy system were men and they were generaly much more confused and pushed todays by family and they predicted that next big task will be how will society handle real men not pushed by anyone to their roles. That time I had no idea how close that predicition was.