Rashiminos
Fool Prophet
It's kind off odd to connote being gender nonconforming and the act of spitting when the latter can be used to insult someone.
The Rights of Men
- Thread starter jackelgull
- Start date
- Status
It's kind off odd to connote being gender nonconforming and the act of spitting when the latter can be used to insult someone.
Akka
Moody old mage.
I just thought of any counter-norm idea which went by my head. You can always get back on the good old "walking naked in the street" if you want, but it was a bit overused and I wanted to change.
For the record, I was just thinking of the social norm which considers spitting as dirty and crass, and imagined someone spitting on the ground, not the "spitting in your face" scenario.
Though I think that "norms" are pretty self-explanatory as a social conventions and it really, really takes only a very minimal amount of intellectual honesty to get what I'm meaning without trying to distort it.
Rashiminos
Fool Prophet
You just thought of any idea (with one exception), right? Maybe it would help to not assume such norms are "self-explanatory, " thereby not assuming that the meaning received is the meaning you intended to convey, or not assuming someone is being dishonest about receiving something different.
*Or to gloss over a possible unconscious association between dirtiness, crassness, and departure from gender norms.
Bolded: Incidentally, if I didn't do a little probing, I wouldn't get what you mean. I'd just be sticking with my first or later impression of what the model Akka in my head said. If the model is flawed, so will the impression be.
Ryika
Lazy Wannabe Artista
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2013
- Messages
- 9,393
Male privilege 2917:
- You can be reasonably certain that whenever Men's Issues are discussed on the internet the discussion will quickly end up being about women's or Trans Issues instead.
I find it so disheartening to see people dismissing Men's Issues on the basis of the top 5-15% of men in our society. It is undeniable that the peak of our society is mostly inhabited by men, but so is the very bottom of our society. Most homeless people are men, most mentally ill people are men, most people who end up having to live from social welfare are men (in Germany at least), just to name a few circumstances that are just part of our society in times of peace and relative security. People are so quick to dismiss all of that, sympathy for men who are doing badly in our society is basically non-existent in the minds of many. Sooner or later people will have to start seeing the individuals that they are misjudging so unfairly.
- You can be reasonably certain that whenever Men's Issues are discussed on the internet the discussion will quickly end up being about women's or Trans Issues instead.
I find it so disheartening to see people dismissing Men's Issues on the basis of the top 5-15% of men in our society. It is undeniable that the peak of our society is mostly inhabited by men, but so is the very bottom of our society. Most homeless people are men, most mentally ill people are men, most people who end up having to live from social welfare are men (in Germany at least), just to name a few circumstances that are just part of our society in times of peace and relative security. People are so quick to dismiss all of that, sympathy for men who are doing badly in our society is basically non-existent in the minds of many. Sooner or later people will have to start seeing the individuals that they are misjudging so unfairly.
Generally in the first post if the thread is started by someone with mens' issues.
Ryika
Lazy Wannabe Artista
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2013
- Messages
- 9,393
Probably true in some cases, as with all issues you have some reasonable people, some people who just want to cause trouble and people who have a victim complex.
Anything constructive to say?
Yeah, I used to think I was a victim of my white maleness, but then I discovered my bootstraps.
madviking
north american scum
then call these issues something. clearly "men's rights" doesn't cut it if people are always going to assume 'meninism'.
I have never in the considerable amount of time I've spent on the internet I have seen an MRA address any of these issues EXCEPT WHEN it's time to whine about how no one takes them seriously.
Put that in proportion to so called activists who complain about feminists and tell them to make them a sandwich because they try to take away their computer game tiddies.
Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2009
- Messages
- 8,659
Doesn't seem a very helpful attitude - "Give these issues a better name or I'm not going to pay attention to them".
Manfred Belheim
Moaner Lisa
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2009
- Messages
- 8,659
Erm... okay so explain exactly how that's a bad thing. If you care about issues that the majority of people seem dismissive of or actively hostile to, isn't trying to tackle that pretty much the first issue? The fact that you'd label that as "whining" kind of illustrates the problem really.
That sounds like a very balanced and fair summary without a hint of hyperbole or exaggeration.
They aren't doing that. They complain about feminism, which really has nothing to do with the problems they claim to address (and in some cases could even help overcome them). They only bring up these issues when someone questions the legitimacy of their movement, while they should work on overcoming these issues without that kind of prompting.
Ryika
Lazy Wannabe Artista
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2013
- Messages
- 9,393
As far as I can tell this thread is not and was never limited to the MRM and your post does not respond to what I have said. I am not am MRA, I am not a person who feels the need to actively oppose feminism (the fringe part of feminism already does a good job at making itself look bad enough for people to distance themselves from what is being said and with the good part of feminism I mostly agree), and I'm not scared about people taking away my tiddies in video games, because frankly... I don't care about tiddies in video games most of the time and when I do then the games I play are usually made in Japan anyway, a country whose industry does not seem to give a damn about the political correctness that is on the rise in western countries.
So with that said, how about we stop talking about MRAs now and go back to my actual comment? If you think MRAs do a bad job at talking about men's issues, let's just do a better job than them instead of dismissing the whole thing on basis of what 'they' do. I'll even pick up one topic and go into more detail, given that my first post yesterday was mostly a frustrated reaction to reading through the thread:
Let's talk about males doing bad at school, because that seems to be the main cause of most of the other issues. And once again... I can only talk from a German perspective, but America does not seem to be that different as far as I can tell. Here in Germany that problem has been known for a while now and it has gotten some public attention, but so far little actual change has taken place. We now have a Some of the reasons why boys do worse at school:
- Young girls are generally "less active" during class and especially very young boys often have problems getting rid of their energy during school - this is even worse in times where many schools here in Germany got rid of climbing contraptions (<- I hope that's translated correctly) and other constructions in fear of children hurting themselves (Personal anecdote: I visited my basic school 2 years ago and saw exactly that. Other than a little soccer-area there is nothing left to be used actively). Some people are very quickly to declare boys as "hyperactive" and will often use medication to calm them down, instead of helping them to channel their activity into more positive behavior (which is what drives many men).
- Teachers are very badly educated to deal with active personalities - studies made 15+ years ago already showed that, but not much seems to have changed. To be fair: This issue IS being discussed here in Germany, but so far there is little progress as far as I can tell. Even basic school are still understood to be people who make sure students get knowledge, but not people who form characters. So that is very often where young boys have problems.
- Many boys lack male Role Models that they can identify with. In the "age of single-motherhood" (yes, that was a hyperbole) many boys grow up without a father, grow up with female teachers around them given that most teachers are female these days (in 2004 Germany already had 65+% of teachers being female in all school-forms for non-adults, and 85% in all basic schools). Even in the media the stereotypical "man" is now very often the idiot of the family (Simpsons, Family Guy, pretty much any Sitcom we have here in Germany, to name a few examples.)
- Close-minded gender roles are of course also part of the issue. It is interesting how many of the "traditionally male" jobs either don't exist anymore or are not jobs that boys tend to like these days. Those that remain are usually technical jobs. Still, boys who are told that they "cannot" do the kind of job they would like to do (sometimes even by their teachers) usually do worse in school than boys who have a goal to work towards. It is interesting how the "rules" for females have eased up a lot in the minds of many, but for boys they are still relatively strict.
So yeah... all of that has been known for a while, statistics show that men are doing worse and worse at school, but not much is happening yet. I wonder how far this will go until it is finally commonly accepted that this is in fact a men's issue.
Narz
keeping it real
You bring some good points, the mass diagnoses of boys as "hyper" and needing drugs to "settle down" as young as 5 or 6 is pretty disgusting (and incredibly profitable especially considering Ritalin may lead to depression later in life), that's really for another thread though.
I've thought of starting one on the rights of minors. Not sure about Germany but in the US minors can be put thru a variety of miseries based on their parents beliefs. If a parent is convinced a child has a mental illness they can easily find a doctor to agree and find institutions willing to house & attempt to reprogram their child. Here in the US you can read a new article about various abuses at such "alternative schools" almost daily.
This issue affects both sexes but boys more than girls (as it is with incarceration, with males getting stiffer sentences for the same crimes).
I've thought of starting one on the rights of minors. Not sure about Germany but in the US minors can be put thru a variety of miseries based on their parents beliefs. If a parent is convinced a child has a mental illness they can easily find a doctor to agree and find institutions willing to house & attempt to reprogram their child. Here in the US you can read a new article about various abuses at such "alternative schools" almost daily.
This issue affects both sexes but boys more than girls (as it is with incarceration, with males getting stiffer sentences for the same crimes).
Rashiminos
Fool Prophet
That's a monkeysphere (Dunbar's number) issue, more or less.
brennan
Argumentative Brit
Teacher's are not badly educated on dealing with certain kinds of student, they are too damn busy trying to teach everyone who can sit still and listen to waste all their time on the disruptive elements.
Hilarious that the number of posts on men's rights in these 10 pages can be comfortably counted on the fingers of one hand... mind you with an OP about male privilege how is it any surprise?
Let's talk about how the vast majority of the street homeless are male. Why is this? In the UK at least it is because men are last on the list to be considered for emergency housing need. This has nothing to do with perceptions of masculinity, but rather stems from the privileged status of women as the gender universally acknowledged to be more deserving of protection.
Hilarious that the number of posts on men's rights in these 10 pages can be comfortably counted on the fingers of one hand... mind you with an OP about male privilege how is it any surprise?
Let's talk about how the vast majority of the street homeless are male. Why is this? In the UK at least it is because men are last on the list to be considered for emergency housing need. This has nothing to do with perceptions of masculinity, but rather stems from the privileged status of women as the gender universally acknowledged to be more deserving of protection.
Narz
keeping it real
Brennan, from my experience teachers are poorly educated on how to deal with students who are distracted or disruptive. The sit still, shut up & let the underpaid, unenthusaitic teacher drone on to the lowest common denominator may work for some students but not all.
"Normal" students simply cannot understand how unpleasant and unproductive the school experience is for some of their peers. Of course those students will be tried to fit into the square holes thru chemistry. I do feel society is getting more aware of this and parents are less quick to drug their children.
But that's for another thread.
"Normal" students simply cannot understand how unpleasant and unproductive the school experience is for some of their peers. Of course those students will be tried to fit into the square holes thru chemistry. I do feel society is getting more aware of this and parents are less quick to drug their children.
But that's for another thread.
brennan
Argumentative Brit
I'm well aware that people who know nothing about teacher training think they know what it consists of, or rather what it doesn't consist of. I've been through teacher training and I can tell you that you and they are all wrong. Education theory just doesn't last half a term out in the field. People have this idea that if teachers just 'got it' then teaching would be perfect, they don't realise that every new teacher has exactly the same idea... for about two months.
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
Which was an attitude men fostered to justify giving husbands a lot of control over their wives. Women need to be protected from everything including themselves.
Not to blame the current generation of men for their suffering. Just pointing why I think my post on male privilege was relevant to this.
And I found this article to be nice and relevant. It highlights the issue without necessarily attacking feminists
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11787304/Homelessness-is-a-gendered-issue-and-it-mostly-impacts-men.html
Could any British posters inform how true these statistics are? I'm leary of trusting this article's statistics because of the small sample size. There's like 124 people surveyed to get that 75 per cent of the 124 homeless people surveyed who don’t receive support for alcohol problems, but say it would help them, are men.
brennan
Argumentative Brit
How would that be relevant to the problem today, even if true?
People ask why it is impossible to have these discussions without criticism of feminism, well here's your answer: just try it and count the seconds before someone steps in and tells you that you must blame the Patriarchy.
The street homeless are indeed overwhelmingly male. You can confirm this where I live by walking along the seafront after about 10pm. Or if you wished you could visit the local homeless charity, whose customers are almost exclusively male. Many of them have substance abuse issues amongst other problems.
People ask why it is impossible to have these discussions without criticism of feminism, well here's your answer: just try it and count the seconds before someone steps in and tells you that you must blame the Patriarchy.
The street homeless are indeed overwhelmingly male. You can confirm this where I live by walking along the seafront after about 10pm. Or if you wished you could visit the local homeless charity, whose customers are almost exclusively male. Many of them have substance abuse issues amongst other problems.
- Status
Similar threads
