The Rights of Men

[Ryika]

It doesn't have to be as a matter of course, but it often is. For example, one of the things that men's rights advocates often complain about (rightly) is that when domestic violence calls are made to the police, the man is presumed to be the guilty party nearly 100% of the time, in spite of the fact that studies show that domestic violence is a roughly 50/50 split. The reason the man is presumed guilty almost all of the time is because domestic abuse programs and law enforcement training for these situations are based on the Duluth Model, which is based on feminist patriarchy theory. In practice, there is no way to correct this imbalance without overturning the Duluth Model, and there's no way to overturn the Duluth Model without criticizing the feminist theory that it's based off of in the first place.

So, yes, in some areas it is a zero sum game, because for some of the issues that they talk about there is no way forward that doesn't start with criticizing aspects feminist theory, which of course many feminists see as an attack on all of feminism whether or not it is.

I agree with you, but I think it's worth noting that this is NOT a zero-sum game when refering to the genders. Both genders will profit from that in the end and nobody who is not a perpetrator loses ground - male victims will no longer be assumed to be guilty by default, female perpetrators will get the therapy they need (or the punishment that is adequate) and female victims will still get the help they already get.

The only ones who lose are the type of feminists who cling to their theory and refuse to look at the evidence.

 

[brennan]

And with reference to WolfBeckett's post (and the last 50 posts), is there not in fact a perfectly straightforward reason why men's rights frequently involves the critique of the feminist perspective?

 

[Farm Boy]

Why are we talking about women?

What are your views on the questions I asked Jackelgull? You're welcome too Senethro! I'm interested in what you have to say? I like your opinions, generally, even when I think they're wrong. What do you think(and everyone) about the rates at which we drug little boys into compliance during primary school? Is this an appropriate adaptation to inculcate growing boys into an increasingly sedentary society where physical prowess and energy is not only unnecessary but perhaps also unwelcome? As in, it's dangerous(the physical energy level)? Or is it not appropriate(the drugging)? If it's not appropriate, what do we do with little boys? They need to move more than state curriculum builds in time for, often enough. There's multiple choice tests to prep for and funding to be earned. And we know better funding yields better lifelong results!

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I agree with you, but I think it's worth noting that this is NOT a zero-sum game when refering to the genders. Both genders will profit from that in the end and nobody who is not a perpetrator loses ground - male victims will no longer be assumed to be guilty by default, female perpetrators will get the therapy they need (or the punishment that is adequate) and female victims will still get the help they already get.

The only ones who lose are the type of feminists who cling to their theory and refuse to look at the evidence.

Yes, I assumed that last bit was what Senethro meant since he specifically mentioned feminism in his post. Some parts of MRA activism may be a zero sum game in terms of feminism, but in terms of actual gender equality the things that MRA's have a good point on will of course end up benefiting all of society in the end. The good thing about correcting injustices that are actually unjust is that our whole society becomes safer and more prosperous as a result.

What are your views on the questions I asked Jackelgull? You're welcome too Senethro! I'm interested in what you have to say? I like your opinions, generally, even when I think they're wrong. What do you think(and everyone) about the rates at which we drug little boys into compliance during primary school? Is this an appropriate adaptation to inculcate growing boys into an increasingly sedentary society where physical prowess and energy is not only unnecessary but perhaps also unwelcome? As in, it's dangerous(the physical energy level)? Or is it not appropriate(the drugging)? If it's not appropriate, what do we do with little boys? They need to move more than state curriculum builds in time for, often enough. There's multiple choice tests to prep for and funding to be earned. And we know better funding yields better lifelong results!

I doubt it will be any great revelation at this point to learn that my opinion on this is that it's monstrous. I have posted elsewhere on this forum in the past regarding this topic. It's a huge problem. The important factor to consider is that ADD is almost never diagnosed according to any kind of objective scientific methodology. It is diagnosed (and treated via brain altering drugs) based almost 100% on the subjective reports of teachers and parents, and the doctor just makes a subjective judgement call based on that. That is not how medicine is supposed to work. Can you imagine if people could just walk in to a doctor's office, report symptoms, and get prescribed drugs without any further tests? This is a horrible standard to have for the diagnosis of any mental problem, much less one being diagnosed in small children.

This next bit is conjecture, but in my opinion the problem is being caused by a lack of male teachers in such education coupled with increasing rates of single motherhood. I think many women, having never grown up as a boy, simply don't really understand young boys. They expect them to behave the same as young girls (cause they learned in college that gender is a social construct, you know, no difference at all in the way male and female brains work!), which they are familiar with, and when the boys don't perform to that particular standard, it must be because there's something wrong with them. I'd be willing to bet good money that if we had a more even split between male and female primary school teachers and less young boys being raised without a male parent in their life the diagnosis rate for these things would go way down.

 

[brennan]

I can't speak for the US, but in the UK an educational establishment, or doctor, would have to refer someone to an appropriate expert e.g. an educational psychologist, in order to obtain such a diagnosis. We've never had the Ritalin issue to anything like the same extent I hear about in the States. Rowdy boys do however continue to be a major nuisance in our classrooms and typify underachievement as a result.

Lastly - and I don't have any large body of evidence to go on here, just personal observation: female teachers tend to report that they find girls more difficult to deal with than boys, whilst male teachers experience more difficulties with boys. I suspect a lot of it is competition with teachers for social status and the genders differentiate themselves heavily in this regard. Female teachers report 'catty' comments about how they dress for example, wannabe alpha males attempt to encroach on the teacher's command of the physical space.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

I would imagine teachers reporting "catty" comments or boys acting like "wannabe alpha males" must be high school or maybe middle school teachers. I was primarily talking about primary school age kids (K-5), if kids in the 5-11 year old range are already making catty comments and behaving like alpha bros in England you guys have got bigger problems to deal with .

 

[warpus]

See the post immediately prior to yours. Anti-feminism is a commonly held belief by internet MRAs.

Why are we talking about extremists, then? In a thread about the rights of African Americans, would the conversation revolve around the KKK or the black panthers or worse?

What are your views on the questions I asked Jackelgull?

Sorry, I don't have much time right now, but I will respond to this one:

Where do you think we need to work on men's issues

Where to begin, you mean? Does it matter? I suppose it does.. So.. Why not start with the some more serious ones?

Why not just focus on sorting out anyone's issues, if they exist? In the context of this thread, since it's supposed to be a focus on the issues that men face, I think a huge problem is so many middle aged men committing suicide. I'm not an expert, I haven't studied up on all the issues men face or whatever, but that seems to be a huge red flag. It probably has a multitude of causes, though.

So are you asking me where we begin? Or what we focus on? Or what? Because it's easy to spot the issues, but in a lot of cases not so easy to come up with solutions.

I suppose we could start by trying to convince everyone that some men have issues that we need to deal with, as a society? Because right now it seems to me that nobody wants to talk about this stuff, and those who want to talk about it are often labelled as "MRA extremists" or sexists or whatever.

 

[brennan]

Like the vast majority of males in teaching, I have no experience of that age group. If I take my male privilege into a primary school I risk being perceived as a paedophile because, what with society valuing masculine traits over feminine ones an' all, being a man with any interest in children makes you a revolting pervert. Obviously.

 

[jackelgull]

So Jackelgull - we have parts of our society that suck for men or, depending on how people like things phrased, where men suck in society(it's practically the same thing when it comes down to it), what are they, where are they, and why? I'm not entirely sure, but that's not surprising, it's a big issue and I'm really not all that clever. But there are a couple places we can pick at.

Our children lack sufficient male role models during early life. Not all of them, that would be an idiot's statement, but enough of them and with frightening regularity. Learning about masculinity from TV and magazines(oh yea, it's 2015) and the porn-filled internet is wicked terrible. We need men in households with children in them. Hell, they don't necessarily even have to do the diapers or dishes though that would help, but they do need to be there. Not fighting crime or climaxing on faces, but being dad. We need them in early childhood education. Male elementary school teachers still get looked at as kinda weird or kinda dangerous too often. Male daycare providers? I'm sure they're out there, but I haven't met them. Historical male employment fields which have fueled the day in day out incomes of vast tracts of the middle class in the USA, rather than the CEOs and co-sociopaths, are drying up. Just like the middle class itself. Without being equally valued as a person person, committed to family and children rather than the pursuit of money, male identity dries up. If male identity dries up, then nobody wants them around since they're "useless(adjective, not CFC community member!)." Useless members of society are dangerous, and we already know we send the dangerous to our state rape dungeons. Which is also a problem, particularly for men of color, for whom all these issues are grotesquely cariacatured.

If overlarge gender disparity in advanced, powerful, and highly compensated careers is a social problem worthy of constant attention, and it is, then overlarge gender disparity in the positions that build the muddy foundation of society rather than just the spired towers is too. It's a cultural problem all the way from the top to the bottom. Equalizing treatment by the state in mandated parental leaves and custody cases is just low hanging fruit. If we're not willing to make those things happen, even if it seems weird or unnecessary, then I think we're just not committed to the idea of equality between the genders at all.

Where do you think we need to work on men's issues(boys' issues too, those are also men's issues)? Same places but with different reasoning? Different places? I'm curious as to what you think at your age and with your experience the problem areas are.

Here's something I've noticed about men- when something that happens to cause them pain directed inwards, they turn it into anger directed outwards. I don't mean this to be the case for all men, or only for men, but I tend to see it more often in men. In my school, the student body has witnessed 3 freshman fights, all of them between men. I have in my entire 4 years of high school, only ever heard of two cases of female classmates fighting.

And on the case of role models, I think we have to ask- why is there a lack? Is it because more men work longer hours and thus have less time to spend? How would we fix that? Reminding men that spending time with their family is important? Raising wages?

Is it because more and more and being thrown into jail thanks to a long standing drug war? How about we end the drug war? Or if we allowed more visitation hours for criminals and their children to meet? Even if criminals aren't the best fathers, they are often better than no dad.

For the male elementary school teachers and male daycare workers being rare, well we get down to the problem of can we do anything about it? I doubt anybody wants to force more men into the field. In order to make early child care work more acceptable to men, how do we convince them that to take such a job does not say anything negative about them?


I'm sorry I only have more questions rather than answers.

 

[Ryika]

And on the case of role models, I think we have to ask- why is there a lack? Is it because more men work longer hours and thus have less time to spend? How would we fix that? Reminding men that spending time with their family is important? Raising wages?

Often times there are no fathers in the first place. About one third of american families with children below the age of 18 are single-parent families, most of these are mothers with children after a divorce.

So reducing the amount of dysfunctional families would already be a big improvement. Unfortunately many of these families are low-income families, so very often family-therapy would not even be possible, which leads to the vicious circle of breeding children that themselves are then not fit for a working relationship in the next generation.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Single parent households + teachers not being valued enough in general + a pervasive social stigma that paints men interested in working with children as highly suspect at best and straight up pedophiles at worst = lack of male role models. Men simply have no incentive to go into child care roles right now, they will be paid badly and socially stigmatized by at least parts of the community and will not get any respect from the rest of community to balance that out. Add to that no active father and young boys are left to get their role models from television and video games, where they are bombarded with the very sorts of alpha-douche men that are most likely to knock women up and then bail on the children, perpetuating the cycle.

 

[warpus]

Men tend to gravitate towards careers that pay more, historically speaking. Becoming a teacher in America is not such a great career choice these days, so on top of all the other issues mentioned, there is the one of money and benefits. It's not such an attractive career choice, so those who mean to maximise their income and sanity stay away.

 

[Flying Pig]

Surely this is a perfect area in which you could work with feminists? Men are stigmatised in childcare roles because we think of caring for children as women's work. The exact same social force that makes it difficult for women to be engineers makes it difficult for men to be primary-school teachers. A bit of feminism here seems like a good thing for everyone.

Warpus - I think, all things being equal, that's true for everyone, isn't it?

 

[warpus]

Sure, but show me one feminist initiative that attempts to get more men hired into those positions. I don't think you'll find many.. or any even.

Feminists generally focus on issues that affect women, not men. And that's fine I think.

 

[Flying Pig]

That doesn't matter, though, if there are feminist initiatives which will (even if as a side-effect) achieve that result. I suggest that the general work against the idea of gender roles is exactly that. The reason that people say that men don't need a counter-feminism is that most men's issues are the other side of a women's issue - this being a prime example.

 

[Ryika]

That doesn't matter, though, if there are feminist initiatives which will (even if as a side-effect) achieve that result. I suggest that the general work against the idea of gender roles is exactly that. The reason that people say that men don't need a counter-feminism is that most men's issues are the other side of a women's issue - this being a prime example.

The problem is that many of the "fringe" feminists will oppose all of this or try to shout down a debate about male teachers because they claim that it takes away time that should be spent solving female problems, while not really caring about the reality behind the rhetoric. "Men already run society, now you want us to work on getting them to teach our kids?" is an actual argument that I've read not only once.

But again, I think this is an issue where most non-ideological people could easily work together to fix the problem, once it is understood and accepted that it exists. That's really the hard part, making society take a problem that affects men seriously and then it will be relatively easy to fix.

At the point where an actual public debate about these issues can take place it's really easy - just get the extremists on both sides out of the picture and there you go, a solution is likely to be worked on soon, by people who tend towards feminism, by people who tend towards mra-ish talking points and everyone in-between.

 

[brennan]

In my school, the student body has witnessed 3 freshman fights, all of them between men. I have in my entire 4 years of high school, only ever heard of two cases of female classmates fighting.

Male fights are physical and highly visible, female ones are more social and protracted and do not come to your attention.

And on the case of role models, I think we have to ask- why is there a lack? Is it because more men work longer hours and thus have less time to spend? How would we fix that? Reminding men that spending time with their family is important? Raising wages?

Because we are all routinely told in the media that male behaviours are bad behaviours?

Men know that spending time with their family is important. But not as important as holding down your job so you can feed them, house them, clothe them. In the US and UK there is a huge amount of pressure on workers to overcommit to their working life. Presenteeism, habitual overtime etc. Changing that over-work culture would probably help a lot and the evidence is overwhelming that men are far more ready to over work at the expense of their family lives than women on the whole.

For the male elementary school teachers and male daycare workers being rare, well we get down to the problem of can we do anything about it? I doubt anybody wants to force more men into the field. In order to make early child care work more acceptable to men, how do we convince them that to take such a job does not say anything negative about them?

For a start we have to address rhetoric about men being a danger to women and children... now where does that come from?

 

[warpus]

That doesn't matter, though, if there are feminist initiatives which will (even if as a side-effect) achieve that result. I suggest that the general work against the idea of gender roles is exactly that. The reason that people say that men don't need a counter-feminism is that most men's issues are the other side of a women's issue - this being a prime example.

A lot of issues need solving head-on, not to be sort of half-arssedly solved as a side-effect of something else. Come on

 

[jackelgull]

Heavy is the crown, all that burden of decisions sure gets you down.

This is just obviously silly. I'd rather be a person than a possession. Any threat of death hung over everyone, but some classes of people got no say in it. You can't be oppressed by this privilege.

Understanding the viewpoint of the privileged is important though. In APUSH history, when my teacher was talking about pre antebellum South and the history of slavery, he taught the institution of slavery from the perspective of the planter elite, as well as from the perspective of the slave. How can you get a complete picture if you leave out such an important part of the picture?

And if you understand history from all viewpoints, the narrative becomes more complex. And I say this as someone who is supportive of feminism. I'm just tired of this females only as victims narrative. Yes, females had reduced agency, but it also true they manipulated gender stereotypes to their advantage. One of the great victories of the Progressive era for females (at least in the minds of female Progressives) was the upholding of a law that required better working conditions for females under the justification that their value as baby makers and child rearers demanded they receive special protection. This does not mean I deny oppression existed, or that it exists.

 

[Flying Pig]

A lot of issues need solving head-on, not to be sort of half-arssedly solved as a side-effect of something else. Come on

I don't think there's any half-assedness about it: every step forward for female engineers is, almost by definition, a step forward for male teachers. If nothing else, it's an unhappy female applicant moved away from a teaching job towards an engineering job.

That said, Ryika makes an excellent post, except:

making society take a problem that affects men seriously and then it will be relatively easy to fix.

The problem affecting women and the problem affecting men aren't just related - they are the same problem!