Yes, likening one person saying to another that they are mansplaining, to defending oneself from literal death by chemical weapon, is misrepresenting my argument. If you are being threatened with death, defending yourself is not punching up or punching down, it’s not even a voluntary action at all, it’s just human instinct and you can’t even call that a choice.
Also, are you trying to paint a random commenter on the Internet who probably didn’t even fully read the post they’re replying to, as an “authority?”
I didn’t liken the two though, because that’s not the representation of your perspective I was interested in. I’m curious in the meta-analytical nature of why you hold this position - as an example, where is the line drawn between “being threatened with death” and “punching up”. I assume we agree on the idea that objecting to calls to gas all the queers isn’t problematic - but is calling someone a bigot for expressing the (deeply homophobic) view that femboys are constantly horny “punching up”? Or, if not there, calling out the ‘did you just assume my gender’ joke?
I’m really very curious where you draw the line. We sincerely appear to agree on damn near every issue except the one of feminism. Why is that? Where do our opinions diverge? Do we disagree on other things that, given our respective positions on so many other topics, one could be forgiven for assuming we’d share?
Aside
(Yes, I am claiming that the internet dipshit is an authority. I don’t consider them one, I think they’re a dipshit - but my opinion isn’t the only opinion that exists, and the undeniable existence of the anti-vax movement has clearly elevated those self-same uninformed internet commenters to positions of trust and authority in society. They even put one in charge of HHS, god help us all.)
Second, and pretty unrelated, I think feminism is a dishonest platform and has far exceeded its mandate. Women are oppressed in the Middle East. To say they’re oppressed here currently, relative to males, is somewhere between dishonest and delusional.
First wave feminism had a very strong reason to exist. Second wave as well. But intersectionality is a complete mess that only creates problems instead of solving them, and ideas like antiracism are positively counterproductive
Anyway, feminism doesn’t have a monopoly on egalitarianism. You can be pro-equality without being feminist, despite what feminism would say.
And gays are literally crucified in the middle east, and yet the fight to be allowed to change one tiny letter on your driver’s license is important. Why does the first one negate the second one?
Sorry, that was snarky. But seriously, where are you getting this? No not in a dismissive way, I think there’s commentary to be found here - but I’m incredibly curious what actual interaction with the subject you’ve had. The opinons you’re presenting here are almost identical to the fundamentally misinformed ones presented by commentators like ThunderF00T, Sargon of Akkad, Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan and Charlie Kirk (I can find examples of all of them repeating this stuff…) and I’m pretty sure you’re smarter than this. I don’t see that you’ve been confronted about these ideas in the last two months on lemmy (and that’s clearly all I can draw on), but have you ever confronted these ideas?
You’ve presented an idea of the world that’s quite optimistic, except on this one point that you hold an inherently contradictory position on. You’re reacting with habitual hostility, not reasoned consideration. Please, please, think about this. Have you ever actually gone and listened to, say, any video essays from feminist figures? Have you ever engaged with feminism at all outside of internet commenting? Or are you being told that this is what feminism is.
Feminism is necessary. It’s not delusional, it’s not dishonest, and women’s and men’s rights are being eroded every day in the western wold because of the current far-right administrations. When does it start being acceptable for women to fight back again, when every victory the second-wave feminists won have been reverted (instead of just half of them)? No, really, that’s a good question. When do women get to have their grievances heard?
(And… what? What’s wrong with intersectionality? It’s literally just the study of biases in culture, it’s a core branch of sociology, and the first tenet of anti-racism is education about the historical realities of racism. There’s nothing more to it than that.)
Well, I’m on my phone so apologies if my replies are shorter generally. I will attempt to answer some of these. Yes, I have engaged in a ton of discussion with hardcore feminists. I have listened to podcasts by them including Stuff Mom Never Told You and unfortunately read Brotopia. This is not my first rodeo. And you don’t need to listen to Tate or Kirk any of those extremely distasteful people to know that feminism claims to speak for men’s interests while completely ignoring them. Feminism 100% claims to be acting in the interest of both men and women, and at least for men, it completely falls short of that. You will try to correct me. That is the problem.
Any ideology that posits “<ideology> is necessary” is self-serving and borderline cult. The ideas of the ideology are what matter, and the ideology itself is just a name. If the ideas were any good, you should just as easily be able to create a new ideology from those ideas with a different name and have it be just as valid.
Which is really funny because masculism and feminism both claim to be about equality. But only feminism is the one that is right, apparently.
A good chunk of the population has been listening to feminism for… decades. What do you mean, when will the grievances be heard? We’ve heard them. Women are oppressed, the second sex. Abortion is a right. Equal access to healthcare. 84 cents to a dollar. Alimony. Some of these are addressable, some of them have been addressed, and some of them are not addressable. It’s complicated.
Perhaps I should be asking you when will men’s grievances be heard?
Sure thing. Thanks for asking. Well, I would say main ones are:
Family court — completely asymmetrical treatment of men, basically for every 7 chances a woman gets in family court, a man gets 1. This is a made up number but it’s to get the essence across.
Male disposability is widely accepted and not compensated for at all. A good example of this is mandatory selective service which still exists today.
As a result of the accepted disposability, men have a far higher death rate both by accident and by suicide rate (which is 400% that of women)
Title IX imposes unjust punishments on men in colleges by favoring “preponderance of the evidence” standard over the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard — basically, if there’s even a slight chance of sexual misconduct, men can be thrown out of college without any kind of trial.
Asymmetrical definitions of rape which only apply to men in definition and also in practice are enforced mostly on men.
The above denial of female rapists leading to severe mental health issues for men who are raped or sexually abused by their female parters.
Generally men’s lagging acceptance rates into university (this would be more of an equity issue on par with the 83 cents to a dollar issue, as opposed to an equality issue like the others)
Demonization of fathers — the number of stories of fathers getting dirty looks for taking their kid into a changing room or even just existing in a playground with their kid are unending.
Last but not least, “male loneliness epidemic” which I think is a stupid phrase and this is one of the more unaddressable issues by everyone but it’s still a problem.
I never said the core idea of feminism isn’t egalitarianism. Just that you can be egalitarian without being a feminist, since feminism involves so many other ideas. They don’t all spring from “equality” and equality itself has many different conceptualizations. Feminism’s conceptualization of how to achieve equality is essentially limited to, “women should be given more supports” which is not a good way of thinking about it any more than an elevator’s best way of operating is “just move the person higher and higher.”
Okay I generally hate point by point responses so I’m sorry in advance, and I’ve tried to format this in way that will make it less bad to read. Also this is very american-centric, though the trends to tend to carry over across western cultures because of that convenient hegemony:
Family Court
I’m sorry, this one is a common piece of misinformation. While on the surface the statistics are clear that yes men are seldom (~10% of cases) awarded full custody, 90%+ of child custody agreements (formal or informal - it’s actually quite uncommon for a formal custody agreement to exist) are decided completely independently of the courts, and those agreements are what this statistic is based off of. Men nearly always give up custody (and yes doubtlessly the impact of the perception of court bias doubtlessly plays into this, but not enough to shift the balance this severely). The reason this is misrepresented is that THERE IS NO REPORTING on child custody decisions from the courts - it’s straight up illegal to release that information in the US and is similarly restricted in pretty much every western country - and anyone who claims that these statistics are from court decisions are either wrong or lying to you. There is almost no data on this, and the oft-cited PEW study (which was taken down) that these numbers crome from is extremely explicit about the source of the data.
Male Disposability
Yeah, this one sucks (and has sucked for all of human civilization). However, not only have feminist groups in the US been suing for decades to allow women inclusion into selective service, they are also the ones trying to get women allowed into combat roles because they legally cannot be put into them. So, feminists are also aware and also would like this fixed, and have been fighting hard to get it changed. It’s awful, but it really should be equal-opportunity awful.
Death Rate
The male death rate by accident is extremely complicated, but broad strokes is down to both a culture of heavy drinking (which is vastly improving in Gen Z/Alpha!) and that men do nearly all manual labor (the most dangerous category of jobs). There is a push for more women to be included in manual labor jobs, but it isn’t overly vehement - both biological differences make this a difficult argument, and manual labor sucks. Why would anyone want to do that if they don’t have to (this excludes skilled trades, which are HEAVILY biased against women and do not require pure muscle density - I can elaborate on how vital female welders are, if you would like, but for the sake of brevity I will delete that three paragraph rant).
Title IX
Okay this one pisses me off: This is absolutely not how title nine works, and I say that as a university professor who has to do a yearly training on Title IX, who’s been subject to Title IX hearings for sexual misconduct (both dropped, suits were not brought by the victims but a male student “on their behalf” and without informing them so that was fun, they both found out and immediately protested on my behalf so fuck yea…) and has sat on the panel for Title IX misconduct cases (though in the past twenty years at my uni, there has never been a Title IX hearing for sexual misconduct brought against a male student. It’s almost impossible to get it to happen). This just isn’t at all accurate, and I do not know where you got this information from because it is just wrong. Also, Title IX investigations are subject at very least to reasonable doubt (not preponderance of evidence, because it is a civil issue not criminal). Title IX explicitly proscribes hearings and the conduct of those hearings is subject to legal oversight and public review as well, so… yeah, go find me some examples of this having happened please.
No argument, this one is terrible. Women also want this fixed, see above for how fucked up our rape laws are (and then just start drinking because it’s not getting better any time soon, thanks alt-right).
Male Acceptance Rates
Again a real fucker of a pet peeve: Men are being accepted less on the whole because we are getting fewer male applicants. There are doubtlessly cultural baises behind this, but it’s not the unis choosing more women over men - we’re choosing the same number from our applicants, but there are just not as many men as there were previously (also, application rates for women have also decreased, though markedly less. Application volumes are down across the whole of the educational system!)
Demonization of Fathers
This one, man, yeah this one is a real fucker. I won’t expound too much, but the cultural shift towards the fear of pedophilia and kidnapping is a fascinating subject to get into (while you drink. Or smoke. Or do whatever escapist activity gets you through the day because oof).
Male Loneliness Epidemic
Man, yeah, I don’t know about this one. The death of 3rd spaces has been horrible for society, and covid just exacerbated that. It’s just hard to make new friends anymore, boy do I know that pain. Just sucks. I’m lumping the x400% suicide rate from above in here, like, there’s just too much here to really be encapsulated in a lemmy post. It just sucks. It’s why mental healthcare is so critical to… well, establish in the first place. Start drinking again, though, 'cuz that’s never going to happen…
Feminism’s conceptualization of how to achieve equality is essentially limited to, “women should be given more supports”
I’m… look, I’m really trying so hard not to just go “no you’re wrong” in this whole conversation, and except for a couple points above (which are, sadly, just wrong) I’ve been pretty good about refraining… but this is just wrong? I’m truly curious where you got this from, especially since you say you’ve both read Brotopia and SMNTY and that’s completely antithetical to the core message of both. No seriously, who’s saying this? You see it presented in rage bait subreddits like r/TumblrInAction or r/TheRedPill, but I genuinely doubt you browse those cesspits so… I’m just not sure where you’re getting this. This has never been the messaging of feminism. Please, why do you think this is what’s happening?
(edit: skipped over the egalitarian thing whoops - I was attempting to paraphrase, not quote directly. Though you’re right, I read some nuance into your response about that which was probably excessive on my part)
Saying someone is mansplaining is a normative statement. You’re stating a moral position by using the word. One aspect of that moral position is the use of this obnoxious spelling, “splaining,” which is clearly meant to denigrate the desire to explain things. This is anti-intellectual, yet it’s couched in the oh-so-innocent veneer of being pro-feminism.
To contrast, calling someone a bigot is stating a moral position, but the only moral position it states is that bigotry is bad, which isn’t anti-intellectual.
There are several parts of the word’s meaning, some of them optional:
man explaining thing to woman
poorly / incorrectly
dismissively
that she already knows
to someone who knows more about it
But the only real requirement is #1. Despite what anyone says, even if the thing is not explained dismissively and is explained well to someone who doesn’t know about it, you could still call it mansplaining because it’s punching up. Which again only serves to say that attempting to explain is the shameful part.
Punching up again. You keep using that word, and I don’t think it means what I think it means. You’re using it as a stand-in for asserting inherent superiority over another person, but correcting someone on the internet does not actually imply that. You’re trying to present it as an inherently hateful and cruel act, and it’s still not. You even present that it’s not, in this very comment.
But the only real requirement is #1
Why? No, seriously, who says? You’re the one making that claim here, and you appear to be the only one doing that. Why is that the only real requirement, and why does it conflict with all the broadly accepted definitions (including the one you just provided)?
Yes, likening one person saying to another that they are mansplaining, to defending oneself from literal death by chemical weapon, is misrepresenting my argument. If you are being threatened with death, defending yourself is not punching up or punching down, it’s not even a voluntary action at all, it’s just human instinct and you can’t even call that a choice.
Also, are you trying to paint a random commenter on the Internet who probably didn’t even fully read the post they’re replying to, as an “authority?”
(re edit: thanks, I appreciate that)
I didn’t liken the two though, because that’s not the representation of your perspective I was interested in. I’m curious in the meta-analytical nature of why you hold this position - as an example, where is the line drawn between “being threatened with death” and “punching up”. I assume we agree on the idea that objecting to calls to gas all the queers isn’t problematic - but is calling someone a bigot for expressing the (deeply homophobic) view that femboys are constantly horny “punching up”? Or, if not there, calling out the ‘did you just assume my gender’ joke?
I’m really very curious where you draw the line. We sincerely appear to agree on damn near every issue except the one of feminism. Why is that? Where do our opinions diverge? Do we disagree on other things that, given our respective positions on so many other topics, one could be forgiven for assuming we’d share?
Aside
(Yes, I am claiming that the internet dipshit is an authority. I don’t consider them one, I think they’re a dipshit - but my opinion isn’t the only opinion that exists, and the undeniable existence of the anti-vax movement has clearly elevated those self-same uninformed internet commenters to positions of trust and authority in society. They even put one in charge of HHS, god help us all.)
Second, and pretty unrelated, I think feminism is a dishonest platform and has far exceeded its mandate. Women are oppressed in the Middle East. To say they’re oppressed here currently, relative to males, is somewhere between dishonest and delusional.
First wave feminism had a very strong reason to exist. Second wave as well. But intersectionality is a complete mess that only creates problems instead of solving them, and ideas like antiracism are positively counterproductive
Anyway, feminism doesn’t have a monopoly on egalitarianism. You can be pro-equality without being feminist, despite what feminism would say.
And gays are literally crucified in the middle east, and yet the fight to be allowed to change one tiny letter on your driver’s license is important. Why does the first one negate the second one?
Sorry, that was snarky. But seriously, where are you getting this? No not in a dismissive way, I think there’s commentary to be found here - but I’m incredibly curious what actual interaction with the subject you’ve had. The opinons you’re presenting here are almost identical to the fundamentally misinformed ones presented by commentators like ThunderF00T, Sargon of Akkad, Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan and Charlie Kirk (I can find examples of all of them repeating this stuff…) and I’m pretty sure you’re smarter than this. I don’t see that you’ve been confronted about these ideas in the last two months on lemmy (and that’s clearly all I can draw on), but have you ever confronted these ideas?
You’ve presented an idea of the world that’s quite optimistic, except on this one point that you hold an inherently contradictory position on. You’re reacting with habitual hostility, not reasoned consideration. Please, please, think about this. Have you ever actually gone and listened to, say, any video essays from feminist figures? Have you ever engaged with feminism at all outside of internet commenting? Or are you being told that this is what feminism is.
Feminism is necessary. It’s not delusional, it’s not dishonest, and women’s and men’s rights are being eroded every day in the western wold because of the current far-right administrations. When does it start being acceptable for women to fight back again, when every victory the second-wave feminists won have been reverted (instead of just half of them)? No, really, that’s a good question. When do women get to have their grievances heard?
(And… what? What’s wrong with intersectionality? It’s literally just the study of biases in culture, it’s a core branch of sociology, and the first tenet of anti-racism is education about the historical realities of racism. There’s nothing more to it than that.)
Well, I’m on my phone so apologies if my replies are shorter generally. I will attempt to answer some of these. Yes, I have engaged in a ton of discussion with hardcore feminists. I have listened to podcasts by them including Stuff Mom Never Told You and unfortunately read Brotopia. This is not my first rodeo. And you don’t need to listen to Tate or Kirk any of those extremely distasteful people to know that feminism claims to speak for men’s interests while completely ignoring them. Feminism 100% claims to be acting in the interest of both men and women, and at least for men, it completely falls short of that. You will try to correct me. That is the problem.
Any ideology that posits “<ideology> is necessary” is self-serving and borderline cult. The ideas of the ideology are what matter, and the ideology itself is just a name. If the ideas were any good, you should just as easily be able to create a new ideology from those ideas with a different name and have it be just as valid.
Which is really funny because masculism and feminism both claim to be about equality. But only feminism is the one that is right, apparently.
A good chunk of the population has been listening to feminism for… decades. What do you mean, when will the grievances be heard? We’ve heard them. Women are oppressed, the second sex. Abortion is a right. Equal access to healthcare. 84 cents to a dollar. Alimony. Some of these are addressable, some of them have been addressed, and some of them are not addressable. It’s complicated.
Perhaps I should be asking you when will men’s grievances be heard?
I’m sure I’ll get into the rest in a moment, but for the sake of vamping for time while I’m cooking dinner: to your mind, what are men’s grievances?
edit: And for a bonus, since you’ve already rejected that the core idea of feminism is “egalitarianism”, what is the core idea?
Sure thing. Thanks for asking. Well, I would say main ones are:
I never said the core idea of feminism isn’t egalitarianism. Just that you can be egalitarian without being a feminist, since feminism involves so many other ideas. They don’t all spring from “equality” and equality itself has many different conceptualizations. Feminism’s conceptualization of how to achieve equality is essentially limited to, “women should be given more supports” which is not a good way of thinking about it any more than an elevator’s best way of operating is “just move the person higher and higher.”
Okay I generally hate point by point responses so I’m sorry in advance, and I’ve tried to format this in way that will make it less bad to read. Also this is very american-centric, though the trends to tend to carry over across western cultures because of that convenient hegemony:
Family Court
I’m sorry, this one is a common piece of misinformation. While on the surface the statistics are clear that yes men are seldom (~10% of cases) awarded full custody, 90%+ of child custody agreements (formal or informal - it’s actually quite uncommon for a formal custody agreement to exist) are decided completely independently of the courts, and those agreements are what this statistic is based off of. Men nearly always give up custody (and yes doubtlessly the impact of the perception of court bias doubtlessly plays into this, but not enough to shift the balance this severely). The reason this is misrepresented is that THERE IS NO REPORTING on child custody decisions from the courts - it’s straight up illegal to release that information in the US and is similarly restricted in pretty much every western country - and anyone who claims that these statistics are from court decisions are either wrong or lying to you. There is almost no data on this, and the oft-cited PEW study (which was taken down) that these numbers crome from is extremely explicit about the source of the data.
Male Disposability
Yeah, this one sucks (and has sucked for all of human civilization). However, not only have feminist groups in the US been suing for decades to allow women inclusion into selective service, they are also the ones trying to get women allowed into combat roles because they legally cannot be put into them. So, feminists are also aware and also would like this fixed, and have been fighting hard to get it changed. It’s awful, but it really should be equal-opportunity awful.
Death Rate
The male death rate by accident is extremely complicated, but broad strokes is down to both a culture of heavy drinking (which is vastly improving in Gen Z/Alpha!) and that men do nearly all manual labor (the most dangerous category of jobs). There is a push for more women to be included in manual labor jobs, but it isn’t overly vehement - both biological differences make this a difficult argument, and manual labor sucks. Why would anyone want to do that if they don’t have to (this excludes skilled trades, which are HEAVILY biased against women and do not require pure muscle density - I can elaborate on how vital female welders are, if you would like, but for the sake of brevity I will delete that three paragraph rant).
Title IX
Okay this one pisses me off: This is absolutely not how title nine works, and I say that as a university professor who has to do a yearly training on Title IX, who’s been subject to Title IX hearings for sexual misconduct (both dropped, suits were not brought by the victims but a male student “on their behalf” and without informing them so that was fun, they both found out and immediately protested on my behalf so fuck yea…) and has sat on the panel for Title IX misconduct cases (though in the past twenty years at my uni, there has never been a Title IX hearing for sexual misconduct brought against a male student. It’s almost impossible to get it to happen). This just isn’t at all accurate, and I do not know where you got this information from because it is just wrong. Also, Title IX investigations are subject at very least to
reasonable doubt(notpreponderance of evidence, because it is a civil issue not criminal). Title IX explicitly proscribes hearings and the conduct of those hearings is subject to legal oversight and public review as well, so… yeah, go find me some examples of this having happened please.Rape
yeah, our laws about rape are terrible. Hell, there are a number of states that still differentiate between marital and non-marital rape, and explicitly state that it’s only male-on-female (edit: marital) assault that qualifies. Here is an amazing article on how fucked up rape laws, and cultural attitudes surrounding rape, are and what feminists are doing to change the laws for both genders
Female Rapists
No argument, this one is terrible. Women also want this fixed, see above for how fucked up our rape laws are (and then just start drinking because it’s not getting better any time soon, thanks alt-right).
Male Acceptance Rates
Again a real fucker of a pet peeve: Men are being accepted less on the whole because we are getting fewer male applicants. There are doubtlessly cultural baises behind this, but it’s not the unis choosing more women over men - we’re choosing the same number from our applicants, but there are just not as many men as there were previously (also, application rates for women have also decreased, though markedly less. Application volumes are down across the whole of the educational system!)
Demonization of Fathers
This one, man, yeah this one is a real fucker. I won’t expound too much, but the cultural shift towards the fear of pedophilia and kidnapping is a fascinating subject to get into (while you drink. Or smoke. Or do whatever escapist activity gets you through the day because oof).
Male Loneliness Epidemic
Man, yeah, I don’t know about this one. The death of 3rd spaces has been horrible for society, and covid just exacerbated that. It’s just hard to make new friends anymore, boy do I know that pain. Just sucks. I’m lumping the x400% suicide rate from above in here, like, there’s just too much here to really be encapsulated in a lemmy post. It just sucks. It’s why mental healthcare is so critical to… well, establish in the first place. Start drinking again, though, 'cuz that’s never going to happen…
I’m… look, I’m really trying so hard not to just go “no you’re wrong” in this whole conversation, and except for a couple points above (which are, sadly, just wrong) I’ve been pretty good about refraining… but this is just wrong? I’m truly curious where you got this from, especially since you say you’ve both read Brotopia and SMNTY and that’s completely antithetical to the core message of both. No seriously, who’s saying this? You see it presented in rage bait subreddits like r/TumblrInAction or r/TheRedPill, but I genuinely doubt you browse those cesspits so… I’m just not sure where you’re getting this. This has never been the messaging of feminism. Please, why do you think this is what’s happening?
(edit: skipped over the egalitarian thing whoops - I was attempting to paraphrase, not quote directly. Though you’re right, I read some nuance into your response about that which was probably excessive on my part)
Saying someone is mansplaining is a normative statement. You’re stating a moral position by using the word. One aspect of that moral position is the use of this obnoxious spelling, “splaining,” which is clearly meant to denigrate the desire to explain things. This is anti-intellectual, yet it’s couched in the oh-so-innocent veneer of being pro-feminism.
To contrast, calling someone a bigot is stating a moral position, but the only moral position it states is that bigotry is bad, which isn’t anti-intellectual.
I’m sorry, it’s gotten late here, is your basis for claiming it as an anti-intellectual term really just that the word is a malformed portmanteau?
There are several parts of the word’s meaning, some of them optional:
But the only real requirement is #1. Despite what anyone says, even if the thing is not explained dismissively and is explained well to someone who doesn’t know about it, you could still call it mansplaining because it’s punching up. Which again only serves to say that attempting to explain is the shameful part.
Punching up again. You keep using that word, and I don’t think it means what I think it means. You’re using it as a stand-in for asserting inherent superiority over another person, but correcting someone on the internet does not actually imply that. You’re trying to present it as an inherently hateful and cruel act, and it’s still not. You even present that it’s not, in this very comment.
Why? No, seriously, who says? You’re the one making that claim here, and you appear to be the only one doing that. Why is that the only real requirement, and why does it conflict with all the broadly accepted definitions (including the one you just provided)?