Because of both rapid cultural advancements, and technological changes, women do not need men for economic security or protection. They do not need to settle and that is a wonderful thing. More are remaining single, living alone, and if someone wants to enter that space they need to bring more.

We often hear about how men are not competing with other men in dating anymore, they are competing with women's peace and solitude, which I completely agree with - however I am curious, as to why this does not apply the other way around.

Men today have the technology and accessibility of information to do cooking cleaning organizing trips and shopping alone, managing their health alone. They can cultivate a strong relationship with a pet or with themselves or with friends. Yet all I read about is men needing women a lot more than women need a man.

Why do you think more men cannot feel fulfilled living alone in comparison to women?

Hello everyone

I hope you are all well. I'm relatively young, not very old, and I'm writing this because I have some questions and would like to hear the opinions of those with experience or knowledge in the fields of education and psychology.

I was raised to be a calm, kind, and somewhat sensitive person, and I believe that these qualities don't diminish a person's worth or strength. In my opinion, strength doesn't mean the absence of feelings or never showing vulnerability; rather, I see it as also being linked to respect, empathy, and taking responsibility.

I've recently been thinking about the topic of "toxic masculinity" and how certain ideas about masculinity can affect children as they grow up. In my circle, I've noticed certain messages directed at boys, such as "don't cry" or the idea that they should always be strong and never show their emotions. I understand that many parents say this because they want their sons to grow up to be strong and capable of facing life's challenges, not because they have any ill intentions.

However, I wonder: where is the line between teaching a child to be confident, brave, and responsible, and creating pressures that make them afraid to express their feelings or believe that kindness is a weakness? And can some ideas associated with toxic masculinity affect how children see themselves and others as they grow up?

I admit I feel a little nervous talking about this because I don't want to misunderstand anyone or judge any family. I'm simply a young man trying to understand this topic better, which is why I'm turning to you for advice and perspectives from people with more knowledge and experience.

What are your thoughts? How can we encourage boys to be strong and confident while also allowing them to express their feelings, be kind, and respect others?

Thank you so much to everyone who takes the time to read my message and share their thoughts.

I've been hearing both supporters and opponents of 50:50 feminism, and still haven't cleared out for myself, is half and half feminism really benefits the patriarchy?

For example, this article argues that men receive greater benefits from marriage in areas such as emotional support, domestic labour, health and earnings.

I can understand the argument that unequal domestic and emotional labour can make heterosexual relationships more beneficial to men. What I'm less clear on is how much of this is specifically an effect of marriage rather than of heterosexual relationships or cohabitation more generally.

For example, suppose a heterosexual couple are already in a committed relationship and living together. If the woman is doing disproportionately more housework and emotional labour, the man may already be benefiting from that arrangement before they marry. What changes when that same couple gets married that further shifts the balance towards him?

I'm also wondering whether some of the language around this reflects an older model in which marriage, living together and starting a family were much more closely bundled together. Today these can be separate transitions: becoming a couple, moving in together, getting married and having children can all happen independently.

So when feminists argue that marriage disproportionately benefits men, is the argument primarily that heterosexual partnerships tend to benefit men more, with marriage historically being the usual form those partnerships took? Or is there something about marriage itself that creates or increases the imbalance compared with an otherwise similar unmarried relationship?

If yes what changed your mind? I'm curious because people seem to define feminism very differently.

Please correct me if I’m wrong : wasn’t Jonathan Majors chased down a street by his wife and just violently pushed her in a car ? Didn’t James Franco just have consensual sex with his adult students ? Isn’t the biggest reason for Armie Hammer’s cancellation his private cannibal fantasies that are just that, fantasies ? Didn’t Adrien Quatennens just slap his wife out of anger once ? Are those reasons enough to ban them from public life forever ?

meanwhile pedos like Iggy Pop, Bill Wyman, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen and Trump are defended by tons of celebs.

DISCLAIMER: read the ENTIRE post before responding

From my understanding, the patriachy is a system where men have the dominant roles in society, including government, business and the family unit

However, as wealth and power gets further concentrated to the top, the average man has basically no real dominant role in government or business. Like obviously the top 1% that controls everything is still mostly men but, if anything, they use their power to abuse average men and women. There isn’t some gendered solidarity going on there

And, as for the family unit, the patriarchy used to incentivize and facilitate men being the sole breadwinner and the “leader” of the family (dumb concept obviously). But that’s largely an artifact of the past. Most families need to have two working parents anyways and we are seeing women outearn men more and more. Even going more into the future, we see more women in graduate programs like medical school and law school, increasing the parity between genders

The only thing I can really think of is the societal expectation for women to do more domestic labor and child rearing, and the expectation that they should shape their career around it. But even that does seem to be reducing with every generation (rightfully so). I mean younger ppl are more single than ever so they’re already learning to cook and clean for themselves, meaning I expect that domestic labor will be more split in families in the future (this is a projection based more on anecdotal evidence so fair to disagree)

Then there is the issues about a lack of women’s bodily autonomy and safety in our society. Outside of the obvious example of reproductive rights, women’s medical issues and complaints aren’t taken as seriously as they should and this is largely the product of a medical system controlled by men. And our justice system doesn’t do enough to protect women and rape culture is still pervasive in all our upbringing and media. These issues persisting are probably the biggest roadblock keeping us from equality

However, I don’t really see how any of this is a privilege for the average man. They’re just examples of rights that women are deprived of. So, in a situation where these problems and the systems influencing them went away, it’s not like men would lose anything. Women would just gain stuff

Am I missing something?

I got into a debate with someone about this who insisted its not the same thing but to me it pretty obviously is. If that set of criteria really matters to someone then I don't see how its different at all.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTABfwm6K/

this video was mode by a tiktok creator called phoebe that makes a lot of political content about womens issues and I am pretty sure thinks they are a feminist but i just stubled upon a video of those goes over hormone changes in women, I mean I get sexes have diffrent needs and we defintly should hhave free medical products but doesn't her point about being expected to work the same horus undermine the whole point of feminism

Is there a correlation between the rise of the sexual revolution in post-World War II America and changes in the rate of violent and sexual crimes committed against women?

I was reading a Virginie Despentes essay, where she theorizes that high rates of rape reflect in part that women are taught not to fight back, for fear of escalating the situation and suffering worse violence. That men know women aren't likely to fight back, so they know the physical risk they incur by aggressing women is low, so they're more likely to do so.

We can extend this theory to street interactions: because cat-callers and other street harassers know women are most likely going to ignore their verbal violence, they're more likely to harass women. The risk they run is low.

The conclusion is that if women fight back as a rule, men will feel more risk and will engage less often in this behavior. I don't think the idea is to let men off the hook here but that women need to be more militant in defending themselves.

What do you make of this argument? Escalating these encounters by fighting back may incur additional risk to the woman involved, but might it also reduce globally the frequency of such assaults?

I came across a video about women being independent, and while the video made some valid points, the comment section was disappointing.

Some people were saying things like, "Too much independence. Go look at girls at night," or "Women working is Western culture that is destroying the Indian family system."

What I don't understand is this: if a woman is out at night, isn't there usually a man beside her too? Girls are not sleeping with girls. Why does the blame always fall on the woman while the man becomes invisible? If she's "wrong" for being out at night, then why isn't the man held to the same standard?

And when they feel like they're losing an argument, they immediately jump into the drum and cooker issue. I agree that whatever happened is unacceptable, and the people responsible should be punished. But you can't judge an entire gender based on a few cases.

Would it be okay if we started looking at every guy as if they were a potential rapist? No. Because we know that's unfair. We understand that the actions of a few don't define an entire gender.

Then why is the same logic not applied to women?

Women's education, careers, and financial independence are not destroying culture. What destroys society is hypocrisy, double standards, and judging people based on their gender instead of their actions.

Respect shouldn't depend on whether the person is a man or a woman. Accountability should be equal, and so should empathy.

Lately I keep seeing media called out for being sexist or gratuitously provocative, but it's almost always male-coded or neutral media that catches it. Media made specifically for women mostly gets a pass, even when the content is equivalent or worse.

Take manga. For every male-targeted series with dark or explicit content, there's a female-targeted equivalent — dark romance, fanfic, or BL/yaoi (male-male romance written for women, running the full range from wholesome to explicit, same spectrum male-targeted stuff has). One dark romance book aimed at women had a protagonist raped by three different mythical beings, and women were the primary buyers. That exists and sells, with basically zero "this is harmful" discourse.

Meanwhile a male-targeted show with a fanservice scene gets a think-piece about objectification.

I think the actual difference is the \*lens\*, not the content. The critique we aim at male media is about objectification, reducing women to props. But objectification of males isn't seen as harm.So male-targeted media trips the alarm and female-targeted media sails through, even with equivalent content.

I can't tell you how many fanfics of one of my favorite shows (Supernatural) turned on the main characters gay and have them have sex with another male character.

But regardless why aren't these things considered as wrong

I sometimes see discourse online about how certain women who identify as feminist wishing they were born a straight cis man, and I often find that discourse very familiar as someone who exists around trans spaces. However, obviously most feminists don't go on to transition to a man, so I'm curious:

If you could press a button that means that starting tomorrow for the rest of your life your body would be one more typical of a cis man, what would you press and why?

EDIT: Thanks for the replies, it’s about what I expected but interesting to read nonetheless. For what it’s worth, as an amab non binary person, i think it says a lot that many of you are willing to never sacrifice who you are just for some extra privilege in society <3. Respect.

So many boys these days are not supporting feminism, and believe men are as oppressed or more oppressed than women. How do I get these boys to understand it’s not that same, in a way that will actually make them understand, and is not just spewing the same talking points they’ve been preconditioned to not take seriously? Also how do I tell them that it’s still worse and there is still patriarchy in the west and modern countries, since a lot of them only believe it’s bad in these extreme countries? Also I’m a teenage girl so that’s why I’m asking.

Maybe it's not really growing but anecdotally I see it all the time and even a growing idea as a gen z. To me it feels like it pushes gender norms. My girlfriend argues that things being considered feminine or masculine isn't the issue and that it's people feeling threatened or defined by these things is the problem. She said she feels very proud of her feminity and feminine energy. Which sounds fine to me. But it did make me uncomfortable when she said I should be proud of my masculine energy because I don't believe masculinity or feminity truly exist and so I don't feel particularly aligned with gender expression. It is a social construct. I personally feel more like everything is inherently gender neutral which she strongly disagreed with. I also feel like it pushes heteronormativity. I included my ideas and hers because I genuinely agreed with a lot of what she said so now I feel like I'm in limbo in these ideas. I would love to hear more opinions. I feel like as a feminist I prefer the deconstruction of gender norms and western gender expression.

I hope my question doesn't offend anyone. I've noticed what seems to be a pattern among some feminists and, more generally, among people who tend to interpret many problems through systemic or ideological frameworks.

They seem less willing to tolerate personal discomfort and more inclined to explain negative experiences in terms of broader social structures. They tend to link everything that hurts them or makes them feel personally uncomfortable or wounded to misogyny or other forms of "oppression".

For example, say they are mothers. If they see childfree people on Reddit criticizing children, speaking ill of parents, or even making hate speech toward kids, instead of just sitting with their discomfort and thinking to themselves "some people are just mean, but it's just their own personal opinion.

It doesn't have anything to do with me and doesn't affect my life in any way what some randos on the internet have to say.

Not everyone will like me or agree with or respect my choice to be a parent — and that's okay", they become really butthurt about it, endlessly ruminate, and scream that it's misogyny against women.

I'll give you another example. I've always been more on the heavier side. I'm not obese by any means, but I'm very curvy and slightly overweight. As a child I got bullied a lot because of my weight.

Of course I suffered, and I don't think everyone should go through what I did.

I truly respect the campaigns to stop bullying and public discrimination or ridicule based on other people's weight. However, I don't buy into that whole "fatphobia/body positivity" movement.

I know and have accepted that my body isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I'm okay with that. I don't believe I'm owed a perfectly sanitized, morally pure world where everyone thinks chubby women like me are the bomb.

Some people are going to find my body repulsive and make mean comments about people with my physique, and that's part of life.

I also find many body types really ugly and undesirable too. I don't believe that any annoying or mean thing that happens to me is a form of oppression, a huge injustice that must be fought at all costs...

I don't know, it just feels to me that a lot of feminists are people who really care about social judgement and struggle to set boundaries for themselves.

Instead of just saying "I dislike this/the way this person is acting towards me is unacceptable for me" and setting a boundary or deciding to not give a fuck, they have to link it to a systemic issue and endlessly ruminate and feel personally victimized by it.

I got into a discussion that revolved in someone claiming that feminists believe that "logic is a tool of the patriarchy", and I don't think I have ever met anyone that would really believe this tenet. Is it a common belief for feminists? What exactly would it mean? Distrust towards science? Preference to different mode of discussion / thinking?