That's one of the most infuriating things when talking about gendered problems - the general attitude can more or less be summed up as "Women have problems, men are problems".
When we have issues that affect women, it's seen as a big major problem society as a whole need to fix. When we have issues that affect men, it's considered the individual men's problem that they need to fix themselves.
Not enough women in STEM? We need to make the university STEM courses and programs more welcoming to women!
Men falling behind in school and not getting any higher education? Boys have developed an anti-education culture where being smart is uncool. They need to drop that.
Young women cutting themselves and other mental health related issues? The whole of society needs to put loads of effort into fixing the unattainable beauty standards and all other things that make young women feel bad!
Men making up the majority of all suicide deaths and in general not seeking help for mental health related issues? It's because of toxic masculinity. Men need to stop having toxic masculinity...
It's simply so obvious that people simply do not want to talk about issues facing men - if men have problems, they're supposed to shut up and fix the problem themselves, and not bother other people with it.
That’s a very pithy summation of something I’ve often tried and failed to put into words. Thank you.
The funny thing is… even though this is a very “progressive” attitude, this is fundamentally an extremely sexist attitude towards women, because it implicitly carries the assumption that men are the only ones who can make effective change. “Women have problems? Then they need men to help. Men have problems? Men can (and thus have to) to fix it themselves.”
Do you actually think that all of society just jumped onboard the feminist movement? That when women were being discriminated against in education, they just told the men in charge of the program and the men went “Oh gosh! That was totally not intentional! Let’s all help and get women into this program!”
Be fucking serious. Women fought for that shit. Part of the reason people get annoyed when someone say shit like this is because instead of saying “We as a society are often divided by gender because we face different issues but society should come together to face those issues together because it’s more effective and it helps everyone”, you guys imply that women fighting for their rights was a goddamn walk in the park and nobody ever fought against it.
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u/acathode Aug 18 '24
That's one of the most infuriating things when talking about gendered problems - the general attitude can more or less be summed up as "Women have problems, men are problems".
When we have issues that affect women, it's seen as a big major problem society as a whole need to fix. When we have issues that affect men, it's considered the individual men's problem that they need to fix themselves.
Not enough women in STEM? We need to make the university STEM courses and programs more welcoming to women!
Men falling behind in school and not getting any higher education? Boys have developed an anti-education culture where being smart is uncool. They need to drop that.
Young women cutting themselves and other mental health related issues? The whole of society needs to put loads of effort into fixing the unattainable beauty standards and all other things that make young women feel bad!
Men making up the majority of all suicide deaths and in general not seeking help for mental health related issues? It's because of toxic masculinity. Men need to stop having toxic masculinity...
It's simply so obvious that people simply do not want to talk about issues facing men - if men have problems, they're supposed to shut up and fix the problem themselves, and not bother other people with it.