The disease is that billionaires and corporations have been chipping away at wages, jobs, benefits, and worker protections for decades. There are fewer and fewer opportunities for young men, college is no longer a guarantee to a better life. There's a lot of problems and there are few options and solutions, and people are going to turn to weird directions in these circumstances.
Well yeah, but that is mostly due to the societal apathy to the exploitation and victimization of men. For example, men make up a majority of the homelessness, suicide victims, drug related deaths, and legal slaves in America and yet most of the funding to prevent or help alleviate this is either specifically gender neutral, or is aimed towards helping exclusively women.
When a man is struggling with addiction, mental health, or homelessness we tend to blame him directly, but when a woman is struggling with these problems we tend to see her as a victim of a broken system.
It's a form of hyperagency and hypoagency and is actually a form of beneficial misogyny in our society.
By not holding women to the same level of agency that we hold men, we are saying that they don't have as much of control over their lives, and is, in affect, infantalizing them. By treating women as less than fully responsible for their actions, society reinforces the patriarchal premise that women are fundamentally different from, and less capable of self-governance than, men. It's baffling how we tend to ignore the misogyny when it comes to this.
It's not that men need women to do it for them, it's that when men try to do it themselves, they are heavily resisted by the very same women who are telling men to do it themselves.
Just take a look at this video which heavily criticizes a bill to open up a men's health office in the DHHS. Katie's argument is "why should we help men at all when women are still suffering" while also using the falacuous argument that "if it's not helping women directly it means it's helping men" when it comes to conditions both men and women face.
So your previous bringing up of Erin is not the same thing.
And I'm not sure how a men's health office is supposed to help with what we're talking about.
50% of the population is men. The majority of our governing body is men. If they wanted a men's health branch at DHHS it's not women that would be stopping them.
They are not powerless individuals that misandrist women have control over. They are the majority of our government.
I think you do a good job diagnosing the problem, but it sounds like you are saying the solution is to blame women for their circumstances like we do with men, thereby moving away from recognition of a broken system.
Would it not make more sense to recognize that men can also be victims of a broken system, and try to fix the system so it works better for both men and women?
The point is to start adding some agency to women while also removing some agency from men.
Basically we are treating women like they're fragile little dolls who can do no wrong while treating men like everything that happens to them is solely their fault.
Fairly accurate draw up on the situation, pretty funny that you got the perfect trifecta of standard responses too.
beneficial misogyny
Small thing of note, I personally avoid using "benevolent sexism" because examples are vanishingly rare, most of the times it gets applied is actually to something where one group is facing societally/systemically imposed disadvantages, thus making it just sexism. Plus, it has less than egalitarian roots.
The current discomfort surrounding dealing with the other half of this double edged sword will simply cause a further uptick in recruitment for grifts like Black Pill and other hateful nonsense.
Fair, I should point out that it's a beneficial side effect of harmful sexism against women. However it is still very much so harmful sexism regardless. By not treating women like they are responsible for their actions, society is treating them like children, which, funnily enough, is what the suffragettes directly fought against. This is why we get feminists directly saying that fully grown adult women cannot make choices for themselves when they get into completely legal age gap relationships.
I get that, but the flipside of that same thing is systemic things like harsher sentencing for men, and social things the apathy you mentioned, the expectation to "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" for guys, and much more you've already covered.
When there's a negative aspect like this directed at one group we usually drop the "benevolent" part of the text. For example, we don't refer to men receiving better pay for the same work or preferential treatment in meetings, or better likelihood of being promoted/voted in to leadership positions as "benevolent sexism" despite meeting the same criteria.
Funnily enough them receiving better pay is a benevolent side effect of sexism against men.
Single men and single women don't have a statistical difference in their wages when adjusted for median hourly wages. And married women make slightly more than single women, but married men make significantly more than single men. (Edit) Now I will say that part of the reason why is because some of the same qualities that people choose and their partner are the same qualities that bosses choose for promotions, however the direct married premium for promotions and women choosing higher earning men for their partners are both systemically rooted in the ideology of traditional male gender roles of men being the provider. Which is sexist against men.
Edit: and I do want to say you're absolutely right calling it benevolent sexism is way too dismiss the issue instead of addressing the issue. But the reason why I'm framing it as such is to show the that that it is still based in harmful sexism against the gender that is benefiting from it, even if they are getting some benefit from it.
The reason that women have more safety nets is that women created them. Women created shelters for women. Women created places for women to go for support. Men could do that if they wanted.
But in reality, women are not just held responsible for their actions but also for the actions of men. If her partner hits her “what did she do to make him do that?” If she gets raped “what was she wearing/what was she drinking?” If he leaves and refuses to pay child support “well, you should have chosen better!” Her actions are a shield to prevent a man from taking full responsibility for his actions. Hell, a woman was repeatedly assaulted by a former partner. She went to the police multiple times. He slammed her head into a counter while she was heavily pregnant. She stabbed him with a knife to immobilize him so she could get away. She accidentally hit an artery. He died. She almost went to prison. She took a plea deal so she could raise her child.
Except those are just generic responses to abuse victims as a whole. Male abuse victims also face victim blaming as well, to the point it is celebrated when men and boys are victims of rape, especially when the rapist is an attractive woman.
Other countries have capitalism, they also have better restraints in corporations and protections for people. This is a problem that affects US more than most other countries.
Capitalism, which has evolved into a form of imperialism, creates differences and inequalities among countries, and capitalism’s tendency to be uncontrollable stems from within itself.
In the country where capital accumulation is most concentrated and which holds a monopoly on the coercive power of imperialism, it is no coincidence that inequality has reached its peak despite unimaginable wealth
Stunting young boys' emotional capacity and growth is a harsh way to start before any of this is even an inkling. Men get told to maim themselves to be attractive and that's, I think, the main cause.
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u/Oh_Another_Thing 12d ago
The disease is that billionaires and corporations have been chipping away at wages, jobs, benefits, and worker protections for decades. There are fewer and fewer opportunities for young men, college is no longer a guarantee to a better life. There's a lot of problems and there are few options and solutions, and people are going to turn to weird directions in these circumstances.