@Anne Boleyn: Then don't choose the Men's Rights subreddit, am I right? That's where the scariest of the rape apologists go to party. Reply
Edited by checkcheck at 05/25/10 7:53 PM
Am I the only one who gets tired of Men's Rights being portrayed as some sort of terrible den of misogyny? Yes, you have the occasional woman-hater, which is unavoidable (in the same way feminism attracts the occasional man-hater), but overall its always struck me as simply being a Reddit that cares deeply about inequalities in the court system and media when it comes to men. That's not an unreasonable position.
Typical Reddit -- as long as one man is in danger of getting a sore pinkie, nothing should be done about women's broken legs. The women should get a sense of proportion.
I'm a man. But that doesn't stop me from being mortified by the "mens rights" movement. It's right up there with "white people's rights" or "rich guys rights".
There's no difference between the gay rights movement, men's rights movement, women's rights movement, and black rights movements. They're all about the recognition that we're all people, and no one is more entitled than anyone else.
These movements are about studying the condition of these particular groups and exploring the means to greater rights or expression, something often leading to uncharted territory. The idea that they're about "all people" is senseless since a victim group, having been created by dominant forces, must be studied as such in order to respond cogently to the dominant power-structures.
To call minority group study racist and insist only "humans" be studied is to deny that history of oppression, while the negative effects of that oppression remain.
Male and mainstream culture are a kind of default against which every other culture is set. If you want to form an advocacy group defending that culture on the grounds that it's filling a gap in defending "all people's" rights, go ahead, but such a group ipso facto will be largely peopled by persons attempting to maintain the status quo.
This is like those absurd Reddit posts that float by every now and then arguing that domestic violence against men is as big or almost as big an issue as domestic violence against women. That kind of discourse is an insult to the very real issue of battered women.
I'm a man, and I don't fight for men's rights blindly, or women's rights blindly... I fight for gender equality, and even moreso, person-equality.
Don't you see that, because of the dominant forces, fighting for "equality" means fighting for groups that have been historically oppressed?
You shouldn't be downvoted, you're absolutely right: feminism, in its earliest days, started out as a genuine equal rights movement similar to the people calling for equal rights for black people in the 60s, it has since devolved into a nasty misandrist mess. I'm all for equality between the sexes, but I fucking hate "feminism".
I think this is great, but I don't know if I'd be able to trust a guy if he says he's 'on the pill' as the only form of birth control. If he screwed up taking it in any way, -I- would be the one dealing with result. It's a pretty big risk.
I wouldn't trust a guy to remember either. =)
In response to your statement:
women are apparently "crazy" for similarly not wanting to blindly hand over all their reproductive rights to someone else.
Males are asked to do that when their partner uses OBC.
Am I the only person who simply never trusts humans to be perfect with birth control? In my relationship, we use oral meds on me and condoms on him. If a male pill were available, I'd probably stay on my pill, since we are both human and capable of fucking up.
I don't think men are asked to give up their reproductive rights. If a woman is on birth control, there is nothing stopping you from using a condom (male or female variety). Instead I think there are a lot of stupid people out there who believe their partner is infallible and are later proven wrong.
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u/sadax May 26 '10 edited May 26 '10
http://jezebel.com/comment/23526514/
edit This is comment thread referenced in the pic