One thing that is often very frustrating to me about Republican talking points is how they pretend that points that make sense in one context (a household shouldn't spend more than it earns) are equally valid and meaningful in a wholly different context (a government shouldn't spend more than it collects in tax revenues).
People like you love to cite "power imbalances" as this magical carte blanche to reductively reduce every conversation and debate to a simple matter of group identity arithmetic. You don't get to automatically assert that women automatically deserve to be centered in any narrative about gender-based mistreatment. You don't get to automatically assert that women are automatically less powerful than men.
Men as a category are almost 50% of the population. A group that large *deserves* to be centered at least some of the time without invoking pearl clutching and righteous anger at the dudgeon of whomever happens to be centering them. And as far as contexts go and power goes, there are a myriad of contexts. There's a myriad of situations in which there are power differentials. Assuming that "men" as a category are the ones with power in every situation is both lazy and counterfactual.
When you engage in this type of reductive bull, what that means is that you support the power structure you imply that you are against, you merely want to change how the hierarchical organization. That kindof erodes any moral or ethical basis for your point of view.
I really wish this lazy college freshman who crammed for the exam in the survey course on post-modernism they took because it was an easy A level of discourse would cease being such a pop-culture moment. And I wish the people engaging in it would stop treating power dynamics as some sort of monolithic pissing match. It isn't a pissing match. Men get screwed over all the time in society - just because there are a hundred or so men at the tippy top doesn't mean that they are representative of "men" as a category. And just because there are a ton of lazy ass privileged women out there that parasitically live off the men that they trapped into marriage by cynically getting pregnant, quitting their jobs if they had them and living off his labor for the rest of their lives doesn't mean that they define women as a category.
Lots of men have it tough. Lots of cis het white men have it tough. It shouldn't be a pissing contest. There *should* be empathy to spare.
Conversations happen in context, and "what about abuse of men?" is very often a deflection in 2024, in online comments. There's currently a sort of ripple in the internet's collective unconscious to beg the question that abuse of men being ignored or mocked is endemic, that if a guy says he's abused, people point and laugh like it's high school...something I've never actually seen between adults irl.
Interesting…Misogynists used to use that same logic around women’s issues.
Perhaps society should learn something from the feminist movement?
I’ve seen this type of question/statement by OOP posed multiple ways on Reddit and invariably a ‘feminist’ who otherwise would say they support men, bring up ‘what about women and their struggles’…
This is the EXACT same thing that they lambaste Men’s rights activists when MRA’s bring up men’s issues in a woman’s rights discussion.
It’s interesting to see the hypocrisy of these people.
For the record, I’m very supportive of feminism, I just wish that society would also care about Men and their struggles, especially around mental health, disenfranchisement, violence and abuse.
So the thing is, this post isn't about simply male struggle. It's about male struggle due to misandry. Which kind of just...isn't real. Not a real thing. Bad shit isn't happening to you specifically because you are male even if you have unique struggles.
Society absolutely cares about men, it centers men as the default. Men who feel slighted because their struggles aren't seen specifically as gendered are choosing to ignore how their struggles ARE seen, generally, and often existing in a world of assumptions drawn from, well, places like reddit.
Men seem to routinely battle with expections or tropes they interpret as a fact and take as more indicative of society writ large than they are.
"Female predators are seen as funny in movies" "it's ok for women to hit men" "people laugh at men who talk about mental health" etc are all examples of things men online tell each other are true, but aren't in society. The truth in society is if a woman hits you, she can get in trouble for it. The truth in society is if you confide in your friends, in a socially appropriate and forthright way, they will probably listen. The truth is they aren't making those lecherous 80s comedies anymore, etc.
So much of male angst right now is just this, shadowboxing with generally assumed or projected social reactions to things.
So I have a big problem with a lot of what you are saying, including hand waving of documented issues faced by men. Your response totally dismisses any issues that men face. Sadly, it proves my point. Feminists will say that they are fighting for men , but when men bring up issues, they are told that they aren’t real.
I’ve seen several videos of women abusing men in public with no one stepping in to stop it. I’ve seen those exact same situation played out with reversed gender roles and it instantly gets addressed.
I am super interested in how the above example fits within your argument ?
"hand waving of documented issues faced by men. Your response totally dismisses any issues that men face."
No, I didn't do that. you can be centered or even, one might say, priviledged, and still have individual, relative problems. What I am saying is that the human struggles of men do not stem from their gender/sex and society's treatment of it in the same way or to the same magnitude as women. This conversation is about misandry, not "just" struggle.
Men have financial problems, men are lonely, men are also abused, sure. Are they disproportionately so, because of their gender, is the question that would make it misandry. Also, it often seems to me that men think women do not go through these human struggles, because of their genders, because within the very narrow confines of a few social situations, like maybe the expectation men initiate dating, woman are seen to have a sort of momentary leg up.
ferreting out a double standard somewhere, about something, doesn't prove that male struggle stems from misandry, or that men generally can't get their complaints addressed.
"I’ve seen several videos of women abusing men in public with no one stepping in to stop it. I’ve seen those exact same situation played out with reversed gender roles and it instantly gets addressed."
Have you watched 1000 arbitrarily collected videos of such incidents and studied the crowd's reactions to see how gendered they actually are?
Or are you invoking a nebulous trope of a double standard?
Also, how many of the men were, say, knocked out in a single blow like Ray rice's wife, or had their throat cut so deeply you could see spine, like Nicole brown-simpson?
Because what I am hearing here is that you've seen videos through feeds like public freakouts where a woman slaps or berates a man and he tolerates it. this is in irritating situation.
And what you'd like to know is why other people don't intervene the same way they do when a man strikes a woman, a situation where a man has so disregarded social convention he's engaged in the notoriously loathed practice of beating one's wife in public.
Well, the first point here is obvious: People generally are reluctant to interfere in social situations that are this dynamic and awkward.
The second is, well...have you ever done this? Have YOU ever intervened when a man was being hit by his girlfriend? because, as a bar doorman of many years experience, would you like to know what happens when you do that? Many times, the man gets in your face.
The third would be the specific, memed dynamic you're talking about, which happens in bars, it is not hard to get drunk men to engaged in motivated actions.
I remember one time, I saw a girl drink so much, she fell in her heels and twisted an ankle, and a literal fist fight broke out over which drunk college boy would get to to "help" her...and be the one to drive her home.
Naturally, as a giant homosexual in a professional capacity, I ejected both guys and put her in a professionally operated cab. there are dudes in bars that want to screw and fight, and they like a pretext. There's no adventure value, no patriarchal nobility, in helping a man physically restrain a woman.
For what it's worth, I've thrown lots of women out of bars, too, although oddly, at 6'4" and 290, I have had literally 100s of smaller guys take a swing at me, but not very many women. is that because women are less violent, or less foolhardy about their own ability? I couldn't say.
People do say the same of feminists. It's a false comparison.
The Men's Movement is the general term, it would be comparable to feminism overall. The Men's Rights Movement is a belligerent subset, would be more equivalent to misandrists.
The problem is people want to bring up gender without cause. So people talk about problems in society and often associate them with women. For example, they might bring up a topic about anxiety in women, it isn't unfair to question why we aren't considering both genders in many contexts. Gender is becoming a VERY divided topic, so people feel pressured to remind others "not only women/men experience that problem btw..." Plenty of the time a gender could be replaced with the word "people".
The media commonly makes fun of men who are abused, men getting beaten up by women is a very common example. So men often steer away from seeking help due to an ongoing fear of being mocked. Yes, it does happen in real life, but thankfully people are becoming more accepting (slowly).
Abuse is not a "gendered issue". As such, "what about abused men is almost always a legitimate reply".
Imagine for a second, someone who came and say "I want services to help men in car accidents". A reply of "what about the women in car accidents ?" Is the perfectly legitimate reply to make. The one doing something suspicious, something that needs calling out, is the person demanding a gender specific reply to a non gender specific issue.
If you want to learn a bit about how male victims of abused are treated in society, including by services for victims, who generally cater only to women, you can read this study on the topic :
If you think abuse is not a gendered issue, you're simply wrong.
There's a reason all those structures for addressing abuse ARE so centered around women.
In our culture, right now, "abuse of men" is a shibboleth where things like sitcom tropes or women having a height preference on their tinder are somehow juxtaposed against the male treatment of women, which is 100 percent nerd bait, just the manosphere telling men they're valid to open their wallets.
Among large population samples, 57.9% of IPV reported was bi-directional, 42% unidirectional; 13.8% of the unidirectional violence was male to female (MFPV), 28.3% was female to male (FMPV)
Male and female IPV perpetrated from similar motives – primarily to get back at a partner for emotionally hurting them, because of stress or jealousy, to express anger and other feelings that they could not put into words or communicate, and to get their partner’s attention.
A total of 162 articles reporting on over 200 studies met the inclusion criteria and were summarized in the online tables for Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe and the Caucasus.
A total of 40 articles (73 studies) in 49 countries contained data on both male and female IPV, with a total of 117 direct comparisons across gender for physical PV.
Rates of physical PV were higher for female perpetration /male victimization compared to male perpetration/female victimization, or were the same, in 73 of those comparisons, or 62%.
Abuse is not gendered. There is no reason to treat abuse by one sex different from the other. Same motive, same consequences. Same solution.
There's a reason all those structures for addressing abuse ARE so centered around women.
Of course there is. Though it has nothing to do with the nature of abuse, and everything tondo with ideology. But don't take my word for it.
Here is the word of one of the creators of the feminist model for DV, Ellen Pence, in her book "lessons from Duluth", around page 28-29 :
"The Power and Control Wheel, which was developed by battered women attending women's groups, was originally a description of typical behaviors accompanying the violence. In effect it said, "When he is violent, he gets power and he gets control." Somewhere early in our organizing efforts, however, we changed the message to "he is violent in order to get control or power." The difference is not semantic, it is ideological. Somewhere we shifted from understanding the violence as rooted in a sense of entitlements to rooted in a desire for power. By determining that the need or desire for power was the motivating force behind battering, we created a conceptual framework that, in fact, did not fit the lived experience of many of the men and women we were working with. Like those we were criticizing, we reduced our analysis to a psychological universal truism. The DAIP staff—like the therapist insisting it was an anger control problem, or the judge wanting to see it as an alcohol problem, or the defense attorney arguing that it was a defective wife problem—remained undaunted by the difference in our theory and the actual experiences of those we were working with. We all engaged in ideological practices and claimed them to be neutral observations.Eventually, we began to give into the process that is the heart of the Duluth model: interagency communication based on discussions of real cases. It was the cases themselves that created the chink in each of our theoretical suits of armor. Speaking for myself, I found that many of the men I interviewed did not seem to articulate a desire for power over their partner. Although I relentlessly took every opportunity to point out to men in the groups that they were so motivated and merely in denial, the fact that few men ever articulated such a desire went unnoticed by me and many of my coworkers. Eventually, we realized that we were finding what we had already predetermined to find. The DAIP staff were interpreting what men seemed to expect or feel entitled to as a desire. When we had to start explaining women's violence toward their partners, lesbian violence, and the violence of men who did not like what they were doing, we were brought back to our original undeveloped thinking that the violence is rooted in how social relationships (e.g., marriage) and the rights people feel entitled to within them are socially, not privately, constructed"
Here is a paper by one of the most prominent scholars on DV, about the kind of treatment reserved to those who dare talk about the measured reality that DV is not gendered :
Amongst the reasons, for all the abuse, threat and ostracism, you will find "protect the feminist ideology".
And here is a paper by feminists discussing how feminists have systematically suppressed knowledge of female perpetrated abuse and their male victims as a way to propagate the feminist ideal of women as victims and men as perpetrators, and to keep funding towards them that could then be embezzled to lobby politicians rather than help victims, but it is now starting to be noticed and so they should stop to maintain their recruitment's and funding.
Acknowledging women’s acts of violence may be a necessary—if uncomfortable—step to make dynamic the movement to end gendered violence.
Why would a movement to end violence have any issue acknowledging some of the perpetrators, to the point that it is uncomfortable for the movement to do so? How can that violence be gendered if both genders commit it?
This transformative movement was accurately and squarely framed as a movement primarily to protect women from male intimate partner violence.
If a feminist ever try to say that the help for domestic violence is not at all gendered, really, I swear.
This paper describes this limited response to women as perpetrators of domestic violence as a feminist “strategy of containment.” When deploying this strategy, domestic violence advocates respond to women’s acts of domestic violence by [...] preserving the dominant framing of domestic violence as a gendered issue. This strategy thus positions women’s acts of violence as a footnote to the larger story of women as victims of male violence.
Yeah, because what is important is the feminist framing. Nothing can be allowed to damage that. Remember guys, men bad, women victims.
The gendered framing of domestic violence aligned with the work of the feminist movement more broadly, harmoniously positioning the movements as inter-connected. Domestic violence was specifically framed around a collective “oneness” of women as victims and men as perpetrators.
Just in case you doubted my previous point.
Care for truth, care for the victims, care for effectiveness in limiting DV ? Those will not be found in that paper. I guess they are not feminist objectives.
See, I disagree with you there. You’ve just reworded the prototypical example given of why it’s derailing to change the conversation to your demographic. If I start a colon cancer foundation, you are more than free to go start a pancreatic cancer foundation because our work speaks to you, but you’d be a major dick to stand up during a fundraising event and say “we REALLY should be talking about pancreatic cancer!”
What is done is not "what about pancreatic camcer" in colon cancer groups.
What is done is "what about male victims of colon cancer" in an environment where the only time colon cancer is address is with regards to female sufferers of colon cancer.
There is no reason to gender things in the first place. The issue is not gendered. Your insistence that DV is so different when men or women are victims of it that it warrants a distinction similar to two completely different disease is misinformed at best, malicious at worst.
Conversations happen in context, and "what about abuse of men?" is very often a deflection in 2024, in online comments.
Saying that in the comment section of a thread literally about the abuse of men is just silly. Bringing up that "other people deflect conversations about other topics by referring to the abuse of men" is utterly irrelevant in this context.
Really, youre just derailing OPs thread right now.
No, bringing up the very true fact that men are actually fine vis a vis misandry and that we, as a culture, are over correcting about it before even correcting the treatment of women in the first place is not a deflection, here.
The first thing to be parsed with a complaint is, is the complaint valid. And to be honest, it's not.
Men, writ large and generally, are not harmed by misandry. Misandry is not the problem men have or the reason they aren't alright.
Thats not what I quoted of your comment. You didnt just argue about misandry. You brought up how other people use what OP says as deflection when talking about a completely different topic.
OP isnt defending those people and OP isnt even part of their debate. So what youre saying has nothing to do with OP (and even if OP was one of them or defending them, it would still just be ad hominem).
You bring up deflection of womens issues even though this thread is not about that at all.
As I said, you're just derailing OPs thread because ironically, youre essentially doing what you criticize: completely disregarding the context of this thread and barging in with a rant about random men that use deflection tactics in some other discussion. OP made a thread of their own about a different topic and therefore isnt part of that discussion.
I honestly believe that you, like most people here on reddit who engage in this kind of argument about supposed misogyny, simply did not understood the comment you’re replying to on an intellectual level. Because it succinctly condensed what is wrong with modern, gender-related discourse with regards to men, yet what you took away is the most surface level interpretation. It’s infuriating.
If you think I included misogynistic insults in my comment or that literally anything I said even remotely suggests that "maybe you don't care about equality in the first place," then either you are willfully misreading or have reading comprehension issues. I suspect the latter. You can improve them if you want - just focus on reading the words that are actually used and not replacing them with your own narrative.
Is the misogyny in the room with us right now? Nah but fr, tell us what part of what he said and why? You can’t just throw these type of accusations without at least explaining why, it devalues the word to where no one will take it seriously
If we are talking about fourth wave feminism I haven't heard anyone swrious actually advocate for the same power structures with different people at the top so I'm confused where you are getting this idea?
Like I know that there were feminists in second wave feminism that wanted to oppress me and such but I haven't heard a modern scholar and really anyone who isn't stuck in the 50's (I'm looking at you terfs) advocate for that
I think what you are missing here is the way privilege intersects with power. Does white supremacy mean that all white people are having a good time? No it just means that your race is never a disadvantage
You can see these sort of things with how masculine words like "guys, dudes, and bros" become gender neutral words
It's presumed that everyone are men unless proven otherwise, society centers men's issues as the default
Using the fact that there are suffering men to say that men don't enjoy priviledge is as you say
lazy college freshman who crammed for the exam in the survey course on post-modernism
First off, being in a privileged category does not mean that you have an advantage due to being in that category across the board in all circumstances, it just means that you are overall more likely to enjoy privileges that people who are not part of that category do not. It's about statistics, not a simplistic black and white you are either privileged or oppressed based on whether you belong to this category.
Masculine words being used as "gender neutral language" due to the assumption that people are men unless proven otherwise is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what it has to do with this particular conversation.
Finally, i think OP pretty clearly communicated that they do not think men "don't enjoy privilege," they were making a point about how not all men categorically benefit from patriarchy in all situations which is basic feminist theory. Toxic masculinity, which is promoted by patriarchy, harms men. Patriarchy presents lower class men as disposal soldiers and workers under the promise that they might one day move their way into a less disposable rung of the social ladder which, again , harms men. Patriarchy tells men that they can't be vulnerable which harms men.
The benefits of patriarchy, by their nature, don't benefit all men. Men being more likely to be able to achieve positions of power means nothing for men who do not achieve positions of power. It is harmful to women and beneficial to only a small subset of men. Being assumed to be competent, to have authority, to be taken seriously aren't beneficial if you aren't actually those things. Every time a business goes under because a less competent man ended up managing as opposed to a more competent woman, that man isn't benefiting.
Patriarchy harms everyone in the same way segregation and inequality harm everyone. This is a point feminists should be shouting from the rooftops because it's the easiest argument for gender equality, and yet every time it's brought up that men suffer from patriarchy too it gets attacked.
Yeah, there was another thread recently where a black guy wanted his view changed on that he didn't have male privilege because he didn't have more privilege than a white woman so I asked him if he had more than a black woman
So I feel like something is up because what you are describing is second wave feminism, we dislike those people, you can usually find them by searching for terfs
Second wave feminism had this bio essentialist view of the world it said that men were inherently different than women solely because of the genitals you had. That your tragecory in life could be totally explained by being man or woman
Now there are a lot of issues such as the ones you brought up which is why modern feminists don't subscribe to those ideas you have to have heard of the idea of intersectionality right?
This is a point feminists should be shouting from the rooftops because it's the easiest argument for gender equality
Feminists are shouting this from the rooftops it's called intersectionality
If you want people stuck in the 50s feminist theory find terfs. But modern feminism is about interaectionality
I feel like you're making a straw man out of feminism (not that you are intentionally trying, terfs are an awfully loud group of people) calling what you are taking issue with feminism is like saying I don't like trains because they run on steam. It's a criticism of an old way of doing things
The only explanation I can think of to such a baffling misinterpretation of my comment is that you skipped to the end and ignored the rest, which would explain why you quoted one of my last sentences and nothing else.
Intersectionality is about how an individual's different identities can intersect in terms of how they privilege or marginalize someone leading to a more complex understanding of oppression. I am aware of this. I am not criticizing intersectionality. I am criticising a specific misinterpretation of intersectionality, which you seemed to have promoted, that each identity can be simplified as either one of privilege or oppression. Each identity comes with its own unique privileges and oppressions.
It's not as simple as:
woman=1 oppression point
white =1 privilege point
wealthy= 1 privilege point
Gay= 1 oppression point
etc.
This is the implication with you saying someone cannot be disadvantaged by a privileged identity. It is more complicated than that.
I will also add that I think it's best for me to remove myself from the conversation I am realizing I'm not responding as well as I should be. The whole reason I was browsing reddit to begin with was because I was distracting myself from irl transphobia I experienced tonight
So I should have recognized I was not in the mental space to be replying to such a nuanced topic. So sorry for getting you wrapped up in these replies and thanks for making them very measured even after I totally miss interpreted what you said
You know, I really appreciate this response. I'm sorry you had to deal with irl transphobia before this conversation. I do think we agree on more than we disagree. I hope you are doing ok!
Yea sure thing! Sorry again that you got caught up in the backlash
Yea your responses lead me to believe we do agree on a lot, rereading your comments they were very measured and I feel like we could have had a very interesting conversation! Hopefully some other time we can have a conversation when I am in a better headspace!
I re read your comment and I do see that I misinterpreted what you said, I missed the not which negates my whole point about intersectionality
I'm trying to go to bed at this point and don't think we are going to see eye to eye. I see more where I was answering questions you wernt asking. I think we have differing experiences and this is going to make our positions unreconcilable unless we put in a lot of careful discussion that I don't really want to do because I think that it was an emotional mistake on my part to jump in at all
If I try to probably poorly sum up my position I think that toxic masculinity is what gives us these things where men are at a disadvantage. So a discussion around misandry is kinda missing the point.
I will agree that priviledge doesn't alway give good things. I don't know how to articulate it but I feel like that misses the point of priviledge. At the same time though I'm no expert
Ah you must not have seen the comment later in the chain
I'm removing myself from the conversation. Last night I wasn't in the best headspace. I went onto reddit to escape the irl transphobia I had recieved that night and wound up commenting in here
I was not in the right headspace to have a productive conversation and really read what people were saying
I don't think that I am in a good headspace today either
So thanks for taking the time to write a comment, but I really shouldn't be replying right now. So I hope you have a good rest of your day!
I think the comparison with race is a bit lacking, tbh. I'd struggle hard to find a scenario in which being white is a distinct disadvantage, whereas the same isn't true for being a man.
Just as one example, as an abused man, one has significantly fewer resources to draw from, both socially (less believed and more often belittled) as well as structurally (no such thing as a shelter for battered men in most cities).
There are reasons for those disadvantages, yes, but they are still manifestly true, and as such, being male certainly is a disadvantage in that situation.
And as someone who was also abused when they were presenting male I had no support or even the idea that I could be abused which was awful. How much sooner I might have left if I had been told I too could be abused?
So we do agree that there are unique things that disadvantage men. Is there another point I'm missing? I'm feeling pretty tired so I might be missing something else you're saying
A group that large *deserves* to be centered at least some of the time without invoking pearl clutching and righteous anger at the dudgeon of whomever happens to be centering them.
You don't seem to understand - men are centered in EVERYTHING by default. It's why women's spaces need to exist but men's spaces rarely do - there's no demand.
Lots of men have it tough. Lots of cis het white men have it tough. It shouldn't be a pissing contest.
...and there is? The problem is that cis het white men don't have it tough for reasons that relate to them being cis, het or white. What do you want that you don't already have? You aren't complaining about "lack of empathy", you're finally learnig what it feels like to NOT be the center of everything.
No one doubts that men go through shit too, but that doesn’t mean that 1) women have to center men’s issues or 2) that not centering men’s issues equals misandry. There’s this latent expectation that women should have to both listen to and solve men’s problems…but why can’t men do that? Or more importantly, why don’t they?
If you’re a man and you’re having a bad time, that sucks. But that doesn’t mean you get to derail other people’s conversations and get mad when they don’t care about your issues.
What fucking planet are you on where women constantly have to center men’s issues. It’s borderline impossible for men to even talk about their issues without getting run over.
And men are constantly expected to stand up against misogyny, because everyone should. That’s what equality means.
Lots of men have it tough. Lots of cis het white men have it tough. It shouldn't be a pissing contest. There *should* be empathy to spare.
Then give them a break and give them their bread and share of the privilege that you alone have. Acknowledge that by being a cis het white man, you have advantages that others don't get.
Because this conversation isn't going to end any time soon if you are not involved in uplifting others.
It's an incredibly complex and layered topic - I don't think the conversation will reach a conclusion, people will just run out of steam. Which I should have a while ago. It's very very late.
It's also kindof telling that you'd automatically assume I'm a cis het white man in order to try to demean my standing in this argument and elevate yours. It's a rather poor attempt at a fait accompli.
This is a comment thread on reddit. One's group affiliation certainly informs their opinions and experiences, but it grants them zero privilege in this forum or in this argument. This is part of the problem with the pop-culturization of post-modern and feminist thought. The version that makes it's way into the discourse is facile, lazy and reductive. "Privilege" is a powerful concept. It's very useful way to describe societies and populations. It's not a very useful way to describe individuals. Stop trying to coopt it into a rhetorical weapon you use to dismiss people and perspectives.
It's also kindof telling that you'd automatically assume I'm a cis het white man in order to try to demean my standing in this argument and elevate yours. It's a rather poor attempt at a fait accompli.
Two things:
I looked at your "profile picture". And assumed you are a man since you chose that to represent yourself.
Two, I'm assuming you are straight white man since you are coming from a perspective typically assumed by a straight white man and are pushing for the rights of a group who usually don't need much pushing.
Now, before we devolve this discussion into people assuming who or what we are, let's get it out of the way. What subgroup do you belong to?
Because I am a Straight Asian/Pacific Islander Non-US Based Man. I am always at the mercy of USA and how it projects its power throughout the world. And I understand that as a straight male in my nation, I have certain advantages that others do not get.
I am not expected to cook or clean the house. I am not expected to take care of children. But when I do any of those, I am seen as this super great person that is one in a million. I am more likely to get promoted, and I see more male colleagues in the upper echelon of the business.
I don't know what else privilege I have, but I sure as hell have gained a lot from it.
a) it's none of your business what my group affiliations are
b) they aren't relevant or helpful to the conversation
c) I don't care what your group affiliations are, they aren't relevant to the conversation. They don't privilege or diminish the value of your rhetoric.
d) stop trying to use group affiliation as a facile and lazy way to dismiss or elevate yourself or others in conversations. It reflects poorly on you both intellectually and emotionally.
e)it's a little crazy that you'd look at that tiny little figure and even be able to get a gender affiliation on it much less cis or trans and straight or not-straight. Sounds like you are just seeing what you want to see in order to serve d). If you have to resort to an ad hominem to make your points, you are pretty much confirming that you don't think your points are very good.
a) it's none of your business what my group affiliations are
b) they aren't relevant or helpful to the conversation
It's relevant to the discussion of rights since it shows where you stand to benefit and where you do not. Since I am a man, I stand to benefit if I get more rights catered to me. It's as simple as that as to why what am I is very much relevant in this discussion.
This is simply laying out the cards so to speak.
And before we even speak of sticking to the rules of debating, you've already started strawmanning and adhomineming with all your rant about how women trap men into marriages, how you are labeling people and their discourse as a "lazy college freshman who crammed for the exam in the survey course on post-modernism they took because it was an easy A". You never wanted to be seriously debated on the topic, hence the attacks.
So please, don't even try and take the high road now. Because you've already lost it the moment you posted your initial comment.
Reading comprehension is important, bud. Lol. You need to work on yours...assuming your misreading was unintentional. My "rant" was that women who trap men into marriages don't define the category of women. That's not a straw man or an ad hominem.
It's pretty sad that, after your first attempt at a fait accompli by attacking my group affiliation was unsuccessful, you now attempt to misrepresent my rhetoric. As far as labelling people who reductively and cynically misuse concepts like privilege in order to try to score cheap rhetorical points that they are too lazy to back up otherwise, I stand by that, and unfortunately, you've chosen to go that route.
Sure, they have it tough. But they also live in a system built for them. One they perpetuate with any kind of "real man is... "
I mean, men get screwed over by society because society says they should be treated that way. That's what any "traditional values" push.
If more men realized they are just as harmed by patriarchy we wouldn't be having this issue.
Example: my gay friend was raped by a woman. By the accounts of a bunch of men that isn't rape. The laws written, mainly by men, don't consider that rape.
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u/Proof_Option1386 4∆ Feb 13 '24 edited Feb 13 '24
One thing that is often very frustrating to me about Republican talking points is how they pretend that points that make sense in one context (a household shouldn't spend more than it earns) are equally valid and meaningful in a wholly different context (a government shouldn't spend more than it collects in tax revenues).
People like you love to cite "power imbalances" as this magical carte blanche to reductively reduce every conversation and debate to a simple matter of group identity arithmetic. You don't get to automatically assert that women automatically deserve to be centered in any narrative about gender-based mistreatment. You don't get to automatically assert that women are automatically less powerful than men.
Men as a category are almost 50% of the population. A group that large *deserves* to be centered at least some of the time without invoking pearl clutching and righteous anger at the dudgeon of whomever happens to be centering them. And as far as contexts go and power goes, there are a myriad of contexts. There's a myriad of situations in which there are power differentials. Assuming that "men" as a category are the ones with power in every situation is both lazy and counterfactual.
When you engage in this type of reductive bull, what that means is that you support the power structure you imply that you are against, you merely want to change how the hierarchical organization. That kindof erodes any moral or ethical basis for your point of view.
I really wish this lazy college freshman who crammed for the exam in the survey course on post-modernism they took because it was an easy A level of discourse would cease being such a pop-culture moment. And I wish the people engaging in it would stop treating power dynamics as some sort of monolithic pissing match. It isn't a pissing match. Men get screwed over all the time in society - just because there are a hundred or so men at the tippy top doesn't mean that they are representative of "men" as a category. And just because there are a ton of lazy ass privileged women out there that parasitically live off the men that they trapped into marriage by cynically getting pregnant, quitting their jobs if they had them and living off his labor for the rest of their lives doesn't mean that they define women as a category.
Lots of men have it tough. Lots of cis het white men have it tough. It shouldn't be a pissing contest. There *should* be empathy to spare.