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is the man or bear thing rhetorically or optically the perfect feminist meme that is beyond criticism? no.
but is it leaps and bounds better at getting men to understand the material consequences of patriarchy on the physical and emotional health of women than that stupid “kill all men” meme from last decade? definitely.
if you see “feminists” excusing shitty behavior, call them the fuck out for it. im not holding everything under the banner of feminism infallible and you shouldn’t either.
but bad feminists don’t excuse you inserting yourself into a conversation women are having about their lived experiences. and that is precisely what you are doing.
women are expressing that they have been threatened and hurt, and you are stomping in with some vague “NUH UH a feminist was mean once or twice” to shut up those women. this is, and i don’t say this lightly, despicable.
I do. Then you normally get called sexist by other women.
Like I said you never see feminism, or almost never see, women accepting there is ever anything wrong with feminism. Women need to take more responsibility over shitty women's behaviour.
absolutely the fuck not. and you wonder why you get called sexist lmao. 😭
you are the soyjack in the meme buddy. do some self reflection and listen to others for a moment.
But somehow men DO needs to take responsibility for shitty men's behaviour...
no. men (and women) need to take responsibility for the patriarchy, which manifests especially in oppressive behavior, primarily from and benefiting men but of course not limited to such.
there’s a bit of an equivocation of two distinct meanings of “responsible.” feminism is about being a brother’s keeper type of responsibility, not about direct culpability in the actions of others.
no one is ever individually responsible for the actions of another individual. but we are all responsible to protect and look out for each other.
it’s a subtle difference but so, so important, so please read a couple times to understand.
Women can uphold the patriarchy and/or reinforce toxic masculinity too.
correct
Wonder if some women abusing men is patriarchy.
Or if some women shaming men for not being masculine enough is patriarchy.
Or if some women asking for some sort of benefits over men is patriarchy.
If yes, the scope of "patriarchy" is so damn wide any reference to men (as in "patri-") would be fair to be removed, and then we'd talk about antisexism in general.
Besides, can we truly talk for the case of patriarchy when the oppression comes from previous generations of men leading to issues of currently living ones? Current men are often oppressed by those measures, not empowered, and that contradicts the very notion of it.
I'm always a bit confused by this desire of women to put entire antisexism movement under the feminism umbrella no matter what.
Why is it so important? What causes this desire for women alone to lead the way? Is it some sort of power struggle, fear of men stealing the topic and pushing another agenda?
We are here, and we recognize the issues of men and, to the extent we can, the issues of women. Let us fight our fight without trying to make it about women. We talk about men, and would be happy to have a community of both men and women to solve what can't be solved on one side.
Often true, yes.
Very often true, yes.
I don’t know what you are referencing but probably?
You are absolutely free to do this. :)
You are definitely in the right here! And these stories are often underrepresented in feminist/antisexist spaces. There is a community for this if you were interested: [email protected]
I think it’s more of a tradition thing than anything. As in, feminism being the first antisexist theory, all other antisexist theories will find their historical roots in what feminists first described. But a valid insight.
No, and this is where I encourage you to be careful. You are reading far too much into a name. See above again for what I believe is more of an occams razor explanation.
Fully agree! I wish you the best in this and I’ll be there alongside you. ❤️
Thank you for such a positive answer!
Still, I think naming it part of feminism introduces a lot of confusion about the goals of an antisexist movement, and can be exploited by many feminists, especially radical ones, hijacking the movement and extinguishing male voices where they matter, while covering it with "it never was about males".
I know there are masculist movements, and I'm long member of [email protected] in particular, but they are just drowned by the embracing, extending and extinguishing hands of feminism and what remains are drops in the ocean.
Which is why I insist on not calling it feminism. Because it really isn't and it introduces a field for manipulation.
With all that said, I will be and I am alongside feminists as well, I just want the situation to be more balanced, and want to see more reciprocation and more male voices heard, not just drowned with "we save you too, so shut up" which often sadly happens.
So when is a societal ill not the patriarchy? There doesn't seem to be any delineation between what is and isn't, so it almost seems like some sort of mysterious Satan figure
Good question!
Handling this question is tricky, but I'll give it a shot with some examples. It's worth noting that there's often overlap between different systems, where those in power in one area also benefit disproportionately in others. (This concept is a key part of intersectionality theory.)
Thank you for responding.
What I'm getting is that patriarchy is a system that is structured in a way that it benefits (or disenfranchises less) those that are:
And that you can keep identifying different traits and expanding the list where relevant?
No that’s kind of the opposite of the point I was making. The patriarchy is only one of all those systems of oppression that I listed.
There is a lot of crossover, yes, but I am not equivocating any of those. They are generally distinct.
Ah, gotcha, sorry my mistake. Thank you for all your help btw.
So it's specific for when men are less disenfranchised than women? Regardless of the perpetrator of said injustice?
So looking at that other guys examples. The only one that doesn't immediately make sense is:
And to me the only example that comes to mind is women expecting men to pay for dates? Which I think is part of patriarchy as it's inherited from a time where women couldn't work or had severely limited career prospects?
And other things like
are a response to a historic lack of agency among women, requiring them to force their husbands to find success for them.
I'm not getting this one though, could you explain how this is patriarchy?
Some of this is starting to get beyond my rhetorical capacity so I won’t pretend to have answers for your questions here, I apologize.
Maybe other commenters can give you satisfactory answers, but in the meantime I’ll refer you to this book by bell hooks (free PDF). Should get you 99.9% of the way there. :)
No worries, thank you for getting me this far!