Men's Liberation
This community is first and foremost a feminist community for men and masc people, but it is also a place to talk about men’s issues with a particular focus on intersectionality.
Rules
Everybody is welcome, but this is primarily a space for men and masc people
Non-masculine perspectives are incredibly important in making sure that the lived experiences of others are present in discussions on masculinity, but please remember that this is a space to discuss issues pertaining to men and masc individuals. Be kind, open-minded, and take care that you aren't talking over men expressing their own lived experiences.
Be productive
Be proactive in forming a productive discussion. Constructive criticism of our community is fine, but if you mainly criticize feminism or other people's efforts to solve gender issues, your post/comment will be removed.
Keep the following guidelines in mind when posting:
- Build upon the OP
- Discuss concepts rather than semantics
- No low effort comments
- No personal attacks
Assume good faith
Do not call other submitters' personal experiences into question.
No bigotry
Slurs, hate speech, and negative stereotyping towards marginalized groups will not be tolerated.
No brigading
Do not participate if you have been linked to this discussion from elsewhere. Similarly, links to elsewhere on the threadiverse must promote constructive discussion of men’s issues.
Recommended Reading
- The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, And Love by bell hooks
- Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements by Michael Messner
Related Communities
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What makes us men any more than being beings with arbitrary shapes? I'm using arbitrary in the literal sense of "decided by individuals without regards to external factors".
I'm not a man. I'm me, and I happen to be in this body. All these words are just ways other people are labeling me so they can decide how I'm to be treated. Putting a label on a person is no different than putting a handle on your coffee pot.
Hey it's one of those agender people who only wants to abolish gender when trans people are mentioned.
Hi, this is a bit of a tangent but it's topical so I hope you don't mind me asking. Since you use the pronoun "drag", would you also consider your gender to be a third gender, or is it only your pronouns that are nonbinary?
Drag's gender is dragon rider
https://lemmy.nz/post/15737101
That's a pretty good word for it.
I'm just tired of things not making sense.
https://gender.fandom.com/wiki/Agender
Ty
So rather useful?
Yes, useful for people trying to control it/them.
Or like you know to communicate.
Communicating to others how to treat who you're labeling.
Dude what are you talking about? I can spend a lot of time describing what I do for work, or I can use a label that describes my occupation. It won't 100% do the job, but will be sufficient most of the time, and if not I can elaborate. How do you even talk to people without using labels, are you happen to be Treebeard or something?
I'm gonna just let what you said yourself sink in for a while.
I see, you just in general anti clear communication, fair enough.
Says the guy who literally sent a sentence with no predicate.
Predicate is just a label used to control folks through grammar, something. Don't bee a sheep.
LMAO
So what is your motivation to take part in conversation without really interacting with folks you talk to? Just lonely?
I'll properly interact with someone when I catch some hint that they're above themselves. All of you who are immersed in life can just continue on without me.
Dang dude, how far are you up your own ass?
How far are YOU up my ass? You got any problems with my attitude? How are you affected? Maybe you should try your own ass out.
You are participating in discussions on public forums so you have to live with people finding your attitude odd.
That's fair.
Mango, why do you always have to be the one saying absolutely ridiculous shit?
In the way "man" is being used here, it's not your body that would make you a man, but your gender identity. For most people, those are intuitively the same thing, but that only makes it more important to be clear about the terms being used here.
Ooohh, the word you guys are looking for is "style".
Listen, if you want to question the terms or concepts being used here then go for it, but please don't barrel into the discussion and obstinately refuse to use the same definitions as everyone else while intentionally not making that clear just so that you can try to own people. We all see through it and it's obnoxious and only serves to erode the quality of discussion.
Well if that's the proper way to do things, I'm gonna need you all to stop obstinately refusing to use the words "man" and "woman" the same way as everyone else while intentionally not making that clear for whatever reason you have. It really IS rude to hijack already existing language to change the conventions everyone else is already using. I would also like people to stop acting like feminism is egalitarianism when the label is clearly gendered.
If you wanna question what it is to be a man or a woman, then go for it, but have some definition ready before asserting what's what in the face of thousands of years of precedent.
Agreed.
Anyways, I'm aware that the usage of "man" and "woman" in leftist culture solidified rather quickly and unexpectedly into something that seems counterintuitive from an outside perspective, because I had an outside perspective when it happened. But I assure you, the difference in meaning to its older usage is both necessary and not actually hard to understand if someone takes the time to explain it.
Basically, the idea of sex (physical traits) and gender (mental traits) being distinct things became necessary as the need to refer to nontraditional combinations of them became a thing. Intersex people may have physical traits of both sexes, but have a clear gender. Transgender people are an obvious catalyst, having a gender that differs from their sex (post-operation, you could in theory use the word transsexual, but this has bad connotations from its history so it's not used). Some historical cultures have been argued to have more than two distinct genders, while obviously still only having two primary sexes. You can see how this gets a bit complicated and necessitates the differentiation of the physical and mental traits into different words. So, sex became the physical traits, and gender became the mental ones. Or maybe that was always the technical definitions, and they became more common in their usage. Either way, I hope you get what I'm saying. There are definitions for both terms, and more importantly, there's a need for the terms to be different and more technical than they are in common usage, when discussing sex/gender issues. This naturally bled into common usage as those issues became more culturally relevant, at which point they came into contact with "normal" people who were like "What? Why?" I'm asking you to keep an open mind about learning why, because it wasn't done for no reason. Apologies for the wall of text, it's 2:30am for me.
There is nothing distinct about a gender, and literally nobody is deciding what traits belong, so why does gender get to have anything to do with the word that says I've got a penis? Why imply that anyone should have to be, feel, or act some kind of way in relation to the words man or woman? You're all literally doing worse than the astrology people at categorizing personalities and acting like it grants you the right to suck people in around you to play this stupid fucking game!
Nobody needs to use your pronouns anymore or any more meaningfully than they gotta use your constellation to describe you. In fact, anyone and everyone is perfectly at liberty to call you an asshat instead of anything else for trying to write the script for everyone else!
Gender isn't real, but I sure do love wrecking my ass with dildos. Wanna call me something?
Let me be very clear here. I'm not Republican. I've got no issues with intersex people, or any particular orientation. I don't care what anyone's style is. I couldn't make up any reasons to care. The absolutely only thing that should bother me about someone else's whole damn shape or presentation is if I have to touch them or maintain their life, and I don't gotta consent to any of that. What I'm against here is stupid lack of clarity from the people who wanna reject gender roles by using gender roles as their framework for describing how. It's asinine.
"Gender isn't real" is a valid perspective, and actually, I agree that it's not based on any concrete traits. This is what people mean when they say that "gender is a social construct". There's nothing that makes my gender objectively male, other than that I believe myself to be one based on my social understanding of gender roles. You can't measure someone's gender, it's not something that you can determine from someone's personality or biology, and it's not something that's even objectively definable over time based on specific traits. It's not real, in that sense. If you're someone who believes those to be important traits for something to be real-- fair! It's not real, then. We made it up.
It's about respect, asshat. Gender is something that people value very highly, on par with religion and politics, except unlike those it's entirely harmless. Why would I go out of my way to disrespect someone? Sure, I can do anything. I'm free to be a total dick and fuck everyone over. But I also must accept the consequences of doing so. If you want to misgender everyone, good luck with that, but it's not going to end well for your social life.
I'm respected for my contributions, not for being an unpaid actor. I don't let anyone write a script for me to rehearse. If you want me to call you Mommy, you'd better be turning a dial on my tens unit.
So basically, you want to be able to act however you want with no social consequences. That is, frankly, delusional and the pinnacle of selfishness. Blocked.
You wanna give me consequences for disobeying? We're gonna fight. You're gonna lose. You think respect is for people who act like control freaks? It's not. Trying to control other people is the finest way to be hated.