fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2896 ]

[ SECRET POST #2896 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2896 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 052 secrets from Secret Submission Post #414.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In yesterday's thread about MRA's it was proposed that feminism is failing and alienating men. Interesting idea. What are your thoughts on this?

Not trolling, btw.

To be honest, until we all learn to accept that we are actually Bill Nighy, we cannot progress as a species.

Bill Nighy? =_=

I disagree. I don't think people should model a species on a woman-beater.

As a straight cis male (this being the rare thread where that's actually relevant), that is not my sense at all.

I don't think I can really speak for whether it's generally true for men, I guess. But my feeling is that, no, it's certainly not either failing me or alienating me. It's imperfect but so's everything.

I feel the same.

Are certain people and groups who claim to be feminist alienating men? Yeah, but those people usually do it up front and on purpose and most feminists reject them anyway.

Is "feminism as a whole" alienating men? Not really.

If you wanted to talk about that yesterday, OP, you should have said it in the thread you started.

They probably didn't want to talk about it when IP logging was on. Ten bucks says they wouldn't have brought it up today if IP logging were on.

IP logging was on when this thread was started

I think a subsection of feminism might be - but frankly that's the subsection of feminism I might want nothing to do with as a woman, either.

The problem is when people say "feminism" now, it's basically an umbrella term for different factions that have one thing in common, very broadly, which is not wanting or accepting that women would be disadvantaged not treated inferiorly to men.

But a suffragette was not the same as a third wave feminist, or a radfem who is not the same as Femen activists etc etc.

And the thing is people have all these different things in their head when discussing feminism...which is why, more and more, I feel a different term might eventually be in order.

nope. we are not doing this. fuck off.

Doing what?

Fuck Off.

I'm honestly asking. It's not like there's any wank in the thread as it stands, so what's the problem?

Go for a long walk on a short quay.

Re: Further to yesterday's thread

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-07 22:11 (UTC) - Expand

we're not doing a "lets all criticize feminism" thread.

There aren't any posts critical of feminism ITT tho

Re: Further to yesterday's thread

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-07 22:10 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Further to yesterday's thread

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-07 22:11 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Further to yesterday's thread

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-07 22:14 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Further to yesterday's thread

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-07 22:16 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Further to yesterday's thread

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-07 22:22 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Further to yesterday's thread

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-07 22:39 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Further to yesterday's thread

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-07 22:52 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Further to yesterday's thread

(Anonymous) - 2014-12-07 22:12 (UTC) - Expand

It's not bad to be critical of feminism. There are things about feminism that should be criticized (such as the tendency for it to ignore intersectionality).

There's a difference between talking about the problems with something and dismissing it. Feminism shouldn't be dismissed, because it's necessary, but that doesn't mean no one can or should be critical of aspects of it or of how it's sometimes applied.

Essay time because I have many thoughts and feelings about this topic.

I think the problem here is that there isn't an equivalent to feminism for men, by which I mean a movement that seeks to liberate men from the societally-imposed gender roles and restrictions that they face and to mitigate the problems that disproportionally or specifically affect men in today's society. Instead, what we have is the MRM, which exists to oppose women having rights and to blame women for all the problems that men have and which seeks to reinforce traditional gender roles and restrictions because they view women as their enemies and want to see them controlled and restricted.

Feminism doesn't do much for men's issues specifically (nor is it obligated to do so), but it does spend about the same amount of time telling men that it *does* address men's issues as it does telling men that it doesn't need to address men's issues because women's issues being solved will solve all men's issues. Which isn't true, because you can't just work on half a problem and expect the other half to magically solve itself.

But it *is* true that just as women have been coming together to work on women's issues since the beginnings of the suffragist/women's rights movement, men should be the ones to come together and work on men's issues, because they're the ones being affected by it and they're the ones who know best what kind of solutions will be the most effective to mitigate the problems. However, another issue that feminism has an adverse effect on is that a lot of feminists get upset if anyone suggests that feminism isn't the best solution to men's problems because they interpret that as either men demanding that feminism drop women's issues and focus on men, or as an attack on the idea of feminism itself.

The MRM damages the whole thing further with its loud insistence that it's doing for men what feminism does for women, because the MRM *doesn't* work on men's issues in any meaningful way, only complains about them and spreads misinformation about them and their origins and blames them on women. So the idea of an organization or movement that focuses on men's issues and helping men and trying to liberate men from traditional gender roles and restrictions is tainted because the MRM claims (falsely) to be that movement already, and so it makes people less likely to think it's a good idea or that it's necessary. There's also the problem that some feminists will outright deny, sometimes with a lot of anger and hostility, the idea that men HAVE serious issues to deal with or that men deserve any help with their issues. This also discourages people from wanting to deal with those issues - they either believe that all men are privileged enough that none of them need or deserve help, or they think that trying to help will get them seen as anti-women.

It's a tangled mess and one that would probably be best solved by enough men banding together to say "We reject the horrible, dishonest, outrageous group of people calling themselves the MRM and we are founding a new movement that seeks to do for men what feminism is doing for women - to liberate men from gender roles and restrictions, to work together to improve the issues that disproportionately or specifically affect men, and to bring about genuine equality as best we can in as many areas of society as we can." But I don't think that's gonna happen any time soon.

The trouble is that any group of men starting out with the goal of "We are founding a new movement that seeks to do for men what feminism is doing for women" will have one fo the three problems

1. At best attract misogynist and assholes (Like feminism has attracted misandrists and assholes. See "Kill all men" hashtag for more.)
2. Most likley it will be at it's ground level started by secret misogynists and assholes (Like Feminism. See Dwarkin, see Solanas).
3 At it's worst any movement dedicated to supporting men will, no matter the intentions, be inherently anti woman. There is a strong school of thought that suggests this is just what men do when they assert their will in any direction.

In short the problem of any such group existing will without fail, fall to misogynistic elements, and where feminism has to a large degree moved away from being exclusivly, or even mostly misandrist to the point that a feminist CAN say "Not all feminists" the same will never be true of any male dominated group.

see the ridiculous idea that all men are secretly dying to own and control and subjugate women, and that it's impossible for men to, say, seek to address the problem of male homelessness (men being the vast majority of homeless) without taking a side trip into Female Enslavement Town, is a great big part of why so many men feel that feminism doesn't give a rat's ass about the problems that arise for men when gender roles are reinforced. I mean, the people who think that men are all evil rape-loving slavers are fortunately a minority, but they sure screech very loudly about it and that gives the impression that it's a common thought process. It also gives the impression that the people who claim it have literally never met a man, or ever interacted with society at large, but that's another story.

I really like this comment and feel like it covers the complexities of the situation pretty well. Especially the last part.

As a dude (filed and monitored) I call bullshit.

"Not trolling, btw."

lol okay whatever

No feminism isn't failing. It's people who have had a counter reaction to everything 'femnazi' related because they crave 'male' approval. It's actually really sad.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only