"Ok... But have you considered my anger towards women?" - reddit dude

I'm a man and I'm sorry to say that I kind of agree with you. There are exceptions but most of the men who voice their opinion on feminism and gender issues seems to be viewing it as a zero sum game where women can only be liberated at the expense of men.

Most of those men seems to take any critique of patriarchal structures personal and will try to shift focus for instance by making a discussion about how women feel unsafe meeting men on the street at night be about how insulted they feel by being perceived as dangerous and how they have never themselves done anything mean to women.

I see this as an instance of the liberal fetichation of personal responsibility. The liberal explanation for why things happe is that they happen because individuals deliberately choose to make them happen. So when someone is talking about oppression of women their brains short-circuits into perceiving it as an accusation against them personally.

I don’t know if there is a solution. There are so many aspects to this problem, and most solutions will bring about more violence against women in the process.

There’s so much to this, and it hits differently in different demographics. Different reasons for resentment. Some who need to be approached with humor as a dialectical tool, others who need to be bashed in culturally (which there isn’t much hope of turning barstool sports into a feminist media apparatus, so there goes that), some who can be re-educated, and others who are beyond redemption.

All in all, I can’t offer much hope because women’s liberation must come as a result of men losing power and influence. I have seen glimpses of this in the black community here, and so much of this Latin America. It would be interesting to study situations like Appalachia where women have been forced to be the bread winners, decision makers, and bear all of the familial load because men have checked out or died from drug overdose. They have no political power and little financial power, but it seems they are less disrespected from a misogyny point of view. This doesn’t solve SA matters of course.

Idk. Rambling now

Yeah, I get that. Whenever I need to renew my faith in humanity, I browse r/menslib for a bit. That subreddit is full of good dudes who can actually discuss men’s issues in a healthy way.

Pretty much spot-on. Men, especially white/white-passing, affluent men of above-average intelligence, are raised to assume they've got it made, because they're on top of the hierarchy. Once they hit adulthood and are tossed into the machine, they'd rather take the anger that generates and pass it down the chain, as though this will somehow propel them upward. They've internalized the hierarchy to the point where they don't even perceive it as anything other than natural.

I haven't devised a solution, but I think it helps to be aware of the conversation's context between general and specific. In general, women experience more severe oppression, but the young male hears this and testifies about the oppression he experiences as an individual. But rather than try to deal with his emotions and feelings on an individual level, he instead attacks the generalization, because it's the only way he can justify his feelings of oppression being significant when he's not part of the group in question. So he'll turn around and seek solace with people who pat his ego as an individual, via spurious/made-up statistics about how he's really part of the more oppressed group.

By all accounts, I belong to the demographic that should have turned into a misogynist incel shitlord by now, but instead I'm a misandrist volcel shitlord. Why? I don't fucking know.

If patriarchy had some genius solution, it would have been solved by now. Men giving up social status and power in exchange for, what, getting more "in touch with their feelings" isn't really an appealing deal. It is a zero sum game.

Women are socialized to, well, socialize more. So they have a bigger friend circle and a bigger support network than men, who basically have to fit their entire social circle into one person, the mythical gf, who is obviously a single flawed person just like everyone else, and can't replace an entire varied and infinitely complex social circle. How could the man not be disappointed and bitter at this, lashing out verbally or physically?

So I don't think the solution has too much to do with sorting out male-female relations, we just need men to hang out with each other and make friends and most of the problems wouldn't have a catalyst anymore. Dudes rock.

I can hate men and think men can be made better

Chew bubblegum, walking, same time, etc

Reading this post really reminded me of the introduction to bell hooks’s book, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love which is saw recommended here some time ago.

I must shamefully admit that I barely breached chapter 2 (it’s very strange to think of myself as an emotional being tbh, it was a very good but very taxing read, even though it is very easy to read). I’ll definitely try to get further along, both because it is extremely thought-provoking, and for my personal development).

Anyway, here’s a longish paragraph from the intro; hopefully I’m not way off the mark to find this post reminiscent of it.

Before her death Barbara Deming was among those rare outspoken feminist thinkers who wanted to create a space for women to talk openly about our feelings about men. Articulating her concern that the wellspring of female fury at men was making it impossible for women to express any other feelings than their sense that “men are hopeless,” she stated: “It scares me that more and more women are coming to feel this way, to feel that men as an entire gender are hopeless.” Deming did not feel that men were incapable of change, of moving away from male domination, but she did feel that it was necessary for women to speak the truth about how we think about men: “I believe that the only way we can get where we have to go is by never refusing to face the truth of our feelings as they rise up in us—even when we wish it were not the truth. So we have to admit to the truth that we sometimes wish our own fathers, sons, brothers, lovers were not there. But, this truth exists alongside another truth: the truth that this wish causes us anguish.” While some women active in the feminist movement felt anguished about our collective inability to convert masses of men to feminist thinking, many women simply felt that feminism gave them permission to be indifferent to men, to turn away from male needs.

To be clear, men have only ourselves to blame for this situation, but the conflictedness non-men feel about this state of affairs is so heartbreaking to me.

As a male. May I share something with you

We are giant babies and everyone of us knows that deep down. And just like giant babies we have to make every thing about us.

Also realize that many men have been in sports and physical fights, esp boomers. And all these hits make us dumb and act even more like babies. Take your AVG person's iq than throw in a youth of lead exposure and concussions and you will get close to what the boomer male mind is like.

People will need years of reeducation to get that alt right shit out of their head, so don't just treat them as a comrade cause they hate the present order

western culture trains most men to be human garbage

Some women are sexist. I hate those women and only those women. Some men are sexist. I hate those men and only those men. Saying all men bad is just as bad as saying all women bad or all black people bad or all white people bad etc.

Follow up reply... let’s see what happens with this story

I think it's a general rule of thumb that people care most about issues that affect them personally and that's understandable. We're often encouraged and manipulated by propagandists to "care" about issues that affect others, but in favor of the wrong side of the issue. It's probably good to get people to stop having opinions on things they haven't really looked into at all, but if we were able to do that all the problems in the world would already be solved. But those narratives surrounding 'social issues' are created in the same way as narratives around 'Iraq' or 'China' or anything else.

Maybe it's my dumb late night opinion but that's probably going to be the case until enough people join forces to topple the whole of western imperialism. Women's rights made great progress in the USSR and China, although that has obviously backslid greatly with the end of the USSR (and with reforms in China, as beneficial as they are in other areas). Making sure that all socialist organizing is feminist and disciplines and shuns people who are misogynistic hopefully ensures that women have a better foothold to improve things when change starts happening more rapidly. And that has the effect of also improving the strength of organizations internally (misogyny is also a fed tool) and with gaining new supporters.

A 'Cultural Revolution' in the US would probably have to be on a never-before-seen scale, despite how our media tries to "progressive-wash" this country by platforming people who discuss social issues. I almost think that when these reactionary politicians in the US and France and elsewhere talk about "woke cancel culture" or whatever as being a "new Cultural Revolution" there's almost some truth to it (in a good way obviously). But it's mostly just a culture-war/media thing still.

That said, I’ve been dealing with a lot of irrational anger towards men as a group even though I don’t want to be.

So do i, and that's in spite of me being a man myself. Or because of that. When they say "patriarchy harms everybody, including men", they're definitely correct. I'm so very tired of all this.