What "institutional power" does feminism hold today that isn't completely performative and bourgeoisie?
The institutional power to drive gamers into a frothing rage at the very hint of their existence.
You know why more men die in war? Other men. Men made the rules that women can't do anything physical. Men run the countries that enter into war. Yes women (ie Thatcher) can enter into war too but my point is that all these things that feminists supposedly deny is caused by other men. Trying to equate feminism as a force for toxic gender politics at the same level as the toxic society men created and maintained for hundreds of years is pretty disingenuous.
This whole thing comes off like a chud trying to be neutral as possibly by admitting that men can be a little rambunctious but we need to seriously talk about this tumblr screenshot I found of some caricature of a feminist saying all men need to be castrated. Because that kind of toxicity is the same as women not being allowed to ride a train because their uterus might fall out.
And there's a fundamental economic component to "left-winger" that you can't leave out. Telling people that being a left winger means you do both sides shit in culture war debates is wrong and hurts online leftism more than open a door for pipeline purposes.
You didn't ask for it, but you can see their attempts at a response here: (warning contains hot takes)
https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/lsseqa/rebuttal_to_well_yes_but_its_men_victimizing
lmao, women are targeted for violent crimes FAR more than your average man. What's the statistic, something like 2 out of every 5 women has been victimized? This dude is a fucking moron.
Hm why isn't it the case that men aren't born with that protection? Must be because women just don't care about us. :thonk:
Reading this and knowing nothing more about the community than what you've posted sparks a pang of recognition for a younger Spro in my heart.
I remember a time, before memes of tanks and bears, when I too felt this way. I was inundated, by my reckoning at least, with what seemed to me as the prevailing social issue at the time ten or so years ago: the internet's fascination with feminism.
I live (and always unfortunately have lived) in rural, midwest communities. To escape, I've always spent most of my time online. For most young men, however, that pretty much puts you on one path. If you're raised well, and have a good head on your shoulders, you're going to encounter this particular contradiction: if social capital is a resource, how can I help someone else get theirs without giving them some of my own? I know other people need it, but I barely have enough to get by.
To stop my rambling, it comes down to this: either from this point these cool 😎 dudes are either going to learn how equality becomes equitable (read theory nerds) or they will suffer from "fahq-gotmineism".
So again, knowing nothing else, I hope these guys can learn the right lessons. This is certainly similar where I started.
This reminds me of that incel essay about the "marxist analysis of the redistribution of sex" or some shit that was posted on the old subreddit.
dudes profoundly rock
idk this could be like a potentially positive stepping stone from the self-centered aggrievement and culture war obsession of internet men's rights activism to a politics of solidarity, but knowing Reddit, it'll descend further and further into stupidpol-style griping about SJWs with a tacked-on "this is the reason we can't have healthcare!!"
There's already a place for that, it's r/MensLib, and it's kinda silly sometimes but it's well meaning and positive. It's so positive that you feel bad saying anything even about the kinda dumb stuff over there. This is just weird lol
Yeah I just took a peek at this subreddit and it's very MRA-lite, while still rejecting MRAs. They're recognizing problems of patriarchy, but then complaining that feminists ignore them. I think they take criticism of patriarchy personally and find it confusing that people who aren't men can still uphold and benefit from it.
Honestly the entire subreddit seems to be a product of men harmed by the "men are trash" dialogue that /r/MensLib has been addressing recently. /r/MensLib is overall a good subreddit with occasional outright leftist takes, whereas this one is overtly critical of feminism for not taking Men's issues seriously.
Tbh it does remind me a of a phase I went through where I called myself an "egalitarian" as a way to ally with feminists. It wasn't in bad faith, I just felt genuinely that I didn't belong in feminist spaces for reasons this subreddit seems to be complaining about. So this could be a decent subreddit for pipelining people?
Edit: here's a thread where they discuss MRA/TRP. Not surprisingly, lots of takes that really miss the mark.
Edit2: here's a thread on the recent discourse in the MensLib subreddit regarding "all men are trash". The comments don't seem too optimistic; the top one is literally complaining that trans men are having their voices elevated when someone like them would've been ignored 🤦♂️. There's still some good comments in there too, so it's really a mixed bag of a subreddit.
I'm not gonna go and look at the posts there because I don't really care, but that doesn't really seem all that crazy. It appears to addressing neoliberal feminism. I have definitely had the experience with neoliberal feminists wherein it appears that they more interested in simply eliminating the aspects of our society that disadvantage women but are not necessarily interested in eliminating the aspects of our society that advantage women (which do exist). I feel like I'm not alone in having that experience with "mainstream feminism" aka "girlboss feminism". Just off the top of my head would be girlboss feminists who still believe that men should be the ones to ask them out and pay for dates, etc. I know girlboss feminists IRL that take stances like that wherein they want to maintain gender norms when it is to their benefit.
Whether or not that sub is about that, or just a place for men to complain about feminism in general, is a different story, and like I said, I don't care enough to go look.
I'd think /r/menslib would be the better sub to talk about girlboss feminism and how much of a sham it is. This gives me the impression it's just a sub to attack women under the guise of being progressive to avoid a ban. Maybe, like you I don't care enough to go look.
Never post there so I'm going to take your word for it. Someone should get in there and radicalize them!
Go to menslib or whatever if you want to talk about MENS issues, not complain about feminist women not doing it right. Women can do that too.
I’m not gonna go and look at the posts there because I don’t really care, but that doesn’t really seem all that crazy
It does. When someone complains about feminism guilt tripping men or "downplaying female advantages PARTICULARLY IN CASES OF ALLEGED ABUSE" and "one sided equality" then it's a big fucking burning red flag. It should not be the purpose of a MEN'S sub to specifically complain about "girlboss feminism", inevitably they won't stick to that (not that they were planning to).
No, it's not in and of itself a red flag. There are absolutely women of the "girlboss feminist" variety that use it as a way to climb the social/corporate ladder and not as a means of liberation for all people of all genders. I regularly have to interact with quite a few such women. I've seen many of these same women downplay sexual abuse of men, which is a issue that is actually a wider societal issue. Feminists/the feminist movement, and more specifically it's submovements, as is really the case here (referring to neoliberal feminism) should in no circumstances be above critique for its failures, and men have as much of a right to critique as anyone else of any other gender identity. If the posting just devolves into stupidpol level complaints about everything with no real attempts to discuss the building of more egalitarian gender norms, then that is a different story.
Nowhere in either of my previous statements have I defended this sub. OP tried to show that this sub is bad with these three paragraphs, and what I have said is that there is nothing inherently wrong with these three paragraphs, and that instead, if the sub is bad, it should show with actual posting examples. In my comment that you responded to, I specifically said:
If the posting just devolves into stupidpol level complaints about everything with no real attempts to discuss the building of more egalitarian gender norms, then that is a different story.
Fellas is it gay to be a feminist and recognize that women’s issues and oppression stem from our privilege and historic patriarchy?
