You don’t hate women and feminism. You hate capitalism.
You don’t hate women and feminism. You hate capitalism.
makemenemotionalagain.substack.com You don’t hate women and feminism. You hate capitalism.
Why so many men feel threatened today.
158 comments
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I think this article does a great job talking about there isn't enough examples and models of an non-toxic masculinity out there. Women are told and have examples about many different ways to be women. Thanks to work of female feminists for years being childless, a stay at home mother, working a "feminine" job, working a "masculine" job, etc. are all valid options for women and are celebrated by women.
For men there is celebration of only one kind of man. We need more examples and celebrations of the varieties of men out there. I think this is especially true for straight men. I think straight men should borrow some of these examples from both the Gay community and from women. I personally as a straight man have found a lot of acceptance and value from how Gay men value diverse bodies types of men. I find it validating to me own experience and women are starting to do the same. We as men need to start celebrating each other in the ways that women do. After doing this enough and making it safe enough for women to join in a lot of good examples can be set for young men to see there are multiple celebrated options of masculinity. I think it might be hard for straight men to understand they are not the best at this and we should follow the lead of other but it is best course of options.
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there needs to be real accountability for the impact of men like rogan, tate, musk, trump
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This is definitely needed.
I would like to point on that these men are purposely trying to many people as possible to play their game since they know they can win. So recruiting men to think and act like them is their own point. Its helpful to note that all these "successful" people are all benefiting from the system that exists today that we are not. They need us more than we need them
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I think people who ask generalized questions like, "Why does group X have irrational opinion Y about subject Z?" should instead engage with individuals about why they feel a certain way on a specific subject. I think they would find that people make up a full spectrum, opinions are more diverse than the right one and the ridiculous one, and people don't personify two extreme opposing memes.
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The problem is the answer is usually that they're a gullible idiot that doesn't fact check memes they saw on Twitter
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The article gets so close to fully getting it but then misses the point in an attempt to identify a common enemy.
White male privilege was the bribe that was given to the group in exchange of accepting a shit deal (being a worker under capitalism) as long as that group helped enforce an even shitier deal to the rest.
Now that bribe is gone, so it’s actually a shittier deal than before (similar to what everyone else has, maybe worse cause of the stigma).
Men aren’t thinking, oh what’s the ideal solution. They are thinking, we did the right thing and agreed on equal rights, but you (feminism) didn’t fix the shit deal, so I don’t want more of your solution.
Imo, the solution to the shit deal wasn’t feminism, it was socialism (which includes equal rights for all humans).
I think this is by design, the owners knew feminism wouldn’t change their system of oppression much, so they let that one go through and crushed socialism in the process.
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I think this is by design, the owners knew feminism wouldn’t change their system of oppression much, so they let that one go through and crushed socialism in the process.
This was definitely the strategy and it wasn't an acceptance of feminism but a much limited feminist rights. These were limited to the rights to vote and work from other rich white families (i.e. from their own wives and daughters.) . From the earliest days feminism included socialistic elements with many of same people interacting in much in the same way civil right organization had socialist elements. The powers at be simple found the easiest path and did it. Moreover, they tried to highlight the most extreme man hating elements to isolate men from joining the cause.
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it's wild to me how many people think socialism and feminism are somehow at odds rather than exactlyein lock step, two aspects of dissolving the torture that's inflicted through all of the hegemony. we want to dissolve the hierarchies of gender, race, class, and nationalities and create a society where everyone celebrates each other. feminism, socialism, integration, and solidarity are all the same goddamn movement. none of them are distractions from eachother. they're all different sets of messaging to help reach people where they are.
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but you (feminism) didn’t fix the shit deal,
I'm just curious where feminists are in power. Maybe in some nordic countries - but than again those have rather high living standard and economical equality. Big corporations pandering to LGBT and co, does not really count.
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Feminism has a lot of narrative power, and the whole middle management not just of individual companies but society as a whole is, by now, female-dominated.
If you're getting laid off chances are a women wrote the reports that the layoff was based on, and a woman is signing off on your severance package. You go to the dole office and -- yep, a woman works your case. Chances also aren't too terrible that, above the layer of the predominantly male C-suite, there's an heiress to the empire because generational capital accumulation doesn't discriminate.
So, in a nutshell: Much feminist messaging can easily come across as HR telling a male truck driver "our boss is a man, therefore, you're fired".
Whether that power base can actually be, realistically, mobilised, is another topic. I guess academia in principle serves the place for middle management that unions play among workers but it's a tough cookie no matter which side you look at. Doubly fucked in places like the US where middle management is even more prone to the temporarily embarrassed billionaire fantasy. And somehow I ended up at class analysis. Honestly, wasn't intentional.
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While there are some points worth discussing in the article, I want to raise an issue with the community itself, since it's actually fairly adjacent.
If you look through it, majority of posts in the community that calls itself "Men's Liberation" is really not about, well, men's liberation. It's about how men should adapt to the realities of modern feminism, without getting a set at the table to discuss how it affects them and what they would've done differently. It just straight up mirrors feminist talking points and rephrases them to have "men" in the name.
This is very much why feminism is often hated: not because it gives women seat at the table, but because it takes the seat away from men, while vaguely claiming they have power elsewhere (but do they?).
Don't get me wrong: feminism tackles important questions, but it always looks at issues through the women's perspective, which might miss the unique circumstances men find themselves in and their angle with the issues raised. Since the community claims to come from the men's side (it's in the name), I find it deeply disingenuous and concerning.
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If I’m not mistaken, this was the initial concept behind the community, no? The idea that this “manosphere” bullshit is a response to the erasure of men in the misguided attempt to bow to third (fourth now?) wave feminism.
In a nutshell, the plot of feminism got lost in the greater society as a whole finally trying to adopt some of its principles via straight up virtue signaling.
—fuck I can’t think of the phrase people use—value posturing? Ethics acting? I’m sure you all know the phrase I’m searching for, right wingers popularized it.But point is, it’s true. And yes, it happens on the white left, but its most devious incarnation is in corporate America. Putting a woman of color in your ad is not equality. Taking aunt jemima off your bottle isn’t erasing racism. It’s just lip service to something akin to progress to boost their bottom line.
So in this world of a bunch of meaningless putting women in the spotlight to say they’ve done it, young men are feeling like they don’t matter. So when you have the liberal world saying “shut up now, a woman is talking,” young men don’t hear “okay, it’s on my generation to take this and smile because there is a long history of women not getting a seat at the table.” Young men hear the most misguided of the fourth wave feminists shouting “men are pigs” and “oh a woman killed her husband? Good, one less man in the world,” and they don’t see much pushback on it. And their brains aren’t fully developed, so they don’t understand that this behavior, in context…well, it’s still very stupid and wrong, but they see society writ large mostly embracing this or laughing it off.
So what do they do? Where do they turn? To the people telling them that women, actually, are the ones who are trash and they need to shut up and get back in the kitchen. Because, to their eye, the world does seem to be trying to go out of its way to “oppress” men. When you hear those fucksticks say “white men are the most oppressed group,” young men don’t understand why that should be laughed off. Because, again, their young brains aren’t developed and hey don’t have centuries of history understood. They hear one side saying “whatever it’s just some white man,” and they hear the other saying “it’s okay to be a man, it’s actually great and you deserve everything.”
Who the fuck do we think they’re gonna listen to?
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Not sure exactly how the lemmy.ca community came to be but I suppose it's a continuation of the subreddit, vox has the original story in form of an interview:
I had gotten really into observing the online gender wars. It was entertaining for a while, and then it started to get pretty depressing. You had people on both sides of these issues who are passionate about the parts that they care about — but what they're really passionate about is arguing, and making the other side look bad.
After a while, I realized that I either needed to stop observing it or I needed to try to help fix it. So I started thinking that what we needed was an actual solutions- and positivity-focused men's group, where we could talk about these issues that are so important but ditch some of the bad habits of what we've seen before.
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The term you're looking for is 'virtue signalling'. It's a shame it got assigned a political bias, because it's a handy term for what makes rainbow capitalism so infuriating.
Another big point that needs to be made is that engagement driven social media algorithms have pushed the most controversial content to the top, giving it an oversized representation. Then there are also those with vested interests in preventing unity who are more than happy to jump on any opportunity to stoke division.
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You mean, virtue signaling?
I agree with you in that the less avenues we have for men to speak up and be listened to, the more radical they will become, and instead of coming with constructive and useful criticisms, they will instead follow everyone who says "the other side is a problem, so now it's your time to violently state your way".
One thing though - no one should be silenced or mistreated for the acts of previous generations. Those young men hold no relation to what happened there in the past, and those young women are not its victims, either. "Reverse" discrimination is just discrimination based on arbitrary concept, and acts of other people in other times should never be seen as a supporting argument here.
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I think when hearing about feminism and Men Liberation is to understand how feminist talk about the Patriarchy. I would really recommend The Will To Change by bell hooks. She does a great job explaining how the Patriarchy system harms men. It helps me to understand when people are talking about the Patriarchy they are talking about the "imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy" which is its full name. See below quote from bell hooks.
Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence. -The Will to Change, Chapter 2 pg 39
Talking about the intersections of gender, race, class etc. is called Intersectionality which is what modern feminist are talking about. It talks about how one can be both discriminated and benefit from others being discriminated at the same time. This how you get the case of typically rich white powerful females using the language of feminism to support the patriarchal systems that keep them in power by dominating those who are below them.
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Thanks, I am aware of patriarchy and the way it harms men. I don't take the issue with men going against it, and it should absolutely be dismantled as it screws pretty much everyone, women and men.
What I do take issue with is that many just adopted the feminist approach and expect women to fix it for everyone, despite the fact feminism is and always has been about women, and what it does for men is rather collateral. Men are commonly not seen by feminists as someone whose voice matters much inside the movement, and if men don't have much representation in it, we can't expect it to be fair to us.
As per intersectionality, I've always found its ties with feminism concerning, much for the same reasons. Intersectional feminists are concerned with the issues of Black women, for example, but are Black men proportionally covered? We should accept that a white disabled man and a black able woman are both disadvantaged, and do our best to help everyone who is disadvantaged by any means. Intersectionality shouldn't focus on women, or Black people, or disabled, or poor, or someone with mental issues, or anyone is particular; it should be about recognizing everything that drags people down and figuring out what can be done to shorten the divide.
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I mean there is a duality in patriarchy, that each issue that touches on a woman also touches on a man. If you don't understand how feminism is two halves a whole, and how it is actually a mirror for us to investigate our own masculinity, then I don't know how to help you on your path to liberation.
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Of course there is!
But that's the very issue I take. The problems around gender stereotypes, patriarchy etc. are a complex combination of factors on both sides - and the only way to untangle this is to listen to both sides. Men should absolutely scrutinize their behavior using what women can share; but so should women hear male voices to see what can be changed on their end.
We can't expect to find a common ground under the dictate of one side. Men didn't manage to solve the issue of women back in the pre-feminism era, because they thought they knew better. Now women repeat the same mistake, thinking they hold the keys to the solution and not bothering asking men on what they think about it.
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Because it is disingenuous. Most feminism frames the world in terms of women's interests and experiences, and elevates them above men's. It doesn't seem a middle ground or acknowledge the difference in the sexes. It just sort of adopts 'women are wonderful' bias through and through, without realizing that women can be, and often are, awful people.
Liberation requires acknowledging our shared humanity outside of identity labels, but that type of thinking isn't emotionally motivating for people because it can't take a 'us vs them' approach.
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Exactly!
Screw everyone who tries to put feminism as a band-aid for everything, and screw twice everyone who tries to take men's movements and turn them into yet another feminist think tank, pretending it's about men.
We need to consider both sides if we want to form any sort of balanced view, or to actually achieve anything on the grounds of gender equality.
Women are people. Men are people. Let's figure out how to coexist in a way that makes everyone happy.
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acknowledge the difference in the sexes.
If it does not acknowledge the difference in the sexes how does it value womens interest/experiences over mens? Like dude, get some basic logic going.
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You could have read the description of community first:
"his community is first and foremost a feminist community for men and masc people,"
But you chose not to which kind of begs the question of you arguing in good faith.
How is giving women a seat at the table taking it away from men?
while vaguely claiming they have power elsewhere
We can go check who is in positions of power around the world if you are inclined to defend this point.
You seem to misunderstand the core concept of feminism, which is not men vs. women it's people against a specific power structure, which arguably benefits only few while keeping the majority down.
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I did read the description - and initially tried to write it off, because in the minds of many people feminism=gender equality movement (it is not).
The point I raise is not that giving women a seat removed it from men in itself, but that feminism tries to sit on two chairs, claiming to be for equality and at the same time doing everything to show only female voices count, because men are presumably "powerful anyway" and don't need to be heard out.
It is true that the top positions are predominantly taken by men. But does it convert the same way for the average Joe, does he actually have that much power? This place seems to recognize this is not true, yet comes with an answer that feminism (a movement that strongly boasts female voices over male, and often doesn't consider men as actual allies) will magically resolve it without active men's contributions by dismantling patriarchy. No it won't, because it doesn't work with the issue on the other end. Men are not invited to resolve issues that directly concern them; they are instead forced into the roles feminists have made for them, and this doesn't work because men have issues and considerations of their own that are not addressed.
Again, feminism (as in "let's figure out where women are disadvantaged and fix it") - cool. Masculism (as in the same but about men) - amazing. But we can't have one of them and hope for it to fix stuff for everyone. Either we go united for an actual antisexism, or we need both to be balanced. What happens here is the subversion of the men movements into yet another feminist space. We have enough of that.
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Wow great read
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men's liberation
feminist community
lol, is this some kind of joke? That's cultural appropriation.
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It's a community to discuss men issues predominantly through the lens of feminism. Care to explain the joke?
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Men's lib, as in the term at least, is as old as second-wave feminism. This is a place to talk about men's issues that doesn't bash feminism. At least not more than feminism bashes itself, that is, which can be a lot. Also not a place to be a pickme.
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What is this community about? I have read the sidebar, but I have not understand it...
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Put simply, this is a community dedicated to criticism of the gendered constraints placed on men.
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Put simply, this is a place for criticism of the oppressive gendered expectations placed on men with a focus on intersectionality.
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As an outsider: "Feminism for men". It currently exists as a counter to Men's Rights, which was a movement deemed "too problematic" by the Feminists. Whether it is too problematic is something I'll leave up to the reader. I for one think they're just really good at trolling (and sometimes they were assholes).
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I mean, women do their part to contribute to consumerism.
The main reason why guys want money is so they can be more appealing to women.
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that's patriarchy, which enforces capitalism. that's not the natural order. that's how we're programmed
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But that's not women's fault, that's patriarchys fault for instilling into men on a deep cultural level that they need to make money to "provide" and then capitalism exploiting us workers so hard that that "providing" goal is impossible for a lot of us.
A lot of men deal with that insecurity by entering hustle grindset mindsets. Others get taken advantage of by right wing groups and say it's women's expectations at fault, not understanding that feminism also combats that expectation.
The point being, patriarchy binds us all, men and women with its expectations, and capitalism has made meeting those expectations impossible for a lot of people resulting in a double wombo combo of fucking men over.
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I think this ignores part of the problem some younger guys have expressed which is their perspective partner still expect the guy to earn more and that's increasingly not the case.
A lot of men have no idea what feminism entails so they aren't aware that it calls not just for the adjustment in expectations and attitudes for men but for women as well. Clarifying what feminism is could fix a bunch of minor issues.
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But that’s not women’s fault,
I think at this point it's time to take a step back and say "not all women".
The reaction to "drizzle drizzle" has been particularly telling in this regard: You can scroll through miles of comments of feminists1 trying to analyse the thing as "a movement", not really knowing what to make of it, where to put it, you can scroll through just as much mileage of "these men are gay" tiktoks from, well, the kind of women drizzle drizzle is taking the piss out of. And you'll also see reactions from women totally getting it: The ones who can't help but laugh along. Which is the only way to take this seriously.
The enforcement of patriarchy, or consumerism, whatever you want to call it and however you want to slice it, is not a particularly gendered thing. Just because you belong to an identifiable group doesn't mean that your actions or opinions are beneficial to that group. That would presume people to not be idiots which is never a safe assumption to make, present company and myself included.
1 "feminist" as in "contains the word feminist in the subreddit name" and suchlike. Not intended to be a deep analysis of the *isms.
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Now we just need a strong representative to frame this as populist rhetoric and the left will finally be able to stand on two feet
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that’s patriarchys fault for instilling into men on a deep cultural level that they need to make money to “provide”
Maybe that's the case because it's been the case since bartering started about 100,000 years ago... You'd rather your daughter marry a guy with a lot of stuff, rather than the guy with little stuff. If you think you can "just" change such an ancient system by introducing Feminism, then oh boy, are we even more fucked than I thought...
The only real issue is that Capitalism in the US has gone hogwild and concentrated most wealth down to 3 people. Europe is somewhat doing fine in that regard. Don't we have superrich people? Yeah, sure, but our bottom line is a LOT healthier. Not as healthy as I wish it to be, but fine-ish for now.
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It's not their fault insomuch as they can't think for themselves, I'll agree with you there.
But the agreement stops when you blame the patriarchy over consumerism. No, this generation has been convinced to sell itself out to the lowest bidder. Average women are proud consumers that want to live like instagram models. Any kind of modesty is shunned in their social circles. It's drowned out by "look at this new thing I bought! Please praise me for spending money!"
The sex speaks for itself. Men have a ridiculously easy time getting laid if they have money, even if they're pieces of shit in every other way.
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I hate none of the three.
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Not sure why you’re being downvoted for a difference in opinion, I think we should try to converse with people who have different views, lest we are just an echo chamber.
With that in mind, do you support the current version of capitalism which is very laissez faire? Or are you in favour of the system if it is regulated more than we do now.
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He's being down voted because he had an uninformed and uncritical response to a valid point. Not because of a difference in opinion but because he entered a conversation with the sole intent of saying "not me", clearly showing he didn't even begin to engage in any way with the topic.
It is disingenuous to call it a difference in opinion.
However, conversation is good, and I appreciate your attempt at getting him to put some more thought into the topic. It's something I need to be better at myself rather than being snippy.
In that spirit of conversation I do wanna say that I think focusing on different versions of capitalism misses the point of the topic as well. It isn't about laissez faire vs more regulated systems. It's that the incentives regardless of the specific system of capitalism seek to squeeze wealth out of every orifice. It's a constant struggle between the oppressed being squeezed and the squeezers doing the squeezing.
What does this have to do with feminism and whatnot? Well you see, due to the endless squeezing, men have lost the ability to do the thing they have been told their whole life to do. Provide. This has happened at the same time as women and LGBT rights becoming more and more equal. Due to this, many right wing groups prey on men's insecurity with their lack of ability to "provide" and blame that changing world on the fact women and queer folk are more open and equal.
As if putting women in the kitchen and queer folk in the closet will revert the economic status of those men back to the time when women were forced to be in the kitchen and queer folk were forced in the closet.
This is the topic. To say to all that "I don't hate capitalism" is to fundamentally not understand the topic at all. Conversation is good, but to conversate we need to have a common topic and a common language to communicate ideas about that topic. A language that the person you replied to does not have as shown by his non-understanding of what was even said.
This is called a false consciousness. It's a natural outcome to oppressive systems to take people within it and give them a language incompatible with people outside of that same false consciousness. Conversation becomes difficult because what I mean by capitalism and what he means by capitalism are fundamentally different.
Both I and the article are using the academic meaning. Meanwhile he thinks we mean like, Owning a house as capitalism.
As I said before, I need to be better at engaging people and being less snippy and just pointing and saying "your wrong and here's why". Meeting people where they are is my goal but I'm not quite there.
Anyways, good luck with your attempt. Sorry that I talked so much. Please take it with genuine love that I want to give it with.
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I don't hate capitalism, it's better than feudalism, and the human race's attempts at communism have failed so spectacularly descending into absolute tyranny and corruption putting the sins of capitalism to shame. I also don't hate women, or feminism, there are some women I hate, but it's an individual judgement.
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Capitalism is feudalism with rule by grace of money instead of grace of god. Don't confuse it with having a market economy, especially a well-regulated one: Capitalism is when there's unbridled capital accumulation, unbridled accumulation of economical and political power. Capitalism is when the 0.1% exist and, in the broader sense, capitalism is that set of memes which infect the majority to put up with that nonsense.
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Capitalism is that abusive boyfriend that keeps bringing up your super abusive ex so you know how lucky you are to have him.
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If you think communism put capitalisms sins to shame then you don't know what capitalism has done.
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“Confessions of an economic hit man” would be a good book to remedy that.
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I think the point is that unbridled capitalism is creating increasing wealth inequality that many straight, white men are feeling but aren't accurately attributing to their being on the losing end of wealth inequality. This could be ameliorated with any number of policies in a capitalist system, such as a more progressive tax code, better labor protections, or universal healthcare, but the US employs none of these, and straight, white men are largely blaming women, immigrants, and LGBTQ people instead of the class of people keeping them poor.
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Found the stockholm syndrome victim.
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How is capitalism different?
It's not you're just biased.
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We hate Babylon, actually, and all the stupid things that money makes people do to each other because they forgot what it means to actually live as a real person in the real world, instead of chasing clout inside systems designed to ensure the house always wins, regardless of which banner it happens to be flying today, be it feminist, Marxist, capitalist, socialist, or whatever other asinine idea people who produce nothing real come up with to explain why someone else is to blame for the shit state of affairs.
And no, we very definitely do not hate women. We do very much hate what this shitty world turns women into, which is why we have worked ourselves to death to protect them from it in past generations. But that peace was broken, and now there's going to be hell to pay.
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You hate "what women are turned into"???
What a pathetic excuse. Shameful, even.
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