Men and feminism

been following this thread for little while now. is there some particular text, or writer you could point to that would typify what it is that you are seeking to refute? feminism is such a broad term that it that almost any attack is sure to be valid in some sense, and off the mark in others. some specific examples could be helpful.

 

I don't know about police but in the US military we're losing more soldiers to suicide than enemy fire at this point, I've got no idea whether that's even worse or not as bad for vets but I'd be surprised if it wasn't at least even. The thing is we see similarly horrific suicide rates among men in general, a great many of which did in fact have contact with mental health services even in countries with more socialized healthcare systems. People keep trying to come up with answers to this when they're already been stared in the face by them.

To quote a short but well written foreign piece on the subject: Men are talking, society just isn't listening.

Men aren't killing themselves because they're just so privileged it hurts, they're killing themselves in record numbers because they're being reamed from childhood and then told they're so privileged it hurts and it's the fault of their own "toxic masculinity". Men are being shit on so much from every angle that they can't even take a subway ride without massive advertising campaigns telling them they're evil misogynist oppressors for sitting down wrong... nevermind the bag-spreading women do.

Feminism is an incredibly broad term, and the "that's not TRUE feminism" two-step is itself one of the problems systemic to basically all branches, but even as broad of a movement as feminism is there's still varying degrees of mainstreamness and public support. There's two bit bloggers on Medium, and then there's Amanda Marcotte writing for major mainstream news media. There's small campus or local organizations, and then there's the juggernaut that is the N.O.W.. If you want to know what's worthy of rebuke simply look at the most prominent, popular, publicly supported feminist writers and largest most trafficked websites.

 

Someone doesn't know what privilege is...

If you want to know who defines feminism, you need only look to select female bloggers, who define feminism despite only reaching ~2% of actual feminists.

 

*2% figure declared by arbitrary fiat since it's politically convenient to feminists to claim there is an invisible supermajority of wonderful non-bigoted non-hateful feminists that just so happens to have more or less no proof of its existence because they never speak, never act, and never do anything about the violent bigots running the show.

I mean by that logic you may as well say the Republicans are the most scientifically literate and equality minded political party because all the ones you ever see or meet just so happen to be part of the "2%".

 

I actually did the math. Its in this thread, or one of these threads. It was more comprehensive than your approach, which is "these bloggers define feminism because I say they do".
--- merged: Feb 5, 2015 6:20 AM ---
These feminism-defining bloggers write for Jezebel, whose unique page views amount to ~2% of the number of people who self identify as Feminist in the US. According to Shadowex, the lack of a clear, unified renunciation by the 98% of feminists who aren't exposed to Jezebel is direct evidence that this 98% endorses and subscribes, word for word, to the views he's projected onto these bloggers. By Shadowex's logic, even though only 5% of Christians are Lutheran, the fact that Christians don't generally publicly denounce Lutherans is evidence that all Christians are secretly Lutherans.

 

Oh that's adorable, you're still trying to pretend that it's completely irrelevant that these people and their ilk are the most powerful, influential, publicly supported feminist writers and researchers out there and that there is not a shred of meaningful mainstream opposition to them at all. You're even abusing numbers to try and do it.... then again given feminism's track record with figures (1 in 4 when the real rate is 6-7 in 1000, claiming 98% of rapists/abusers are men when 50% are women) I suppose you're just following a longstanding tradition.

Your imaginary says-nothing does-nothing never-shows-up "majority" is irrelevant, these are the people in power. These are the people dominating feminism with no meaningful opposition. These are the people (and organizations) perverting public policy and fraudulently manipulating research to serve their own ends.

You're literally trying to claim that the most popular, influential, publicly supported feminists out there right now aren't the most popular ,influential, publicly supported feminists because you say so. The fact that they are in the first place the most popular, influential, publicly supported feminists MEANS exactly that. If they WEREN'T the most popular, influential, publicly supported feminists out there then they wouldn't be exactly that. They wouldn't be where they are, and there would be meaningful opposition.

But they are, and there isn't. And no amount of blind religious insistence by you that some imaginary population of says-nothing does-nothing may-as-well-not-exist "good feminists" is out there will change that.

Because frankly even if you were right it doesn't fucking matter because it doesn't make a difference if they never ACT.
--- merged: Feb 5, 2015 at 2:28 AM ---
That's beside the point though because they don't exist. If they did then we would see the same thing with the feminists that do exist that we see with Westboro: Crowds of dozens to hundreds of people protesting them everywhere they dare show their face, and their being ostracized so thoroughly that they can't even get slashed tires repaired.

But we don't have that. Why? Because your massive army of "good feminists" is not real for two simple reasons:
1. Either they plainly do not exist or
2. They do but choose to allow men's shelters to be bankrupted by feminist protestors, suicide prevention efforts and domestic violence victims to be silenced by criminal feminists, abhorrent laws like VAWA and SB967 to be passed at the demand of feminists, lynch mobs like UVA and campus rape hysteria to be stirred up by feminists, fraudulent research erasing half of all rape and domestic violence victims to be published by feminists... the list goes on and on and on. All without any meaningful mainstream feminist opposition whatsoever.

So either your "good feminists" don't exist or they choose to allow all of this to happen without any opposition in which case they're not "good" in the first place and just as complicit.

And don't pull that "what do you want me to do" crap. Just look at what feminists can do with lies like "1 in 4", hoaxes like UVA, and rigged (racist) viral videos. Look at how many people that can get screaming over a single woman's T-shirt design. Look at how many people they can get in the streets for slutwalks. I'm not buying the selective-incompetence argument.

p.s. What was that sickening feminist meme that became enormously popular again? Oh right, "Imagine a bowl of M&Ms..."

 

Yes, suicide is a huge problem, and yes, something like 80% of suicides are men.

But this is not a new development!

The graph (below) only goes back 30 years, but it's enough to make clear that the sex-ratio of suicides has not changed much in some time.

Note that the low point for suicide rates (for both men and women) occurred in 1999, when the economy had been doing especially well for several years -- the unemployment rate fell from 7.5% in 1992 to 4.2% in 1999. A lot of suicides, especially among men, are motivated by economic distress, such as loss of a job.

The situation for the marginally employed has obviously gotten a lot worse since 1999, and suicide rates for both sexes have gradually increased.

 

Japanese and Korean culture and attitudes toward suicide surely play a huge role. I'd expect suicide rates to be higher in those countries regardless of gender dynamics.

For example, a hundred years ago, the U.S. and Japan were probably about equally male-dominated. I bet the suicide rate in Japan was some multiple of the U.S. rate even then.

 

If 98% of the people in your group don't know of care whether you exist, how can you dominate that group's ideology? Must be the result of some secret vaginal power source.


Suicide was brought up as a way of dismissing the notion that men are privileged. What this idea fails to capture is that privilege doesn't mean "nothing bad ever happens". Privilege can often be its own curse. In a society where men are favored as strong and decisive, we should expect men to serve more on the front lines of conflict and suffer for it more than women. This suffering is a direct result of the privileged status bestowed upon men.

 

I'm not 100% sure what all the debate is here at this point in the thread, but something did strike me an thats the idea of what "true" feminism is.

It reminds me of political posts about whats "true" communism or socialism. When the really bad outcomes are pointed out, they are not "true".

Being feminism as a thing, isn't a thing, it has no official, definable creed, what feminism is then is peoples perception of it. As a whole, the population, most women included, see current feminism as misandry for bitter women and the "usual" man hating lesbians. It seems to project a sort of odd "aggressive victimization" vibe where people shout very loudly about problems that for most of them only exist in their own minds.

It doesn't matter what "true" feminism is at this point. It doesn't matter if the above description is wrong for you or for a majority who call themselves feminists, its what the perception is, and in the end that is what matters.

 

I won't argue with the idea that perception is important. However, I think you're probably off a bit in your implication that feminism is seen as misandry for bitter women by the whole population (even though you've been gracious enough to include "most women" in your definition of whole population). As someone who obviously sees himself as a champion of empirical evidence-based reasoning, do you have any evidence that the whole population sees feminism as nothing more than lesbio-misandry? Or are you just riffin' here?
--- merged: Feb 5, 2015 at 10:34 AM ---
(@ herculite)

 

SJW is a pejorative amongst a group of people united under a tag which shall remain unhashed in this post. If only SJW haters would subject themselves to the same types of guilt by association gymnastics they apply to SJWs. Instead, when someone calls to their attention the dreadful behavior of their compatriots, they appeal to notions of free speech and delicate legal interpretations. As in "Yeah, sure, the website on which we organize also hosts sexualized pictures of children, but we don't believe in censorship and anyway the kids have clothes on so it's not illegal."

 

Poll: Few Identify As Feminists, But Most Believe In Equality Of Sexes

Most believe in equality but do not call themselves feminists. I believe in equal opportunity but I'd never call myself a feminist. My wife even more so yet would not call herself one. Feminism has a bad name, because many of those who self identify as such and make the most noise about it are the female version of he "He man woman haters club" from the Little Rascals.

 

I'm aware of the small, but not that small, proportion of people who self identify as feminists, which is why I questioned your earlier claim that the whole population considers feminists to be lesbiomisandrists.


I wonder how many Americans would self-identify as abolitionists vs how many Americans would say they don't support slavery in the US.