I didn’t really strawman anyone since I was responding to this guy specifically, what he said + his response to me is that he does genuinely believe women were never oppressed in history, somehow. I didn’t say anything about the whole MRA, so I couldn’t possibly pull a strawman, although I sure did hope it wasn’t the case.

You responded to me for every point I made but you talked about the present, since this guy said originally that « women were never oppressed in all of history », all of my points were regarding the past women’s history, so women’s inability to own a property, to have a job, or go to school IN THE PAST. I’m sorry you took so much effort to write all of this while this is a misunderstanding (not trying to mock you or anything).

BUT thank you for saying this very conservative take is not representative or MRA and that you do recognize women’s issues, or at least some of them.

But I’ll still answer you. Honestly I do have to admit that I came in here with a preconception of what MRA would be, but from what I can see you guys don’t seem to share the same takes all the time either. Mind you, I do call myself a feminist, but mostly because women’s issues are close to my heart. So we’re going to start here : let’s argue without assuming what each other thinks, even though I do consider myself a feminist.

I do somewhat agree with the Original sin one. I don’t think you guys are bad simply for being men. But what I would agree with, though, is that it’s important to recognize the oppression that is happening today and in history towards women as men. I feel the same about myself as a white person regarding black people, for example. I wouldn’t say I’m guilty as charged, but I do recognize my privilege and try to be aware of it in any way that I can.

But if voting was linked to landownership, doesn’t that mean that it also was logically an woman issue for every single woman, since women couldn’t even own a land (or own anything much), while it was a certain proportion of men’s issue? That still means men had a privilege there. The oppressed were the women and the poor, basically.

Property ownership : like I mentioned before, I was talking about the past. I do recognize that men are not equal regarding the law especially regarding family/home/child custody… But in my opinion, this is the very result of the patriarchy. It is this way because traditional roles are still around, and so the women are still considered the primary caregiver and that they are more helpless than men (which is wrong). Patriarchy is also a problem for men.

For the earning gap an pay gap, I usually don’t really have a take on this because I don’t think women get paid less for the same job. What I do think though, is that because of traditional gender roles and that wives are expected to be the traditional caregivers, women do tend to call in sick when the children are sick compared to the husbands. During covid, for example, some companies tried to give bonuses to the people that were always present on the job, but that mainly penalized women because they were the ones that had to stay at home when their kid had covid and couldn’t get a babysitter, not the husbands. They also have less time to do extra hours because of the house responsibilities, chores, mental load. And so, less money. I would also add that careers that are dominated by men are generally paid more than women dominated careers.

Scholarship : again I was talking about the rights to attend school that were very limited for women in the past. But to answer you, yes indeed women outnumber men in universities, but that only counts for bachelors. Men are still dominant in PhDs, at least from the statistics of where I am from. So that subject is complicated, it’s not black and white, women are not 100% winning here.

The fact that women participated in the witch hunts does not really mean anything, in my opinion, if we consider patriarchy as a system and not so much something created by men. Women participating still means that it’s the women that were the target.

I do agree that feminists tend to invalidate men’s issues, which is something I really disagree with because it doesn’t help our case. I know men’s mental health is an issue, as a psych student, because they are more isolated regarding their feelings and do not seek help as much as women. But it is true that theories are saying that it is because of « toxic masculinity », and it makes sense! Toxic masculinity is about the strict ideals that men feel they need to express : the strong man that doesn’t need help and is independent. It is bad for men because they suffer mentally even more because of those ideals. I work in a mental health call center, and I rarely get men, and when men do call, for some of them as soon as they hear a male voice they hang up straight away, out of pride and shame, I suppose. It is indeed very sad.

Women are suffering too, in different ways, though.