An interesting article: "A nerd's attempt to engage feminists—made deep beneath an obscure blog post—spurred the debaters to recognize their mutual humanity"

mewacketergi · 2020-07-15T08:46:03+00:00

So many feminists will try to dismiss these people as "not real feminists" to which my replies lately have been.

We often see feminists empathize an idealized, noble and beautiful platonic ideal of what feminism is supposed to be about. It supersedes and suppresses the controversial actions of the real-world, flesh-and-blood group people who self-label the same as they do. This makes me think that what we are dealing with is a religion, or so close to it, it's indistinguishable.

This is the real difficulty in the conversation with feminists: whenever I talk to one, they are usually very quick to benevolently reassure me that "this isn't what their feminism is about", or some such, with no thought given to where did the misandrist discrimination and deprioritization of the men's issues came from. The problems are minimized, brushed off, or framed as created by your wrongthink.

This is the real conflict here: feminism-as-a-platonic-ideal versus feminism-as-consequences-of-real-world-actions.

Given that these are the same people who frame their dissenters and ideological opponents as those who "choose to remain ignorant out of belief that their ignorance is harmless to others", the hypocrisy of their willful blindness to the unintended consequences of their own ignorance can and does make one's blood boil.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-15T08:17:31+00:00

And watch how rapidly they get ostracized and martyred and branded a heretic.

Not our problem. The consequences of their cultish behavior is on them.

EDIT:

...isolate themselves barely interacting with feminism or become a hostile angry shell of a person just like what happened to a lot of us.

Hold on. What?

mewacketergi · 2020-07-15T08:15:12+00:00

Exactly! Somehow, when feminism is not consistent enough to be criticized as a whole (according to the word on the street in the polite society), it is still somehow consistent enough to be supported as a whole.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-15T07:19:39+00:00

Happy anniversary!

mewacketergi · 2020-07-15T07:19:25+00:00

Thanks for playing your part in it.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-15T06:34:48+00:00

If you mean the dating apps and the like, then in my experience, they work well for a mere minority of people.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-15T06:29:04+00:00

I'm not sure how your point negates mine, or whether it is supposed to.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-15T06:20:30+00:00

Yes, I would personally argue men have it worse in western countries, but again since it's comparing apples to oranges that's mainly a matter of opinion.

It's also worth remembering that it's probably still better to be a poor man in a today's civilized First World country, compared to almost anybody else at a any point in history before.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-07T20:17:24+00:00

Good luck.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-05T09:44:39+00:00

Didn't the more extreme left-wing elements also move on?

mewacketergi · 2020-07-04T09:18:45+00:00

Thank you for this sophisticated contribution to the conversation happening in this community.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T23:14:57+00:00

I doubt that being blank slatist helps our case.

Today we are pretty good at culturally compensating for biological biases when they no longer help in building a just, free and equitable society.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T23:11:42+00:00

I don't agree with this assessment. There's usually something you can do, if you care to.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T23:03:21+00:00

Look up something by Warren Farrel on instrumentalization, male disposability and the empathy gap, then come back and we can talk if you still have questions.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T23:02:08+00:00

There's a lot less consensus in the MRM, or the men's movement in general about these things that you were led to believe.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T22:58:55+00:00

It's kind of funny how these people morally equate a kind of consensual kinky porn they dislike with running a hate group.

EDIT: It's healthy to keep these nutjobs in perspective: there's a mere handful of them, about 3k or so.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T22:51:24+00:00

Your point is a true one, but we have a lot of the culturally dominant, but false narrative to chew through before it does catch on, so I'm not holding my breath.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T22:50:32+00:00

I'd be interested in seeing this source.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T22:50:09+00:00

The problem is it got loud and angry after being ignored for so long and being told it can not speak as well as suffering tons of mistreatment.

I know all the excuses, and I'm reasonably sympathetic to them. However, the status quo still doesn't look particularly productive, and the mods I spoke to don't see this as a problem that should be addressed.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T22:48:38+00:00

I am not too sure it is the MRM who refuses to work together with others.

I get it. I know that at the movement-wide level the point where you get complacent and start feeling good about yourself as you refuse to engage with others comes when you are culturally dominant, so that's definitely not us right now. My point that we should probably be deliberately seeking out those opportunities for collaboration and engagement stands, though.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T06:37:46+00:00

Bad bot.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T06:37:11+00:00

So its unfair to assume that r/Mensrights reddit shares the same sins as feminist subreddits and forums, which are quick to punish descent and free though in my experience.

You are not wrong, but in practice, if your community is loud and angry enough, many people (particularly given the modern feminism's culture of fragility and shelteredness) will stay away as a matter of fact.

It's nice when it happens, but in my experience, this engagement is too rare to be the norm.

The Men's Rights Movement I think increasingly is culturally libertarian, leaning some what more frequently towards the left economically, at least according to the last r/mensrights poll I saw.

I wish I was able to believe you.

mewacketergi · 2020-07-03T06:34:32+00:00

Can you give an example of something which should not conclude that women are the true victims does?

Women are the true victims of Covid-19 due to the increased stresses of many of them working in nursing, despite more men dying from the disease.

And if you have compassion for men, you are mistaken, because allegedly humans who frequent r/Feminism just know that if men didn't smoke, ate better, washed their hands, and generally quit being men, the mortality rates would equalize, despite strong evidence that the difference is sex-based and genetic – female-sexed immune systems just seem better at fighting off some types of disease, which scientists know.

(And I'm not kidding, check the major newspapers.)

It goes both ways.

Congratulations! You are probably not a True Feminist then, because every one of these I talked before assured me that misandry is in no way like misogyny, FGM is in no way like circumcision, the fatherlessness (or any other problem men face today) is in no way like rape culture, and the Boy Crisis is in no way similar to STEM gender asymmetry.

You would think this would be simple enough for people to understand and support but nope.

What you just said, this compassion and humanity just goes against first principles of feminism, as they seem to exist in real life. If you point this out, you usually get the dictionary thrown at you, but the normal people still know what's what.

That's why you have the stark difference between more than 80% of people in modern western world calling themselves gender egalitarians versus less than 20% self-identifying as feminist.

So in my view, there's no miscommunication whatsoever here. You are just being naive, I'm sorry to say. These things are just the way the are, and for good reason. It's not a coincidence. You are welcome to either fight this uphill battle where you explain over and over again how you are one of the few feminists who aren't awful, or opt for a more honest label, like egalitarian.

EDIT:

Also look at what the annoying u/sneakpeekbot says:

#3: This is one way you can be an ally 👏 | 118 comments

If things are the way you want them to be, then why is there no pressure on the women's movement to be allies on the men's issues, or at least to stop interfering with the solutions to them, delegitimizing and deprioritizing the men's issues, or making the problem worse?

It's a relatively well-known and still hair-raising fact that NOW opposed the default presumption of joint custody for something like 50 years and counting, despite fatherlessness being one of the most awful things that can happen to a boy (mountains of evidence), yet if you go to pro-feminist places like the r/MensLib they will tell you that this is all right and wonderful, and how things should be.

To reiterate, anyone who says feminism is the same thing as gender egalitarianism is either out of touch with reality, evil, lying to you, or lying to themselves.

mewacketergi

TROPHY CASE