News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:I'm a feminist and I think it's harder to be a man than a... by lemoni on Monday October 14, 2024 @04:15AM (#41835364)
The problem with this analysis is it ignores the elephant in the room: that almost all men think of women as objects. I don't mean just men looking at women, I mean the near-universal male opinion that they are entitled to sexual services by any means necessary, and that rape is only rape if it involves battery and strangers. A man may view his wife or girlfriend differently than he views a camgirl or prostitute, but the bottom line is that both are expected to provide him with sex in the context and style he demands at any given moment.

It is appalling that every form of sexual and reproductive slavery exists and that men justify this as normal and expected and blame women.

It is appalling that women are expected to give birth to these men and their children, and that this ability is held in utter contempt. It's a travesty that mothers can apparently do no right and are in a constant Catch 22.

It is appalling that women's intelligence is so widely considered nonexistent, or is held in contempt, while men steal women's creative output on every level and in every field.

It is appalling that women are expected to hold up the world in terms of domestic work and caregiving of the young, the old and the sick, and that the love and stress and work of this is dismissed as expected.

It is appalling that women have to hold up the economy with unacknowledged labor, and their paid labor is undervalued.

Yet despite all this, men then still complain that they're somehow the victim. Often pointing at wealthier and more powerful men and blaming them for everything without looking at their own contribution to the pervasive sexism and misogyny of our society.

Re:I'm a feminist and I think it's harder to be a man than a... by komali2 on Monday October 14, 2024 @05:12AM (#41835708)
What you say regarding rampant misogyny I take to be true, and I think about that and similar all the time as the one of the primary problems I'm not sure how to solve when I wonder about my ideology and how to improve the world.

It's not just that there's rampant misogyny, there's also rampant racism and religious prejudice, and various other forms of outgroup hate or disregard that gets trained into people.

I can say there's no excuse for misogyny or racism all day, and I certainly speak out against it if I encounter it, but it doesn't really help me solve the problem of how rampant it is.

If a boy, as he's growing up, is told every day that he must behave one way, and his sister another, and watches his father beat his mother for "misbehaving," and he himself got beat the one time he tried on his sister's dress, and in so many other ways had patriarchy essentially beat into him (even outside of a flagrantly abusive childhood, this form of indoctrination will be happening), I'm not sure I can entirely blame the boy when he becomes a man for being misogynistic. Well, maybe I can, I grew up in a culture that violently punished me for questioning gender roles and I didn't end up misogynistic. Then again, I don't think I can "take credit" for not being a misogynist as an adult, questioning assumptions about gender just seemed obvious to me and I was always confused about the rigidity.

Blame or no, what I want is to overcome the indoctrination and help more people not be misogynists or racists or whatever. I'm not sure how.

I constantly waffle between "all people share responsibility in creating a just society" and "there are thought leaders that are responsible for leading people to just societies." I think back to slavery - is it reasonable to expect every single non-slaveholder to be an abolitionist? I want every single person to be an abolitionist, but I'm still not sure if it's a reasonable expectation.