Modern feminism sees gender as a continuity rather than a boundary, and looks at how social gender constructs support systems of power. For example: why are men often stigmatized for becoming grade school teachers? The modern feminist (at least one with the theoretical bent you're describing) sees this as oppression and tries to come to grips with it by looking at the social constructs of masculinity and femininity, and more specifically in this case of maternity and paternity.

In a society where women are caregivers/mothers and men are builders/leaders, then individuals who do not embody those characteristics are marginalized and oppressed. And the marginalization goes both ways. In a society where men are stigmatized for embodying femininity, it will be true that women will be stigmatized for embodying masculinity.

The problem is discussed in a far more multidimensional fashion than you're describing. Marxism is used as a tool for analysis, as are many other ideologies, but is certainly not the dominant force. A (good) academic paper that uses Marxism for analysis will often say, "I'm using Marxism to analyze this topic because I feel that in spite of shortcomings A, B, and C, that I can use it to tease out this subtlety..."

I would go so far as to say that you are unapologetically building a caricature of what you're describing. Why? Because it's almost never the case that you can take an entire group of people, (in this case, the 'American academy') and apply such a sweeping generalization to their way of thought.

In fact, the modern feminist would suggest that it's your absolutist way of arguing that perpetuates this kind of system. When you say that a certain group thinks in a certain way (especially one so easily problematized), you are promulgating the same type of thinking that leads to, "Men shouldn't be teachers." The idea is that when you look at any crowd of people, do you understand that what you're looking at is not some group entity but in fact a very complex interweaving of social dynamics--personality, class, gender, sexuality, family, culture, race, age, height, weight, and all of the intersections thereof. Or do you think you have that group 'figured out' and pigeonholed? Once you have the group pigeonholed, you've denied the individuality and agency of the people in that group.

Saying that men cannot be oppressed because they are the oppressors seems to come out mostly from MRA strawman talking points.

There is a very vocal group of feminists who claim this very thing

But to directly address your point, the OP's argument isn't a strawman. I could compile a list of fifty feminist articles, blog posts, and comics espousing minor variations of:

- "Men can be oppressed, but not for their maleness"

- "Misandry isn't real"

- "Anything that systemically hurts men is simply their privilege backfiring"

But someone will still say that those examples don't represent true feminism.

While I can hardly blame a women's group for focusing entirely on women's issues rather than men, the way they attack and berate any attempt to do so by other people ("oh, boys are now doing poorly in school? the poor menz, why will no one think of the menz!!", "oh so now that boys are doing bad in school it's an issue?", "let's see how you like it for a change") is spiteful and hypocritical.

One nuance that might be missing from your comment is that folks who believe this still agree that individual men can be oppressed. And some groups of men can be oppressed too -- black males come to mind. But generally, when talking about oppression, they/we are talking about systemic oppression, and would generally agree that men as a whole are not systemically oppressed, although they theoretically could be if women ever became the dominant gender.

(BTW, I am not trying to own the definition of "racism." I understand that other people prefer to use the word to label a different concept than those who share my politics. I'm just trying to explain what I think people mean when they say, "You can't be racist against white people." They mean that there is no systemic oppression of white people.)

So if anything men are both the most oppressing and most oppressed class of society.

Furthermore woman normally marry upwards which makes it even harder for those already at the bottom to find a life companion and escape their situation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_pelosi

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/homeless-woman-...

My guess is that it wont be that obvious.

I'm not a cultural anthropologist, so I'm not going to bother suggesting this Marxist origin theory is wrong or even not a large contributor, but I will certainly point out that you're reducing something very large and very complex involving a whole lot of vastly different people with different motivations, backgrounds, and goals to a simple, homogeneous, no-moving-parts summary that's so burdened with subjective assumptions as to be unsupportable.

Also, when did simplification become a bad word? Simplification is great. Half of (university) physics is just a collection of really clever simplifications.

@override public Conflict getConflict() { Conflict genderConflict = super.getConflict(); genderConflict.setEnemy("Males"); return genderConflict; } }

(I don't necessarily believe this, but I thought it was a funny joke)

Bye y'all!