Required reading for male feminists

Post Reply New Topic

I think ideally people who aren't 100% oppressed or 100% privileged will use intersectionality as a sense of balance.

I think guys like Prince William probably should be feeling their privilege & doing something about it.

I think the opposite kind of person probably does need help - although it is hard to do that without someone saying 'white saviour complex' or 'western saviour complex' (for non-white people) and the opposite kind of person would not have access to the internet or the ability to use it.

Most people are privileged in some areas and not in others. Just like most people are middle class and most people are of average intelligence and medium height.

Heck even white privilege is a balanced thing, how many people out there are really Anglo-Saxon? I don't feel right telling a white Jewish person that they and their family have never been oppressed on the basis of race. It's obvious why Jewish people feel uncomfortable when Neo-Nazis are about...

If what I've been seeing from feminists in the mainstream media was as reasonable as Mona, Bradleigh, OuterView, or KT; I'd feel a lot better about it.

I still have not received a satisfactory response to the following:

This is so ridiculous! If someone needs help, and I have the ability and inclination to help them; why shouldn't I?! Why can't someone just do what they can to help others without being judged for it on the basis of their race?!

If white people do nothing to help; we're complicit. If we do help; we have a "white saviour complex".

You just can't f***ing win for losing!

I don't really have full answers for you, at the very least you can see there is take against essentialist biology of sex. I don't really know the full story of Clementine Ford, but what little I can find pointed that she started making a lot of her statements in regards to a lot of exposure to stuff making light of domestic abuse, a problem that is not addressed as much as it should. Perhaps the people able to do those big disavows thought that it was unhelpful to make big public disavows by name thought that it would be unhelpful to do such when the problems she is so against are not being addressed and would only act to bring further hatred. I don't think she is being defended against being penalised by her speech, and I don't know how much power she has to influence other people into man hate.

Perhaps if she had the power to actually do anything she would be worth the disavow.




Male privilege in a lot of cases is still not acknowledged, and it does not disappear just because men face issues also, in a lot of cases women are still treated as an underclass. There are valid points to talk about female privilege also, such as assumptions against men in being around children, that fathers acting as the caregiver can face discrimination from taking their children to changing rooms. That men can be made fun of for not acting as some idea of masculinity. These are the valid things to talk about, not that men as a trend should not be criticised for common traits that may be infused from how they are raised.

"Boys will be boys" is an incredibly toxic phrase that perpetuates problems.

Tbh, it kind of sounds like you're trying to rationalize and excuse it.

Clementine Ford organized a campaign to bully a mentally disabled man in Melbourne.
https://antifeminismaustralia.com/clementine-ford-bullies-disabled-man/



That statement is no less true when you reverse the genders. Yet I don't see attention being called to female privilege.

Men face significantly more serious issues than getting laughed at for changing diapers. But it doesn't surprise me when people know nothing about them since they're never talked about in the media.

Oh good, an anti-feminist website that says that a woman "looks like a c**t", that is a super balanced news source. Just because a man is mentally disabled, does not mean he can't be creep, there does not necessarily seem to be evidence he was not targeting women for these high fives in a way that could put them off. And the only bit they provided from Clementine Ford was that she shared what Laura Miller posted.

And did you miss the point Miller had to delete her post because she received abuse and dick pics? So sending women dick pics is now some form of justice? It actually looks like the guys who did this to her were just validating her opinions by doing the exact sort of thing.




As I said before, what are the causes of these things and how can they be fixed, because the actual feminists do more to help with these than the anti-feminists. It is the patriarchy that is responsible for the majority of these things, with men needing to project this idea of being strong that both has them not seek help, and can have them be seen as more dangerous.

Tackling ideas like fathers not being welcome in changing rooms or watching their kids, is the exact sort of thing that can go a way to helping the other problems. Letting men to be allowed to be seen as vulnerable and just as able to be seen as emotional where they can seek help and talk to others. Be more likely to receive fair trials in child custody cases, and not have to be such risk takers to fit some quota of being manly. Like, how are we going to address a statistic like men making up most combat fatalities? Perhaps letting women into the military more, or perhaps a more feminist idea of war would mean that there is less combat at all. To not have death of men seen as normal in war, I am not against something like a movie that might have soldiers that might influence ideas to equal out genders, to make more women Stormtroopers or something, so the default mook being shot in a movie is not necessarily just a man. Of course there should be avoidance from feeding into some revenge thing.

Do the anti-feminists actually want these sorts of fixes. I don't suppose they really cared when Borderlands 3 added in female Psychos as general enemies. The fix is there where video games add in more female characters, which means they can also have more female enemies without it feeling weird, and we lessen the idea of men being treated as the disposable kind. God I am happy that things like women and children first, these are ways that feminist stuff should help everyone.

As for calling out female privilege, under what circumstances is it going to be used. Who is it criticising that men don't open up about their feelings and stuff? I can say that I called out some family members who thought it was no big deal that a little boy punched me and stuff because he saw me as a man and that apparently thought that was a free pass to be rough on me. I have had to deal with a bunch of neighbourhood kids who thought I was dangerous because some kid decided to follow me on his own once, and got pretty openly harassed over it. The fact those things seemed okay to do to me because I got perceived as a man are things that I absolutely call out as female privilege because something tells kids that it is okay to act that way. But I don't think the anti-feminists do anything to help fix this sort of problem, as their answer is just to act like a tough man, I guess to intimidate people that just perpetuates it more.

How about we start by stopping have this kind of s**t be treated like normal.

I'm not thrilled that anti-feminism has become dominated by right-wingers. I miss when people like Armored Skeptic, Chris Raygun, and the Amazing Atheist were more prominent.

I'm aware it's a biased site. But the story is backed up with sources. Screenshots of all the relevant social media posts are included.

The name of disabled man who was attacked is Ben, btw.



Here's a follow up article on Clementine Ford's refusal to apologize to Ben and his family. It is also backed up with sources. It includes testimony from people who personally know Ben.
https://antifeminismaustralia.com/cleme ... abled-man/

Even after being informed that Ben is mentally handicapped, Ford still refused to apologize. She repeatedly fell back on Ben not having autism to claim that he was not mentally handicapped. I'm sure that if he did have autism, she'd be harping on about how he doesn't have down syndrome.

Here's her own article on the matter. In it, she compares the incident on the tram with a string of unrelated anecdotes in order to justify the appalling behavior of herself and her fellow feminists, and asserts that her critics never cared about the mentally handicapped before without providing any evidence to support that claim.
https://archive.fo/oRkwO



So we're victim-blaming now?! Classy.

For a while I actually thought you were better than this.

Ben has the mental capacity of an 8-year-old. He is not capable of understanding that his friendly childish gestures could seem unsettling to others. The responsibility falls on the mentally able to handle the situation like f***ing adults. This whole mess would've been avoided if Laura Miller had bothered to speak to the tram driver or any of the regular passengers who were familiar with Ben before jumping to paranoid assumptions.



Oh, so now the article is suddenly credible?!

Explain to me how is it, exactly, that the bad behavior of others is supposed to somehow excuse Laura Miller's own appalling behavior toward Ben.

You're only concerned with finding rationalization to excuse this disgusting behavior.



That's what they always say. But the moment we do show our emotions; out come the "male tears" mugs.



I agree that barring women from military service is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. Women should be allowed to serve if they choose to.

However, thousands of women are not dying every day because they are barred from service, but thousands of men who are compelled to serve (whether by law or social pressure) are!

That women's right to enlist is considered a more pressing issue than the fact that men's lives are treated as literal canon fodder shows what little regard feminism has for the plights of men.



If that happened, feminists would get outraged that movies are normalizing violence against women.



Yes, of course. As opposed to the thousands upon thousands of videogames in which general enemies have always been men and absolutely no one on the entire planet ever freaking cared!


Remember that time you said:





Lara Croft
Chun-Li
Samus
Jill Valentine
Trish
Bayonetta
Cammy White
Sonya Blade
Chell
Taki
Faith Connors
Ivy Valentine
Heather Mason
Widowmaker
Kitana
Mileena
Tracer
Aeris Gainsborough
Claire Redfield
Nina Williams
Anna Williams
Yuna
Mai Shiranui
Ling Xiaoyu



I wholeheartedly agree.

And while we're at it, can we also do something about this kind of s**t being treated like normal?

I am not a huge expert on those people in particular, but I don't know if some of those people are right-wingers themselves. You are looking at an event that was called something like the big sceptic divide, where online scepticism was largely divided into the Left and the Right, with a few people that were a bit unsure where they sat. One example of a person that was left a bit vague was Shoe0nHead, who stayed pretty strongly with the calling out feminism, but was not as actually Right wing as many on that side thought, and her more recent discussions with figures were she is against something that I think were called liberal feminism. Them being the kind that mostly use it to sell a product or create an image principles without actually standing up for anything, which is not actually the main feminist standpoint.




Maybe you will find some, but that is hardly necessarily representative of most feminists, and you will find people that find these extreme examples and pretend that it is the common opinion. On the flip side feminists are much more likely to be on the receiving end of harassment for showing weakness or not. Like games being made where one can simulate beating up Anita Sarkeesian.




I mean, I think that there has also been an in general anti-war movement, and I don't think feminist has advocated that anyone should have to enlist.




Did you hear a lot of feminist outrage that there were female Stormtroopers in The Rise of Skywalker, you started with Captain Phasma in the earlier movies and then when you hear some troopers being shot you can hear feminine voices. Maybe a lot of people did not care, but I did. I am not even saying that these movies are good, but at least were not ruined by the least it was not ruined by these things, and did not cause a huge feminist outcry.




I cared, it was why, and I assume others like me, cared when some gender diversity was given to even enemies, I think that feminists think it is okay for even villains to be women, preferably if some sort of stereotype was not given in. I would say enbies too, but Borderlands 3 kind of gave into a trope by having it be the robot player character.

Not sure what it says about the wider public, but I was obsessed with the Mario Super Crown meme, where I thought it was cool to have some fun looking evil princesses. It was better than just sticking a bow on a character otherwise assumed to be male.




I can go a whole lot into gender politics of video games, and I think it is worth discussion that a lot of these feel like exceptions to the rule, and may hold the places of fanservice, the girl member of the cast, or otherwise a subversion that makes them notable. With Lara Croft, probably also worth mentioning that you had a lot of people that were not too happy that the reboot did a way with a lot of her more fanservice elements with a more psychological character that you could probably say is more feminist.

I could go on quite a lot in talking about how Bayonetta is totally a feminist character, this rooted entirely in how she is in control of her own sexuality and within the game handles it all on her own terms. The character can be at risk of being used in non-empowering ways, but for the most point she gives off the air that she is not defined by what other characters put onto her.




I don't think that is at all treated as normal. Where are you hearing that this is normal? Is that even a real product?

Absolutely. You can buy it here:

https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/78787 ... lsrc=aw.ds

Notice how the website lists it as a 'feminist t-shirt'.

I've shown ample examples of misandry from feminists. And every time I do, you either excuse it, blame the victim, or try to say it's not real.

This is getting ridiculous.

As a man with ASD, I live in fear that some day an innocent greeting or joke will be taken the wrong way and it will ruin my life.

I checked the designers other work, and it looks like the vast majority of their designs are meant to be some element of ironic or sarcastic. Presumably there is some sort of joke to it, which I guess is why it is in quotes, so it is meant to be ironic or sarcastic. In fact the tags down the bottom of the page call it things like "stupid saying" and various versions of sarcastic. So whoever it is that is getting things with this sort of design are doing it for some sort of sarcastic reasoning.

I guess kind of like "Be Gay Do Crime", the saying is not literally telling people to do crime it is meant to be a sarcastic statement to invert the preconceptions of other people.

I don't know enough about those examples of the disabled man. I understand that a lot of women can be at risk from strange men forcing themselves onto women, where they can be attacked for not turning someone down the right way. So I can understand that people might have acted a bit rash after something that made them feel threatened when the person might have been mostly harmless. But it also seems pretty s**t how those women were then treated by being sent abuse their way.

Should they have been sent threats crude things like dick pics? I suspect a lot of people involved in that whole thing are wrong to some extent. How is it victim-blaming to simply say that mentally disabled people can cross boundaries they really should not. I still think such people should not just do certain things, not necessarily because it might be indicative of ulterior motives, but invasions of personal space and might scare people, I know that I probably would not want someone trying to force a high five out of me, and I am not even subject to being creeped on.

Don't we all. Thus we should try and be aware of how we can come across to other people. I am absolutely terrified of interacting with other people, and had to try a lot to understand body language of other people and come across as disarming and the right amount of friendly.

Rules are not to touch someone without permission, in fact I will generally not initiate the possible physical contact. I already had my fill of being accused of sexual harassment unknowingly when I was a kid. It otherwise is not too difficult to not do something that could be taken as something that could ruin my life.

If the word "boys" were switched to "girls" you would not excuse it on the ground that it's irony or sarcasm. The double standards you employ to defend misandry are blatantly transparent.



I'm not defending the people who did that. But that does not excuse the attacks on an innocent disabled person. You are attempting to distract the conversation away from the disgusting behaviors of Laura Miller and Clementine Ford.



Saying that a mentally handicapped person doing something he does not possess the capacity to understand he shouldn't do justifies people attacking him is victim blaming, plain and simple. Furthermore, you are disingenuously attempting to mischaracterize his asking someone for a high five as forcing it on them.



I have no choice but to go to work and do my job if I want to pay my rent so I don't end up homeless again. That means I have no choice but to interact with my female coworkers. As a person with ASD, it is not possible for me to understand body language or guage what the 'right amount of friendly' is. An interaction does not need to involve physical contact for it to be considered sexual harassment. We just discussed an incident in which a mentally disabled man was accused of harassment because he asked someone for a high five. And you blamed the victim and excused the actions of his attackers.

Given all that, I think I'm perfectly justified in my fears.

I think I've seen enough.


Can a mod close this thread, please?

I would regardless think that it was in bad taste. Did I not express that I don't quite understand what the joke and with my understanding do think that it is in bad taste? I was only able to have my understanding as I did by seeing the tags as being sarcastic, and that the designer himself seems to be a man, whose other designs seem to pain a confusing mess of a sensibility. I don't think I should have to try and figure and explain what joke this man thought he was making.

I actually did a reverse image search of the picture you used, which removed the quotation marks, and it came up with a Facebook called Patriarchy Daily, which seems to have a lot of pretty offensive things meant to foster some sort of divide between genders, along with homophobia and anti-non-binary language. If we want to talk about stuff against genders, I think that I would be pretty earned to complain about this one. You might be using something that was doctored from its original context from a source that is specifically meant to create anti-feminist discourse and is against my gender.




Seems that what they did might have been bad, the testimonials that the decidedly anti-feminist website you used paint a strong picture of them only being in the wrong. But if even the bias information that site gives is to be believed, they too became victims.




I don't even know what his character is, I only explained what a woman in that situation might have felt, so multiple things can be true. Something that might have meant nothing to one person could have been indicative of a lot that someone else has had to deal with. Rather than putting blame here, I think that it would be more productive to go so women don't have to feel that way in the first place, and be able to explain to the mentally handicapped that even if something fun and friendly to them, they might scare someone else.




We all have different difficulties, we can only try and do the best we can. Even if you think that you might innocently do something that might get mistaken as sexual harassment, you should probably try to make people not feel uncomfortable. Maybe you don't understand that your co-workers have had to deal with a lot of things that make them feel uncomfortable, with little ways to combat that. I think that if most people are earnest about their difficulties in not always understanding things, it can help a little.

You probably should be a little happy you even get gender acceptance. I could probably count the number of fairly mainstream representation of my gender on my fingers. And in many cases of dialogue outside of the communities we get treated as jokes and freaks. Most anti-feminist spaces are going to entirely disregard who I am, and yet males are the ones really hard done by because some radicals say some kind of mean things. I am not discrediting your own experiences, but I probably get more acceptance for my gender from feminism than whatever places you are getting your arguments from, and thus I find this attack on feminism itself to be rather silly.

You said nothing about bad taste before. You're just backpedaling after I called out your double standard.



I never said that misogyny or homophobia don't exist. But bigotry does not excuse other bigotry. "But they did it!" is not an valid argument.



I don't condone these methods, but I'm not particularly inclined to have sympathy for someone regarding the backlash they received for attacking a disabled person. And I'm sure that Miller and Ford called attention to only the responses that were abusive while ignoring all the ones that did not fit their narrative. That's what feminists do, after all: point to examples of predatory men as representative of all men, while ignoring all the men who have never hurt anyone in their lives. At any rate, the severity of the backlash does not excuse what was done. You want to condemn the people who sent these dick pics, but excuse feminists for their attacks on disabled people.



According to people who know him, he has the mental capacity of an 8-year-old. Though I'd hardly be surprised to see feminists label every 8-year-old boy who asks for a high five as a rapist.



We're arguing in circles. It is clear that you are blaming the victim.

I'm done with sh!t.

Thread locked on OP's request.
(BTW - it's better to PM such requests)