What's bad about men's issues?

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What's bad about men's issue's & feminism just the same is that they indicate a LOT of people only thinking of one gender or the other. We need both but it's either misogyny or misandry to focus on just one.

I gave up on this struggle not all that long ago. When people discuss politics, I'm largely looking at the impoverished (as a whole), public services and scientific literacy. Globally, it concerns strengthening alliances with trusting parties.

The divisiveness in identity politics is interesting but not key. Pushing for all inclusive policy and legislation will cut out the middle man, and potentially deal with other problems (poverty, homelessness, health, environment, education, anti discrimination, etc.), not to say feminism and other movements aren't important but the bigger picture is priority in my opinion.

I don't disagree entirely but what I do think is that each movement is comprised of individual members, voices, mentalities and even political affiliations.

As a male, if I support feminism (which I do, though I don't consider myself a feminist; I'll explain another time maybe) then I don't have anything to directly gain. If, and that's if, feminism directly benefits women only then it raises a question; why would I as a man ever think to support it? What do I gain?

Besides a rested conscience and a potentially needed voice in a national or global discussion, it's also safe to claim that feminism is not a structure that only supports women. If I want to be a stay at home father, for example, feminism would support such a decision. This alleviates pressures and concerns on me as a man, and by bringing down stereotypical barriers on both genders it benefits women as it should.

This is just one very small idea, but the encompassing point is that feminism creates synergy between men and women being who they want to be without societal boundaries.

From personal experience, some so-called men's rights activists are simply an allergic reaction to feminist ideologies and principles. No, that doesn't mean that the MRM is only a sexist movement and nothing more, there are some that just want justice. Though it has been hijacked by toxic members that become the vocal minority.

The question here is; when does a movement become redundant or malignant as a whole? In my opinion, it's when more than half of its supporters have to sling mud at the other because they no longer have a constructive argument to make. So when MRA's have to yell at or demean feminists, or perhaps women in general, you know why they chose their position.

Regarding your comments on experiences, largely people like to use anecdotes or their own lives as a basis for what does and does not occur. Men have a hard time understanding women because they aren't women. Subsequently, microagressions and other minor issues can't exist or be relevant. This is confirmation bias and a component of the bigger picture as to why so many regard feminism as an unnecessary movement (most being men, from what I've seen at least).

Also, to see men's rights or women's rights as a pushback of the opposite gender is not productive. Of course, we can support both.

Maybe it's safer ditching labels and just advancing causes that you believe in? That's how I operate personally.

You're back already? That didn't last long.

It certainly sounded like a litmus test. The only alternative is to assume that you meant that "[whether women are elected at an equal rate] depends on the seats [they run for]," and the facts don't support you in that case. The women who've run for the presidency have done pretty well, especially when compared to both the average performance of serious male candidates, and to their own credentials. If you compare Clinton, Fiorina or Dole to the top ten male candidates (by polling numbers or primary delegates), or to the top candidates capturing 90% of the support in the primaries, they got pretty far.

Consider also that very few senators have won the presidency, and that no Democratic nominee who was a private citizen when endorsed has won, regardless of gender.


Perhaps not, but we've at least had the dignity to keep our word when we've used the ploy you fell back on in your last reply to me.

I feel like TRUE feminists would want the same equal rights for both women AND men. Most of the women who call themselves feminists nowadays are just being man haters who want to blame men for all the problems in the world, but there are some women who see that life can be pretty unfair for men too and they don't believe that men should subjected to forced gender roles either.

Some of the many problems that men face in society that I'm aware of:

* Men have always been the ones to get drafted and forced to risk their lives fighting in wars.

* There are more homeless men in the world than there are homeless women.

* Men are taught as young boys that it is shameful and unmanly to get sad and cry but it is OK for girls to cry. They don't express themselves in a healthy manner because of this and it causes problems for them psychologically (men DO have emotions contrary to what society likes to think).

* Men are more likely to get the death penalty for crimes than women or get a longer prison sentence.

* A woman can physically abuse her husband or boyfriend and most of the time he will be too ashamed to admit it and seek help because people think that only men abuse women and if he is getting abused by a woman than that makes him "less of a man".

Forgot men have higher suicide rate then women
Purr system favors women more then men

Man has sex with teen girl it’s horrible gets national news and he goes to prison for life
Woman has sex with a teenage boy and everyone just like ah well he probably wanted it, way to go boy, she doesn’t deserve punishment. This is both sexist to men and women, it assumes boys can consent while women the same age can’t mentally decide to have sex and so had to been forced, but science says women mentality mature faster then boys so if anything the boys aren’t mentally able to consent and are being taken advantage of. It disturbs me. Even when the women get jail time it’s far less then men who do the same.
Women who have sex with teens should get life as well. Wonder if it was a female adult sexing with a female teen how everyone would react

Oh then there’s the notion that the man has to be the provider and isn’t a real man if he isn’t,

That sickens me too. There really is a double standard in our society about thinking that it's ok for a grown woman to sleep with an underage boy. To me that makes her just as big a pedophile as a man who would sleep with an underage girl. But we don't like to think that female predators exist because I guess only men can be predators according to our society's way of thinking.

Another thing that bothers me is that in school girls can bully boys and nobody does anything about it except pick on the boy for getting bullied by a little girl and yet we all know what happens to a boy if he tries to stand up to a girl who bullies him.

For a lot of the above I can say I'm finally, blessedly, coming out of that place where I used to whip and beat myself for the ways I got treated or failing society's knee-jerk conformity shibboleths.

The only way to fix it is really taking to heart, deeply, that human beings are just a species of animal and since truth has absolutely nothing to do with the evolutionary arms race (aside from maybe don't eat lead paint chips or you can't fly off the top of a five story building) it means that this will reflect in how people treat each other.

The other thing I'm learning - truth, in the minute detail sense, only matter to two types of people 1) business, government, legal, medical, and engineering consumers who need to know certain things for their livelihood to work out and 2) freaks, geeks, and misfits who need it to survive how society is treating them. Everyone else can ride the big raft of fantasy and self-delusion to varying degrees so long as it isn't punishing them enough for them to find themselves on the edge of suicide. Once a person finds themselves on the edge of suicide though, if they don't go through with it and realize with resounding clarity that the role they were typecast into by 'the game' lead them to that point, that's where they tend to break with society's prescriptions and stop conforming in all the ways that were demanded of them up until that point.

There are pros and cons to no longer conforming - one pro is that you feel far more free than you ever have in your life and you have a real fighting chance at actually having integrity and being able to live according to it. The biggest con to it - people will absolutely ignore you, ie. you either conform or you don't exist and in this case you will for the most part cease to be in the eyes of most people around you. That later punishment is what keeps 'normies' exactly the way they are and when someone really starts living life objectively and pursuing truth for its own sake it's usually because society played its hand so heavily against that person that the exclusion blackmail chip depreciated to zero or near zero value.

I agree. You are looking at the bigger picture, and I also wish we could all move in that direction. I suppose that does answer the question of why men's issues are "bad," it's because it isn't about men's issues or women's issues, it is about human issues. Is that what you are trying to say?

I see humanity as a great morass of individuals, each with a tiny part to play. Each are called to a different aspect of life and hopefully trying to move it in a positive direction. Some work in small ways and some have larger visions.

I agree. You are looking at the bigger picture, and I also wish we could all move in that direction. I suppose that does answer the question of why men's issues are "bad," it's because it isn't about men's issues or women's issues, it is about human issues. Is that what you are trying to say?

I see humanity as a great morass of individuals, each with a tiny part to play. Each are called to a different aspect of life and hopefully trying to move it in a positive direction. Some work in small ways and some have larger visions.

In most cases, when there aren't massive - like can't drive, can't vote, apartheid or in shackles - inequalities you have an activism that's a dance of a couple distinct types of people; people who've been victimized by sociopaths of the group their activism is hoping to modify if not overthrow and on the other end the self-same sociopaths but the ones who look like them, have the same XX/XY chromosomes, have the same religion, who are triggering the other side to activism.

When I think of Karen Staughan's work she seems to just know a lot of guys who got screwed over in the worst ways. Her atheism and rationalism are generally on target, as far as being a something-ist or -phobe she's really no better or worse than Sargon of Akkad or Computing Forever in that she remains quite capable of interviewing people and having thoughtful discussions of the content that reveal what they actually have to say much more than any massive skew getting put on it (I bring her up in specific because a pretty well thought out video got reacted to - on name - as if I'd posted the equivalent of Richard Spencer).

A lot of the types of guys she references - the types who married the wrong person, worked 80+ hours a week to finance someone else's lifestyle to get taken through the legal wringer, lose house or house and kids, or even have this happen because they were 'working too much' or traveling for work too much - this is the factory that makes the MRA's with legitimate grievances, even if and when those grievances are just damning personal anecdote. I can't always tell whether it's a problem of our genetic wiring attracting us to people who are animalistic and thereby expertly deceptive, whether it's cases of people with borderline personality hiding it really well until they can take the mask off, or some combination of all kinds of things like that - I'm sure it's pretty damn chaotic and these problems are never anywhere near as neat or tidy as we'd want them to be. Similarly I'm sure there are some guys in the men's rights movement who are the types of guys who quite literally make nth wave feminists, give cause for real grievance, while that sociopath sliver of women who make legitimate MRA's - like a grim mirror to that sociopath sliver of men, hold the megaphones and lead the charge.

This is part of why I don't trust activism or identity politics in general. I might be white and male, can't rule out the possibility of some motivated reasoning, but over and above that I can't help but notice something that I'd have to think anyone else paying attention can't help but notice as well - the cream clearly doesn't rise to the top, rather it seems to be something closer to the opposite. If that's the case why not just focus on really understanding the nuts and bolts mechanics of the problems, figuring what they actually are, and once you have a solid grasp on what those problems really are and where they're coming from work on equally plausible solutions that can work in the real world with minimum invasiveness (ie. the one assurance that they can stand the test of time, strain, and political cycles). Otherwise the middleman/middlewoman/middlexe/xer is atrocious.

Sorry about the double post. I don't know how that happened.

That happens to me sometimes too.

^^^^^ thanks for understanding.