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Why do you think that there isn't a male-led/focused feminist-style movement?
It wasn't until recently that the oddness of this absence struck me. While I am definitely not claiming that men have it worse then women or other minorities, men do have very serious issues from being men. Of course there are individual men, groups and small organizations that support men along these lines, but why do you think there isn't a broader culture movement?
Because there's really two different movements. There's a r/MensLib style movement, which accepts feminist theory and works to talk about male issues in a supportive way that helps men deal with the challenges unique to them. There's not really any money to be made in practicing empathy and supportive community, and it's not trying to distinguish itself as a "men's movement."
And then there's a r/MensRights style movement who thinks that feminists are stealing their manhood and that the only way to have men's needs taken care of is at the expense of everyone else. If you've heard of Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson, those are the grifters that make their money telling vulnerable men how all they need to do is clean their rooms, neg women, and live like a lobster and they'll be back on top. There's a lot of money to be made there. This is the stronger cultural movement focused on men at the moment.
It's easy to blame its lack of popularity on "well it's just too empathetic and there's no money in it!", but my anecdotal experience is that the only people interested in it are male feminists already interested in activism and the rest are split between knowing about it and not being interested because they identify very little with its messages, and not knowing about it at all.
I don't know anybody who actively cares about men's rights stuff either, but in my experience they're much better at picking up topics that average men care about even if we throw out the most obvious ragebait. The problem of course lies in what they then do with those topics. Whereas Men's Lib seems to target men who are already quite strongly ideologically aligned with the movement, which is of course a relatively small minority.
This is interesting. Do you think the MensLib movement could do anything to improve that situation without sacrificing their ethics?
It's been a few months since the last time I doomscrolled /r/MensLib, but here are the three major interrelated problems I remember.
First, it has a lack of focus. It seems to treat "men's issues from a feminist perspective" as a all good things for all people movement, a la Occupy. Discussions are easily derailed by good faith actors bringing their legitimate issues there instead of a more appropriate forum. For example, that subreddit often feels like a playground for the "trans men exist, too" crowd instead of a pragmatic home for non-sexist cis men that keeps a cardinal rule that the policies they propose must not harm trans people (of either gender). Actually, there's no reason for trans men not to be there, only for a few users to make their own dedicated threads about the issues trans men face instead of posting their tangential perspective on popular threads.
Second, there's a weird obsession with inclusive language and reading into tea leaves when someone does not use it. If you want to reach the masses, you must accept that you will engage disguised opponents in good faith. What the traditional parable of the Nazi bar ignores is that any sufficiently large bar will inadvertently serve several Nazis who were smart enough to take off those ugly uniforms and completely cover their swastika tattoo before entering on a regular basis. Because the overall goals are so diffuse, the de facto goal seems to be to have a discussion hub with language that is as inclusive and non-offensive as possible. It's reflected in the moderation decisions of mass preemptive bans for participation in no-no subreddits. The subreddit's community is jumpy and paranoid of those who do not already agree.
I had a third point when I started typing, but it fell away from my mind while typing the previous two. Perhaps I'll remember and edit this.
That's a difficult problem. It's been some years since I last followed what's going on in the online MensLib movement (until today), so I may be out of date. But from what I remember, I think that a new movement would have to emerge, and it would have to be more divorced from feminism than MensLib is. Because there is a nontrivial number of issues and ideas in mainstream feminism that many "average" men disagree with, but the current social atmosphere makes it really difficult to criticize or reject those without being labeled a conservative, whether a traditional one or an alt-right weirdo. They're not going to join a movement that they feel reinforces this.
An example of this issue is what douchebag (hah) says here.
Taking it a step further, I think that a new MensLib type movement would have to essentially pick up some of the less ragebaity Men's Rights topics and approach them from a sane and measured point of view, which in my experience MensLib does not do.
What frustrates me the most about Menslib is that it is very anti-action. It doesn't have concrete goals, or try to reach out to people outside the subreddit. They just discuss articles in an arm-chair academic way about how masculinity needs to be redefined, but masculinity doesn't need to be redefined because it can be anything, but if masculinity can be anything then nothing is masculine, but people should be able to decide what masculinity means for then, but most people need guidelines in life so we need to redefine what masculinity means, but we don't need to redefine masculinity because... And someone in the thread will complain about how nothing is changing, or at least not fast enough. Granted, is not fair to expect much from a subreddit, but it is weird when people inside and outside of the subreddit call it a "movement".
I wish they would at least organize some online events outside the subreddit.
Yeah, fair enough. It's not really a movement that focuses on proselytizing, which is kind of a death knell for any conceptual grouping of people.
I am aware of both, but neither are the thing I am asking about. MensLib, from my experience, is tiny and has no meaningful influence. There are whole Feminist sections in book stores, many explicitly feminist podcasts, articles and magazines dedicated to it, you name it. I am wondering about the significant difference in scale.
MensRight's are filled with con-men and their marks. They aren't making meaningful critiques or offering actual help and support to men.
I hate to put it this way, but collective rage sells better in our capatilistic society. In the case of the feminist movement you have a long history of women not settling for the status quo and that rage culminating into social movements. There's better hegemony with feminist women as a group that has a long track record of items we have sought change for our collective betterment. To seek that change and actually have it happen requires a lot of anger to act.
I don't see this type of group collaboration in more positive male spaces. They're more fractured and even in my experience seeing women's professional groups attempting to include men in their discussions, the responses are low. But those who follow people like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, they're more cohesive in their community and thus are a bigger group to market for. Positive male movements just have not been acknowledged as a group to market towards because they lack a large collective to sell too.
As far as media is concerned, I think it would probably exist if it were projected to be consumed but the market is probably not very profitable.
Feminism itself is divided into factions. It is not a movement that gathers into big demonstrations.
Social class: Upper-class women, for instance, consume child care services while lower-class women provide them. Henry Ford realized that the automobile was only going to revolutionize society if the factory could become so efficient that the person who worked in a factory could afford a car. No such revolution is possible in child care. Consumers and providers of child care have different positions on how and if commercial childcare can be made “affordable”.
Age: part of the female predicament of women concerns the lifecycle. There is a huge sexual interest in young women while older women are dismissed as “crones”, “witches”, etc. Second wave feminists rejected the word “girl” as a diminutive but since then feminists have embraced the word in forms like “girl power”, and a statement by the Gates Foundation that “girls are our most important natural resource”. It is said that second-wave feminists found they couldn’t get through to “girls” (basking in the glow of that sexual interest) and that (many) feminists decided they could make progress through pandering to “girls”.
Sexuality, reproduction, and all that: Some second wave feminists said that “sisters” who were sleeping with men were sellouts. Others saw reproduction as the center of oppression. I would contrast that to Eva Illouz, who in her Why Love Hurts points out that many women are struggling to get in the situation they would like to be in to reproduce while they still can and develops a complaint that is structurally like some versions of the “incel complaint”
WEIRDness and essentialism: I am right now reading Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_a_Different_Voice) which I’ve found quite interesting but is a flawed work for quite a few reasons. You don’t see feminists active in the streets very often but you do find “feminisms” that have found homes in academia. Gilligan built an argument out of a set of interviews she did of people who she sampled, but, like Sigmund Freud, focused on a small number of interviewed with boys and girls who certainly showed stereotypical, if not typical, behaviors. (She should have been able to say that 33 girls out of 50 said X but only 7 boys out of 49). That’s a problem in itself, but she draws conclusion about “men” and “women” based on a group of people she interviewed in a particular place and time (e.g. Harvard has a magical ability to interview a hundred people and not find anyone who’s suffered from poverty) and who knows about white people living in poverty in Western Massachusetts, never mind black people living in poverty in Alabama, people in Egypt today, people in Egypt 2500 years ago, etc.
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As for men it may be worse because the dirty secret of “the patriarchy” is that it is not about women at all but rather a system of competition and status among men for which women are just a prize. Fundamentally there is a difference in pose between winners, losers, and people who think they can still win. (Similar to the “young woman” problem feminism has)
First, I understand why you aren't saying anything. It's also really frustrating to not be able to speak up about a harmful policy, and I do believe that is a harmful policy.
At my company, we had a similar "get the number of women in management up" effort. Thing is, we're an engineering company. We are 25% women, and that's because there aren't a lot of women graduating with EE degrees because of various systematic reasons that we (the company) cannot immediately fix.
I am a woman (and an engineer), and I was in a women's "town hall" type meeting with a (male) member of our business unit's leadership. We were almost all engineers, actually. We brought up that policy to the member of leadership, because we hate it too. We worked hard to be engineers, we don't want to be forced into management just because we're women and also even if we did want to be in management there's nothing like the stain of an unfair promotion to cut a new manager's feet out from under them. Anyway, he was really surprised to hear this basically unanimous feedback, and apparently the company is working on adjusting the gender balance goals or something.
Also, if you promote most of the women out of individual contributor roles, the gender imbalance gets really bad in that sector. 25%, 15%, is enough to not be literally the only woman on an entire project... But at my previous job, we had a similar policy and there were two female individual contributors in a business unit of over 100 people. Goddamn it felt lonely sometimes. And I have threatened to quit to avoid going into management because it sounds like a job where I'd be miserable, so that wasn't an option to find a role with a little more balance.
It might be possible to find some women who would agree with you and who might bring it up on your behalf without mentioning you, although there is some risk to that of course. But if you're friends with any, you might ask them what they think about it. Obviously it would be better if you could say what you think about it without needing a proxy or a roundabout way to approach the topic. But unfair is unfair and, like how toxic masculinity harms men, poorly thought out policies to promote women harm women too. I have been harmed by the policy you're describing. It's a bad policy.
I wish it was possible for our male allies to bring up that kind of thing without all the Andrew Tate fanboys being like "One of us!"
ETA: it goes without saying, that policy is also really unfair for men. It's just bad. I offer my perspective on it because going from "one group hates this" to "everyone hates this" can be effective for accomplishing change.
To yourself, @douchebag, or anyone else who finds themselves in this kind of a situation, I've found the following narrative to be a useful one to bring up: ask how the externalities are going to be managed. That is to say, ask how they are going to manage how some of the women might feel, that they were promoted before their peers because of their gender and not the quality of their work, especially so if they have impostor syndrome. Ask how the company intends to manage how some of the men might feel, being passed over for a promotion they've worked hard for and now being given an easy scapegoat to explain why their hard work didn't pay off.
There's always a balance to be struck in the application of equity work. I happen to advocate at my own place of work in the equity space and have spent a lot of time arguing for more resources to develop minorities and to improve diversity. In many cases hiring goals and a push for diversity comes from a place with good intentions, but either acts too fast or doesn't take externalities into consideration.
Here are a few alternatives that employers can consider to improve equity in other ways. They all have their pros and cons, but having a nice mix of opportunities tends to work best in my experience.
Obviously this is not an exhaustive list and there's a good chance many people reading this will never have the chance nor wish to weigh in on equity and diversity strategy, but I'm hoping that someone seeing this list might have the chance to offer these alternatives in the future or at least start a discussion on how no plan is perfect and even with great goals in mind we need to think fully through all the externalities of implementing these programs and how people feel about these programs existing.
With the disclaimer that I’m a layman here (have only ever worked as an individual contributor) this all makes sense. I might suggest that companies of a certain size (due to affordability being a concern) also work with local universities to help identify bottlenecks in their degree programs that may be contributing to a reduced flow of minority entry-level candidates and interns and funding things like outreach, feedback, and mentorship programs there too.
For the point on pay equity I think it’s important that companies not use this as an excuse to cut compensation. Compensation should instead be raised for everybody to match that of the best compensated peer.
I think it boils down to this being an exception to a rule.
There will be cases where this happens, but it is dismissable in the grand scheme of things.
And with the incel/mgtow/red pill rhetoric running amok these days, this immediately rises the suspicion that what you are saying is not exactly what is happening.
I guess I am just repeating what you said with another words.
For some reason I wouldn't be worried about people thinking I'm sexist for bringing up this topic. But I would be really worried that suddenly an idiot within earshot thinks I'm his buddy in his anti-woman crusade. I think I can appropriately indicate the level of caution with which I'm initiating the conversation. But as soon as a Tater Tot "yes, and"-s me, it's all over.
I'm not really qualified to answer this as some dumbass from lower middle class america but from my own perspective as a 30something dude, I think a lot of it is possibly pride and the lack of will for self-help. I even recognize this in myself and still don't see a therapist, don't see a doctor, don't ask for help, the only thing I ever ask for is time alone. I have watched countless videos about how we should all be talking out feelings and issues and whatever and I 100% agree, yet for some reason do not advocate for myself.
I think it has to do with my pride and my realizing that at the end of the day my family needs to be fed and I am the one that has to do it. There is no one else. I can talk about it all I want but I start seeing how much worse other people have it and I feel guilty for even mentioning my issues out loud. I'm housed, I'm fed, I have a house and kids and a wife and a dog and I did all that, now I get to maintain it and that's on me, no matter how hard it is.
Anyway that was probably poorly written and probably doesn't quite convey my take but the long and short of it is that even though I think men should advocate for themselves and seek help when they need it, it's probably somewhat the case that they don't think they need it yet.
I read something over on reddit in my early twenties that really helped me. It let me identify why I was so scared of asking for help, displaying vulnerability, and showing emotions:
This was written over a decade ago, and I was really hoping it would be dated by now. In my own experiences, it's still mostly true.
I think what's changed is how I respond to it. I do see a therapist, and I talk about it openly, with my friends, family, and at work. My wife and my friends all give me positive affirmation for saying how I'm feeling. Learning how to describe feelings that weren't 'I am angry' or 'I feel bad' took me years, but it has really paid off.
And I think over the decade that's passed, I benefitted from some extremely effective role models and mentors. Men and women both, they encouraged me to open up more and have the courage to be vulnerable. I wasn't met with sanctions, I was met with admiration for my bravery. Coming from people that I really respected and wanted to be like, this meant a lot.
The other side is that there has been a cost. I used to have a lot of 'bro'-like friends (worked in a very male-dominated industry). I'm also a lower middle-class person, so you probably know what I mean with groups of male friends like this. Talking shit, being real tight with a friendship group of men who are all in the same boat. It was nice. I still miss it.
It's not like I made a concious decision to cut them out, but I just drifted away from them over the years because they would relentlessly target anyone showing 'weakness'. That's not good for tough times, and life is full of tough times. They're out of my life now. My friends are way more diverse, accepting, and supportive. But still, I do really miss being in a solid friendship group of guys. I just wasn't willing to do what was required to maintain my place there.
I ended relationships with some girlfriends over their implied requirement for me to 'man up' and shoulder the responsibility of earning the money and just being stoic. These were women who definitely said out loud they wanted me to be more emotional, then found it confronting and unmanly when I was.
If I had have overlooked that, I never would have met my wife. If I hadn't have started therapy, I'd still have the emotional range I had at 21 - 'angry', or 'sad, but don't know why, and I can't talk about it.' If I hadn't started going to the doctor regularly, they woulda missed something that could have been fatal. Even in my career, I've changed jobs sometimes just because a boss has thought that if I needed help with problems outside of work, I was being a little bitch. This has led me to way better working relationships with more accepting people. It's made me a better boss now that I'm managing young people people. They feel comfortable coming to me when something blows up in their life and they need to vent, or need a break from work.
I've tried to nurture relationships with people that allow me to express my full spectrum of feelings, and that I can be there for when they do the same. I think the benefits far outweigh the losses. But I'm not gonna pretend it's easy.
This comment, and the thread in general have really shaken me. Especially the "patriarchy is a system of competition between men where women are a prize" bit.
I was raised by very liberal parents and mostly sheltered from any patriarchal influences growing up. A year ago at work I asked my ex-manager, who is the most "tech bro" person I've ever met, why some other manager was trying to steal resources from our department. Over the course of 20 minutes he had to explain patriarchy to me, from first principals. The idea of attracting a mate through status, that more status means more power to select discriminately, etc. Mind you, this was a weird conversation and I don't think it was appropriate for him to have brought up the topic. But every step of the process bewildered me. All of this I knew existed, but I didn't think it was common for people to actually think this way.
It all makes so much sense now. I've wondered about the whole "are the straights okay?" meme. Why is it that LGBT relationships seem so much less burdened (to be fair, that's an outside looking in perspective from someone in a very liberal location). Presumably they have the immense advantage of, by default, not being a focal point for the patriarchy.
This also explains a major hesitation I've had around dating. I knew there was some nebulous thing I was afraid of. Of course I'm generally aware of sexism and aware of the woman's chance of seeing of my actions through that lens. But what was it that I was afraid of? I don't want to get dragged into a focal point of patriarchy. Expectations that I behave, at least partially, in that way. Now that I'm aware of this I'll need to assess the degree to which women in my area actually are promoting that behavior. Maybe it's not too bad. Like I said, it's a liberal area.
Also for context, many self-assessments have consistently placed me plausibly within the range of ASD. But I've never been diagnosed. I'm definitely more mild than the diagnosed autistic people I know.
Anyway, thanks everyone for the thread. I feel like I just went on a psychedelic trip. I wasn't able to get any work done today I was so mentally preoccupied.
Really appreciate you sharing your experience! It's probably especially helpful for men, but these lessons in emotional intelligence are illuminating for everyone. I'm happy for you that you've had support in your journey and I respect how much work you've put into it!
I appreciate you writing this up. I actually had a bit of an epiphany. When you mentioned that you slowly started moving away from friends with these toxic/masculine behaviors, I realized I did that to a certain friend group but I wasn't sure how to explain it. I do miss them..but being friends with them came at a price.
What helps me is that when you talk about your feelings/process your emotions thouroughly is that it makes you more resiliant in the end. Showing emotion is seen as a weekness, yet we all know the type of man that is constantly angry. This is also expressing emotion, just in a way that only makes it worse. That's my 2 cents
This is absolutely not what the patriarchy is defined as within feminism, fwiw. Within actual feminist discourse, the patriarchy is discussed far more as a systemic issue with how society is organized -- one that is maintained by both men and women but not because of some evil male "they" at the top. While I'm sure there are some women who believe it in those oversimplified terms (not everyone is going to engage with feminist theory and there's plenty of bad pop feminism out there), it's absolutely not fair to paint feminism as believing in the patriarchy as a conspiracy from a bunch of consciously-women-hating men at the top. This is not even close to a mainstream view within feminism. A more accurate picture of what feminists actually believe about the patriarchy also covers a lot of the men's issues you bring up, because the patriarchy is a system that hurts both men amd women by forcing them into reductive gender roles.
I don't really have a more complex answer than that I disagree that what you're describing is even what you'd get asking the average woman on the street what the patriarchy is either.
I think it's for the same reason as there isn't a (non-KKK/nazi) white-led white advocacy-style movement; this kind of thing invariably ends up as a toxic women-hating Andrew Tate kind of thing. A lot of people it attracts tend to have a big chip on their shoulder about some supposed oppression they face (e.g. women won't date them) and turn what was a good-faith attempt to improve things into something twisted. A classic example of this is r/incel (The Guardian).
There's no need for a group for men, feminists believe in a society with true equality and to achieve that they need both women AND men to work together. Societal changes requires everyone coming together with a common goal and so true equality means helping men get equal treatment too and losing things that benefit women over men.
The problem is, fighting for equality for men is often resisted by sexist people (women AND men) that think men don't have the right to talk about inequality until women are not suffering it. It would be nice if more people would call out self proclaimed feminists that try to shame men for simply being male. It's toxic, sexist and does more harm than good. It breeds more sexists as men who feel attacked/threatened fight back or find refuge with sexist men like Tate. Hate only breeds more hate. It attacks one side and reinforces the negative stereotypes of the other creating a vicious cycle.
I don't really get the feminist comparison here. Feminism is anout promoting women's rights and removing societal obstacles in the way of them. Men... Don't need that, do they? Like I've got mental problems. I have low confidence and self esteem. I have crippling social anxiety. I'm a crazy introvert. A lot of it leads to me struggling to succeed at work. I have to figure out how to deal with that, but being a man isn't a barrier for me.
I feel like there's a ton of self help books and materials out there for someone like me. I hate them. I've dropped therapy multiple times because I find it useless as well, but it's there and lots of other men seem to use it.
I doubt there are fewer charlitans on the women's side than the men's. Mel Robins isn't "toxic" I guess, but she's just spewing shit that "sounds nice" to people ir that they want to believe is true.
I've been trying to figure out if I could concisely clarify what I was trying to convey, but its still fairly messy. I am aware that menslib exist as a branch of Feminism, it's a big reason I am wondering about this is reading bell hooks. But I kinda grate on the reflexive "Just be a feminist" type of response; I do consider myself a feminist, and it has deeply informed my current position. Men are a distinct group with different social and systemic issues to women, to transfolk, to any other dimension of your person-hood. Men both need and deserve media, spaces, philosophies, all the elements of wider movement focus on supporting them and providing them with GOOD models on how to led good lives for themselves and other people. I am perfectly happy to have that under the banner of feminism, or to not have it under that banner. I simply want the small seed that exists now to actually grow into something significant.
And while there are many feminists that are supportive to menslib and I think its improved over the last decade, I don't think that support for it is important to the majority of feminists. Even someone as truly devoted to equality and feminism like bell hooks admits to pressuring her partner to be vulnerable with her, but then whenever he actually did, she made her feelings the priority and provided little support to him. That is emotional abuse, fused with a heavy does of emotional neglect. I am not trying to "cancel" bell hooks, I think she is a phenomenal writer who resonated with me deeply, but to convey that even someone so deeply focused on and self-reflective about gender issues can have massive blind spots about these issues. It also matches up with my own personal experiences of being a man trying to open up to women, often feminists.
I guess the point of my rambling is that I personally feel surprised that more men haven't openly and publicly denounced patriarchy; I feel like its fucked me up since I was like 4 and my crying was met by indifference and my sister's was five alarm fire. Clearly many do speak out, but the scale just doesn't seem to be there. I guess it just makes me sad and tired.
So, looking at North America, men probably didn't need anything like a male version of feminism for a long time.
I would argue these days are significantly more challenging for everyone and men would probably benefit from a movement similar to feminism. It would collect some of the men flailing around looking for support and not find it.
It probably doesn't happen because of the negative connotations associated with the idea. I'm a straight, white male. Basically every other sex or minority has had it worse. That doesn't mean that straight, white males don't need support from time to time, but I imagine it is similar to when a man suggests they were raped by a woman and everyone kind of just laughs at that idea.
That said, I don't really have to worry about getting shot by the police or other similar things, so when it is bad for me it is still probably worse for other non-white, non-straight males.
That's just my off the cuff response. I can't say I have put a lot of thought into it so I guess you can call this a good discussion topic for that.
Women have to deal with "the system" too. As do those that don't ascribe themselves a binary label
EDIT fixed a typo
Because the issues men face are a product of the patriarchy.
So while feminism is a women's movement, the problems affect men to a high degree too.
The men who can understand that end up supporting feminism and it's movements because there is no point making up a new movement. Wanting to lead something else is just wanting to put men in the center of everything again. It will lead up to the same toxic behavior we need to end.
It’s not only a women’s movement and it’s not that the issues “affect men to a high degree too”: the central idea of feminism is that it’s for everyone because the topics at issue harm women and men and nonbinary folk, just in different ways.
Feminism has a branding issue. It has “fem” as a prefix so many people assume it’s only for women. This assumption might arguably have been more accurate during the first wave feminist movement of the 19th century when feminist theory focused, among other things, on women’s suffrage. Nevertheless, feminist activism is intertwined with labour activism who (in the West) secured the 8-hour workday, sick leave, limitations on child labour, and other worker protections that benefitted all workers—in this case, men most of all.
Third-wave feminism incorporated the concept of intersectionality: rather than focusing on one feature of our identities (i.e. gender) and how it informs our interactions and oppressions, this idea recognizes that our identities are formed from overlapping characteristics, statuses, group memberships, cultures. With that in mind, contemporary feminism seeks to liberate people from the oppression they experience from these intersected identities (e.g. a brown immigrant lesbian middle-class woman, a black bi working class older man, a white straight young trans-man, a white immigrant ESL nonbinary person experience different struggles, of which gender is an inextricable part, but only a part). Their experiences of oppression and power are complex, differ if they’re in Houston vs Portland let alone US vs China, so it would be woefully insufficient to focus only on the “women’s issues” involved.
For anyone who thinks “feminism” isn’t for you, I’d encourage you to think of it more as “humanism that was started by women” and dig a bit deeper.
There are countless books I could recommend, but on the topic of masculinity I particularly appreciate bell books’s insightful writing.
Finally, I’ve tried to summarize the ideas of contemporary mainstream Western feminism—like any field, it’s not a monolith: feminist theory and practice focuses on different issues in the different places and times. And different theorists and activists disagree with each other—as they should because that’s how academic fields and activist movements evolve. (Not to mention it’s field made up of imperfect humans who promote poor ideas and bad-faith assholes who push harmful nonsense: that’s what the debate is for.)
For the sake of self-improvement, I wonder to what degree I need to fix this. I’m pretty good at disregarding the status quo. I was raised by parents that encouraged their boys to be emotionally intelligent. My make friends and I used to specifically talk out our feelings in a group in high school. But I do think it’s hard to not internalize the default male behavior.
One of the more shocking things I learned in therapy was that my ability to shut down emotionally in exchange for better tactical execution isn’t healthy. Internally it seems like a skill, a tool to be used. And I will maintain that there are certainly times when it’s the best option at hand, moments where you’re trying to survive something you aren’t emotionally prepared for. But I suppose it should be used sparingly. I’ve dug myself into holes, many months into suppression, where it becomes a serious episode of depression.
So for me it’s a mode, but I don’t know yet if it’s my default mode.
Because feminism exists to address issues that oppress men. I’m a man: I support the liberation of men (inclusively), so I’m a feminist.
Your question suggests you think feminism is only for women?