thread for contemplating the serious issues raised by the Men's Rights movement

MRA/antifeminist/"red pill" scenes were the first to blow this thing up, they are deeply implicated and their language is all over the "movement"

by that token the tea party + IS are also men's rights phenomena

lol yes?

yr going to force me to start a new thread that's just called men issues or something aren't u

"the predominant use of young males in armies" <--- this is not a serious issue; the serious issue is the exclusion of women in armies and the misuse of military might throughout the entirety of human history, but the fact that militaries use young men isn't a serious problem by itself

also in order for "disdain for maleness in popular culture" to be an actual issue, you need to define "maleness" in a pretty insulting way

Also it takes chutzpah of a major fashion to have purposefully, for decades, kept women out of (or discouraged them from working in) high risk jobs or front-line military roles, then to complain that you're the ones at risk in the workplace and at war.

disdain for maleness in popular culture

I can't even.

thread for contemplating the serious issues raised by dudes who spend 90% of their waking hours disengaged from reality

posts that effortlessly etc

It hadn't occurred to me when I clicked on this thread that people would actually be discussing this self-evidently moronic concept seriously.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 19 November 2013 16:00 (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nobody is discussing it, we're trying to discern why deems made it into a thing

― just got dope thai food (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Tuesday, 19 November 2013 16:01 (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't get me wrong, there's nothing i dream of more than addressing phil d on ilx but i'm gonna pass. i'll probably start just a plain 'men's issues' thread (i'll even attach some kind of DNRIYHM) the next time i have something relevant to post or whatever

and those of you who believe there is no such thing as a 'men's issue' or a problem facing men specifically in society can note yr objections here or whatever

have fun talking to Treeship

i always do

i'll even attach some kind of DNRIYHM) the next time i have something relevant to post or whatever

I'm pretty sure reddit still exists tho.

Mo/r/dy

The best solution to that would be to actually cover the gaming world in a way that is cognizant of non-gamers. I have no idea what goes on in gaming - just that the graphics hurt my eyes. I guess I worry that young people won't learn anything from it, but I don't believe in being alarmist about it.

― Threat Assessment Division (I M Losted), Wednesday, October 15, 2014 4:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A friend and I briefly planned to do a weekly radio segment covering games from an explicitly left-wing, anti-oppressive, anti-capitalist position--along with discussion of the cognitive dissonance of ""critical consumption"" etc--but we eventually decided there'd be very little audience for it, and that the last thing the world needed was two more dudes talking about video games.

O no Mordy will not reply to me whatever will I do without his ~deep insights~.

I mean sorry that's dickish but there are at least two trivially obvious answers I can think of to the problem of young men doing all the dying in wars: Fight fewer wars and let more women do things.

hey mordy fight fewer wars

like I mean that as srs advice

I keep reading MRA as "NRA"...

I am not really clear that this thread ever did what in said in the title, though, it's not just suddenly drifted away from it? In many ways it worked best as "contemplating the serious issues not raised by the Men's Rights movement (as that would involve compromise (with reality))"

The thing about "predominantly males" in armies is that it's usually a disingenuous move by MRA people to bring that up, i.e. what they REALLY mean is "Oh yeah, well if you want equality, then how come men are the ones out fighting and dying?" The same people are not actually advocating for an egalitarian military. Same thing with the people who always bring up female-on-male sexual assault or domestic violence -- it's not that these things don't exist, but the people who most often bring them up ONLY seem to care about them in the context of feeling somehow victimized by discussion of male-on-female rape or violence in the media.

Like anyone who thinks having a primarily male army is free to go out and advocate for putting more women in the army, and anyone who thinks female-on-male domestic violence or sexual assault is a serious problem is free to advocate against that too, but somehow this only ever occurs in the context of opposing protections for women.

*thinks having a primarily male army is a problem

O no Mordy will not reply to me whatever will I do without his ~deep insights~.

― bippity bup at the hotel california (Phil D.), Wednesday, October 15, 2014 11:20 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean sorry that's dickish but there are at least two trivially obvious answers I can think of to the problem of young men doing all the dying in wars: Fight fewer wars and let more women do things.

― bippity bup at the hotel california (Phil D.), Wednesday, October 15, 2014 11:22 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

god you are so fucking stupid, stick to being a simpsons character 24/7 instead of calling out somewhat intelligent posters so i can go back to ignoring you completely.

^ you never seem to learn, despite being given many clues. verbal abuse is not appropriate. flagged.

Flagging you for flagging that

smile when you say that, treesh, because I have to assume you were joking

god you are so fucking stupid, stick to being a simpsons character 24/7 instead of calling out somewhat intelligent posters so i can go back to ignoring you completely.

― mattresslessness, Wednesday, 15 October 2014 19:59 (13 minutes ago)

✓

and those of you who believe there is no such thing as a 'men's issue' or a problem facing men specifically in society can note yr objections here or whatever

― Mordy, Wednesday, October 15, 2014 10:54 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also why the fuck is this so difficult to comprehend? swear people on here treat this shit like the rest of america apparently does when they see the word 'ebola'.

kneejerk reaction to 'men's issues' from men who are ostensibly feminists is hypocritical and rests on the same ideological construction of gender roles that they want to position themselves beyond. a more egalitarian situation w/r/t gender has much to do with men recognizing and helping other men to recognize the unfairness they face in a patriarchal domineering system and working to not assume these roles as constituted, to find relational health and sanity.

^^^^^^^^^

Flagging you for flagging that

― Treeship, Wednesday, 15 October 2014 20:05 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

✓

I haven't been paying that much attention for a while and now I don't even know whose sock is whose anymore.

this thread is an abomination that should have been closed ages ago

take her, dude

and those of you who believe there is no such thing as a 'men's issue' or a problem facing men specifically in society can note yr objections here or whatever

― Mordy, Wednesday, October 15, 2014 10:54 AM (2 hours ago)

just because the whole thing is wounded and risible when framed that way, it just make the petitioners look like sad fuckboys and undermines whatever cause they might have

People might be perhaps less kneejerk if they had the slightest confidence that petitioners were even a tiny bit interested in "a more egalitarian situation w/r/t gender."

for those relatively very few instances in which men suffer while an equivalent woman would not, it is illogical and grotesque to co-opt the language of minoritarian rights rather than the general right

― Nilmar Honorato da Silva, Monday, 18 November 2013 12:01 (2 minutes ago)

since someone c&ped this into this fucking thread i might as well c&p it again

I agree that "masculinity" has/is a problem, and that new identity models are deeply necessary both for men's health and sanity and also to reduce violence against women and children that is largely carried out by men.

Imo the most interesting reconstruction work on masculinity that I've seen anywhere is coming from Mychal Denzel Smith, Jamelle Bouie, Kiese Laymon, trans men--mostly non-white and/or queer people at the intersections. MRA-oriented groups aren't the slightest bit interested in any of that because what they want is to concentrate power in themselves and their identities--to get power BACK from the parties they perceive as wounding them.

I agree with that. That's not how matt is framing it

Sorry xp to nakh

I agree with in orbit too, 200%. We need a better conversation on this front. Mras are hate groups mostly

this happens every time this thread gets revived. the title is obviously risible and icky. seems like a good idea to lock it and start a new one with a better title. my suggestion is "men as feminists" or something equally clear about the position i think mordy, treeship and most of the pro-"mens issues" people are actually taking. xps

agree with in orbit

I tried with 'maleness' and uh

If you think that's what mordy wants to talk about, I have to question your reading comprehension.

hey include things like higher fatality rate in male occupations, the predominant use of young males in armies, disdain for maleness in popular culture, court prejudice against fathers in custody battles -- ie actual serious issues that men face!

Nope, noooo, lol, uh-uh...none of these are "actual issues."

Sometimes I think the term "patriarchy" does a disservice to this topic, because it has embedded in it a sense of guilt, so that even if you are a man who thinks you are somehow shortchanged by the old gender order, the term "patriarchy" implies that you are or are part of the problem (I realize there are very good explanations of why the term isn't supposed to do that, but the term inevitably does that). I think an egalitarian discussion has to recognize how there are usually two sides to an assumption of the old gender order -- e.g. the all-male military is a partly a counterpart to the presumption of women absolutely having to be the one home with the kids (which same reasoning also served the presumption against them having careers). I think it's far to say that both sides of the equation have to be addressed, I just think most self-described "Men's Rights Activists" have a huge amount of spite behind their manner of "addressing" it, and if anything are addressing ONLY the male side of the equation in a "men are the REAL victims" sort of way.

there are social expectations about males + their bodies in terms of their expandability, the exhaustion of their physical capacities, etc, where certain kinds of sacrifices of health + wellbeing are expected and in some places even honored + fetishized. they directly contribute to workers rights in these fields where often 98% of the employees are men - and what men feel entitled to ask for. they are certainly male issues.

But to be fair to Mordy and others, wasn't this thread title basically chosen to mock his expressed wish to discuss these things at all in the first place?

if you can't see that io, it might be bc in some ways you're privileged not to have those kinds of expectations