Let's talk about the impacts of patriarchy/misogyny/male privilege on men.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Let's talk about the impacts of patriarchy/misogyny/male privilege on men.

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

Black Baby Goku posted:

So it silences women by bringing up a topic in the feminism thread that doesn't involve women?

feminism is pretty much about women's issues in a society which discriminates against women. there is some space there for "men's issues" in the way that men can also be damaged by the patriarchy - for example, young men stereotypically not knowing how (or being willing to) cook or clean or keep house is a problem when they move out on their own, which is part of why homes where young adult men live are often disgusting. like the stereotypical frat house. this is a problem! but it's only kind of sort of related to the bigger issue, that women are expected to take on a larger burden of unpaid domestic work and from a young age children are socially gendered, such that little boys and girls are given different expectations, where little girls generally aren't allowed to do many of the things boys can do and are instead expected to clean up and keep quiet

and by talking about "how does this big issue regarding women relate to me, a man" you can, even in sincerity and good faith, refocus the discussion about women's issues to be about men after all. this is because men tend to dominate conversations and that's almost a given on a dying old comedy discussion forum which is probably upwards of 2/3 men if not more. as a feminist man, one of the most useful skills you can learn is when to stop talking and let other people, particularly women, talk without adding your own thoughts or comments

boner confessor fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Dec 28, 2016

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 02:04

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 06:23

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

ate poo poo on live tv posted:

Because something I've noticed on the occasions I attempt to educate myself via online feminism, the narrative is immediately seized by virtue signaling people who see feminism not as the notion of equality of all people, but as a club they get to exclude people from.

maybe you're extremely incompetent at self-education, powercrazy

ate poo poo on live tv posted:

So what factual concerns are there that men face?

overconfidence despite evident inadequacy and mediocrity, for one

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 03:57

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

ate poo poo on live tv posted:

How does feminism solve this issue?

And why is "mediocrity" a character flaw in your opinion?

men are often taught that, despite glaring inadequacies, they should speak up and assert themselves when they have nothing interesting to say or nothing valuable to contribute. this lack of introspection and self-knowledge is typically paired with the idea that masculinity is tied to the ability to lead and manage other people. really it's just part of the patriarchy to empower otherwise incompetent men to otherwise ignore their flaws, which inhibits personal growth - you can't solve a problem if you're not aware you have one

think really hard about this post

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 04:06

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

ewe2 posted:

It is surprising that men would not deal with the issues Kubrick mentioned effectively. Is it just that we are too tunnel-visioned?

well like i said earlier, lack of self knowledge, particularly emotional knowledge, often leads to problems that an individual is unequipped to deal with. the idea of 'toxic masculinity' is one where people focus too much on 'being a man', whatever that manhood means, which can easily perpetuate harmful activities like fighting, domestic violence, child abuse, suicide, substance abuse, etc. simply from sheer lack of emotional regulation. some boys in america are raised to be tough, flinty, like a cowboy, never cry, never admit weakness or defeat, and so on which is really an unrealistic and self-damaging mindset

take jobs for an example - i grew up in a small southern town, a large portion of my white male peers were blue collar working class kids. college was simply something that you didn't do, it was a waste of time - liberal indoctrination or just loving around when you could be working for a living. pretty much none of these guys went to get education beyond high school, and now it turns out in our mid thirties that those who had the opportunity but didn't take it (our state has an excellent higher ed system including community college) was a bad choice and employment is much less secure and well paying if you went to work straight out of high school. job training has two components - lack of opportunity, because of poverty or inaccessibility or disability or whatever - and lack of desire, because there's still this attitude among men that you prove you're a man by working with your hands and starting a business, both increasingly unprofitable choices, instead of going to fruity college and reading books for however many years so you can get a stupid office job

and this isn't to blame people for how they were raised, but really to point at how "being a man" can cripple you later in life, sometimes literally, as you hustle two warehouse jobs to feed your family and ruin your back before age 40 because OSHA and weight belts are for sissies etc.

punched my v-card at camp posted:

The one real critique of feminist practices in this regard is that I think that feminist men need to do more work to reach young men, and offer a constructive alternative to the reddit cesspools. Right now a lot of impressionable young men are starting with questions like "why can't I get a date?" and ending up with the answer "because feminists and cucks are destroying male america" because the spaces they go with the question are radicalizing them.

i agree with the rest of your post but it's always easier to capture anger with anger rather than reason. people want a conspiracy against them to be true, that way they don't have to work so hard to avoid it

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 05:13

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

Phyzzle posted:

"Inadequacies" as in "Inadequate knowledge", or Ignorance. Not . . . inadequate looks or muscles or penises or whatever else you might be thinking.

It is bad for ignorant people to speak up and assert themselves, because this is pretending to know what they are talking about. It is bad when men feel pressured to pretend something like that.

https://www.guernicamag.com/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-me/

quote:

I still don�t know why Sallie and I bothered to go to that party in the forest slope above Aspen. The people were all older than us and dull in a distinguished way, old enough that we, at forty-ish, passed as the occasion�s young ladies. The house was great�if you like Ralph Lauren-style chalets�a rugged luxury cabin at 9,000 feet complete with elk antlers, lots of kilims, and a wood-burning stove. We were preparing to leave, when our host said, �No, stay a little longer so I can talk to you.� He was an imposing man who�d made a lot of money.

He kept us waiting while the other guests drifted out into the summer night, and then sat us down at his authentically grainy wood table and said to me, �So? I hear you�ve written a couple of books.�

I replied, �Several, actually.�

He said, in the way you encourage your friend�s seven-year-old to describe flute practice, �And what are they about?�

They were actually about quite a few different things, the six or seven out by then, but I began to speak only of the most recent on that summer day in 2003, River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, my book on the annihilation of time and space and the industrialization of everyday life.

He cut me off soon after I mentioned Muybridge. �And have you heard about the very important Muybridge book that came out this year?�

So caught up was I in my assigned role as ing�nue that I was perfectly willing to entertain the possibility that another book on the same subject had come out simultaneously and I�d somehow missed it. He was already telling me about the very important book�with that smug look I know so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority.

Here, let me just say that my life is well-sprinkled with lovely men, with a long succession of editors who have, since I was young, listened and encouraged and published me, with my infinitely generous younger brother, with splendid friends of whom it could be said�like the Clerk in The Canterbury Tales I still remember from Mr. Pelen�s class on Chaucer��gladly would he learn and gladly teach.� Still, there are these other men, too. So, Mr. Very Important was going on smugly about this book I should have known when Sallie interrupted him to say, �That�s her book.� Or tried to interrupt him anyway.

But he just continued on his way. She had to say, �That�s her book� three or four times before he finally took it in. And then, as if in a nineteenth-century novel, he went ashen. That I was indeed the author of the very important book it turned out he hadn�t read, just read about in the New York Times Book Review a few months earlier, so confused the neat categories into which his world was sorted that he was stunned speechless�for a moment, before he began holding forth again. Being women, we were politely out of earshot before we started laughing, and we�ve never really stopped.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 06:16

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

ewe2 posted:

Men do this to each other just as much as they do to women, it just looks more stupid when they do. Just today on another thread someone felt the need to explain technology to me that I already knew about, apparently there was a danger I might not have understood what I was discussing with someone else. The need to be right is just as powerful as the need to patronize, and it infects all men to some degree, myself included.

yeah, which is doubly bad when someone isn't just misinformed due to ignorance, but misinformed due to being a woman. it's very easy for unaware men to assume that women couldn't possibly know what they're talking about, which is why this isn't just a "male problem" but a problem arising due to the patriarchy. the quoted anecdote couldn't have happened if it were a male author, the rich idiot wouldn't have kept a man behind to chat him up and impress him with knowledge of recent books

why do you say it looks "more stupid" when men assume ignorance among men? wouldn't it be equally stupid? could there be an expectation that women wouldn't know things?

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 06:31

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 06:23

boner confessor: Apr 25, 2013; by R. Guyovich

yeah, the key to getting laid is

-exercise
-therapy
-eat right
-dont talk about nerd things too much
-adjust your expectations

but it's easier to blame society than work on improving yourself. and as you say, because society objectifies women and makes the obtaining of sex/a woman's affection into a measure of the man's worth, you basically have to admit you're not worth much in a real and sincere, depressing way rather than a joking ironic "haha i'm an unfuckable but at least i'm not a tryhard like chad thundercock who probably hates himself anyway"

# ¿ Dec 28, 2016 06:42

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Let's talk about the impacts of patriarchy/misogyny/male privilege on men.