Feminism: Yay or Nay?

Because chances outside of some of those contexts were worse for them than they were for you? While it can seem harsh, remember that there are complex backgrounds behind why actions such as that are taken, even when they're executed poorly.

As for familial law, there are plenty of points about how the assumption that women make better parents is an aspect of sexism that harms men, not a uniquely masculine problem nor an isolated one in terms of how femininity and masculinity are perceived. It is a problem that must be addressed, but remember that feminism only changed the role from men having automatic possession of children, property, and wives to a far more equal system that unfortunately shows some biases. To claim that feminism ruined that is either ignorant or horrible; what it was like before feminism was unequivocally worse.

You can very well work on those problems within the framework of feminism.

 

I was never raised in an environment where feminism and misandry were thought of as two sides of the same coin, and I'm not entirely sure why people believe the two concepts have to go hand-in-hand. I call myself a feminist because I support the social, political, and economic advancement of women. This doesn't mean that I believe women are superior to men. It doesn't mean I don't support equality of all people. All it means is that I support the efforts to raise women to the same standard as men. All it means is that I recognize the fact that my gender does not invalidate my claims to certain rights and respects.

People can be sexist, and they can also be feminist. They are sometimes overlapping qualities, but I refuse to believe that they are tied to one another at their cores. I can be sexist without being feminist. I can be feminist without being sexist. I can be a sexist feminist. My point is, I think, that folks shouldn't discount a singular belief simply because the individual believer also subscribes to another belief. Why discount feminism because the feminists you've known are sexist? The root of that problem is the sexism, not the feminism.

 

I blame lawyers :lol:.

I was in the car and heard an ad for a law firm that specialized in divorces for men so that they could fight the fact that women get custody most of the time and divorce is a generally losing battle for men.

Also, I kid you not, this is one of the billboards I see in my city:

 

Look, I do feel sorry for some men who feel they have faced misandry, but you shouldn't judge people who identify as a feminist based on what some people of the group might have said. I identify as a feminist, and I'm not anything like what people are describing. Feminism can describe 'femininity' and not just 'female', and a lot of us want to get rid of the stigma against feminine men, along with other non-female related issues men face, so stop judging everyone in a group just because you had a bad experience with one person.

Should I hate heterosexual people and say that It's 'wrong' because many heterosexuals are homophobic and have harmed me? Should all bisexuals hate gays and lesbians and say that our sexuality is wrong because many of us slam them, call them 'sluts', and refuse to date them because they've been 'touched' by the opposite sex (or want to?). Is it wrong to be a police officer and should we ban that because many have killed innocent people?

CRAZY PEOPLE =/= ENTIRE MOVEMENT

 

I Don’t Support Feminism If It Means Murdering All Men

 

The worst part of this right here is that I have yet to see a movement not get undermined in some way by the more radical elements within it. Feminism isn't the first, and no movement today will be the last to face this particular problem. I don't know how to really combat it other than to try to deny it too much power and discussion time.

Although, to the person who said feminism must be about women, I kinda agree and disagree at the same time. There are intersections between what the movement is trying to achieve with people of color, non-binary genders, and at times, even men (i.e. circumcision & stigma around feminine behaviors in men). While I don't think feminism needs to adopt these mantles itself, I think it is bizarre every time I see intersecting agendas between different groups fail to get an alliance going for that topic. Another big problem I see with movements in general.

The comment "I'm egalitarian" is a bit of an odd one as well, as if to back away from the stigma of radical feminism. An egalitarian should find themselves supporting the black civil rights movement, feminists, the LGBTQA+ community, and more. In essence, a true egalitarian is a member of all these groups, and cannot distance themselves fully from what they claim to include in their worldview.

This is actually fairly intentional. If the husband is the sole breadwinner which was likely at the time the law was enacted, then it is also likely that the wife was basically without education and training. This is changing as society continues to evolve, but stuff like this came up in the era where the wife was basically expected to have no work experience, a high school education at best, and pretty much needed to be supported until she could develop said skills.

Plus, being older actually worked against her in many parts of the job market. The thought was that it'd be fair that the ex-husband kept her afloat in these situations instead of basically casting her straight into the gutter of society, no matter why the two divorced.

Yup, this sucks when it happens. At times, correcting things results in an overcorrection. I don't really agree with this result when it happens, as I do think both parents should have equal access to their children unless there is proof otherwise. But part of the mentality here is that having a stable single parent is better for the children over shared custody. Although I don't actually know how much of that is true.

Here's the problem, the job market is already skewed heavily in favor of the white male. Affirmative Action isn't actually about being fair to the individual, but to the larger group, which means correcting the existing imbalance, even if a white male gets the short end of the stick during that correction.

Despite things like Affirmative Action, my company hires ~30% women, and roughly the same percentage of minorities. White males are not at a disadvantage here, when they are the majority of tech workers on their own, despite only making up ~31% of the population within the US. It's still heavily skewed.

This in particular is something feminism can help rectify. Part of the issue here is that the same stigma that keeps women out of certain jobs is the same one that keeps men out of jobs like these. This is actually one of the intersections between feminism and men that should be an alliance between the two groups, not a competition.

 

I think some people in this thread are very confused as to what feminist means. It doesn't mean we hate men, it doesn't mean we are biased against men, and it doesn't mean we don't believe men should have the same rights as women. It means we believe that all genders are fundamentally equal. Any feminist who thinks women are better than men somehow is doing it wrong. It's true that most of what feminists are doing is empowering women, but that's because women are the ones who are still very much being oppressed even right now as you read this sentence. Women still make less money than men and aren't given as much respect in men. And in some countries the treatment of women is downright inhuman, things such as female genital mutilation and honor killings.

Honestly I think that feminism will help men as well, in particular men who would rather take on a more domestic role. Currently men like that are mocked, but with gender equality they wouldn't be.

 

Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.

 

I would second that:eusa_clap

 

I believe in equality, equal treatment for women, equal access to education etc but I wouldn't necessarily see myself as a feminist per se. I do feel that modern day feminism has a bad stigma attached due to a minority of "bad feminists" who use tactics of misandry and misrepresentation of stats to make a point. I don't think these particular feminists help women in the grand scheme of things. Another problem I have with feminism is the commonly promoted idea that patriarchy is the root of all of societies ills. I think greed and corruption are the true cause of the problems we face, it just so happens we have a political system that favours greedy corrupt men as opposed to greedy corrupt women - it's not the masculinity or "patriarchy" that is at prime fault, it's these particular negative traits. We could have a matriarchal society with largely the same issues. I think its down to bad people not gender.

I also don't believe that feminism adequately addresses male issues that exist, and in many cases can act to suppress or belittle them when men try to raise them themselves. I think either we need to move towards egalitarianism or allow for some separate counterpart for mens issues.

Interestingly, I've heard a few feminists dismissing claims that religious male circumcision is in any way akin to female genital mutilation. Whilst its true female genital mutilation is more severe it shares a lot in common with male circumcision, so much so that I would regard the latter as genital mutilation also. At the end of the day both involve cutting a baby's genitals without any consent for non-medical reasons. I would like to see feminists pressing for both forms of mutilation to ended (unless being used as a medical treatment in extreme cases) whilst they have the topic in discussion.

 

I'm a feminist and I'm against male circumcision. I argue against the concept all the time and I think It's an ignorant practice when done without consent. Although I'm a queer woman, I still may possibly want kids one day and I will not be mutilating any of my sons. It's important that my partner and I agree to this.

 

Thats very good to hear.

It angers me when I hear mothers state "I'm getting my son circumcised so he won't get STDs" (the science is very debatable re this) or fathers using weird projection arguments like "I didn't have a choice when my Dad circumcised me so I'm getting my sons cut to match me". Its sickening. Let your children decide when they are old enough to make an informed decision and consent I say. It should only be carried out if an adult or mature teen voluntarily requests it for themself or if its needed to treat severe phimosis that doesn't respond to conservative treatment.

Again, whilst the severity of the two procedures is different (thankfully male circumcision can be "reversed" somewhat), the sheer number of men being circumcised against their will (some 60% of newborn males in the US) should be enough to make it an issue for all feminists to take seriously.

 

Two things here though:
1) Feminism isn't about human rights (for men).
2) Feminism does intersect with human rights (for men), and those intersections should spawn alliances. Feminism itself should not be required to take up the mantle of egalitarianism itself, no more than the civil rights movement needs to think of all the white people. Egalitarianism should include feminism, not the other way around, IMO.

That said, I have seen the lack of alliances in the actual organizations trying to fight circumcision, which sucks. But I am finding quite a bit of feminist literature that does take this topic seriously.

 

I think the problem with that though is whenever men do try to raise issues on their own, or even club together to form their own movement (as with the mens right's movement) they are almost immediately shouted down or mocked for doing so. I think largely its down to a mistaken belief by some feminists that acknowledging mens issues somehow damages their own cause. They believe they have to widen the perception of the inequality gap (i.e. stating that only women are suffering and in some cases at far greater extremes than they actually are*) for their issues to be addressed which is simply not true - we can multitask and tackle two types of issue at the same time. Men having issues does not invalidate female inequality, I think many feminists are mistaken on this and see mens rights as a threat perhaps?

So on one hand you have feminism refusing to directly take on these issues, and on the otherhand you have feminism censoring these issues (there are examples in this very thread mocking MRAs using stereotyping).

*This is a point I am very critical of. For example, lets take the pay gap. I'll begin by stating YES the pay gap DOES EXIST, as in some professions women are paid less for doing the same job as a man. This is wrong and needs addressing. HOWEVER, some feminists are misusing statistics to seemingly suggest the pay gap is universal amongst all jobs and far more prevalent than it actually is. An example of this misuse is using ONS statistics on career sector to demonstrate a pay gap.

I've seen one feminist journalist claiming there was a pay gap in the construction industry with women being paid less for the "same work" (because they are both in construction right?). Wrong. When the statistics were reviewed in fact men and women were not doing the same work at all so the comparison was misleading (the women were typically in lower skilled admin roles at a lower pay whilst the men were in dangerous field roles or technically skilled foreman roles at a much higher pay). Now certainly we need to look at why these women aren't applying for or getting into the higher paid roles, but there is not a like-for-like "pay gap" here, its a separate issue on access and career marketing.

Now I think deliberately twisting statistics in this manner is dangerous and unhelpful to the cause. Not only does it cause people to not take real issues seriously, but its simply unnecessary. If you raise awareness about the real inequalities people will listen (its a serious enough issue that there is a pay gap in some professions, no need to embellish it), if you begin exaggerating and spreading half-truths people naturally stop listening.

 

My father was abusive, we proved in court he was abusive, he got to see me every Wednesday and every other weekend. I see no reason why he got visitation at all. He's so awful that by the end of the trial his own lawyer turned against him, probably because he refused to pay him the whole amount. My mom got no alimony either, because she didn't want it. As far as I can see the court didn't take anything away from him, you know when he lost his visitation rights? When he ran away and forfeited them.

You can act like just because they are a father they are entitled to so much, but honestly it doesn't take much effort to impregnate someone. If the courts have been biased in favor of women I sure haven't seen it.

 

Actually, the MRAs out there do plenty damage of their own. If we can say certain feminist groups and individuals have done things that hurt the credibility of the movement as a whole, the MRM has the same problem.

When you have folks in the MRM/MRA camp that deny the existence of male privilege, or that women are behind the oppression, it does zero service towards finding common ground and actually fixing the underlying problems that hurt both groups. That common ground is needed to form alliances, and it seems like folks in both camps are perfectly fine sabotaging the whole thing. I don't have much sympathy for someone unwilling to admit their side's issues while bashing the other side. That said, it makes perfect sense in my mind that the MRM started in response to second wave feminism, because second wave feminism spawned some rather hostile groups. But those aren't really the people the MRAs are attacking today, and it's not helping build bridges as a result.

But expecting a female to have male life experiences, and thus be capable of communicating male-specific issues is about as silly as the other way around. That's why I don't think you can expect feminism to be attacking male issues without help, and it's fair that they get something in return.

 

Someone mentioned male circumcision, and I'll just add my two cents. It make sense to circumcise your children if you're in a Jewish family. Considering Jewish beliefs on circumcision, you're children would likely be more upset with you if you didn't circumcise them than if you did. However I will never understand why someone who's religion says nothing about circumcision would do it. My mom talked to a nurse when I was born and talked about her decision not to circumcise me(she thought that I had enough problems with HALP Syndrome and AB-O blood incompatibility). The nurse said that she can tell which male babies where circumcised without checking because they are the ones who cry for their entire stay. I honestly think that it's not a good idea to circumcise unless you have a very important reason.