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- cross-posted to:
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Teachers describe a deterioration in behaviour and attitudes that has proved to be fertile terrain for misogynistic influencers
“As soon as I mention feminism, you can feel the shift in the room; they’re shuffling in their seats.” Mike Nicholson holds workshops with teenage boys about the challenges of impending manhood. Standing up for the sisterhood, it seems, is the last thing on their minds.
When Nicholson says he is a feminist himself, “I can see them look at me, like, ‘I used to like you.’”
Once Nicholson, whose programme is called Progressive Masculinity, unpacks the fact that feminism means equal rights and opportunities for women, many of the boys with whom he works are won over.
“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,” he says.
But he is battling against what he calls a “dominance-based model” of masculinity. “These old-fashioned, regressive ideas are having a renaissance, through your masculinity influencers – your grifters, like Andrew Tate.”
Men are turning against feminism because the supposed benefits they enjoy have been disappearing for decades. Women by the very statistics they used to promote feminism now have advantages in many areas. The “patriarchy” that once existed is well and dead but feminist would never accept that they are in the privileged position now in many ways. A simple example that many boys learned when I was younger is the boy scouts. Girls are allowed to join the boy scouts but boys are not allowed to join the girl scouts. Boys are told this is done in the name of equality but it doesn’t take a genius to see that if girls are allowed to have their own dedicated social groups but boys are not and must allow girls into every aspect of their life that is not equality. It’s giving girls privileges that boys don’t have.
Feminists will throw tantrums like the old fire alarm trick and call men sexist if they speak about men’s rights. They will violently and illegally resist any threat to their attempted domination of discussion about gender rights. Some of the comments here show exactly that kind of mentality. Feminists want to be the only ones to speak and frame issues and essentially own the entire concept of gender equality. Men who want to talk about divorce, child custody, domestic violence, treatment at schools, and so on are immediately branded as sexists who must hate women. Feminists aren’t and never will be uncomfortable admitting to their own privileges and the very definition of the word is rights for women. People who are for equality of the sexes are called egalitarians not feminists.
These comments, if viewed objectively, are a great example of why men are turning away from feminism. You have that woman saying “men cause all the problems in the world” then you have another person saying “I don’t see where feminists ever make men’s lives difficult” and you have the male feminist saying “men who are sick of being insulted if they bring up men’s issues just hate women.” Collectively feminism and it’s impact on and impression given to men is extremely negative. The majority of feminists can’t even begin to listen to the issues men face without immediately either trying to one up them or dismiss them as being incels, sexists, or some other derogatory term.
My personal view is that women did indeed have a lot of valid grievances in the past but those are mostly resolved now. However, feminists are unwilling and by definition incapable of doing anything other than continuing to ask for more for women. There will always be more that could be done for any issues women face collectively. The problem comes when feminists are also unwilling to see how the world has changed over the last 50 years and acknowledge their own progress and how it has shifted things.
Boys today will typically have entirely female teachers their whole life. They will told endlessly that women are oppressed and deserve equal rights. Yet they will also see any “safe space” for men infiltrated by women and criticized by women as problematic whereas girls and women will maintain their own in group spaces free from criticism. They will hear stories from older men about the supposed “patriarchy” actually favoring women in terms of the court systems, schools, and workplaces. They will eventually experience the same for themselves. They will see all the statistics about things like women graduating college at higher rates, earning more money, living longer, having lower suicide rates, and so on. They will see the media focusing on women’s issues endlessly while ignoring men are often in worse places by the same statistics. A big example being suicide and workplace deaths. When female suicide ticks up the media runs articles declaring it an issue requiring urgent examination and often concluding in some way that men are behind whatever is bothering women. When something like 99% of workplace deaths are men they won’t hear a peep about it from feminists but they will constantly hear about the pay gap which is often explained away by women simply choosing careers that don’t pay as much, not working as many hours, and so on. Men will hear things like women are the true victims of war because their husbands die. They will consider that men are still subject to the draft. Men are still required in many ways to uphold masculine roles even by feminists.
They start asking questions and the response they get is vitriol. Any attempt to refute any of this, say that maybe things aren’t so biased in their favor, that maybe women are the ones who have a lot more privilege in western nations they will be insulted, their lives will be threatened in terms of systemic or social punishment, and so on.
I remember learning that more men are raped than women if you include prison rape. I suggested to my now wife that she ask her feminist Mom about that and her Mom told her, in private, that it’s good men get raped in prison because they deserve it. If a woman is open minded enough to actually listen to men and challenge feminists in the same way men challenge them they will get the same exact hateful or vitriolic response and start to understand men’s perspective.
I challenge any feminist here to take up an issue that men bring up often and earnest attempt to debate in favor of positive reform for men with any of their feminist friends. Just as a simple academic debate concept where they are taking the “pro” side of an argument they might find distasteful personally. I’m not talking about picking an issue men face that feminists have decided is okay, I’m talking about the issues that men bring up which result in them being insulted. Pick one from these comments as an example. They will likely be shocked at the response IF they engage honestly. Once women step outside the box of solely advocating for women and only advocating for men within a framework of how men should change in ways that women approve of they can quickly learn for themselves why boys and men are turning away from feminism.
I bet destroying all that straw felt great.
Everything you just said is due to the patriarchy and is toxic masculinity.
You’re completely right though. Men and boys have issues and there are a lot of people out there that have already made their mind up that the problem is men and will use any evidence or stories and manipulate it into it being mens fault and feminism being so great that is has no issues.
It honestly reminds me of the creationists arguments of old.
Boys are getting the short end of the stick and they look around for anyone, absolutely any person that is in their corner that is willing to defend them. They then find Tate. If boys had the support, the lack of orginal sin of being male, and more equal world (instead of just women’s issues being addressed) they wouldn’t give a shit what Tate has to say.