men

It seems that the community once concentrated at LWMA is now fractured. Some are here, some stayed and I suspect that some will follow thetinmen in his boycott.

I am not much of an activist myself. Growing up, I was quite lonely and occassionally bullied for not fitting in with the main group, and so I have operated under the assumption that I don't want that to happen again. Thus, I have largely kept thoughts of advocating for mens rights or not being a feminist to myself.

So this community has been a breath of fresh air to me, seeing that I am not alone in my thoughts and seeing people argue for helping men without devolving into conservative talking points.

So how do we assure this community is not lost and broken?

I remember this was linked on the LeftWingMaleAdvocates subreddit before it was privated. I do not know who made it, but it is an archive of all posts and comments submitted there. The association with the red pill is unfortunate, but this seems like the best way to read the old posts now.

Edit: Seems like the subreddit is back up. https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/

progress!

Across the life span — from infancy to the teen years, midlife and old age — boys and men are more likely to die than girls and women.

A silent crisis in men’s health is shortening the life spans of fathers, husbands, brothers and sons.

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that a lack of sex-specific health research mainly hurts women and gender minorities. While those concerns are real, a closer look at longevity data tells a more complicated story.

Across the life span — from infancy to the teen years, midlife and old age — the risk of death at every age is higher for boys and men than for girls and women.

The result is a growing longevity gap between men and women. In the United States, life expectancy in 2021 was 79.1 years for women and 73.2 years for men. That 5.9-year difference is the largest gap in a quarter-century. (The data aren’t parsed to include differences among nonbinary and trans people.)

“Men are advantaged in every aspect of our society, yet we have worse health outcomes for most of the things that will kill you,” said Derek Griffith, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Men’s Health Equity in the Racial Justice Institute. “We tend not to prioritize men’s health, but it needs unique attention, and it has implications for the rest of the family. It means other members of the family, including women and children, also suffer.”

The longevity gap between men and women is a global phenomenon, although sex differences and data on the ages of greatest risk vary around the world and are influenced by cultural norms, record keeping and geopolitical factors such as war, climate change and poverty.

But data looking at health risks for boys and men in the United States paint a stark picture.

• Men are at a greater risk of dying from covid-19 than women, a gap that cannot be explained by rates of infection or preexisting conditions. The age-adjusted death rate for covid was 140 deaths per 100,000 for males and 87.7 per 100,000 for females.
• More men die of diabetes than women. The death rates for men are 31.2 per 100,000 people vs. 19.5 per 100,000 for women.
• The cancer mortality rate is higher among men — 189.5 per 100,000 — compared with 135.7 per 100,000 for women. Black men have the highest cancer death rate at 227.3 per 100,000. Among Black women, the cancer mortality rate is 149 per 100,000.
• Death rates for boys and teens ages 10 to 19 (44.5 per 100,000) far outpace that for girls (21.3 per 100,000). Even among infants, the mortality rate is higher for boys (5.87 per 1,000 live births) vs. girls (4.95 per 1,000).
• Men die by suicide nearly four times more often than women, based on 2020 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate of suicide is highest in middle-aged White men, but teen boys also face a high risk.
• In 2020, 72 percent of all motor vehicle crash death victims were male. Men also accounted for 71 percent of pedestrian deaths, 87 percent of bicyclist deaths and 92 percent of motorcyclist deaths.

Advocates for more research into men’s health say the goal isn’t to steal resources from women, girls and gender minorities.

“Some people think health care is a zero sum gain and one dollar to men’s health is taking something away from women,” said Ronald Henry, president and co-founder of the Men’s Health Network, an advocacy group. “That’s wrong. We are fully supportive of women’s health efforts and improving quality of life for women.”

Derek Griffith is the director of Georgetown University’s Center for Men’s Health Equity in the Racial Justice Institute. He is also a health management and policy professor at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. (Lisa Helfert/Courtesy Derek Griffith)

But by viewing men as the privileged default, health experts are ignoring important sex differences that could illuminate health issues across gender and minority groups.

For instance, for years the widely held belief in medical circles was that women used too many health-care resources compared to men. As a result, men were viewed as the standard for seeking health care, while women were often dismissed as hysterical or “anxious” when they sought care.

“We used to think women were overutilizing health care, and men were doing it correctly,” Griffith said. “What we realized was that women were doing it better, mostly for preventive care, and men were actually underutilizing health care.”

Explaining the longevity gap

The reasons behind the longevity gap aren’t fully understood, but the global nature of the disparity suggests that biology probably plays a strong role.

For instance, high levels of testosterone, which can weaken the immune response, may be a factor in why men, and male mammals in general, are more vulnerable to parasitic infections. Estrogen may explain why women have lower rates of heart disease throughout life — and why the gap narrows after women reach menopause. (Even though estrogen appears to be protective in women, studies in the 1970s showed that when estrogen was given to men, instead of being protective, it caused double the rate of heart attacks as those in a placebo group.)

Cultural biases around masculinity that teach boys and men to hide their feelings and not complain also can influence men’s health.

“Depression in men is quite deceptive,” said Marianne J. Legato, a physician and founder of the Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine in New York. “Men are socially programmed to not complain. Suicide is often unexpected as an early end to a man’s life compared to that of a woman.”

Cultural expectations to remain stoic can also delay men’s care. For instance, although diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and hypertension are common in men and women, men often wait longer to seek care and the illnesses are diagnosed at later stages, leading to more damage and poorer outcomes.

“It’s an interesting conundrum and in many ways it’s not well understood,” said cardiologist Steven Nissen, chief academic officer for the Cleveland Clinic. “Men need to pay close attention to cardiovascular risk factors. Treating risk factors early can mitigate a lot of the risk.”

Men also are known to engage in more risky behaviors, such as drug and alcohol use, smoking and reckless driving. While the reasons behind these trends aren’t fully understood, behavioral risks are also a reason men’s health doesn’t get studied, Griffith said.

“It’s hard to convince people that men’s health is an issue if we think it’s just because men don’t do what they’re supposed to do,” he said.

Fewer doctor visits

An oft-cited concern is that men are also less likely to visit the doctor. Although boys and girls visit the pediatrician at the same rate, the trend changes in adulthood and medical visits by men decline. CDC data show that the physician visit rate in 2018 among females was almost 40 percent higher — 3.08 visits per woman vs. 2.24 per man.

One reason is that women regularly visit the gynecologist in their reproductive years. “There is no similar pathway for men,” Nissen said.

But even when visits for pregnancy are excluded, research suggests that women still are twice as likely as men to schedule regular annual exams and use preventive services.

Doctors say that men are most likely to visit the doctor because of a sports injury or for the “Viagra” visit — when they seek treatment for erectile dysfunction. As a result, sports medicine physicians and urologists are encouraged to use those visits to check blood pressure, cholesterol and other indicators of overall health.

“Stamina and sexual health are two of the top things that men think about,” said Howard LeWine, an internal medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and chief medical editor at Harvard Health Publishing. “When you’re 20, 30 and a man, you really don’t think about health. The idea of going to a doctor to prevent cancer or heart disease — I don’t think it’s in the mind of many men until something has happened to them.”

The irony is that men for years have been overrepresented in medical research, often at the expense of women, according to a seminal 1985 report that prompted more government investment in women’s health research.

“Men who were overrepresented in medical studies before are still underrepresented in terms of clinical care,” said Harvey Simon, an internal medicine physician and founder of Harvard Men’s Health Watch, a newsletter devoted to men’s health.

Lack of support

Men’s health advocates say one of the biggest factors is a lack of infrastructure to support research specifically focused on men’s health.

For years, the Men’s Health Network has lobbied for the creation of an Office of Men’s Health, similar to the Office of Women’s Health in Health and Human Services Department. Proposed legislation, however, has consistently failed to win support.

While some health systems claim to have departments focused on men’s health, the care is often focused on urologic and prostate health rather than cardiac care, mental health or other issues that afflict men at high rates.

The topic of men’s health simply hasn’t caught on as something that advocates, corporate sponsors and politicians want to get behind. While the pink ribbon has been elevated to iconic status to signal breast cancer awareness, nothing in men’s health has achieved the same level of attention.

“There is an empathy gap,” Henry said. “There are people who shrug and say, ‘Yes, men die younger. That’s the way the world is.’ It doesn’t need to be that way. If we devote attention and resources, we can change the outcomes for men.”

by Tara Parker-Pope and Caitlin Gilbert

Are there official organizations fighting for men's rights?
Debates on Internet are useful but I'd like to do something that has a real impact.

#men

There’s a common perception that friendships among young men are superficial – but this isn’t necessarily true.

Research shows younger men are engaging in close male friendships and expressing their feelings like never before. They are adept at negotiating the rules of masculinity. They will open up to others in safe contexts – although not all men have these safe spaces.

We believe creating more of these safe zones for young men is key. For example, it seems that by encouraging men to do activities side by side, or that have a “purpose” (such as volunteering or attending men’s sheds to create things), male bonding and important conversations naturally emerge.

Although there are concerns that some online activities and forums can be dangerous, anonymous online discussion forums can help men connect and express themselves about the things that matter without fear of judgement.

Please read the whole article.

As I psychologist, I’m concerned about mental health, especially the mental health of men and boys because it’s been overlooked for so long. Because there was so little interest in how much the negative discourse around masculinity impacts boys, my colleagues and I ran a survey. We found that around 85% of respondents thought the term ‘toxic masculinity’ is insulting, and probably harmful to boys.

My latest research has just been published. It assessed the views of over 4000 men in the UK and Germany, and found that thinking masculinity is bad for your behaviour is linked to having worse mental wellbeing. [... And] positive views of masculinity are linked to better mental wellbeing.

This is why we oppose the usage of the term toxic masculinity and any negative generalizations of men as a gender.

"Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday signed a measure that will overhaul the state's alimony laws, after three vetoes of similar bills and a decade of emotional clashes over the issue."

A true victory for the institution of marriage and the rights of men.

This article is inspired by a Youtuber Caitlyn V who is a sex coach. I've watched some of her videos and I find them to be very informative, especially about sex. I'll link it here below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agscWsru7Gk&ab_channel=CaitlinV

She actually goes onto explain how not having sex for a long time can contribute to problems on mental health, emotional health, etc.

The second half of her video has the solutions to these problems and the last point is one I want to expand on. The first 2 solutions was to 1. Create feel good chemicals by exercising, eating healthy, leaning on trusted friends, etc and the 2. one is fuck yourself (not regular masturbation where you race to ejaculation, but slowly taking your time with it.). The third suggestion is where I take issue with and it's getting a sex worker.

Note I have nothing against sex work. I believe sex work is work and there's nothing wrong with getting it. My issue with this point is the way I believe society is set up to profit off of lonely and sexually frustrated men.

Paying for sex work is very expensive, like you have to be making the kind of money where the cost to even get these services are casual at best. Even if there are cheap option, I don't believe many men out there feel they should have to pay for experiences just to feel wanted.

Think about it this way. When you go outside to try to make friends, or to try and talk to a woman you find attractive, you notice how cold and distant people treat you in social places. In the first initial meeting, you're treated as a potential predator that has to prove himself to be a good person first, and even after you passed the test, you need to be mindful of not making her feel uncomfortable, and make having sex with them feel completely natural. It's also on you to make the sure interactions you lead the interactions in a way to keep her around, and basically really sell yourself. Couple that with the expectation society has for the man to be the pursuer, all of these things make a very daunting experience for men.

Men don't have a lot of options when it comes to dating and when they to have the opportunity, are expected to make sure it goes well. This setup creates a very convincing need for sex work, with a high demand of it coming from men because their basic needs aren't being met consistently.

I believe there needs to be a better solution rather than spending money on experiencing intimacy via sexual services. The most obvious way would be to stop demonizing men at a very ridiculous level, especially at the first meet, but most people on the left space don't like that idea cuz 'safety' and 'patriarchy' so obviously getting to a point where we don't do that is gonna take a long time, we need better short term solutions that doesn't cost money for that. Sexual services are fine when you get them here and there, not when it becomes a potentially long-term thing (I've known men who consistently get sex through prostitutes)

One of the solutions offered by Aba and Preach would be a solution I would offer in helping with this situation as well, mostly short-term.

https://youtu.be/P22ZpncT8B4?t=738

Now they're saying not to approach women and I don't think most women put men that approach them on blast that regular, but that's perfectly valid given the society we're living in. Me personally, I've done a lot of approaching and have been very experienced in it and I haven't been blasted on media, but this is because I gauge most situations I have going in. The process of learning it today is fucking hard so one slip up in an unlucky situation can turn your life upside down if you get blasted on social media.

Other solutions?

Read books and websites on people skills so you can work on talking to people. Don't get me wrong, we've all had natural experiences with talking to people, so I'm not implying you're all very socially inept that can't hold a conversation. I think a lot of the guys here actually have no problem with conversation, especially when talking to women. But maybe you don't have the kind of friends you do like having around, or maybe you don't have any afab friends or maybe you do, but again not the ideal person you want in your life. I'm mostly recommending this because if you want to have control over your own life and build better relationships, people skills are crucial. So the next time you're in a situation where you want to make friends with certain people or talk to a woman you find attractive, you know have the experience backed up to do it

Read books on dating material so you can make up for a lack of experience. However, this bit is very tricky as there's a lot of toxic dating advice out there. I got proper sources of healthy dating advice if you want my suggestion message me.

Next step is practicality. For social skills, go to a hobby-based group or club and put what you learned to the test. Preferably a new one, as if you're in an old group, they probably have a set image of you and depending on that, maybe harder to break out of. Finding a new social setting will give you a fresh start if this is the case. For practicing dating skills, I would highly recommend speed dating. Now don't expect to actually get dates from speed dating. In fact, as a man if you wanna find a date via speed dating, you're gonna be spending money for a long time. Instead, use them to practice your skills. Each date you have last up to 5 minutes so you have a very short timeframe to work with, but this is perfect as you get to work on initiating conversations and internalizing body language signals being sent out, and you'll be 'dating' multiple people in one setting so you have a lot of volume to work with for one night. This is to help improve your skills quickly, arming you with enough knowledge and experience to navigate life with a prepared lens.

Now the article is written from the perspective of someone that hasn't gone to any sexual services and don't really plan to. Has anyone gone to get sexual services? What was it like going there? Do you agree it to be a solution for guys problem with a lack of sex?

As egalitarians, we want all people to be treated with equal consideration. There should be no favorites. All people, be they men, women, or children, deserve the same human rights, and the same amount of support.

As it comes to gender, which is our focus here, there are still many problems to be addressed. But we call upon all, paraphrasing a famous actress: you're either an egalitarian, or you're a sexist.

What do you think?

I currently use fetlife as a way to connect with likeminded individuals. Sometimes they would make post about gender issues (usually female centered, and when it's male-centered it's usually about toxic male behaviour or how our problems are created by the 'patriarchy'.)

To the premise of the post is that the original poster thinks that men get angry at women because they're allowed to be sexy and feel desirable in ways that men aren't. Considering fetlife is a kink community, I didn't see any of that as I've seen men in dresses in that community. Though outside of it, I would think it's more of a case.

However, during that discussion, it seems the term "desirability" is discussed in a way that they mean compliment. When women interact with each other, they compliment each other such as "Omg you're soo sexy" "slay queen, you are gorgeous" "you have a nice fat ass" or anything of that variant, however most women understood these are just compliments and a way to make other women feel good, not always as an indicator that they wanna fuck. They don't accept this from men as they see it as an invitation to fuck (and I wouldn't blame the women here, our society has still conditioned men to their gender role and expectations of men to be the pursuer are still there.)

In terms of the term desirability being treated as a compliment, it's true men don't get that often as women do. As a man, I don't get compliments on how sexy or handsome I am. But I can count the rare times I do get them and even then, I personally saw it as nothing more than a compliment. I know that if I wanted to date a person, I would put in the effort to build that relationship and my potential partner would also put in that effort too if they want the same thing.

But there's a different kind of desirability I want to talk about. It's about the feeling of being wanted especially by women. We're taught that women send signals to show if she desires or wants someone or not, but many of these signals are very subtle. This is because men aren't brought up in that way and women expect us to just know these signals. Because of this, men sometimes do not feel desirable. What I mean here is men are expected to go up to the person, almost always be the first ones to express desire in a person and wanting to go out. I've very rarely had any woman seduce me, had any woman ask for my number, wanting to take me out. This is the desirability that men very much lack, and was a conversation not covered by that post.

Now women don't show these desires because of their safety. No, I'm not saying women don't express interest cuz of fear of being raped and murdered, that's ridiculous. What I am saying is that because society expects a lot from men and the abundance of PUA/TRP material out there, men are training themselves to pounce on every opportunity they get to experience intimacy but can come off as trying to getting some action and aggressive, leading to women closing themselves off and not wanting to 'tempt' a man into thinking she wants sex, so this understandably creates a double bind for both parties involved. So if she does express interest in him, there's a likelihood he'll latch onto that (tho you can tell me from your experience if this is true as that's just a theory in my head. I don't get approached by women like this a lot but maybe there's a guy out there that does.)

Because most women don't usually court guys and expect to be courted, guys feel like they have to give their efforts to make them feel good, but they themselves don't receive that same effort or even appreciation for trying. Anyways, lemme know what you guys think.

#men

so overtime i have been seeing the left after the convo's about men's place in society, and it has been dismal. There was this video of a trans man talking about the loneliness of men went viral on TikTok and A channel named Aba and Preach covered it from their perspective (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZF7k9nVNRw&t=1088s) but it brings up a point i want to touch on

Which is that we will only listen to men's issues when it is someone who politically agrees with the right things, (patriarchy, toxic masculinity, feminism) but if it was someone like Jordan Peterson, who has actually pulled young men from the brink of suicide, and has been someone who has been someone very critcal of feminists in the past, they do this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZxz7WrW2Yo) literally laughing at the man for crying about men's issues. Aba and preach also covered this actual video and the responses. heres that video too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abQo5wWkMxs&t=532s)

Or when Dr Michael Reeves, made a video about male inequality, which is linked here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBG1Wgg32Ok&t=1s), when he want on the we are man enough podcast, a feminist podcast about men's issues, Liz Plank, A feminist, essentially wasn't actually concerned about the actual argument but rather the language of calling men not being represented in HEAL Jobs (Heath, education, admistration and language) as seen in this clip (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVo-sCPR5CA&t=44s)

But what i want to discuss about these two things is that on one end of the spectrum, a trans man rightfully talks about the void of lacking the connections that he had when was still a woman, and because he said men should take advice from women to become more emotionally vunerable. but when someone, Jordan Peterson has an emotional moment and cries at the plights of disaffaceted young men, The Left cant help but point and laugh at him.

Which is the point i want to make is that when it comes to all the talk about toxic masculinity and men being emotional, it seems to only be for a specific sect of the population, ie, Leftist or Liberal men who curtail the line of being serious about men"s issues but never focus on how society plays a hand in those issues, which includes women, or if they do focus on society, it is quick to blame men.

And even if a man is vunerable with their emotions, ie like Jordan Peterson, because he is a right winger, they just will make fun of him, which reinforces "toxic masculinity" and the gendered stereotypes and expectations that they claim to want to get rid off. And helps not only make Jordan Peterson a viable alternative to them. Or even if they agree with the inequality that men can face, they are often critical of the language or the imprecise nature of what they are saying.

And with the often times toxic and very hypocritical nature of their arguments, the mass generalizations, and painting of men as the bane of existance of women, queer folk, and minorities, dispite the fact that men with in these groups are vicimized much like them. Young men are just deciding to be done with the left, as they really offer no solution other than some false class conciousness as with these 2 videoes by a youtuber named That Dang dad

1 is a critique of a song by Dax, named to be a man (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN3-32AcQMQ&t=764s) which just to me, dismisses alot of what men go through and tells men to essentially build community with women, minorities and queer people, (which isnt a bad idea but ill get into why i think it and his other video are a kinda tacit dismissal of what men feel and also just a very bland way of what i like to call the "give a man a mission" play)

2 which is his attempt to answer the question, is the left failing men?, an answer with a resounding yes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVXZo1ld5Nc)

The second reason as to why i feel that young men are essentially not aligned with the left, and feminism which i highlighted earlier is called the "give the men a mission play", which is essentially, though used by both the right and the left, we are talking about the left which is like this.

"What you are mad at is late stage capitalism, which is fucking us all over so join with us and it will make life easier for not just you but everyone else" Or as it is most commonly used like in this tiktok, where the woman responds to a strawman of man who is frustrated with the current dating market, and feminism with the perils of living under "late stage capitalism"

(This is the tiktok in question https://www.tiktok.com/@elisse.01/video/7198671535073316142?lang=en)

but this is a broader sentiment on the left as stated, mostly in jokes, that if men could instead of "being mad at women" could focus on destroying capistalism and patrarchy, the world would be better, but that is built on 2 false premisies

1 that a communist or socialist revolution would better the lives of anyone, as in history, it truly hasnt and in fact has been more destructive to peoples lives.

2 the presumtion that men have any privilage that men have some one up over women. and have never been the victims of a society that they themselves built to benefit themselves, but has them suffering.

but the entire left does this with mens issues, which is why young men dont really find the left appealing, as the only solutions for men are to either mire in depression, join one side if the political isle that want to use you to enforce a fascist christian theocracy, or the one that will constantly tell you you are privilaged and must sit down shut up, and maybe die in a class war that probably wont liberate people at all, and might make life worse.

There’s a certain copypasta that gets posted in men’s issues spaces online. I think it might have originally been said by Karen Staughan. You may know the one I’m talking about. If you have it handy, please post it in the comments. I want to go ahead and reiterate it because it’s a very important point about online gender discussions. It bears repeating here as we start off on a new platform:

“I’m a real feminist. I support equality for men, too. Only fake feminists oppose recognizing abuse and laws against men.”

Have you ever posted a comment like this before? Well, I’m glad to know that you support men and boys. We need all the allies we can get. Too many people deny that we even face any gender-based disadvantages, or if we do it’s our all fault, anyway, so it’s on us to address them. It’s hard for guys to find sympathy from either side of the culture war, but especially from the progressive-leftist side. There’s just one problem.

What you say doesn’t matter.

I mean no disrespect, but you are an anonymous commenter on the internet. I have no reason to assume you have actually done anything to confront the anti-male policies or stereotypes that rule our lives. Unless you have “leveraged your privilege to call out” those who stand in the way of progress, your egalitarian ideals mean nothing to me.

First of all, I need you to understand who the “fake feminists” who oppose gender equality are. Quite simply, it’s all of the major feminist organizations. There’s a convenient list of those who proudly stood behind husband-beater Amber Heard: https://amberopenletter.com/ . Despite numerous recordings of Heard admitting to violence against Depp, they backed her. This isn’t the first time feminist organizations have stood behind violent women. Donna Hylton, who participated in the torture and murder of a man and spent 26 years in jail for it, has reinvented herself as a feminist activist and was even a featured speaker at the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, DC.

Not only do feminist organizations support female abusers, they have created and fight to maintain policies which exclude men and boys from being recognized as victims. Many countries and territories around the world legally define rape in such a way that men cannot be victims. When efforts to reform the laws to being gender-neutral started in India, feminists worked to shut them down (https://timesofindia.com/india/Activists-join-chorus-against-gender-neutral-rape-laws/articleshow/18840879.cms)

Aside from laws, feminists have also engineered the standard operating procedure of law enforcement to be biased against men. A framework for understanding interpersonal violence known as the “Duluth Model” was created by feminist Ellen Pence in the 1970’s. It assumes that men are more violent than women, based on stereotypes rather than scientific evidence. The Duluth Model informs the way police in many countries respond to domestic violence calls. This usually involves assuming that in a heterosexual relationship, the man is the aggressor, even in cases where he makes the call to the police to report violence against him.

This bias against men cuts across gender lines. Male feminists like Lundy Bancroft and Chuck Derry have made their careers on perpetuating the view that men are always the aggressors and women are always the victim. Bancroft even goes so far as to say that men who claim to be victims are actually doing it to hide their abuse, and that all men are potential abusers (https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/10/31/lundy-bancroft-anti-vaxxer-who-thinks-all-men-are-abusers-14370)

Feminists fighting to maintain legal inequality is bad enough, but they don’t stop there. Any time an advocate for men and boys makes a speech or starts a new organization, feminists are there to harass and undermine them. Erin Pizzey founded the first domestic violence refuge shelter in 1971. When she turned her attention to creating services for battered men, her feminist colleagues went so far to as threatening to bomb her house. Despite moving away from the UK she is still regularly harassed for her promotion of a gender neutral approach in her services and writings. The experiences of self-described feminist filmmaker Cassie Jaye had a similar experience. She directed an unbiased documentary about the men’s rights movement, and was subsequently shunned by the feminist movement.

Prominent feminist individuals and organizations have demonstrated time and again they oppose equal treatment for men. So that begs the question, who are the “fake feminists”? Does NOW, an organization which platforms abusers and opposes 50/50 child custody laws (https://floridapolitics.com/archives/206474-womens-rights-groups-host-statewide-media-conference-sb-668/), not count as real feminists? Is Hillary Clinton who once called women the primary victims of war, despite them not facing conscription anywhere in the world, not a real feminist? Are the various gender officers in universities around the world setting up kangaroo courts for accused men not real feminists?

It’s time for an uncomfortable realization. When it comes to equality, feminists’ actions speak louder than their words. If you still think the term “feminism” is worth reclaiming at this point, it’s up to you to stand up against the feminist institutions which have created and uphold the treatment of men and boys as second class citizens.

#men

I just stepped down as moderator from all five of the subreddits I used to moderate over on Reddit. I just can't ethically justify continued activity on Reddit, and especially free volunteer labour for an openly greedy company that is engaged in scummy behaviour, forcing mods to open protesting communities or be demoted.

So my online activism for boys and men is now focused here and on Mastodon. And I am welcoming everyone coming over from Reddit, especially from LeftWingMaleAdvocates, the sub I put in the majority of my time and effort as a mod.

Let's build something good here, as we did previously on Reddit. It appears we have a wider reach here, so let's debate in good faith and with civil manners.

Here, in this magazine (i.e. community or subreddit in Kbin-speak) we wish to discuss and spread awareness of various issues that disproportionately affect males.

We believe men are not being well-served by either side of the mainstream political spectrum. We oppose the right wing's exploitation of men's issues as a wedge to recruit men to inegalitarian traditional values. But we also oppose feminist attempts to deny male issues, or shoehorn them into a biased ideology that blames "male privilege" and guilt-trips men.

We have no objection to the genuinely egalitarian aspects of feminism, but we will criticize feminist ideology wherever it is inegalitarian and/or untruthful, especially now that it holds institutional power. Too often feminism has promoted a one-sided "equality", dismantling male advantages while exploiting, reinforcing, preserving, and downplaying female advantages - particularly in cases involving alleged abuse.

In practice this means that most of us are politically homeless. The natural home for male advocacy should be the left wing, which professes to be explicitly egalitarian. But in modern practice, men's issues are habitually ignored, denied, or even opposed.

We seek to address male issues without falling into the traps of an impossible return to the past or a disastrous sexism. Men and women have equal value, and we need to work together for a better future.

There is a tendency among some academics to prescribe individual solutions to systemic problems, when those problems are men's problems. For example, Diprete and Buchman, sociologists, in chapter 6 of the book “The Rise of Women: the growing gender gap in education and what it means for American schools.” Write that boys get worse grades than girls because they have lower emotional attachment to school than girls do because male adolescent role models like Batman and James Bond don’t emphasize academic success, which fosters an adolescent male culture that is oppositional to school. The solutions that they propose in the conclusion to the chapter is for parents to provide their sons with information about the relationship between academic success and financial success and provide them with emotional rewards for academic success and for fathers to role model good study habits and ways of achieving financial success and masculinity through academic success to their sons. Andrew Reiner, who teaches men’s studies at Towson university in Maryland, says that men don’t go to other men for emotional support because male heroes in popular culture don’t do that. But that causes mental health problems for men. So he prescribes men to discuss what about masculinity to change with their male friends and for men to write about the emotions they experienced in the past, along with other recommendations for men. https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-be-a-man-who-has-inner-strength-and-emotional-resilience But what is missing from both accounts, is addressing the source of the problem. If the problem is the role models that boys and men see in the media don’t exhibit the behaviors that are necessary for them to thrive, then the solution is to change those role models. Telling individual men and families to change is just passing the buck. Those role models did not always exist. Someone created them on purpose. They can be changed. Is there something obvious that I am missing? Is it just impossible to make healthy and positive male role models profitable in fiction?

#men

Notes for a talk at ICMI with the following title: Feminism: Not “progressive”. Not “egalitarian”. Not “liberal”. Not “left-wing”.

1. Feminism is not “progressive”: It’s regressive; it is based on misandry, sexist discrimination, hate & bias; it suppresses science (esp. on domestic violence, on female violence and on criminology in general); it is conspiracist; it asserts the existence of a non-existent entity “Patriarchy”; it is ultra-conservative, in its treating women as helpless infants. Infantilism about women is conservative, not progressive.

2. Feminism is not “egalitarian”: It demands, and achieves, preferential treatment for a privileged group (women). By definition, this is anti-egalitarian.

3. Feminism is not “liberal”: To the contrary, it is socially conservative—women are infants, without agency; it is illiberal & authoritarian; it demands increasing state power; it uses the police and institutional power as a tool of social control; it is moralistic & Puritan. More or less by definition, these are central principle of state-enforced illiberalism, social illiberalism and social conservatism.

4. Feminism is not “left-wing”: It has no interest in economic fairness (esp. those at the bottom of society); it is openly anti-working-class. Marxism and socialism are, by definition, left-wing because their primary concern is with economic exploitation, wage slavery, alienation of the worker, co-erced theft of their labour, and so on. Feminism is, in no way, “left-wing”. Feminism is a form of Identity Politics. This, in general, is an anti-left-wing position. Furthermore, it is a form of Identity Politics closely aligned with the State, policing, punishment and incarceration (so-called carceral feminism). Again, these are not “left-wing”. They have been traditionally right-wing positions for centuries.

The ICMI20 talk is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQf1JDa28Y&list=PLOXfnai0-o0I8BtOpmjbn_3FGYBHiV64S