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Young male voters are flocking to Trump – but he doesn’t have their interests at heart
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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Feminism has done a great job of bringing woman and girl issues of importance into the public dialogue.
Men and boys have definitely been left in the dust.
Until we have a movement that represents men’s issues similar to feminism, this trend of men falling off the deep end will continue.
It can be argued that feminism is part of the problem, and has exacerbated many of the problems facing young men today. This is the entrance to the rabbit hole, and again, until we have a movement that represents men and boys similar to a feminism that just means equality and or equity, this trend will continue.
You're close to getting it but you're not quite there. The patriarchy oppressed men AND women. It oppressed white people AND minorities.
Feminists, LGBTQ+, and black rights activists have each fought against the hierarchal structure for an end to their oppression and to enshrine their own rights. These people fight for equality, but they obviously do it when they're the ones harmed by inequality. They also support eachother in their respective fights as allies.
None of these groups will fight on behalf of other groups for many reasons, not the least of which is that they DON'T KNOW what it's like to be in a group they don't belong to. The most they can do is support eachother's fights.
Unfortunately many of the advantages that the patriarchy offered men was through oppressing others. For example if you were a "manly" man you could attract a "feminine" woman to do chores and raise kids for you. Nowadays women have better deals available. So men are at a unique crossroads, they can work on their own fights: the freedom to express human emotions, the freedom to participate in "feminine" pursuits like being in the lives of your kids, taking paternity leave, fighting for an education system that doesn't leave boys in the dust, among other things. OR they can try to go back to the hierarchal ways of life, adopting the "manly alpha" persona and hoping to find a "feminine" wife to take care of the house and kids. The latter FEELS easier, but success is difficult.
Nobody else got that choice because no one else thought that taking apart the hierarchy was as painful for them as much as it is to men. It lays bare all of our limitations and removes all the privileges. But if we understand that the hierarchy is what CREATED those limitations and gave the privileges at the cost of operating others, then we know the right thing is to start fighting our fights and stop being left behind.
It's not feminism's fault we're left behind. Why would women fight men's fights against the hierarchy/patriarchy FOR us, when women don't even live the problems we live. We're left behind because we stayed behind. Because it felt good. Now it doesn't. Now we fight for our freedom from the hierarchy.
This is an article about young men.
But yes, if feminism changed our classrooms and our dialogues in such a way that young woman are now able to achieve in way that they were not even allowed to before, to the detriment of young boys, then yes. This is feminisms fault especially as a group that claims to advocate for equality. Especially as a group that claims to also be fighting to help men and young boys out of the patriarchy.
Yes, feminism can be critiqued. If it has failed our men and young boys, it has also failed our women and young girls.
Even people in this thread have said that feminism fights for men as well. You can’t say that feminism fights for men until someone says the men and boys have been let down and then all of a sudden feminism is not fighting for the men.
Otherwise feminism is an ethereal veil of bullshit.
You’re either fighting for equality and equity or you’re fighting for superiority and some weird idea of revenge.
We need to find solutions that help both our boys and our girls succeed in an equitable environment.
If you’re saying well, we removed patriarchy it’s not our fault the boys are failing. I find that morally repugnant and an example of harm caused by feminism.
.... I'm not feminism man so I'm not sure what your trying to say.
Anyways "Welcome to the left" i guess, everyone has to identify the systemic barriers holding them back and fight to have them removed. You don't fight alone, we all help and support eachother. But no one can identify your barriers for you, they don't live your life.
You're coming in here saying "a side effect of the fighting done by feminism is reveal the obstacles holding boys back" then thank feminism I guess and join the fight for boys and men against the patriarchy/hierarchy.
If you're going to sit here pretending that these problems were CREATED by feminism and you want to attack the idea of "women fighting to remove their obstacles", well I don't know what to tell you, but you're going to be alone and you're not going to get far. We don't win by diminishing eachother.
For example, you talk about how feminists fought hard to get women into schools and make the education fair for women. Now that women outnumber men in higher learning you're saying feminists stopped, but then you're complaining that feminists aren't fighting for men? Why would they? And even if they wanted to, how can WOMEN understand the obstacles holding back MEN? Feminism isn't well suited for these challenges, but feminism certainly didn't set out to hold men and boys back in education. The fact that the education system doesn't meet the needs of young boys has nothing to do with feminism.
Now you want to fight for more physical activity, more hands on learning in schools because that's what boys NEED? All the power to you. There are a lot of people fighting for that and you should join. Left wing activists of all stripes support this because we all support eachother and better, more equitable education helps us all. Demand higher school budgets and get physical and hands on learning back in schools.
You wanna sit here and whine like a baby blaming feminists for cutting school budgets and removing PE, science labs shop classes and hands on tech courses based on no facts at all? Enjoy the downvotes and loneliness I guess!
Thank you for proving my point. Feminism can not solve the issues facing men and boys. And critique of feminism is not misogyny.
I’m far from alone. I understand that folks have been taught that any critique of feminism is somehow on par with misogyny.
Half of the posters here have argued that feminism is already solving the issues facing men and boys and half have argued that feminism by design is not responsible for these issues. The cognitive dissonance that allows folks to hold both ideas in their minds at the same time is very real, and shows a major fault of feminism by itself, namely, that feminism and feminists are unaware of both the problems they are trying to solve, as well as the problems they are unable to solve.
Question everything. Otherwise you’re in the same rabbit hole as these young men in the article, just on the other side of the fence.
Dude I didn't prove shit. I don't understand how saying "men and boys need help" is a critique of feminism.
I know a lot of people are suggesting to address these things through "feminism" and that these problems belong to the "patriarchy". But fundamentally what they mean is use a leftist approach to deal with obstacles affecting you caused by the existing hierarchy.
They're saying that because what no one wants is another alpha male Jordan Peterson/Enon Musk style bullshit peddler claiming that men have been harmed by feminism and will be better off if we just restore the patriarchy and become "alpha" or whatever lingo they're using these days. That might be superficially true, but oppressing others isn't the way to get ahead.
It's starting to become obvious which side you're learning on, but hopefully you'll come over and help fight for men and boys issues in a way that improves society instead of harming it.
I didn’t prove shit either. I think we’re on the same page.
If men have been harmed by feminism I think as men and as advocates for men and boys we would need to listen to the hypothesis and then look at it and try to solve the problem rather than worry about whose fault it is, whoever’s fault it is is less important in my opinion than trying to understand if there is a problem which seems to be true and then to go on and try to identify the problem and find the cause.
I don’t believe that many phrases that are helpful to feminist arguments and causes for women and girls that genuinely help them are as helpful when we are specifically talking about helping men and boys.
Yes, patriarchy of the 1% is probably not the best phrase.
You keep saying "men have been harmed by feminism" and I couldn't agree with you less.
Oh well I guess, lol. Good luck to you
Feminism does represent men's issues, more than any other movement I would argue, and definitely more than any MRA ever has, it just doesn't centre men's issues, which is what you are used to, so you reject it because, for a change, something is entirely cantered around you.
You don't care about equity and equality (which is what feminism is for), you care about maintaining your privilege which entitles you to everything in society being first and foremost aimed at and cantered around you. It's the small token the patriarchy rewards you with to ensure you never join the fight against it as it fucks you up with shit like toxic masculinity and blames it all on feminism, and it's obviously working.
Sigh. There was a moment when I first joined lemmy that I was impressed how liberal of a space it was. And then I wandered into the comments of posts concerning gender. Fuucking depressing. Really, people would benefit from a gender studies class, or even anthropology or family and society, but for some everything is an attack and I doubt they'll listen.
Yeah, it's almost fascinating to see how some people are able to confront some of how the systems we live under oppress and marginalise parts of society, but not if they happen to benefit from a particular system, in which case they will always prioritise their own interests, because, like you say, they've never learned any better (in fact, are actively taught the opposite deliberately to ensure the divide remains).
I generally don't even bother replying to people like this anymore and just block, but this was so blatant I couldn't help myself lol, it really brought to mind a couple of points others have already summed up better than I can:
When legislation 'threatens' to make shared custody the default (re: neither parent is unfit, and both want custody) instead of maternal, feminists fight it. NOW put out press releases saying that the only two reasons a man would ever fight for custody is 1) they're abusing the mother and want to retain access to her 2) they're a deadbeat trying to avoid child support payments. Men are so dehumanized in the feminist mind that the very notion that a man actually wants to raise his child does not even register as a possibility to them.
When lifetime alimony (specifically alimony that never expires) is challenged, feminists fight to keep it.
When men significantly outnumbered women in college (though only because they got free college via the GI Bill after being forcibly conscripted into the military, something women were never subjected to--in the early 1900s, the rate of men and women in college was the same ~9%), feminists were outraged, and countless programs/grants/incentives were created to fix this 'injustice'. But presently, when women significantly outnumber men in college, feminists magically stopped giving a shit about sex disparity in universities.
When Erin Pizzey helped create domestic violence shelters for female victims of male abusers, she was a heroine to feminists. When she realized there are also male victims of female abusers, and wanted there to be shelters for them as well, she became 'the enemy' in their eyes, with not only censorship attempts by feminists, but her dog was fucking shot, on her property, on Christmas Eve that year.
Feminists point to a stat showing that 11% of journalists killed are women, to put out a "stop targeting women journalists" message. Similar happened with 1 of 4 women being homeless.
And that's just what I care to mention while I'm on mobile.
Feminists have proved many times over that they don't give a shit about men, nor about women who don't fall in ideological line with them, for that matter. They're special interest group that wants as much as they can get for themselves, no matter at whose expense it's of. There is a good reason there is a huge gap between the percentage of the population that believe in sex equality, and the percentage that self-identifies as "feminist".
Thank you. You have made my point 100 percent.
You will not be able to fem splain that you know more about issues facing men and boys than men. Now is the time for you to sit down and listen.
Feminism is old and broken and divisive. Feminism doesn’t care for men at all. It’s set up for women.
In the UK when it was first created in 1976 it focused on mens and womens issues correctly but whatever this garbage movement is in the US is an abomination and doesn’t help anyone. Sure it brought problems to light but hasn’t solved shit because it wasn’t meant to. It was meant to keep men and women divided in the US. And it worked great.
Lmfao, tell me you know nothing about feminism without saying you know nothing about feminism
Anytime someone says "tell me you know nothing about X without saying you know nothing about X" instead of in any way refuting the comment they're replying to, it only shows that they're the one who actually doesn't know anything about it.
You know people read what you write right? Like people other than who you're talking to? If you can refute them, then refute them, otherwise you're just making your side look bad and you're not making anything better except maybe you feel better patting yourself on the back with your pithy and original comment.
No, it's actually telling the person I'm replying to that their wilful ignorance is glaringly obvious, and that I have no interest in biting their poorly prepared bait. If they've very openly made zero effort, why the fuck should I make any?
Why the fuck should I invest any of my time and emotional labour seriously replying to someone who clearly gets all their information exclusively from sources that confirm their bias, and have no interest in learning, but only asserting their confidently incorrect opinion, and having it confirmed back to them?
I actually wasted years doing exactly that, because I too believed the patriarchal lie that told me it was my job, and you know what?
THEY AREN'T LISTENING AND DON'T CARE
You want to refute them? Be my fucking guest, but don't fucking demand it of others. I've learned from my mistakes and have better things to do with my life than waste it coddling misogynists, and it certainly isn't my responsibility to hold their hand and walk them in to acting in their own best interests, when they'd rather be oppressive in return for the pittance the patriarchy gives them.
Lmmfao, says the person who inserted themselves in to a conversation for the sole purpose of demanding others do their work for them, while contributing absolutely nothing.
You're just as big a part of the problem as the asshat I replied to, trying to shift the blame for misogynists on to feminists "not being nice enough" to them, but hey, you're in good company, the biggest misogynists will always find a way to blame feminism for their actions and behaviour and avoid taking any accountability or responsibility for themselves.
Well done? and fuck you. ¯\(ツ)/¯
If you are here to yell at people, you’re in the wrong space. You are only serving to prove my original point correct.
Your commwnt seems like it comes from a men/women us/them perspective that's really confusing for me.
The problem isn't feminism. Feminism hasn't been damaging. Toxic masculinity has been damaging. The feminist movement would have had a real hard time existing without the suffrage movement that proceeded it. And that movement would have been totally unnecessary without patriarchy/toxic masculinity convincing men of the time women were not human enough to vote.
So ... your explanation, to me, at best seems ignorant of a decent chunk of recent history.
If you think the situation before the 19th amendment was ratified was 'men could vote and women couldn't', you're carrying around an elementary school level understanding of that history.
There were demographics of men who still weren't allowed to vote after the 19th, who the suffragettes gave zero shits about enabling.
This narrative of 'feminism fights for men's issues too' needs to die. It has never been true on any significant scale, and this rhetoric only started as a means to devalue and justify attacking movements that do seek to address misandry and injustices with primarily/exclusively male victims.
I gave but a small slice of historical context. You decided I left stuff out on purpose and then made that left out stuff about "male victims."
🤷♂️
Just reacting to the irony of you saying what you said while accusing another of being 'ignorant of a chunk of history'.
What I’m saying is that men can critique the harms feminism has caused without being misogynist.
What I’m saying is just what I said, that men need a movement similar to feminism that advocates for the issues facing men and boys (in much the same way) that the feminist movement which has advocated (and accomplished some very tangible and positive change regarding) issues facing women and girls. (Edited for clarity)
Feminism is not the answer for the issues facing men and boys. So in that sense, it is kind of an us versus them.
But in much the same sense that equality seems like something is being taken away when you are the oppressor, it can feel much the same way to feminists when they are told that feminism is not the answer to issues facing men and boys.
Equity and equality really are a give and take, and life isn’t always fair. But we can remove systems of oppression for all, and we can work on this together where our issues intersect. But feminism can not speak for the issues facing men and boys, and as the only elephant in the room, it is definitely going to feel like something is being taken away when men and boys and their advocates begin to take steps toward solutions that will help them and their families (which also includes women and girls, so in that sense, advocates for issues facing men and boys also address issues facing women and girls).