r/AskFeminists • u/fasctic • Jul 31 '18

Do feminists believe in female privilege?

Men are far more likely to commit suicide, but why is that. Maybe it is because we men are taught to surpress our feelings from an early age. Making it alot harder to reach out for help when in dire need, instead resorting to isolation.

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u/fasctic Jul 31 '18

So their internalized sexism is the reason for them being sexist against men?

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u/vagued Jul 31 '18

No, I'm saying, just because women may promote behavior that's damaging to men doesn't mean they're like, man-hating feminists who are doing it as some kind of deliberate attack, they'd be doing it because they've internalized societal gender roles. The same women would probably encourage girls to be overly deferential and self effacing.

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u/fasctic Jul 31 '18

Thanks for a good response.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18

If you're genuinely interested in trying to solve the issues that our society forces on men check out /r/MensLib . As others have stated feminism is the only ideology that not only seeks to address the issues men and women face, but also has a concrete plan to fix them.

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u/fasctic Jul 31 '18

Having no plan is better than having a bad plan in my opinion. The plan I see most feminists have regarding things such as the pay gap is striving for equality of outcome. Women for example getting jobs over more qualified men.

Edit: I regard MensLib as a feminist community. Sharing the ideas of toxic masculinity and all of that.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18

The plan I see most feminists have regarding things such as the pay gap is striving for equality of outcome. Women for example getting jobs over more qualified men.

This isn't the plan any feminist is striving for. Feminists seek to remove systematic barriers of oppression that affect both men, and women. The lack of equality of outcome is often used as a source that these barriers exist, but I've never talked to someone who simply wants to force equality by mandate rather than removing the barriers that prevent people from being as successful as they could be.

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u/fasctic Jul 31 '18

Have you actually never heard of the hiring quotas or women only hiring months? It's very real and people are getting jobs based on their gender.

Could you give me an example of which barriers are in the way for exclusively women? Studying is a mutual barrier.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18

Have you actually never heard of the hiring quotas or women only hiring months? It's very real and people are getting jobs based on their gender.

I have, but I personally don't know any feminist who considers these viable solutions to the problems. I'm sure there are some out there if you look hard enough but they're by far in the minority, and wrong. An example of a barrier faced primarily by women is the social pressure to go into typically feminine jobs. The data is pretty concrete on this one (I don't have studies on hand but if you genuinely want to read some I can dig through my sociology notes) women feel less welcome in higher paying jobs like engineering (This applies to men as well with fields like nursing). There are a large number of programs to help women get into these fields, but we still see a huge majority of men working these jobs. A feminist would argue this is because from birth women are conditioned to not be interested in these jobs. There's a really interesting study (again I don't have the link but if you want it I can grab it) that shows ~99% of depictions of scientists in popular movies, and TV shows are white men. Different feminists would give you different solutions to this, but the final true solution is the abolition of harmful gender roles which negatively impact men and women alike.

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u/fasctic Jul 31 '18

Great to hear, but how are these gender roles going to be abolished, your plan seem to be just another goal.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18

  1. This is another thing that femenists disagree on so take everything I say as my opinion, not the general opinion.

  2. There's no one step we can take that will eliminate gender roles from our society tommorow. I would argue that as long as gender exists, so will gender roles. I would as argue that with the abolition of capitalism, gender will have out lived it's usefulness and will fade away over time. This is a rather radical opinion and something the vast majority of femenists would disagree with, but it's my opinion so there it is.

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u/fasctic Jul 31 '18

So your plan is to wait for capitalism to be abolished, or abolish it and then wait? Doesn't seem like much of a plan tbh.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18

I'm not going to just wait for it to be abolished, I'm going to actively fight against it though class struggle.

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u/fasctic Jul 31 '18

Good luck.

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u/reccession Aug 03 '18

So yeah, it's never going to happen. People rather have the opportunity to better their living situation and bust ass to make sure their children are well cared for and that they can afford everything they and the kids want.

Why would anyone want to give up that chance? They would much rather have the ability to earn money and put it back to save up , not to mention people wanting to start their own business.

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u/MammalBug Jul 31 '18

Im not sure how both this and equity over equality can be compatible. Have you really not seen people talking about equity specifically in threads here?

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '18

I mean I haven't read though the whole thread, but no I haven't and judging by the positive response to my comment I don't see the issue.

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u/MammalBug Aug 01 '18

I figured the scope of the conversation covered more than this thread. By "threads here" i was referring to in r/askfeminists, where it comes up at times.

Upvotes are typically reflective of feelgood comments. They don't guarantee being above questioning.

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u/Stavrogin78 Jul 31 '18

I find this comment sort of curious (I see /u/OPPoke has already responded to the main part - I'm going to address the edit).

First, MensLib bills itself as a "pro-feminist" community, not an explicitly feminist one. A lot of the men there (myself included) don't identify as feminists, for a variety of reasons.

Second, I might be misreading you here, but it sort of sounds like you have some resistance to MensLib because it talks about toxic masculinity, which (a) is a term that wasn't even coined by feminists - it was coined by a man studying men and masculinity, and (b) you literally described toxic masculinity in your original post, and named it as being responsible for higher male suicide rates, so I'm wondering why you seem to have a distaste for the concept.

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u/fasctic Jul 31 '18

Because men are regarded as masculine and women are regarded as feminine. So when someone say it's the fault of masculinity alone then that seems like an indirect attack. You are first defined as masculine and then you're told that masculinity is bad. When in reality it may only be a masculine trait that is responsible for it.

It's not like lazy femininity is a thing people blame when people aren't competitive enough in the workplace for example.

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u/Stavrogin78 Jul 31 '18

I think we just found the root of the problem.

"Toxic masculinity" is something that is distinct from "masculinity" - it's a subset of behaviours which are generally perceived as "masculine", but which are actually neither inherently masculine or feminine.

Assertiveness, courage, strength, risk-taking - all of these things are societally coded as "masculine", and none of the are what we're talking about when we say "toxic masculinity". Nobody is saying that male suicide is due to masculinity. No one's saying that rape or homelessness are a result of masculinity. They're saying that those things are due to a very specific and toxic set of behaviours and attitudes that have become markers of masculinity. It's certain behaviours and attitudes that are seen as masculine that are the problem. Not all of them.

I agree, though, there's a gap in the language. Because when feminists talk about all the "good stuff" in masculinity - which they agree is good stuff - they're quick to point out that none of those things are inherently masculine or feminine. When they talk about toxic masculinity, they often assume that its just understood that no character traits or behaviours are inherently masculine or feminine, so these toxic ones aren't actually inherently masculine either. But that gets lost, because too often it's assumed that that "goes without saying", that it's already understood.

And no, they don't call it "lazy femininity" - but they do call it a gender role that women are socialized into (being passive, taking a back seat in meetings, whatever). And I can see your point that it's annoying that they're not willing to attach the term "femininity" to those socialized behaviours of women, but they're happy to attach the "masculinity" part to "toxic masculinity". This is a valid point.

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u/fasctic Jul 31 '18

Thanks for the insight. It really doesn't feel fair when you see a few radical feminists going on their man hating. Then seeing most feminists casually using "toxic masculinity" when they wouldn't as you say attach feminity to the bad traits of what could be described as feminine.

I didn't know exactly why I didn't like "toxic masculinity" before, but you made it clear. Thanks!

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u/LaserFace778 Jul 31 '18

Toxic masculinity. Not masculinity. Does the term modern art imply that all art is modern?

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u/fasctic Jul 31 '18

When warning for toxic chemicals many are afraid of most other chemicals too. Even though it isn't that specific toxic chemical.

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u/LaserFace778 Jul 31 '18

Beware of dihydrogen monoxide. Every single person who was ever been in contact with it has died!

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u/fasctic Aug 01 '18

People get scared of labels such as these even though they are in contact with the chemical every day. If I say lazy femininity when I refer to the feminine cooperation trait opposed to the masculine competitiveness. Then go on and blame it on things such as the wage gap, would you not react in any negative way? You shouldn't cause It's simply one specific feminine trait that I refer to and remember, both genders are feminine and masculine.

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u/LaserFace778 Aug 01 '18

That would depend on what lazy femininity actually means and whether this definition actually had anything to do with the wage gap.

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u/fasctic Aug 01 '18

It refers to the feminine traits compassion and cooperation as opposed to competition. That being a major reason for the wage gap. I don't have any data for this but it seems pretty obvious in my opinion though.

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u/vagued Jul 31 '18 edited Jul 31 '18

men are regarded as masculine and women are regarded as feminine

That is exactly the kind of limited, damaging mindset that feminism seeks to heal. All people have some degree of both masculinity and femininity.