If I’m not mistaken, this was the initial concept behind the community, no? The idea that this “manosphere” bullshit is a response to the erasure of men in the misguided attempt to bow to third (fourth now?) wave feminism.
In a nutshell, the plot of feminism got lost in the greater society as a whole finally trying to adopt some of its principles via straight up—fuck I can’t think of the phrase people use—value posturing? Ethics acting? I’m sure you all know the phrase I’m searching for, right wingers popularized it.
But point is, it’s true. And yes, it happens on the white left, but its most devious incarnation is in corporate America. Putting a woman of color in your ad is not equality. Taking aunt jemima off your bottle isn’t erasing racism. It’s just lip service to something akin to progress to boost their bottom line.
So in this world of a bunch of meaningless putting women in the spotlight to say they’ve done it, young men are feeling like they don’t matter. So when you have the liberal world saying “shut up now, a woman is talking,” young men don’t hear “okay, it’s on my generation to take this and smile because there is a long history of women not getting a seat at the table.” Young men hear the most misguided of the fourth wave feminists shouting “men are pigs” and “oh a woman killed her husband? Good, one less man in the world,” and they don’t see much pushback on it. And their brains aren’t fully developed, so they don’t understand that this behavior, in context…well, it’s still very stupid and wrong, but they see society writ large mostly embracing this or laughing it off.
So what do they do? Where do they turn? To the people telling them that women, actually, are the ones who are trash and they need to shut up and get back in the kitchen. Because, to their eye, the world does seem to be trying to go out of its way to “oppress” men. When you hear those fucksticks say “white men are the most oppressed group,” young men don’t understand why that should be laughed off. Because, again, their young brains aren’t developed and hey don’t have centuries of history understood. They hear one side saying “whatever it’s just some white man,” and they hear the other saying “it’s okay to be a man, it’s actually great and you deserve everything.”
I had gotten really into observing the online gender wars. It was entertaining for a while, and then it started to get pretty depressing. You had people on both sides of these issues who are passionate about the parts that they care about — but what they’re really passionate about is arguing, and making the other side look bad.
After a while, I realized that I either needed to stop observing it or I needed to try to help fix it. So I started thinking that what we needed was an actual solutions- and positivity-focused men’s group, where we could talk about these issues that are so important but ditch some of the bad habits of what we’ve seen before.
I agree with you in that the less avenues we have for men to speak up and be listened to, the more radical they will become, and instead of coming with constructive and useful criticisms, they will instead follow everyone who says “the other side is a problem, so now it’s your time to violently state your way”.
One thing though - no one should be silenced or mistreated for the acts of previous generations. Those young men hold no relation to what happened there in the past, and those young women are not its victims, either. “Reverse” discrimination is just discrimination based on arbitrary concept, and acts of other people in other times should never be seen as a supporting argument here.
Oh, I absolutely agree with you. What I was trying to say there was that they’re not able to see the situation, as it is, through the lens of history. They don’t have the capacity for that kind of understanding. I’m not exactly saying that unequal treatment is good and fair.
However, after a long period of inequality, there is kind of a necessary middle point between inequality and equity where there has to be a balancing of the scales. We’ve all seen that sort of infographic/web comic where they’re showing the people looking over the fence, where inequality has the white boy standing on all the blocks and the others standing on one or none, and then under the “equality” header, they’re all standing on the same amount of blocks, and then under “equity,” the tall kid gets exactly enough o see over the fence, the short kid gets more, etc?
I mean, that is the main goal, right? Equity? There comes a time, especially after a long period of inequality, where those blocks have to get doled out. There has to be a time, after a long period of people not getting a seat at the table, where those disenfranchised people who have been historically kept out of the room get intentionally put in that room, given one of the seats at the table. And for all intents and purposes, there are only so many seats at any given table. See what I’m saying?
Now, these are all solutions under a capitalist system. Solutions to work within a system that is inherently flawed and inequitable. The answer is dismantling that system. But if we’re talking about jobs, positions of power, places at the capitalist table, etc., there is going to be a period of righting the wrongs, of giving those limited number of seats to people who belong to groups who have historically been kept out. But that’s talking about solutions within a flawed, unjust system. Because under capitalism, it is a hierarchy. And putting people in higher positions within it is the solution under capitalism—because you’re placing people still in a hierarchy, where others will be exploited at the hands of, now, the people who have suffered the exploitation the worst.
It makes no sense. You’re absolutely right.
So I think that’s what you are butting up against. It is that’s still inherently unfair because it requires overlooking the previously dominant groups, no matter that people didn’t choose to be born into the oppressor group, and they shouldn’t bear the pushback their ancestors catalyzed.
And rightly so, you should butt up against that because the system is built to be unfair. It thrives and literally operates on exploitation. So the solution you’re looking for is one that doesn’t involve hierarchy or capitalism. And I’m with you there. But we’re unfortunately talking about life under capitalism, so without demolishing that whole system in favor of a more equitable and just and healthy system, there will be inequality to right the imbalance. Should it be that way? No. But capitalism and hierarchy are forcing our hand here. But I’m with you, all the way.
The term you’re looking for is ‘virtue signalling’. It’s a shame it got assigned a political bias, because it’s a handy term for what makes rainbow capitalism so infuriating.
Another big point that needs to be made is that engagement driven social media algorithms have pushed the most controversial content to the top, giving it an oversized representation. Then there are also those with vested interests in preventing unity who are more than happy to jump on any opportunity to stoke division.
If I’m not mistaken, this was the initial concept behind the community, no? The idea that this “manosphere” bullshit is a response to the erasure of men in the misguided attempt to bow to third (fourth now?) wave feminism.
In a nutshell, the plot of feminism got lost in the greater society as a whole finally trying to adopt some of its principles via straight up—fuck I can’t think of the phrase people use—value posturing? Ethics acting? I’m sure you all know the phrase I’m searching for, right wingers popularized it.
But point is, it’s true. And yes, it happens on the white left, but its most devious incarnation is in corporate America. Putting a woman of color in your ad is not equality. Taking aunt jemima off your bottle isn’t erasing racism. It’s just lip service to something akin to progress to boost their bottom line.
So in this world of a bunch of meaningless putting women in the spotlight to say they’ve done it, young men are feeling like they don’t matter. So when you have the liberal world saying “shut up now, a woman is talking,” young men don’t hear “okay, it’s on my generation to take this and smile because there is a long history of women not getting a seat at the table.” Young men hear the most misguided of the fourth wave feminists shouting “men are pigs” and “oh a woman killed her husband? Good, one less man in the world,” and they don’t see much pushback on it. And their brains aren’t fully developed, so they don’t understand that this behavior, in context…well, it’s still very stupid and wrong, but they see society writ large mostly embracing this or laughing it off.
So what do they do? Where do they turn? To the people telling them that women, actually, are the ones who are trash and they need to shut up and get back in the kitchen. Because, to their eye, the world does seem to be trying to go out of its way to “oppress” men. When you hear those fucksticks say “white men are the most oppressed group,” young men don’t understand why that should be laughed off. Because, again, their young brains aren’t developed and hey don’t have centuries of history understood. They hear one side saying “whatever it’s just some white man,” and they hear the other saying “it’s okay to be a man, it’s actually great and you deserve everything.”
Who the fuck do we think they’re gonna listen to?
Not sure exactly how the lemmy.ca community came to be but I suppose it’s a continuation of the subreddit, vox has the original story in form of an interview:
You mean, virtue signaling?
I agree with you in that the less avenues we have for men to speak up and be listened to, the more radical they will become, and instead of coming with constructive and useful criticisms, they will instead follow everyone who says “the other side is a problem, so now it’s your time to violently state your way”.
One thing though - no one should be silenced or mistreated for the acts of previous generations. Those young men hold no relation to what happened there in the past, and those young women are not its victims, either. “Reverse” discrimination is just discrimination based on arbitrary concept, and acts of other people in other times should never be seen as a supporting argument here.
Oh, I absolutely agree with you. What I was trying to say there was that they’re not able to see the situation, as it is, through the lens of history. They don’t have the capacity for that kind of understanding. I’m not exactly saying that unequal treatment is good and fair.
However, after a long period of inequality, there is kind of a necessary middle point between inequality and equity where there has to be a balancing of the scales. We’ve all seen that sort of infographic/web comic where they’re showing the people looking over the fence, where inequality has the white boy standing on all the blocks and the others standing on one or none, and then under the “equality” header, they’re all standing on the same amount of blocks, and then under “equity,” the tall kid gets exactly enough o see over the fence, the short kid gets more, etc?
I mean, that is the main goal, right? Equity? There comes a time, especially after a long period of inequality, where those blocks have to get doled out. There has to be a time, after a long period of people not getting a seat at the table, where those disenfranchised people who have been historically kept out of the room get intentionally put in that room, given one of the seats at the table. And for all intents and purposes, there are only so many seats at any given table. See what I’m saying?
Now, these are all solutions under a capitalist system. Solutions to work within a system that is inherently flawed and inequitable. The answer is dismantling that system. But if we’re talking about jobs, positions of power, places at the capitalist table, etc., there is going to be a period of righting the wrongs, of giving those limited number of seats to people who belong to groups who have historically been kept out. But that’s talking about solutions within a flawed, unjust system. Because under capitalism, it is a hierarchy. And putting people in higher positions within it is the solution under capitalism—because you’re placing people still in a hierarchy, where others will be exploited at the hands of, now, the people who have suffered the exploitation the worst.
It makes no sense. You’re absolutely right.
So I think that’s what you are butting up against. It is that’s still inherently unfair because it requires overlooking the previously dominant groups, no matter that people didn’t choose to be born into the oppressor group, and they shouldn’t bear the pushback their ancestors catalyzed.
And rightly so, you should butt up against that because the system is built to be unfair. It thrives and literally operates on exploitation. So the solution you’re looking for is one that doesn’t involve hierarchy or capitalism. And I’m with you there. But we’re unfortunately talking about life under capitalism, so without demolishing that whole system in favor of a more equitable and just and healthy system, there will be inequality to right the imbalance. Should it be that way? No. But capitalism and hierarchy are forcing our hand here. But I’m with you, all the way.
The term you’re looking for is ‘virtue signalling’. It’s a shame it got assigned a political bias, because it’s a handy term for what makes rainbow capitalism so infuriating.
Another big point that needs to be made is that engagement driven social media algorithms have pushed the most controversial content to the top, giving it an oversized representation. Then there are also those with vested interests in preventing unity who are more than happy to jump on any opportunity to stoke division.