Oh get out of here with that crazy talk. 
Unless you know a lot of women who are calling to put women back in the kitchen, lose the vote, and have their education curtailed, I think we can safely say that a minority of feminists are man-hating and that a minority of those are annoying enough to provide fodder for an article.
In my experience, most women are quite happy to not be treated as property and children.
Hey lance, I gotta ask you something. Do you end up going to those places that look like ordinary bars but all the women turn out to be lesbians? Just curious.
I just want to thank you for making me aware of this site. This thread has been a net positive for the world so far.
Use ‘mainsplaining’ all day long, just as long as you don’t ‘tone police’ while you’re doing it. 
Yeah, every movement has its jagged edges, best not to dwell upon them.
I’m unable to extract any meaning from this post. Want to try again?
I could, but I’d be mansplaining.
Toxicity, cliquishness, and abuse are huge problems in online communities in general, be they feminist, MRA, gamer, racial issue, or corn husking communities. While there are certainly criticisms to be made, especially of content-low sites like Tumblr or Twitter, where “mob justice”, anger, and dogpiling tends to substitute for reasoned discourse (almost by necessity on Twitter), these are issues that are more endemic to the structure of the sites themselves than to feminism per se.
Thanks for your contribution.
A few comments on the article, and the thread so far:
- A few decades ago I was discussing with a friend whether the name “Washington Redskins” was offensive. I said I didn’t think it was intended to be. My friend said that that didn’t matter; if you want to know if something is offensive you don’t ask the person who made the comment, you ask the person who heard it. That’s always stuck with me. I believe I’ve tried to live by it. And it seems to be a cornerstone of social movements, too, including feminism; that women’s lived experiences, opinions, and feelings, if expressed sincerely, are valid on their face.
I don’t disagree with that, but I don’t necessarily see it applied in reverse. If someone feels that a distaff remake of Ghostbusters is co-opting a part of his culture, or that the term “mansplaining” is sexist and demeaning toward men, the response is not to say “I’m sorry you feel that way”, but rather it tends to be people saying that the very feelings are wrong.
That said, it’s worth noting that the article linked in the OP is by a woman, someone who can discuss these cases without being personally impacted by them. And the headline (“Feminists treat men badly. It’s bad for feminism.”) suggests that this subject is important not because it’s bad for men, but because of the consequences for feminists.
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A snapshot of the present moment doesn’t capture the whole picture. Consider the trends, too. The author cites that about 60% of college degrees go to women. I can’t find a specific cite on how that percentage has been changing over the years, but I believe it’s been climbing and continues to do so. If 40% does not mean men have a problem, is there some number that would; 35%, 30%? It isn’t just about where things are, but where they are going.
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There’s no mention in the article about how genders are portrayed in the media. I’m old enough to remember complaints about certain commercials; a woman aghast that someone has spotted her husband’s “ring around the collar”. Not that such concerns have gone away. We still talk about how such things affect girls’ self-esteem with unrealistic body images, etc. But men are portrayed abysmally in TV commercials. When you need some doofus in a commercial to drop a tree limb on the neighbor’s car, or drive into a garage with bicycles on the roof of his minivan so that the smiling insurance agent can come to set things right, it’s always a man. I’ve seen commercials with grown men who haven’t mastered fire, or being outsmarted by chimps or small children. I don’t hear much about what that does to boys’ self-esteem; setting a realistic view of what they can hope to achieve when they grow up.
I disagree with the last part. It is not a man-only thing, and writing it like that makes it sound like it is. What if I started referring to “lady driving” as a term for bad drivers? You’d find it insulting, wouldn’t you?
I think it’s a legitimate concept that needs to be discussed, but the terminology is sexist. It serves only to offend those who most need to learn not to do it.
And that’s the lesson we’re trying to put forth–don’t do things that offend other people unnecessarily. When you say it’s wrong to do it to women but not men, then you do put forth that narrative that feminism is about hating men.
As for “Straight White Boys Texting”–sounds a lot like “Black People Twitter.” I consider the latter to be racist as fuck. It pushes the message that black people are stupid. It’s the digital equivalent to showing up somewhere and saying you’ll observe the “black person” in their natural habitat.
There’s nothing about being black that makes you stupid, and there’s nothing about being a straight white male that makes you a bigoted fuck. So, yeah, I have a problem with both.
You want “Privileged assholes texting,” then call it that. Don’t make fun of people for their race, age, gender, or sexual orientation, or imply that these make them bad people.
I think this stuff is a bigger problem than the OP’s problem. It’s not directly being hostile. It’s the casual stuff like this that is bad on its face that people ignore and thus offend the very people they are trying to convince.
submitted too soon due to accidental tab
Thanks for your tone policing, mansplainer.
This is good and the standard I propose to live by. But
does not follow. Lots of these things can still be invalid. For a rather unambiguous case, what if said woman’s lived experience gave her the opinion and feeling that gay people are pedophiles? That would be obviously invalid.
About the only thing in there I would say is correct is that feelings are valid–and even that doesn’t mean they actually reflect reality. It means that you are allowed to have feelings. But these are limited. They aren’t thoughts. They are feelings. They are things like feeling scared. And it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work to try and fix the issue, so that it will be easier for you to live a productive, non-bigoted life.
See, this is a factual issue. The first is false. The second is true. There is nothing co-opted by the new Ghostbusters. The people who own the franchise intentionally arranged to have this made. And there is no way to argue that Ghostbusters was something that belonged to men. It wasn’t made just for men nor is there anything about it that is particularly manly. You have to start with a sexist premise to believe that women are co-opting it.
On the other hand, I’ve already pointed out why mansplaining is a problematic term. It just does the exact same thing other sexist (or other -ist) terms do. It’s not like “cis,” where people became offended by a neutral term. It singles out a single gender for a problematic behavior. You can’t attach a specific race, gender, sexuality, etc to a word to form a negative term and then say it’s not derogatory towards them.
Neither number nor trends mean anything on their own. What matters is whether there is something going on that is discriminating against men in those scenarios. As a man myself, I can’t say I’ve encountered anything like that. I personally suspect that, if anything, it’s our old friend “toxic masculinity” where men are told to be strong and not so much smart. But, that’s a part of the patriarchy, and the reason we feminists say that the patriarchy hurts men, too.
Again, patriarchy. Mom is the nurturer, and so dad must be clueless. If you learn those things, you aren’t doing “manly” things. And I have heard talk about it. Not so much about self-esteem, but about the gender stereotyping being reflected to young boys.
I have zero problem talking about any of this. I have a problem when these are presented as ways to delegitimize the problems women or minorities face. You know, when it’s “men have problems, too!” as if that makes the women’s problems invalid. Or when the topic is clearly about a woman who has faced sexism, and the guys have to make it about them and the sexism they face.
In those cases, it’s not the message but the context that is problematic. And I do think we can do a better job of explaining that. Still, it seems that some people, even when you try to explain things at length, still assume it means “I disagree with you, so you’re sexist.” No, that’s not it. That’s never it.
Well, you’ve very welcome! I have no idea what you’re thanking me for, since none of your posts in this thread make any sense and you declined to clarify, but I do know how to accept thanks graciously.
Sure, “lady driving” as meaning bad driving is offensive, but the analogy doesn’t work because bad driving is a pretty universal phenomenon. The ‘mansplaining’ phenomenon, however, is specifically about gender-based interactions, and the habits that (some) men have towards explaining things down to women. It’s not about explaining things in general, or even over-explaining things in general: it’s about a specific, common, gender-based phenomenon (or at least, it was originally. The fact that it stopped being used that way is the crux of my objection to it upthread.)
Now, sure, it’s offensive. It’s intended to mock and shame men who do it. Sometimes mockery and shame helps people change their ways. Sometimes it causes its targets to hunker down and ignore everything coming from the mockers and shamers. It’s neither the only tool that should be in the social justice toolkit, nor should it be banished.
I’ve found that too, sometimes. But read the article - some of the cases are undeniable attacks without provocation. And some aren’t attacks on specific people or incidents, just sexist memes, such as “mansplaining.”
Sure there are. They’re called sexists. They’re wrong. This article isn’t about them.
Yes, and? This article doesn’t do that, nor do I. I’m a committed feminist.
So you’re skeptical. That’s fine. But that doesn’t make me or this article wrong.
It couldn’t be more sexist.
It’s a generalization about men.
Denying it is part of the problem.
And it’s not “cute.”
Just turn it around and make it “womansplaining” or something and see if defending it as “cute” would fly.
Yes, that’s a good point. The problem is when the internet and feminism collide - or should I say intersect?