I’d say that, it isn’t a feminist’s job to try to be as nice as possible to men who want to understand feminism. Some will be, some won’t be, but it still isn’t in the job description. It IS in the job description of women under patriarchy, so that is one possible reason why some women have stopped trying to be much nicer to men than men are to them.
Back to the racism analogy, maybe it’s “counterproductive in the long haul” for black people to not want to continually attempt to explain what racism is, to white people, but it’s perfectly understandable.
You may feel at sea about it all, but it isn’t like feminism is a new thing, or that there’s been nothing written on the subject for people like you.
You feel Gandhi’s motivation was self-interest? I guess we have very different interpretations of his life.
Stepping away from personalities, I feel that we should address moral issues from the perspective of what’s right and wrong not from the perspective of which side benefits me more. I can support feminism as a worthy cause even though I am not a woman.
It’s incorrect framing to characterize feminism as “women’s issues” contrasted to “men’s issues”. Feminism is about solving one issue - how both society and the law treat women as second-class citizens relative to men.
If you control for that, I don’t really think it makes sense to say “what about men’s issues”. Many of what we call men’s issues turn out to be an indirect effect of inequality against women. For example a lot of men complain about paying child support and alimony, but many of these burdens are diminished if women have full reproductive access including abortion, pay equality, subsidized childcare, etc. In that way, what we call “women’s issues” often turn out to be men’s issues.
Ironically, when my smart phone replacement became large, I started carrying a passport case* to hold it, my wallet, and Kindle. As a bonus, my wallet can grow as thick as it likes without causing the list it was when it was in a hip pocket.
I feel I was making a valid point. MrDibble had made the argument that women’s issues were more important to the women concerned by them than men’s issues were. This raised the self-interest question.
If you apply the self-interest standard to moral issues, then Gandhi cared about Indian independence because he was an Indian and independence would benefit him. And by extension of the same principle, anyone who isn’t an Indian has no reason to care about Indian independence.
As I said in my follow-up post, I disagree with this view. I feel a person can support the rights of a group of people, even if they are not a member of that group and will gain no personal benefits from those rights.
Women aren’t collectively overburdened. Women aren’t collectively anything. Some women have a lot of burdens, some don’t take any on.
I have worked with women on numerous occasions. Women in management I’ve typically had good experiences with. Some women contribute to toxic work environments.
Years ago I had a male friend, single in his 40s, though he had a girlfriend. He worked in IT. IT is not a very touchy feely work environment to say the least. He had been in his job for a number of years, and a toxic work environment developed. There were both men and women in this department. He was considering leaving, talked with another friend of mine multiple times about it. He was clearly unhappy with this situation.
Now my other friend, also a man, is a good guy. But with emotional stuff after a point he basically shoves his fingers in his ears and starts humming a song. He simply doesn’t have the capacity to deal with emotional things past a certain level.
So the friend with the toxic work environment was in a dilemma because he’d have to give up a ton of pension money if he left the company, and the way IT was structured there were limited opportunities to simply transfer to another area of IT. If you were a highly valued employee you could do it, sure, but someone who’s being harassed and in a not good situation is not going to get that opportunity. They either need to bid out to a non-IT area or leave for another company.
Anyway, one day my friend who was being harassed killed himself. I don’t know what relevance his gender has to the situation. Maybe to his opportunities and his struggles, but he was a fellow human being who needed some help, and if one of the rest of us was able to help him he should have felt open to reaching out.
I’m part of a group at my workplace that’s mostly women. Just today a woman reached out for help because a female relative of hers committed suicide.
We want people who need help to reach out. Me personally, I don’t wish to screen for gender.
I didn’t advocate screening for gender. I advocated the opposite. In many situations, there’s a default that “you should look for help from women, because men aren’t emotionally mature/are too busy/whatever”. This is toxic. It undervalues men and overburdens women. No, not every single man nor every single woman. But on average, this absolutely happens.
And it’s why some feminists might urge men to look to other men for emotional support. You may feel this is “counter productive, because then men won’t care about women”. But you need to see it in context, and the context is that that woman has been asked for help too many times, while the man she’s trying to fob you off on has been spared those burdens.
What is the alternative? Not to support others’ rights?
In Midshipman Easy, Jack is a staunch communist as long as he is poaching and stealing apples, somehow not so much when he is a wealthy landed gentleman standing for the Conservative party. His principles mysteriously adapt to whatever personally benefits him at any given time.
When I was in 8th grade, I went to the 7-11 across the street from the school at the end of the day and found a small crowd of students gathered behind the school. Usually when students gathered like that after school, they were expecting a fight, and I wasn’t disappointed. One of my classmates exited a nearby car, and with shouts of encouragement from his mother sitting in the driver’s seat, met his opponent on the battlefield behind 7-11. I made myself scarce when Plano’s finest arrived on the scene. Years later, when I learned that Spartan mothers supposedly told their sons, “Come back with your shield, or on it,” I thought of that kid’s mother.
There are women who inculcate their boys into embracing toxic masculinity. And other women who encourage and reward toxic masculinity. I know, I know, #notallwomen.
The ur-masculine principle is that a real man may under no circumstances ever seek out any emotional support, so through that lens it does not matter whether support from women or men—both are already transgressive.
Okay, but what’s that got to do with what is, should, or should not be within the scope of feminism?
As an aside, I’ll note the very odd framing of the OP. Specifically, as “Should feminists not care about male issues?” It’s just a really strange way to frame the issue, you know? Alternatively, I might have framed it, in a less MRA-adjacent sort of way, as:
A) Should feminists care about male issues?
B) Is feminism about male issues too?
C) Do feminists care about male issues?
D) etc.
But the “should feminists not…” phrasing is a real eyebrow-raiser for me, because it would seem to suggest that there is a prevailing thought among feminists that they should not in fact care about male issues. That is, that “not caring about male issues” is actually a part of feminism, and as such feminists on the individual level should make it a point to not care or else they’re “doing feminism wrong” or something.
I am hard-pressed to imagine any but the most fringe of feminists asserting that feminists should affirmatively not care about male issues, as opposed to the more nuanced position of “male issues are not within the scope of feminism, though some male issues may incidentally be feminist issues as well, and in any event, individual feminists are free to care or not care about male issues as it suits them, independent of their feminist position.”
My support group at work is open to either gender. I am the most regular of any men, there are some others who are occasional. But the ratio is typically about 10 to 1 women.
Everyone who comes to the group is giving and getting support. I don’t see anyone coming to the group who is just “taking” support from other people and just going their own way. That’s not how it works. Men just don’t come nearly as much. They are more bereft in both giving and getting. The women less so, they receive benefit both ways.
So I don’t see what you are describing at all. Men are much less likely to reach out in the first place. They’re probably not as good as helping either due to inexperience, but kind of seems like both sides of the ledger. So I don’t see how men should be excluded from this mutual exchange process, how women are giving and getting support but are suddenly tapped out when it comes to men. Myself and the group at large would frankly be far for the worse should it devolve to women only.
If it’s an issue like men wanting joint custody and 50-50 placement in a divorce, that is a legitimate male issue. This is an issue that should align with feminism. In practice I have found that liberal women agree with this issue and resistance comes from conservatives.
Now the bar for “caring” is not very high for me. They don’t need to work on the issue or petition the courts. Just have a positive opinion of it. Doesn’t seem to require a lot of physical or emotional energy from my perspective.
So if a woman considers herself to be a feminist, and she opposes men striving for joint custody and 50-50 placement, it says to me that she places gender ahead of shared humanity and common values.
Did i say anything, anywhere, that can be read to discourage women in a mixed sex, opt-in support group from supporting the men in that group? Has ANYONE in this thread done so?
You said that it is counter productive to turn to those who are already overburdened when you need help.
Now I will say that this doesn’t need to be gendered. If women are all overburdened, then women should also not turn to women for help.
In reality women turn to other women for help. Men typically don’t turn to anyone for help. Women should turn to women for help because it’s a mutually beneficial exchange. But typically someone asks for help first, then learns how to help others. It’s the nature of life.
So a man turning to someone for help maybe is more likely to turn to a woman because more of them are more skilled in this sort of mutual exchange. In so doing he then learns the art of mutual exchange and is more likely to be able to help others in turn.
Please tell me how a woman turning to a woman for help is different from a man turning to a woman for help.
I’m saying that Gandhi helping South African Indians while disdaining Blacks shows that he placed importance on how much things affected him and his group, personally.
I guess you’ve never read about his opinions on Africans and Indians merely living in the same township, never mind using the same doors.
Have I said anything that disagrees with this? Destroying the Patriarchy would benefit almost everyone. But that doesn’t mean everyone is trying to do that, even those men who would benefit from it.
Yes. And other members of an opt-in support group of which you are a member is the opposite of those who are already overburdened. It’s made up solely of people indicating a willingness to offer support.
So i think we must be talking at cross purposes, somehow.