Men's Liberation
This community is first and foremost a feminist community for men and masc people, but it is also a place to talk about men’s issues with a particular focus on intersectionality.
Rules
Everybody is welcome, but this is primarily a space for men and masc people
Non-masculine perspectives are incredibly important in making sure that the lived experiences of others are present in discussions on masculinity, but please remember that this is a space to discuss issues pertaining to men and masc individuals. Be kind, open-minded, and take care that you aren't talking over men expressing their own lived experiences.
Be productive
Be proactive in forming a productive discussion. Constructive criticism of our community is fine, but if you mainly criticize feminism or other people's efforts to solve gender issues, your post/comment will be removed.
Keep the following guidelines in mind when posting:
- Build upon the OP
- Discuss concepts rather than semantics
- No low effort comments
- No personal attacks
Assume good faith
Do not call other submitters' personal experiences into question.
No bigotry
Slurs, hate speech, and negative stereotyping towards marginalized groups will not be tolerated.
No brigading
Do not participate if you have been linked to this discussion from elsewhere. Similarly, links to elsewhere on the threadiverse must promote constructive discussion of men’s issues.
Recommended Reading
- The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, And Love by bell hooks
- Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements by Michael Messner
Related Communities
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"Feminism" is just a sloppy term. It's "egalitarianism": people deserve rights, your demographic shouldn't decrease your rights. Those who you're referring to when you use the term "feminists" will insist upon this interpretation, for good reason.
"Feminism", as a term, conjures images of the uplifting of women, which was a potent image when women weren't allowed to vote or work most jobs. Now, with many of those low-hanging battles won, equality is largely the case, and the image of uplifting women feels a lot more like favoritism and bias than leveling the field.
Yes there are gender specific issues, but those exist in both directions much more equally than when the "feminism" label was solidified. The goal should not be to uplift women, the goal should be to trivialize the influence of gender and sex on the involuntary conditions of life. When that results in the uplifting of women, great. But men face struggles intrinsic to being men too, and naming your egalitarian movement after femininity only deepens the divide with marginalized men.
I don't think feminism is the wrong word in this case. The way men are harmed by patriarchy is directly related to how women are understood as lesser. Male only drafts, male worth based on possession of women, unequal familial rights, and harmful beliefs about men's emotion all exists as ways to subjugate women.
For the draft and emotions, men's "violent nature" is cultivated because "we have to protect the women." The only emotion you allowed to have is righteous anger used to defend women. This dynamic ties neatly into men as predators. Men are naturally violent, look at how that violence protects the women, but when improperly raised they become monsters.
Men often feel as though they have no social standing if they haven't had sex with a woman. The way that relationship is framed is often conquest and power rather than mutual connection and understanding. The truth is men would benefit far more from connection, understanding, and knowing that they can have social standing beyond fucking somebody.
Unequal family rights are directly related to the societal expectation that women are the primary care givers. Which frequently results in women working full time jobs, taking care of the children, and taking care of the house.
I don't think the term feminism is really the problem. Billions of dollars have been spent by right wing billionaires to control this narrative. It's no wonder young people have a skewed perception of what feminism is. I don't think changing the term to gender equality really would have helped much.
Please stop viewing men as defective women. Maybe fucking somebody is more important than you think. Maybe the problem is that instead of supporting men we're telling them to stop wanting the things they want.
As a man who has had sex, it's not as good as connection, understanding, and social belonging. Granted, that's just me. Maybe other men do in fact need to fuck somebody to feel like a worthwhile person.
Correct. And I'm saying that's not a defect. That's just an aspect of personality, and it's as valid as any other.
Anyone who says you're less of a man for not wanting to fuck a different girl every night is an idiot and an asshole. But conversely, anyone who says I'm toxic for wanting to fuck a different girl every night is also an asshole.
Yeah, but no. To refuse the term feminism is like to say “white lives matter too”. Of course men deserve rights, and of course white lives matter too. But white people and men don't need to fight for themselves.
Swing and a miss, mate. Many people who have a problem with the name feminism are nonbinary people, who want equality but have been excluded from the movement by enbyphobic women, AKA TERFs. While there are lots of feminists who say feminism also means uplifting enbies, some enbies feel misgendered by this terminology, and reality is nonetheless more complicated. But your comment reducing every opponent of the term to male privilege is perfectly symbolic of the nonbinary exclusionism practiced by many who use the term feminism, and demonstrates exactly why some nonbinary people have a problem.
I'm not sure the mere existence of TERFs has led to any significant movement to rename feminism among the NB community.
It's a complicated issue. I'm being a bit reductive when I say every enbyphobic feminist is a terf. There's lots of people who think of themselves as trans allies, but still don't believe in genderfluidity, xenogenders, or two-spirit. They think they're allies of nonbinary people, because they simply choose not to believe in the nonbinary people they exclude and oppress. Does that make them TERFs? It's complicated.
We haven't assembled into a movement about this because it's not that big a deal, and we have more pressing problems like impending genocide. We can't waste time organising about a word. But on a personal level, the word still makes us uncomfortable. When we're told feminism is for nonbinary people, some of us feel like we're being called female. Misgendered. But if feminism isn't for nonbinary people, well that's a bigger problem.
https://reductress.com/post/4-inclusive-statements-that-arent-women-and-non-binary-people-i-consider-women/
The debate around terminology for spaces intended for women (and the tendency for folks to make nebulous assertions about the inclusion of NBs) seems to me to be an entirely separate issue.
Fundamentally, I see what you're saying but I'd like to push back on the idea that the term "feminism" needs rethinking at this point in time.
I'd even go so far as to say the parent comment where a rejection of the term feminism is portrayed as tantamount to "all lives matter" is more correct than the idea that "feminism" is a poor term because it feels like misgendering. This is a space centered around the idea that feminism is good for men because feminism is not a term that should leave you feeling gendered in it's primary usage.
At this point in time I tend to take terms like "intersectional feminist" to mean someone is probably an ally, but if someone just calls themself a feminist without any adjectives, that gives me absolutely zero information as to whether they're interested in gender equality for all gender identities. I know they support cis women, but I have no idea whether they support any kind of trans person.
Throwing out feminism because it does not essentialise trans and NB rights feels like very poor praxis. From the perspective of one individual assessing the views of another, I don't disagree with your metric, but I disagree with your application of the ideas to the broader movement. Particularly in so far as it grants to right wingers that feminism is a sexist term.
Well this is a debate about prescriptivism vs descriptivism, right? I'm saying the complexities of the ways the word is used no longer make its meaning clear unless certain adjectives are applied. You're arguing we should stick to the "intended" meaning. But at what point does denying the evolution of language to become more transphobic deny the genuine harms suffered by trans people? Surely there's a point where that's the case, right? How do you know we haven't reached that point?
No I don't think so.
I'm arguing that your particular claimed usage of feminism as a transphobic term (that is, the general inclusion of NBs as a class for whom feminism benefits is tantamount to gendering them female) simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny. This is distinct from the issue of women's spaces explicitly including NBs feels like misgendering (which is valid).
The premise of this community is fundamentally dependent on the idea that being a beneficiary of feminism MUST be entirely seperate from being gendered female.
Ah, no, I meant to say that feminism losing its implication of progress for all gender identities (if it had such an implication in the past), is evidenced by the fact that if someone says they're a feminist, that doesn't tell you whether they support equality for enbies.
I assert that the quantity of nbs who hold this opinion is so small as to be negligable and that ceding a major right wing talking point for gender equity for nbs (a group in which I, and the majority of my social circle are a part of) is mostly just ceding a right wing talking point.
Put another way, the idea that "feminism" is an insufficient term is tantamount to "all lives matter".