Oh Noez! What about Teh Menz? -Patriarchy isn't a dude's friend EITHER!

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Yes. There's feminism, and OTOH, there's the female counterpart to the Little Rascals "He Man Woman Haters Club".

We're comparing apples & oranges, here.  The two have nothing in common.  If you hate, distrust, or stick labels all over one gender or group, then you are neither an eglatarian nor a feminist.  You're the opposition.

Yep.

In my worst days of getting keys made for the kids and going to work right about the time school was letting out, still for less money than the guys were making (while not *quite* qualifying for food stamps), I went a little crazy. I had a conspiracy theory that people like Steinem and Thomas were some kind of moles put in place to make us WORSE off.

I doubt now that it was calculated. But I don't think the CEO's particularly minded either.

And it doesn't matter if you're in the "feminists are a bunch of ball-busting man-haters" crowd, or the "men are incapable of understanding" crowd.  The former is obvious, the latter is just as insidious because it places a false condition on the subject.  It is NOT required for me to "experience what being a woman is like", just like it is not required for me to experience what Gays put up with, for me to include them in my view of who counts as "people".

I also have no idea what kids in Mali go through, after all, and I consider them to be humans.

Agreed. I was never hung on a fence and tortured to death. Doesn't mean anybody can tell me to STFU about Matthew Sheppard.

[Salty]

So, if y'all don't mind backing up just a moment...

A cis man is someone who identifies as masculine, as opposed to, say, me who expresses a fair amount of neutral androgyny (I yo-yo, what can I say?). Is that right?

Question: what role in this carefully worded isolation do masculine gay men play?

I am pretty firmly set in thinking that the struggles women face, the struggles feminism fights, is based in the exact same fight that queer people of all kinds are involved in.

Now, clearly, "straight acting" gay men had an advantage in that they can actually pretend they're something they're not, due to their acceptable appearance. Take in contrast a very delicate, feminine, male. They have historically had a much harder time blending in and thus are more of a target. They have in fact been killed for little reason beyond their existence.

If we are separating people out, and I'm not so sure we shouldn't be wouldn't especially feminine men who cannot simply control their appearance or mannerisms be in a less privileged place than women? After all, if women are seen as objects and treated as such, isn't that much better than being seen as an abomination that ought to be eradicated?

This isn't a game of Who's Got It Worse, of course. I'm just spinning my wheels here.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So, if y'all don't mind backing up just a moment...

A cis man is someone who identifies as masculine, as opposed to, say, me who expresses a fair amount of neutral androgyny (I yo-yo, what can I say?). Is that right?

Dunno.  CIS was explained to me as the shiny new label for people who are straight.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

I'm quite fond of Gloria Stienem's quote "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off!"

Being oppressed is traumatic and obviously terrible. But it also can have the effect of turning people sour and seeking revenge. This is fact, and nobody is above it. See: ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY. Being oppressed does not lend itself to giving a balanced view of the situation even if that oppression ends. Whole nations of humans have formed for the specific purpose of seeking revenge for oppression - and they do it, and they're no better than their oppressors were, but they don't see it, because their ability to be fair has been violated and destroyed by the original oppression.

I'm not saying feminism is necessarily going to go down this path, but it's possible (and you can't really say it's impossible without being self-righteous and just plain wrong). So it seems to me that feminism needs detached, outside opinions and observations in order to keep that possibility in check.

Saying things like "men don't/can't understand" or "a man's view is inherently inferior or inadequate" or that it must "take a back seat" to a woman's opinions is evidence of that counter-oppressive possibility.

Um, no, dude. We are saying that often (not all the time and not by all men) our experiences are minimised and brushed off as Not That Big A Deal, (see Street Harrassment, Mr Handsy deemed "harmless", being told that the boy in class when your six is hitting you because "he likes you".) because of this factor, and society treating angry women as something not to be taken seriously or "PERIODS LOL!" that the net effect of this is that although I DEARLY WOULD LOVE MEN TO BE MORE FEMINIST/ PRO-FEMINIST and decent dudes, there is a history of being marginalised, and that more of the same isn't what we want.  Hence the listening/taking a back seat/letting women frame the goals.  It's like planning moving house and telling someone where all the stuff needs to go, they may be doing all the heavy lifting, but if they ignore me and put the sofa in the kitchen I'm screwed if they leave and don't put it right.  Ok that analogy sucked a little.  All I would like from guys involved with feminism is that they recognise the marginalisation, and try not to let there be more of the same in their actions and those around them.

As for guys informing on feminist issues, it was Roger's comments and experience of porn stars and how the life can seriously fuck them up that started me questioning if porn was something I wanted to consume and therefore be complicit in.  I decided no "DO NOT WANT!" and have since been fapping to pictures of James Iha in a dress. I'm not for censorship, and if I was 100% without a doubt sure that "no porn stars were hurt in this production" like the RSPCA does with animals in films I could watch enthusiastic people fucking who have a connection based on mutual respect and fap my brains out, rather than worrying if the girl getting double-penetrated in the ass is coked up to cope or in danger of getting HIV.   I've been educated on these kinds of things by men, having a penis is not a bar to being ethical and decent.

Dudes in feminism (I'm hoping there will be some blokes in dresses! With Beards, because that is HAWT!) can speak to other dudes about Shit That Is Not OK when it comes to rape culture and wage gap and like Roger's examples of Shit He Will Not Tolerate, because for a long time its been a bit like David Cameron telling Nadine Dorries to "Calm down, dear!" when she got wound up in Parliament. (the fact that she's a anti-choicer advocating abstinence only sex ed for girls is infuriating as his attitude, but hey..) The wage gap would drop pretty quickly if household chores and childcare were more equitable, and the custody of kids in a divorce would change and be more in favour of joint custody, and boys who like wearing dresses and playing with dolls will get the same treatment as girls who are tomboys.

Maybe the anger and frustration at being marginalised and not taken seriously has coloured my view and the view of feminists, hence the need to be listened to and taken seriously.

I wholeheartedly want men to engage with feminism, to help us speak truth to power, because in some cases that is the only way to access the boys club mentality of some men and people in power, and the only way to affect social change.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

As for guys informing on feminist issues, it was Roger's comments and experience of porn stars and how the life can seriously fuck them up that started me questioning if porn was something I wanted to consume and therefore be complicit in.  I decided no "DO NOT WANT!" and have since been fapping to pictures of James Iha in a dress. I'm not for censorship, and if I was 100% without a doubt sure that "no porn stars were hurt in this production" like the RSPCA does with animals in films I could watch enthusiastic people fucking who have a connection based on mutual respect and fap my brains out, rather than worrying if the girl getting double-penetrated in the ass is coked up to cope or in danger of getting HIV.   I've been educated on these kinds of things by men, having a penis is not a bar to being ethical and decent.

That's not even really about male vs female.  It is simply wrong to traffic in human misery.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I'm quite fond of Gloria Stienem's quote "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off!"

Being oppressed is traumatic and obviously terrible. But it also can have the effect of turning people sour and seeking revenge. This is fact, and nobody is above it. See: ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY. Being oppressed does not lend itself to giving a balanced view of the situation even if that oppression ends. Whole nations of humans have formed for the specific purpose of seeking revenge for oppression - and they do it, and they're no better than their oppressors were, but they don't see it, because their ability to be fair has been violated and destroyed by the original oppression.

I'm not saying feminism is necessarily going to go down this path, but it's possible (and you can't really say it's impossible without being self-righteous and just plain wrong). So it seems to me that feminism needs detached, outside opinions and observations in order to keep that possibility in check.

Saying things like "men don't/can't understand" or "a man's view is inherently inferior or inadequate" or that it must "take a back seat" to a woman's opinions is evidence of that counter-oppressive possibility.

Um, no, dude. We are saying that often (not all the time and not by all men) our experiences are minimised and brushed off as Not That Big A Deal, (see Street Harrassment, Mr Handsy deemed "harmless", being told that the boy in class when your six is hitting you because "he likes you".) because of this factor, and society treating angry women as something not to be taken seriously or "PERIODS LOL!" that the net effect of this is that although I DEARLY WOULD LOVE MEN TO BE MORE FEMINIST/ PRO-FEMINIST and decent dudes, there is a history of being marginalised, and that more of the same isn't what we want.  Hence the listening/taking a back seat/letting women frame the goals.  It's like planning moving house and telling someone where all the stuff needs to go, they may be doing all the heavy lifting, but if they ignore me and put the sofa in the kitchen I'm screwed if they leave and don't put it right.  Ok that analogy sucked a little.  All I would like from guys involved with feminism is that they recognise the marginalisation, and try not to let there be more of the same in their actions and those around them.

As for guys informing on feminist issues, it was Roger's comments and experience of porn stars and how the life can seriously fuck them up that started me questioning if porn was something I wanted to consume and therefore be complicit in.  I decided no "DO NOT WANT!" and have since been fapping to pictures of James Iha in a dress. I'm not for censorship, and if I was 100% without a doubt sure that "no porn stars were hurt in this production" like the RSPCA does with animals in films I could watch enthusiastic people fucking who have a connection based on mutual respect and fap my brains out, rather than worrying if the girl getting double-penetrated in the ass is coked up to cope or in danger of getting HIV.   I've been educated on these kinds of things by men, having a penis is not a bar to being ethical and decent.

Dudes in feminism (I'm hoping there will be some blokes in dresses! With Beards, because that is HAWT!) can speak to other dudes about Shit That Is Not OK when it comes to rape culture and wage gap and like Roger's examples of Shit He Will Not Tolerate, because for a long time its been a bit like David Cameron telling Nadine Dorries to "Calm down, dear!" when she got wound up in Parliament. (the fact that she's a anti-choicer advocating abstinence only sex ed for girls is infuriating as his attitude, but hey..) The wage gap would drop pretty quickly if household chores and childcare were more equitable, and the custody of kids in a divorce would change and be more in favour of joint custody, and boys who like wearing dresses and playing with dolls will get the same treatment as girls who are tomboys.

Maybe the anger and frustration at being marginalised and not taken seriously has coloured my view and the view of feminists, hence the need to be listened to and taken seriously.

I wholeheartedly want men to engage with feminism, to help us speak truth to power, because in some cases that is the only way to access the boys club mentality of some men and people in power, and the only way to affect social change.

Maybe it's not a matter of "speaking truth to power"?

If you're going to bring power into this (which I suppose makes perfect sense) then I'm pretty much as marginalised as you are. I'm a guy, I have all the "privileges" as you put it. I'm living the life of Riley, right? I'm one of the elite. I'm a hard as fuck, asskicking testosterone machine, marching on the skeletons of women. Only I'm not. I grew up in a fucking shithole where the girls were harder than most men I associate with nowadays. Disputes were solved almost exclusively with violence and you either learned to fight or you didn't make it out of there alive.

By the time I went to secondary school my card was already marked. I was one of those Westquarter kids. We were lumped together in the same form class, along with the kids from the other local blackspots. When kids from the other classes were being given careers advice meetings and told to go to university and shit, we were being told that half of us would end up in prison. As far as I'm aware, more than half of us did.

So yeah, I'm part of the elite. I have no idea what it feels like to be discriminated against. I have nothing in common with some poor oppressed woman who's only on a paltry ten times my salary, as opposed to her husband who's nearer twenty times.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

I don't read ANYONE in this thread bashing Feminism, big F.  What I see are some expressing that any strain or version of feminism, little f, that is practiced to exclude men because they are men and don't have the experience of being women, is a strain that is probably too insular for it's own good.


I think ANY movement designed to better the lives of any subset of humans can be bettered by having people who aren't necessarily part of the affected group, but who have the passion and the skill sets to advance the cause.  The people from the affected group will have the unique experiential knowledge, but they may not have the advocacy or media savy that an "outsider" would have. 


It just helps to make a well-rounded and robust approach, as anyone who does any kind of grass roots work will tell you.

I agree with this. The people with the privilege and the skills still need to listen to the main core of the movement/s, and take what they say seriously.

And this is, of course, just going to magically happen, regardless of how aggressively or condescendingly the "main core of the movement/s" lay on their education?

also

Oh and Roger, i think most of the last 2 pages were referring to P3nt's take on it, rather than you.  You are a decent guy and it SHOULD be the default position, but in my experience, it's not always the case.

Okay, I have to admit to being a little hurt at this, coming from you. Unlike most of the people involved in this conversation, we've actually spent time in each others company. The fact that you came away from that feeling that I wasn't a decent person? That sticks in my throat a little.

Gah. I am sucking at the communication today, sorry. Either that or every fucker including me has their hackles up and it's going a bit ook.

I trust you P3nt, you were wicked supportive when I got all brain sick, and I don't think you are a bad person. Uncomprehendingly Scottish, and a little scary looking, but a good dude. :P  If I was ever in a bar with a Mr Handsy-Gropey in your vicinity I'd totally want you there if me kicking off and being all shouty wasn't enough to get someone to back off.

I mentioned why I felt that guys involved with feminism need to listen to women in feminism, because of the history of marginalisation, in the last post I made.

So, if y'all don't mind backing up just a moment...

A cis man is someone who identifies as masculine, as opposed to, say, me who expresses a fair amount of neutral androgyny (I yo-yo, what can I say?). Is that right?

Dunno.  CIS was explained to me as the shiny new label for people who are straight.

no, Cis (cisgender) is those who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. the opposite of Trans (transgender) and the GenderQueer peoples kind of oscillate around in the middle.

I view gender as a social construct, to be honest, and it would be nice to get to a stage where these distinctions didn't matter diddly fucking squat. But we live in a society that does enforce gender roles, and those who feel that they don't fit what they were told is male/female and identify  somewhere else on the gender identity spectrum can have a pretty shitty time of it.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I mentioned why I felt that guys involved with feminism need to listen to women in feminism, because of the history of marginalisation, in the last post I made.

But we don't.  At least, I don't.

I have listened to individuals (Garbo and Nigel) who have pointed out flaws in my worldview.  On occasion, I have changed my worldview.

But it wasn't because they were women.  It was because they were right and I was wrong.

And I don't need to listen to anyone about anything to be an elgatarianist.  I have a very firm view there, based on entirely different experiences than you've had...That has informed me of everything I need to know, in the simplest terms possible.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

no, Cis (cisgender) is those who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. the opposite of Trans (transgender) and the GenderQueer peoples kind of oscillate around in the middle.

They are still unnecessary labels.  At least they are unnecessary to me.  Telling me about someone's orientation is like telling me they're left or right handed.  It is irrelevant.  Not because I'm some tremendously advanced progressive something or other, but because I don't care.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I'm quite fond of Gloria Stienem's quote "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off!"

I'd like it better if it had come from someplace less batshit than Steinemville.  Coming from her, it reminds me of Fizzly Grizzly: "HURR HURR, U MAD?" She's always had a tendency to dig her heels in and come up with some kind of slogan or bullshit when she's got nothing else. See my other post with the Stossell interview. A woman can be an effective firefighter and find ways of working around the upper-body strength thing, but she's not a better firefighter than a man simply because she's a woman, in spite what Steinem was trying to argue.

Being oppressed is traumatic and obviously terrible. But it also can have the effect of turning people sour and seeking revenge. This is fact, and nobody is above it. See: ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY. Being oppressed does not lend itself to giving a balanced view of the situation even if that oppression ends. Whole nations of humans have formed for the specific purpose of seeking revenge for oppression - and they do it, and they're no better than their oppressors were, but they don't see it, because their ability to be fair has been violated and destroyed by the original oppression.

I'm not saying feminism is necessarily going to go down this path, but it's possible (and you can't really say it's impossible without being self-righteous and just plain wrong). So it seems to me that feminism needs detached, outside opinions and observations in order to keep that possibility in check.

Saying things like "men don't/can't understand" or "a man's view is inherently inferior or inadequate" or that it must "take a back seat" to a woman's opinions is evidence of that counter-oppressive possibility.

Um, no, dude. We are saying that often (not all the time and not by all men) our experiences are minimised and brushed off as Not That Big A Deal, (see Street Harrassment, Mr Handsy deemed "harmless", being told that the boy in class when your six is hitting you because "he likes you".) because of this factor, and society treating angry women as something not to be taken seriously or "PERIODS LOL!" that the net effect of this is that although I DEARLY WOULD LOVE MEN TO BE MORE FEMINIST/ PRO-FEMINIST and decent dudes, there is a history of being marginalised, and that more of the same isn't what we want.  Hence the listening/taking a back seat/letting women frame the goals.  It's like planning moving house and telling someone where all the stuff needs to go, they may be doing all the heavy lifting, but if they ignore me and put the sofa in the kitchen I'm screwed if they leave and don't put it right.  Ok that analogy sucked a little.  All I would like from guys involved with feminism is that they recognise the marginalisation, and try not to let there be more of the same in their actions and those around them.

Everybody's experiences get "minimised and brushed off as Not That Big A Deal". Switch the six year olds and the boy who is being tormented by a girl is not only told that "she likes him", but possibly ridiculed for "whining" about it.

If the sofa is in the kitchen, I can push and drag it to where I want it. It's harder for me, but I'm not "screwed". I got a fucking pool table across the street a few weeks ago, FFS. The next day my daughter and another woman packed it up the steps and left it in the kitchen. This had nothing to do with me being a woman. I now have a bigass pool table in the kitchen, and when it cools off a bit here, I'll turn it sideways and shove it through a couple of doorways to the front room. Or just find some guys to move it. We don't always put stuff where guys want it, either. I can't attibute every incident of people not listening to sexism.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

I'm quite fond of Gloria Stienem's quote "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off!"

Being oppressed is traumatic and obviously terrible. But it also can have the effect of turning people sour and seeking revenge. This is fact, and nobody is above it. See: ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY. Being oppressed does not lend itself to giving a balanced view of the situation even if that oppression ends. Whole nations of humans have formed for the specific purpose of seeking revenge for oppression - and they do it, and they're no better than their oppressors were, but they don't see it, because their ability to be fair has been violated and destroyed by the original oppression.

I'm not saying feminism is necessarily going to go down this path, but it's possible (and you can't really say it's impossible without being self-righteous and just plain wrong). So it seems to me that feminism needs detached, outside opinions and observations in order to keep that possibility in check.

Saying things like "men don't/can't understand" or "a man's view is inherently inferior or inadequate" or that it must "take a back seat" to a woman's opinions is evidence of that counter-oppressive possibility.

Um, no, dude. We are saying that often (not all the time and not by all men) our experiences are minimised and brushed off as Not That Big A Deal, (see Street Harrassment, Mr Handsy deemed "harmless", being told that the boy in class when your six is hitting you because "he likes you".) because of this factor, and society treating angry women as something not to be taken seriously or "PERIODS LOL!" that the net effect of this is that although I DEARLY WOULD LOVE MEN TO BE MORE FEMINIST/ PRO-FEMINIST and decent dudes, there is a history of being marginalised, and that more of the same isn't what we want.  Hence the listening/taking a back seat/letting women frame the goals.  It's like planning moving house and telling someone where all the stuff needs to go, they may be doing all the heavy lifting, but if they ignore me and put the sofa in the kitchen I'm screwed if they leave and don't put it right.  Ok that analogy sucked a little.  All I would like from guys involved with feminism is that they recognise the marginalisation, and try not to let there be more of the same in their actions and those around them.

As for guys informing on feminist issues, it was Roger's comments and experience of porn stars and how the life can seriously fuck them up that started me questioning if porn was something I wanted to consume and therefore be complicit in.  I decided no "DO NOT WANT!" and have since been fapping to pictures of James Iha in a dress. I'm not for censorship, and if I was 100% without a doubt sure that "no porn stars were hurt in this production" like the RSPCA does with animals in films I could watch enthusiastic people fucking who have a connection based on mutual respect and fap my brains out, rather than worrying if the girl getting double-penetrated in the ass is coked up to cope or in danger of getting HIV.   I've been educated on these kinds of things by men, having a penis is not a bar to being ethical and decent.

Dudes in feminism (I'm hoping there will be some blokes in dresses! With Beards, because that is HAWT!) can speak to other dudes about Shit That Is Not OK when it comes to rape culture and wage gap and like Roger's examples of Shit He Will Not Tolerate, because for a long time its been a bit like David Cameron telling Nadine Dorries to "Calm down, dear!" when she got wound up in Parliament. (the fact that she's a anti-choicer advocating abstinence only sex ed for girls is infuriating as his attitude, but hey..) The wage gap would drop pretty quickly if household chores and childcare were more equitable, and the custody of kids in a divorce would change and be more in favour of joint custody, and boys who like wearing dresses and playing with dolls will get the same treatment as girls who are tomboys.

Maybe the anger and frustration at being marginalised and not taken seriously has coloured my view and the view of feminists, hence the need to be listened to and taken seriously.

I wholeheartedly want men to engage with feminism, to help us speak truth to power, because in some cases that is the only way to access the boys club mentality of some men and people in power, and the only way to affect social change.

Maybe it's not a matter of "speaking truth to power"?

If you're going to bring power into this (which I suppose makes perfect sense) then I'm pretty much as marginalised as you are. I'm a guy, I have all the "privileges" as you put it. I'm living the life of Riley, right? I'm one of the elite. I'm a hard as fuck, asskicking testosterone machine, marching on the skeletons of women. Only I'm not. I grew up in a fucking shithole where the girls were harder than most men I associate with nowadays. Disputes were solved almost exclusively with violence and you either learned to fight or you didn't make it out of there alive.

By the time I went to secondary school my card was already marked. I was one of those Westquarter kids. We were lumped together in the same form class, along with the kids from the other local blackspots. When kids from the other classes were being given careers advice meetings and told to go to university and shit, we were being told that half of us would end up in prison. As far as I'm aware, more than half of us did.

So yeah, I'm part of the elite. I have no idea what it feels like to be discriminated against. I have nothing in common with some poor oppressed woman who's only on a paltry ten times my salary, as opposed to her husband who's nearer twenty times.

This is where sliding scales of privilege come in, and the concept of Kyriarchy. I'm a socialist before I'm a feminist, and socio-economic conditions and access to a decent education is fucking important.  I use Kyriarchy as a concept far more often than I use patriarchy, as it's got much more room for nuance.

http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2008/04/kyriarchy_not_p

this is a good quote about patriarchy from the comments page of that blog.

Patriarchy never meant 'men are the oppressors, and no other form of oppression matters'.
It means 'rule of the fathers', not rule of men. It does refer to the concept of a small group of rich, mostly white, able-bodied etc. men ruling over other men as well as women.
This allows for the fact that some women have privileges over others, too, but women as a group have in general less privilege than men as a group, I think.

What I mean about "speaking truth to power" is that some dudes with privilege (and as a dude from a rough spot in town who has had similar health problems to me, you don't really have that kind of privilege, on that level, we probably are close on the spectrum, we have more in common than a rich white girl who went to Oxford, that's for fucking sure.) who are involved with feminism are more likely to be taken seriously than I am, or you are, on certain things.

Am I explaining myself better now? 

[P3nT4gR4m]

What I mean about "speaking truth to power" is that some dudes with privilege (and as a dude from a rough spot in town who has had similar health problems to me, you don't really have that kind of privilege, on that level, we probably are close on the spectrum, we have more in common than a rich white girl who went to Oxford, that's for fucking sure.) who are involved with feminism are more likely to be taken seriously than I am, or you are, on certain things.

Am I explaining myself better now?

Totally. Now we're both on exactly the same fucking page, from what I can tell and all it took was to get rid of "feminism" and replace it with the much broader brush of "equality". Not equality for women. Equality for everybody. The acceptance that everyone, men, women, blacks, jews, gays and straight people are marginalised and discriminated against in a million different ways, every minute of every day. The fact that you have an innie, rather than an outie does not give you exclusivity over being shit on. We're all in the same fucking boat!

[Bu🤠ns]

It seems to me that it's not necessarily about male vs. female so much as it's about the way in which Patriarchy hurts both males and females.  What doesn't really work for me is how there's this term, "male tears" that seems to be assumed when someone brings up the idea that men too are hurt by Patriarchy. 

Being a male, the idea of fully egalitarian viewpoint, makes more sense than only focusing on the effects of a patriarchal society has on women.  It seems that the opposition isn't just men or even misogynistic men, but it's ourselves and our own fundamental assumptions about each of our roles in our society. 

To be perfectly clear, after reading this thread (and some other sources), I'm fully convinced that feminism raises legitimate concerns.  This fight involves everyone but the dynamic of how it affects men and how it affects women is what differs.  And, thus far, it seems women definitely get hurt to a larger extent.  To reach that egalitarian ideal, however, it's about finding ways to address both sides.

I have to admit, though, I'm not fully convinced of this notion of 'male privilege'. Please understand, I believe it exists in many forms, i.e. the pay rate and the concept of a rape culture to name a (big) few. But it looks like the way it's measured leaves out of the further reaching consequences of it's role in oppressing men (read: all of society) as well. This thread is about exposing how Patriarchy hurts men also.  This isn't 'male tears' because the following examples directly or indirectly also hurt females based on their ensuing behaviors.

-lack of male nurses
-the lack of male teachers
-how it's 'unmanly' to show emotions
-male sexual and domestic assault victims
-the lack of a balanced household of a father who is never around (anecdotal, but still)
-the fact that men are more likely to be recruited into the military to die for the country.
-expectation to 'man up'
-nice guy syndrome (or undefined expectations resulting in manipulative behavior).
-promotion of binary gender roles.
-sexual prowess as a measure of one's worth.

In all, I have to question a lot of the buzzwords associated with feminism.  If this really is the age of Third Wave feminism, a lot of the terms resonate with first and second wave.  I don't propose to get rid of any of them, but I definitely think that it would immensely help to define the terms more carefully. 

The oppressed are largely female but not exclusively. 

And the fight, isn't against another group but against our own basic assumptions.

So please to deconstruct.

[Bu🤠ns]

Okay i just read about kyriarchy and, once again I'm back to the drawing board....so nevermind what I just said.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I like this term Kyriarchy. It seems to describe the far more complex and shifting reality, as compared to the more static perception that feminism, racism, etc lend themselves to.