Great post by Ozymandias on her blog on the subject of “Who cares about men’s rights?” (Answer, Ozymandias, for one.) She offers a devastating critique of the Men’s Rights Movement and a critique of feminism I think I half-agree with as well. (She critiques feminists for not caring enough about men’s issues and responding to them with “but what about the menz” mockery; I think she’s got a point, but the fact is that lots of feminists do in fact work on behalf of men and men’s issues, from feminists involved in fighting for men and women falsely accused of sex crimes to feminist shelter workers who work on a regular basis to help male victims of abuse.)
Anyway, you should pop on over and read it.
It’s being discussed all over Reddit as well.
The post also inspired a debate on the old “chicks only want to date jerks” thing, which she’s broken out into a separate post.
EDITED TO ADD: And now The Spearhead has noticed the post.
Here’s the reply I left on Ozy’s blog, in case anyone’s interested:
“I agree with most of what you say, Ozy. However, I do think that feminism *does* help men (and even other groups). Feminists tend to be supportive of men who don’t fit the “manly” mold; LGBT rights are a very common topic brought up in feminism, and feminists want fathers to be more involved. Most (if not nearly all) feminists believe that childcare should be split evenly, especially considering that many households now have both parents working.
Unfortunately, feminists can’t fight everything at once, so it’s up to other groups to fill the other nooks and crannies. It’s not fair to expect feminists to do everything for MRAs; there’s just too much to cover. If MRAs could focus on male issues without blaming women/feminists/feminism, then I’d gladly join. However, I’ve seen nothing but scathing hatred, which offends me and makes me turn away.”
tl;dr: I agree that men and boys have issues that we need to pay more attention to and try to resolve, but expecting feminists to pick up everyone’s problems is unfair; it’s like criticizing an autism-awareness group for not talking more about clinical depression or bi-polar disorder.
Think this will get some of our resident MRA’s to admit that feminists are willing to criticize women?
Me neither.
@Seraph well I’ve been criticizing other feminists, and talking about problems w/ bullying and pressures boys face and stuff about the way boys are pushed to accept head injuries and suck it up and etc etc in sports, and SO MANY feminist blogs I know do so on the same vein about father’s rights or etc… and apparently none of us count, so I wouldn’t hold your breath xD But given that this is going viral, maybe it’ll change something. :]
@David @Arielle yeah I had some of the same caveats, it’s in the post I wrote a post about her post :3 (on my bloggy blog :3 ) but it’s rly powerful and passionate and hope ppl who rly need to pay attention pay attention 😀
I absolutely agree that feminism helps men.
There could be nothing more freeing that eroding gender stereotypes and tired gender roles.
When in college (when dinosaurs roamed the earth and MTV played music videos) I had funny colored hair, all kinds of ear piercings (long before the bod mod movement made this vanilla) and wore oddball clothing, nail polish and eyeliner. OK, more than a bit influenced by Robert Smith, but still…. I miss being able to be more decorative.
My hair never looked like ami’s though XP
A lot of the reason I like hanging out here is that we DO get to talk about the menz. Here “but women can rape men too!” is not considered derailing.
“I’m short and I hate fat chicks” is still derailing though 🙂
Arielle, I think an important point relevant to this gets overlooked sometimes: People who are feminists usually are interested in other issues. People who are feminists often care about race issues, environmental issues, other social justice issues, etc. And roughly half of the people affected by those issues are men. So it’s misleading to say that “feminism” doesn’t care about men, because feminists (such as Ozymandias), as people who care about people in general, care about men.
I like how the commenters on the MensRights Reddit are continuously misgendering the author :/
@zombie my hair is awesome XD except right now it looks like a reverse skunk >_>;; i was wondering, what did you do to your hair? :3 I’m always intrigued by this cuz hair is awesome and a great way to express yourself 😀
Can you set up polls on the side of this thing btw Davd? 😮 (off topic) was just wondering if having a poll for the theme of this week’s open thread (just to kick off the party, like w/ music last week) would be fun? :3
i was wondering, what did you do to your hair
Color: blonde; black; strawberry blonde.
Short; long; short; long; pigtail.
but then I graduated. For a while I had the pigtail, but it could only stay concealed down my shirt collar for so long, then had to go. It was time anyway.
Now, it’s just gray. But its still there!
except right now it looks like a reverse skunk
Also, I think that is great, it’s like Debby Harry.
I used to have like four or five ear piercings between the two ears, can’t remember which. When I went all professional, had to go back to just the one, in the “NON GAY” ear. but I could still get a second one in if I had to, for festivals.
Nowadays, I just seem like a sad old graybeard pirate, so I rarely wear ear jewelry.
Sigh. Gender roles and expectations, so sad.
🙁
Even for zombies huh? :
Feminism doesn’t care about zombies enuf : *protests*
Speaking of which, here’s a funny story.
Back when I was an undergraduate, going to college in Cowtown, Wisconsin, one weekend a friend and I decided it was time to get our ears pierced. We wandered down to Main Street, finding an open jewelry store, and told the girl behind the counter we were getting our ears pierced. She started writing it up, when the little old guy in the back glared at us and said “we don’t do men”.
“…..?”
“we don’t do men.”
My friend said “what, are your TOOLS so inadequate you can’t pierce a MAN.?”
“we don’t do men.”
Heh. We were already half-drunk, so we prevailed on a couple of friends to drive us down to Dubuque to a mall that had a Piercing Pagoda, we both got punched, and she split the standard piercing fee between us because we both took one.
It was funny.
o_o
I’m glad times changed, sry that happened tho >:| When I got my ears pierced, I was still passing as “male” and thankfully the places I went were okay w/ it even tho it was v much a girly store xD
I never got the whole “one ear makes you gay the other doesnt” thing.. xD i never remembered which ear either… o_o
“[E]xpecting feminists to pick up everyone’s problems is unfair”
Hell yes.
Oh, yeah, they don’t “do” men, huh? Lesbian piercing parlor!!
Alright, I give up. I hate doing this, because, you know, GOOGLE and all…but what in the everloving fuck does KFS stand for? The big G refuses to cough it up.
F— MRAs: it’s an acronym that Ozy’s commenter made up, I think? It stands for ‘Kind, Funny, Smart’.
Or, to answer a different way, it’s the new generation’s ‘Nice Guy’.
KFS stands for Kind, Funny, Smart. They mention it in the article a little further down.
And I love zombie, greybeard pirates! =D
Ok, ok! I love talking about my hair, and now I’m totally going to.
It’s been bright pink, an ugly blueish/greenish/grey, bleach blonde, bright orange, black, dirty blond, brown, silver, blue, blue and silver streaks, dark purple, bright purple, green, orange with black streaks, blond with pink streaks, and right now is brown with bond streaks.
It’s been grown long, down past my shoulder blades, cut into a series of really ugly, really short hair cuts, and then shaved off, at which point I rocked the socks off of being bald. And then it started to grow back and I rocked the socks off of various lengths of buzz cuts, and a number of weird cuts that I just sort of made up. And now I’m working on a sexy mullet.
Should I post pictures? I love the crazy stuff I’ve done with my hair! =D
Ozymandias is just all kinds of awesome, there’s no question about it.
As for hair, one day I want to dye mine green.
The Muslim world should comment on what she had said. But then who is she anyway ? Just a tool in some political organization wishing to get more support and more power in the country. Bottom line is it is about Islam.
I had funny colored hair, all kinds of ear piercings (long before the bod mod movement made this vanilla) and wore oddball clothing, nail polish and eyeliner.
*Is briefly distracted by men in eyeliner. Ponders how ending men’s oppression also benefits self, just as ending women’s oppression benefits men, in order to pretend distraction reflects depth and not prurience.*
I respect Ozy and agree with some of that post, but not all of it. My experience has been that many or most feminists do care deeply about all of those issues. They do not, however, take kindly to being told that they need to drop everything they are doing to work on men’s issues instead of women’s issues, with no help from the people making the criticism. Or having every conversation about [women’s issue X] be derailed into a conversation about [men’s issue Y]. I do think that this very common dynamic frequently does lead to feminists shutting down those conversations, maybe too quickly, but it is somewhat understandable. But I don’t think that proves feminists, as a group, don’t care. I suspect that a men’s rights advocate whose contribution to a conversation, for example, about rape is “Would you experienced anti-rape advocates care to advise a new anti-rape advocacy group focusing on prison rape of men?” would be received rather differently than one whose contribution is “Men have it way worse, look at prison rape, and bitches be lying anyway, QED, feminism is stupid and pointless.”
The “gay ear” thing. *shakes head* I can’t count the number of times I have told heteros that if something is a secret queer code, they probably don’t know about it-because having a coded way to secretly pick up other queer people fails if a bunch of heteros know it.
Moving on, are KFS to “Nice guys” what “nice guys” are to SNAGs? These jerkos have been around for a while. When a person holds ideas like that about women-that they are all liars, fools, etc.-they are not being nice, kind, or sensitive, they are being asses. The fact that women aren’t dating them does not show women only date jerks, it shows that women are avoiding at least a certain subset of jerks.
As to my hair, I don’t think I have ever done anything wild with it, except cutting it all off. I always hated it long (it was an aspergers trigger and one of the focal points of my mother’s abuse). So, at twenty, I finally got up enough guts to get it almost completely cut off. I went from curls half way down my back to two inch long fluff. The hairdresser literally cried and begged me not to do it. Ha, I had already told someone who spent years beating me over not wanting it that I was chopping it off, like that was going to deter me. I cut my own hair now, which saves money and stress. It looked pretty terrible the first time, but I have been cutting it on my own for a year now and have gotten pretty good.