I was going to write up something today about International Men’s Day, the me-too what-about-the-menz holiday that’s so meaningless that even Men’s Rights activists can barely remember to celebrate it. Do we really need a day to “celebrate [the] achievements and contributions” of men? Don’t we get quite a lot of that already? Do we need a day given over to “highlighting the discrimination against [men]” as if this is really a thing?
But then I discovered that today was also World Toilet Day, and realized it was probably more worthwhile to promote this event, as the lack of toilets and proper sanitation — a widespread problem in parts of the developing world, particularly in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa — can have devastating public health consequences.
Some disturbing facts, from the UN, which I clipped from this CNN story:
- 2.5 billion people — one in three people in the world — do not have a toilet or access to sustainable sanitation
- Diarrheal diseases are the second most common cause of death in young children in developing countries
- They kill more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and measles combined
Learn more at the official website. Also, Al Jazeera has a useful infographic.
And just a note to the MRAs who have somehow concluded from this post that I am comparing men or men’s issues to toilets (!?), let me try to make my point very clear: I am contrasting a sharply focused activist campaign aimed at a very real problem — lack of toilets and proper sanitation in large parts of the developing world — with large consequences — disease and death, of adults and children alike — with a badly thought out International Men’s Day that seems largely driven by jealousy that “women get a day so why can’t we have one too.”
How halfassed is International Men’s Day? Here’s a screenshot of the International Men’s Day website’s “resources” page.
Generally speaking, you would expect a “resources” page to list facts and figures and possibly link to relevant other groups. All you get at the International Men’s Day site are some posters made from stock photos.
What I found on the site’s “about” page was much more troubling. The site was put online by a group called the Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation, working with the founder of International Men’s Day, Dr Jerome Teelucksingh. The Dads4Kids Fatherhood Foundation, as I discovered with a bit of Googling, turns out to be a virulently homophobic and transphobic organization that is also behind a site called Gendermatters.com. A quasi-manifesto on the site titled 21 Reasons Why Gender Matters asserts, among other things, that:
Transsexuality signals a deceptively fierce disorder. Elective castration, mastectomy, hysterectomy, etc., are futile non-solutions. The cruel, permanent disfigurement of so-called gender reassignment is not the answer. Transsexuals need psychological and spiritual insight that frees them to celebrate the chromosomes they received at conception.
So, yeah, a halfassed men’s “day” that’s associated with transphobic assholes. Not exactly a winning combination.
Look, if you’re concerned about making a difference in the lives of men, pick the issue that matters most to you, and work on that. If you want to increase funding for prostate cancer research, work on that. If you want to raise money to help male victims of domestic violence, work on that. Actually do the hard work of activism. Don’t just have yourself a “day” and pretend that it means something.
EDIT: Rewrote part of the first paragraph and added all the stuff after the Al Jazeera link to clarify the point of this post, because clearly some people have missed the point entirely.
Ah of course! I hadn’t notice there was a new Pierre.
Hellkell
Okay, this time I’m genuinely confused. I get you disagreeing with the ‘nugget’–it’s a personal opinion, nothing more, and I have no vested interest in it. (Serrana’s ‘may not have intended to be a troll but turned into one’ also strikes me as a fairly solid read of her meltdown.) But I don’t think I threw anything actually objectionable into the rest of the mountain of ‘splain, other than the fact that it was a big wall of text. If any portion of that was either flat-out wrong or just objectionably phrased, I’d appreciate having it highlighted so I can avoid it in the future.
I’m just not sure why it had to be dissected, but whatever.
I really took issue with a dude saying who’s a bad feminist.
I thought it was about Moma Sita’s comment
Yes, talacaris, it was.
Eh, the dissection thing’s a habit of mine, in part because finding the specific gaps in logic/debate tactics helps me later the next time I find them. When making such posts in the future, though, I’ll try to highlight ’em at the beginning, because I do know well enough that lots of folks don’t care about it one way or another.
On the second point… Well, shit, you’re right, that WAS bad of me. Sorry about that. I’ll try to make sure I don’t cross that particular line again.
It’s OK. I’m just really wary of calling anyone a “bad” feminist. I don’t agree with radfems or Clarisse Thorn at all about most things, but I’m not going to say they’re not feminists or not good feminists because of it.
I feel pretty comfortable calling Hugo Fuckin’ Schwyzer a bad feminist at this point.
😉
cloudiah: you could go further and say he’s no feminist at all.
Good point.
I haz a disappoint. Am I a man or a woman? Why will nobody explaaaaainnnn?
Do we need a Manboobz bat signal to let everyone know that there are potential lulz to be had?
The important thing is that you’re feral, Kitteh.
CassandraSays – Why a bat? I would think that we’d be better represented by cats. *nod*
But Kittehs is a feral cat from ye olde days, whereas I am a feral anime kitty.
Someone is making an ass of themselves on Manboobz. Unleash the CatSignal!
(It occurs to me that following this logic we’ll probably also end up with a CatBus.)
This is true, it’s our feral feralness that matters.
The Catsignal!
kittehs, you’re a man. I’m sorry you had to find out this way. 😉
On the plus side, that thing on his shoulder turned out to be a cat rather than a massive furry tumor. Glass half full and all that.
(Until we start the drinking game.)
I wanna be a cat viper.
Given that my name is the only one being capitalized I think I may be the capital city of CatViperLand.
You may be the Supreme cat viper.
That’s a relief. Furry tumours are the worst.
cat viper
“In this case, it’s true that in other countries, as in America, intersectionality causes women who do not appear to be ‘local’ to be targeted more by predators, who rely on in-group thinking on the part of authorities to partly shield them from reprisal. In nations that are not white-majority (or more accurately, white-dominant; it certainly wouldn’t have applied in South Africa during apartheid), this is going to include the targeting of white women”
” It’s true that globally, HIV infection is (or at least was, I admit I haven’t seen recent statistics of the global HIV population) a heterosexual condition.”
Holy shit freemage did you actually just say exactly what I was saying? Why the fuck are you asshats being so anti-social? YOU JUST ADMITTED I WAS RIGHT!And “begrudgingly” admit black women have issues of stereotypes abroad-it was not begrudgingly you twit. I was only focusing on white women because that’s what my post was about. I did not want to make it so broad. Mentioning white women is the reason they accused me of being racist so that’s what I was defending. You even admit I was right about the heterosexual stats. Did you even fucking read my post or who I was replying too before joining your cliquish jackals? How the fuck do you NOT contribute to a hostile environment?
“I thought it was about Moma Sita’s comment”
So talacaris you admit you have no clue what youre doing. Youre just disagreeing with something because for irrational reasons you simply don’t like that person. You were going to dismiss freemages post above not because of its content or if it was true or not but because you thought it was me writing it.
Gawd you guys are a bunch of fucking idiots. YOU KNOW in the real world you’d be completely shut out for issues of not being fair, having honest and mature dialog or even knowing what the fuck youre talking about?
Hey petal, you still haven’t told anyone why I’m a man.
If this blog is soooooooo terrible, why are you still here throwing shitfits?
I thought you were going to tell David how nasty we all are? You seem to have missed that he told you to stop digging already, which rather suggests he’s not going to come rushing in and ban everyone except you.
If you want a blog for showing opinions the way you want it to, make your own. It’s free, y’know, and then you can make the rules.