why? this is all the results of men being in power, including the odd thing that favors women sometimes, like custody battles being usually easier for women. it comes from the patriarchal view that looking after children is the mother’s job and the father barely needs to have anything to do with it.
same here: men are stronger and women are weaker, not to mention women shouldn’t be working to begin with but since they do they might as well retire early.
To me as a layman it immediately brings up a connection to feminism. I don’t think that anybody who will want to get men to think different will get very far using the word “patriarchy”, given men being more right leaning.
There isn’t much substance to my argument than “nuh uh I don’t like that word” but it is what it is. There must be some better approach “marketing wise”, despite patriarchy being technically correct.
Kyriarchy refers to the overlap of various inequalities caused by gender, race, sexuallity and disability describing overlaps of cross sectionality. It also refers to the practice of problems created by assumed superiority.
Britain did until quite recently. Then a group of men went to court, I think hoping to get the men’s age lowered to that of women. But of course the government raised the women’s age to that of men.
The “of course” makes it clear you dislike the outcome. The long mention of the men who in your eyes “caused” this also makes it pretty obvious what your stance is about this and who you want to be the scapegoat in the discussion.
The “of course” makes it clear you dislike the outcome
Only inasmuch as a desirable outcome would have been the lowering of the age of retirement for men to either that of women or meeting both on the middle. The issue is that the government being the government took it as an excuse to effectively cut welfare.
The long mention of the men who in your eyes “caused” this
To be honest it probably just brought it on sooner. The government would have found it as excuse to raise the retirement age without it being highlighted to them.
also makes it pretty obvious what your stance is about this and who you want the scapegoat to be in the discussion.
Wow that’s some projection. You are reading deeply between the lines to find your take on that one.
I immediately got it as “why would the people in power ever make it easier for those not” but hey why bother with nuanced takes when the Internet will allow you to be angry at your specific beliefs as if they are the only truth, right?
It may be real, but I’m finding a Russian nesting doll’s worth of references to other sites when I try to find more info. The closest I can get is a blurb on this website, which claims to get its info from an AFP article it doesn’t link to.
People gonna make this a trans thing and not a gender equality one… in most things women get the shitty treatment but with retirement and mental health its men
i’m going to make it both. we really do need to advance women’s equality before we let men take their identities in order to dilute the few offsets women have had legislated for them.
just like how many affirmative action band-aids are being ripped off before poc have actually gotten equal footing in society, we are pushing women’s advances backwards by pretending that we live in an equal society and allowing men to take advantage of the mechanisms meant to promote equality.
To be fair, the men’s rights movement is absolutely characterized as alt-right by the mainstream media. People tend to assume all sorts of things about you when you bring up any kind of men’s issue. Most people (including other men) have difficulty empathizing with grown men, and thus they subconsciously expect that men’s advocates are motivated by something else, such as misogyny. It’s hard to move past our biological and cultural tendencies and view men as vulnerable and in need of support.
Depends on the approach. In a lot of queer friendly spaces men’s issues are generally accepted as incredibly valid as gay and trans men tend to get pretty hardcore beat down by failing to pass the bar of the expectations of cultural masculinity and on average they require more outside help from services or others because they are less likely to be able to return to their families to escape abusive relationships and face addictional precarity.
But the difference tends to be a general understanding that while women definitely get it and can absolutely sympathize they also aren’t in a particularly great position to change things in a general sense because women also have to regularly fight against social power of systems that depower their autonomy that are fronted by men and they generally have to see to their own needs before being able to do the administrative work on men’s behalf.
It’s emergency airplane crash logic. Put your own supply of air on before you help the person next to you. If your job, legislature, judicial system and potential funding structure is only made up of a minority of women you are asking a lot of people who don’t have institutional power to flex even on their own behalf and a lot of women have deep seated anger regarding that disparity so when someone tries to pile more on their plates the gut reaction is to throw it back. Women might be willing to assist, but they aren’t going to accept doing the lions share of the required admin for another group when they have other priorities. The same goes for queer groups, racial minority groups, religious minorities, disability affected groups and so on. They might have room on their plate to show up to your protest… But usually that requires you to you show a willingness to reciprocate and show up to theirs.
generally have to see to their own needs before being able to do the administrative work on men’s behalf.
Same logic applies to men as well. And I don’t like your perspective of said groups always being enemies of each other. If this perspective was uniformly adopted, queers will never have their rights because they are a minority. While the majority groups only fighting for theirs. IMHO we need to look at all these as human rights and human values. Not gay rights, trans rights, women’s rights or men’s rights. Otherwise we don’t get anywhere.
That’s not quite what I mean. It’s not that they are enemies of each other it is just that reciprocity is a road to success. A lot of the LGBTQIA for instance is solidarity based. Everyone has their main concern that focuses their own needs. Like folks who push for asexual stuff is different than say trans stuff. You wouldn’t go to an allosexual trans person to get your marching orders for organizing for Ace things or vice versa. They have independent agendas and groups who do the main work. Successful adgendas put in the primary effort and give lower effort tasks to do to allies.
Like okay, example. There’s the regular list of regular concerns from men’s advocacy groups. Education accommodations to close gaps for students and resources for domestic abuse shelters for men. Those are two very common issues. On their own however it doesn’t matter how often you say it, I could agree with you those would be good thing but that isn’t enough…
You need someone dedicated to actually create the initiative. Maybe organize a group of psychology professionals to advocate to a school board for changes or set up a non-profit to get shelters going… Governments generally only adopt things once a model has been tested so just getting shit done to prove your model has to usually be grassroots : That’s the stuff that a primary organizer does. It’s tough work. It takes a lot of free time and dedication. There’s admin aspects where you need to talk to professionals, get a dedicated core of like minded people together and point them in a direction, deal with a lot of very impassioned ideas clashing against each other and hours of effort. It’s a frustrating blood, sweat and tears endeavor. Most people have the energy at most to do one of these maybe two during their lifetime. A lot of people can’t manage it even once. Chances are nobody is going to sign on to help you with this generally unless they got enough skin in your game.
Look back at the history of the LGBTQIA and you will find hundreds of fairly small groups working this way for very specific initiatives. The main people of those group’s cores are usually either people of that specific queer minority who are directly effected or family or friends of a minority member who died.
But what a primary group creates is secondary tasks. Maybe they create the charity that does the main work and other people who want to help but don’t have time to volunteer kick money into it. The primary group organizes the protest and post the posters and reach out to allies… and all the allies need to do is show up.
With a lot of men’s advocacy groups there’s this toothless helplessness where they aren’t asking people to join in to do secondary tasks. They just state problems that exist. It kind of comes across to groups that are more used to organizing like they aren’t giving trying to give someone a job they are trying to convince you to start their small business for them from scratch.
I don’t think anybody is expecting women to do administrative work on behalf of men’s rights. It’s more that women tend to react with outright hostility when men advocate for other men.
It’s actually the feminists who frequently argue that men need to be fighting for women’s issues. I haven’t seen the reverse from male advocates, partially because it’s quite obvious that such a request would be summarily denied. Men generally just want:
funding for men’s shelters
sympathy & aid for male victims of domestic violence and sexual assault
solutions for the growing educational achievement gap
a discussion about various legal discrepancies when it comes to conscription, marriage, and parental rights and responsibilities.
None of this requires women to assist or flex their institutional power. But when men are systematically denied access and funding for various forms of governmental aid, it seems like certain women are flexing some of their institutional power to prevent men from having access to the same kind of social safety net that women enjoy.
It’s emergency airplane crash logic. Put your own supply of air on before you help the person next to you.
This is a faulty analogy, because men’s issues are women’s issues and vice versa. It’s impossible for women to actually solve their own problems without also solving men’s problems. How are women ever going to keep their oxygen masks on if they are surrounded by men who are suffocating and trying to rip the mask from their face? In order to help anyone, you need to help everyone.
You miss my point. What mens advocacy groups are missing is that they aren’t doing the primary work required. They just kind of expect that stating the issues are enough.
Like let’s take the mens shelter thing. Cool. I agree… So Where do I donate? Who is doing the admin? What’s the aim, the targets. What is the method? Who’s talking to the accountants and doing the paperwork and signing the papers. Are you seeking a grant? Who’s filing it? Who’s name is on the lease for the property? Who do I contact to volunteer my time?
… Wait you want me to be that guy who creates all that framework? You want me to pay for the lawyers and, wrangle the committee and spend my nights arranging experts and to set up the charity? Okay… Why me exactly? I am a transmasc non-binary person fighting for my union to cover trans healthcare and showing up to city halls to stop book bans and bathroom bills. I totally have like 5 hours free on a Tuesday you can have or maybe $50 out of my pocket to an organized cause but that’s not exactly gunna help you unless someone does the framework to make that useful…and I am sorry but like hell am not about to throw myself on that particular beaurcratic sword. Doing that for a cause that directly effects my security to exist in public is hard enough.
Saying “we should have men’s shelters” is not giving someone a actionable task. People love actionable tasks! They are easy : show up here and protest, go here and donate, go here to run a fundraiser, volunteer here sign this petition etc etc etc… But just plunking "We need mens shelters somewhere is basically low key implying you aren’t personally asking the listener to do anything… Or you are asking them to do everything. Like I can totally agree all these things are worthy endeavors… But you aren’t giving me a framework here for my endorsement to translate into anything helpful. Okay. Shelters got it I agree. Job done, argument won. Victory. Woo.
Doing the primary work is not fun or intuitive or easy. But what it CAN be is managed by a very small team. The initial investment is always in personal time money and extreme frustration and growing the thing takes patience.
Look to the LGBTQIA model and you will find a myriad of different small independent groups generally focused around singular letters of the acronym who have a diehard core and damn near always the people who founded them were the people who experienced the problem directly or the surviving loved ones of people who died. The circle of secondary supporters are usually more varied but the Leaders basically need to be able to devote at least around 100 man hours apeice per year doing pretty intense work that involves a lot of key decision making. If you really are fired up about making this thing real that’s the bit that needs to be done so other people can push it. Or find someone already doing the thing and support them. Amplify their message and organization. Grow them.
Allies are also more likely if you create solidarity. Try partnering with a women’s shelter group to learn their process, reach out to the Gay community to tap their activism networks by explaining how your interests intersect, cross promote. Be prepared to reciprocate. Nobody likes selfish people who take up all the oxygen in the room. People will find time to help people who make reasonable direct asks that respect the time and resources needed to attend to their own admin first.
But in general I don’t see this engagement style from cis straight men’s activism groups. A lot of the time they seem to be fairly unhealthy because they just want to ruminate on how life sucks while practically nobody steps up to the plate to do the critical and nessisary front work. I just hear “women don’t care”, “nobody cares” “this should happen”… But what I NEVER hear “Okay, here’s our plan. Let’s meet.” “do this.” “support this.” “here’s how to effectively ask for this”, “support this court case” “I’m throwing a fundraiser” “let’s build our own shelter”… If you aren’t asking these things of each other then you have zero business demanding it of anyone else.
And if someone comes at me with “well I DO run or support a thing but nobody seems to care…” there’s usually some kind of reason why people aren’t latching. Chances are good if you aren’t crowing your most modest successes as wins and keeping hope and optimism as your center people are going to doubt your ability to deliver on your intentions. You can’t afford to mope, you need to change your approach, experiment and figure out what your winning formula is, replicate it, amplify it CELEBRATE it.
Because if no one actually cares… If you can’t advocate, If that actually is the implicit nature of the world there is no sense in complaining. You are fucked. You might as well go down fighting.
I keep wanting to light a fire under your asses. These things are worth fighting for but so often you don’t realize what you are doing to yourselves. You keep reinforcing your learned helplessness while looking at stuff that people worked damn hard to make real through individual personal effort and sighing over how that isn’t happening for you. That stuff didn’t just pop up out of the ground because someone clapped their hands and believed in fairies. Somebody get boots on the fucking ground already!
If you can’t find someone doing the admin for the thing that’s your ride or die issue then you have to create one and chances are good that person is gunna have to be you. Nobody is generally lining up to take that gig… You can keep trying to convince rando people to try and take on your heaviest burdens but chances are all its going to do is make you angry when they just shoulder their own pack leaving you with nothing but a few kind words of encouragement before moving on down the road. You get a lot more faith in humanity when you hand them an item or two from your pack to carry for you as most people will help you out under that circumstance.
Because I’ve been conditioned to never question laws, and never learned to mentally deal with contradictions in society I’m mad at the pronouns now! Those darn pronouns!
Is this an actual question or are you being indignant? If you have actual questions can you please try to articulate them? If I try and answer you without knowing what questions you are asking, we are more likely to get frustrated.
I see. Well, i hope we never meet in person cuz this is just the way I tell jokes, and I’m always half joking. Watching you get irritated would probably only encourage me to keep doing it too
So, obviously, people don’t generally change their legal gender for an advantage somewhere. But if they do, that’s a pretty good sign, not that it’s too easy to change your gender, but that there’s a gender bias in the law.
So arguably, the easier it is to change your legal gender, the less of a problem gender-based affirmative action is. Conservatives must love this! End liberal overreach in one easy step!
I agree. The Daily Mail no doubt uses this as a way to say “legally changing your gender should be harder”, but that’s fixing the wrong problem. Gender fluidity isn’t the problem, gender inequality is.
Gender should be as unimportant as eye color in most things in life. If your system breaks from someone changing their gender, you need to fix your system.
Thing is, There are less women in STEM, there are less women in management position etc. Therefor, either women are less interested/worse at these things (which is the conservative view) or society itself treats women differently than men. The rational behind affirmative action and programs geared towards women isn’t that women are less skilled and therefore need more help, rather that society makes it harder for a woman achieve the same as a similarly skilled man. By treating women differently we can help level the playing field.
Also, making gender “as unimportant as eye color in most things in life” is a completely unrealistic goal in the near future even in the most liberal countries in the world. We can (and do) strive to reach it, but that’s not a viable solution for issues we have right now.
And you know what? Legally changing your gender SHOULD be harder than filling a form. Someone who’s transgender should have no problem showing that’s what they are. The thing is to make sure the legal process is done respectfully, without making the person feel like they’re being interrogated.
[…], there are less women in management position etc. Therefor, either women are less interested/worse at these things (which is the conservative view) or society itself treats women differently than men.
For management its actually a quite complex problem. First of all, women themselves seem to underestimate themself more than men and so don’t apply for higher jobs(e.g. Manager) since they underestimate their skills and potential thinking, they aren’t able to suit such a role, even tho they could. At the same time the manager(etc.) Are mostly males, so the stereotypical view of a manager iis a guy, which may also lead to women not believing in themselves. When women do apply for a higher role they often get overlooked. They get judged much more critical in terms of skills, while their potential often gets overlooked. This causes female applicants to often not get accepted for said positions. This is also one of the reasons, why women are less likely(around 14%) to get a promotion. Last but not least the typical Charakter traits that a manager needs, are often associated with masculinity(e.g. Strength, endurance, rationality,…).
Yeah, there’s a similar issue from the other side (at least in my country) - Men will usually apply for a job if they don’t meet all the requirements, while women won’t tend to do so.
Going on a tangent off “The traits that people typically associate with success in leadership, such as assertiveness and strength" (from the article), that almost sounds like something form the 50s - “Look here Johnson, I need those forms, and I need them yesterday, now get moving!”. Traits I associate with leadership (at least in high-skill modern work place) are good communication and motivation skills, ability to plan ahead and multi-tasking/ability to prioritize. Sure, once in a while a manager has to bang their fist against the table, but the real skill isn’t in banging on the table as hard as you can, it’s the ability get what you want without needing to do so in the first place. Point being that, if anything, womenarebettermanagers.
So arguably, the easier it is to change your legal gender, the less of a problem gender-based affirmative action is.
Gender-based public sector affirmative action exists to counterbalance discrimination in the private sector. I would argue that becoming trans to undermine gender-AA is penny wise and pound foolish, unless you were already tending towards that inclination.
But what I’m seeing here is “I’m changing my gender but only for the purposes of gaming the system, then I expect you to recognize me as my original gender again”. And that’s on par with carrying a pair of crutches in your trunk so you can park in handicapped spaces.
You don’t really want to take on the burden of being recognized as a woman. You just want to pocket a benefit in the public sector and then go back to your privileged position in the private sector.
I had a nephew that found out he could get a $500 bursary for trade school as a male, or $5000 as a female. A trip down to the DMV netted him (her) $4500.
because laws like this were made to offset the patriarchal dominance of a society shaped by men for centuries. it’s unfair to women to let men just take those offsets away from them and it’s the elephant in the room that nobody wants to address as they cheer for trans-women’s rights.
I mean with the different rules based on sex/gender can cause this sort of issues, having just one retirement age for everyone for example could be easier
i’m guessing you’re too young or foreign to remember what the economic landscape looked like in the 70’s/80’s early post civil rights era. there was rampant poverty in black communities, especially in the south where i’m from. affirmative action helped bring those people up from that (but didn’t finish the job - there is still rampant generational poverty). those were good government programs aimed at a more egalitarian society. sorry if that sounds ‘sketch’.
