Nah, men can and do have problems. This post is an example of a man problem. There are people on this post trying to claim that men and women suffer equally in this regard and arguing with people who are pointing out that this is wrong.
Men suffer from toxic body standards and would greatly benefit from body positivity and better representation in media. But men aren’t (as an entire class of people) getting harassed as 10 year olds by 40 year old men making comments about their bodies. Men aren’t (as an entire class of people) having relatives make open comments about the size of their secondary sex characteristics and their bodies in general. As a class you don’t experience this. Some individuals might, I’ve rarely met women who did not experience body policing from their earliest memories, ive rarely met women who have never experienced sexual harassment. The statistics are crystal clear in this regard.
Again, body positivity and better representation for diverse body types would be great for men too. No one is saying otherwise. Even that isn’t enough for women, because institutional misogyny exists at all levels of society and in nearly all people in society. Even well meaning and otherwise progressive people can and are misogynist. Even your family and friends are. Its impossible to simply change one thing. It requires a society wide change in tolerance for bigotry.
But men aren’t (as an entire class of people) getting harassed as 10 year olds by 40 year old men making comments about their bodies. Men aren’t (as an entire class of people) having relatives make open comments about the size of their secondary sex characteristics and their bodies in general
/*Pokes circumcised dick.
/*Looks at the countless men living their lives recieving no emotional support.
/*Looks at male suicide rates.
/*Looks at male domestic abuse rates.
/*Looks at history of men getting lynched.
/*Looks at what happens when a man wears a bun, has long hair, has piercings, has any sort of distinguishing features.
/*Looks at classic stereotypes of “fat stupid man”
/*Looks at people casually calling men fat.
/*Looks at stats showing men are more then twice as likely to face assault in public, are twice as likely to experience assault causing bodily injuries, are twice as likely recieve major injuries…
Like how you can look at the male suicide rates and just “nah there’s nothing deeper here” is beyond me.
I never said that men do not suffer in any way, I said that women’s body image issues are systemic ones that affect us for all our lives and from nearly everyone in our lives. It happens to every woman. Men’s body image issues are not systemic ones. Body shaming is a thing, but its not a social institution to severely sexually harass and assault men and boys. Almost every woman will experience sexual harassment and assault to some degree. It affects the entire class of women.
So a bunch of men experience the same thing completely independently from each other, and you’re here just assuming there aren’t systemic processes at play? Like do you just think men have some biological affinity for suits and ties? or Jeans and T-shirts? Or it’s just a coincidence or what? Like we live in a world of cause and effect, everything you see in society is a matter of systemic influences.
There are systemic problems for men as well. This conversation has gone largely beyond its scope, that being the way that body image issues for women are unique and particularly abhorrent. Misogyny is a system that also affects the lives of men by devaluing specific activities, clothes, opinions, personality traits etc. that society associates with women and girls. It reinforces misogynistic principles and affects the lives of women too. Men should be allowed to dress how they want to (so should women), work what jobs they want to, present themselves however they want to, and so on. All those things also affect women and the majority of them are based around discrimination towards women. “Pink is girly and therefore boys shouldn’t like pink” only functions if you think that being girly is bad or worse or lesser.
But there’s lots of systemic issues in society. Misogyny affects the entire class of women directly and the entire class of men indirectly. There are other systems that devalue men such the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, rape culture that discourages male victims from coming forward, and the wage slavery of late stage capitalism. Those things also affect women. And intersectional feminism examines the way that those systems interact and build upon one another. Misogyny is one of the most abhorrent things man has ever created, and me and all my friends live with and struggle against misogyny every single day. I think the scale of the problem is hard to understand if you don’t talk to a lot of women about their struggles. And when we do speak up more often than not we’re barely acknowledged at all, look at the backlash to misogyny in video games or the backlash to the epidemic of rape on college campuses. Those problems have never adequately been addressed in any capacity. When its women’s issues a quarter of society listens and cares enough to acknowledge the problems we face, half of society is ambivalent and does not react at all, and the remaining quarter actively believe in misogyny.
That phrase is meaningless lol, what part of my comment are you saying that to? The horrifying things that women experience every single day? Is the lived experiences of women and girls “oppression olympics” to you?
Is the lived experiences of women and girls “oppression olympics” to you?
Yes! Literally yes! You’re close to getting it!
“Women have it worse” is participating in oppression Olympics and it’s belittling men’s problems. I am not disputing the facts of how bad women have it. I don’t think anyone in this thread is.
I’m saying it’s irrelevant to the conversation at hand, and at BEST it’s a distraction.
This isn’t a men’s space. This is a public forum. I’m allowed to respond to anti feminism here and I will. That’s your own problem if you do not like it. And you’re openly using anti feminist nonsense yourself, shocking you didn’t like my initial comment.
I’m not picking a fight. I have been patient and fair in all my responses. I’ve already said this many times, but people were already talking about the way women suffer from body policing when I first viewed this post.
Only if you read it as “women’s issues don’t matter because men also have issues” which is honestly a problematic place for your mind to go. And clearly not the intent.
I am pretty sure that’s the punchline of the meme. “Women say they are unrealistically portraited in media, but look at how men are shown!”. That’s the oppresion olympics you pretend to be against, is it not?
Have you ever heard of “two for flinching”? That was (I hope) a thing back in my school days, whereby another boy would mime a physical attack, like a punch to the face, or body slam. When you instinctually recoiled, the other boy would delightedly proclaim, “two for flinching,” and punch you hard in the arm, twice. The message was clear.
Men as a class certainly do get policed by boys, girls, and adults about affect, height, weight, voice change, et cetera. I say this not to dismiss or downplay what girls experience, but to say that certainly happens. In fact, I’m certain that it’s two sides of the same coin, and it all needs to go away.
Dear confused men (hashtag: not all men): You have lots of problems. The vast majority are not caused by women. One of your problems is trying to blame us for many of the harmful things you do to yourselves, or that patriarchy/toxic masculinity does to you. Another problem is loathing it when women try to help you by explaining this to you but it isn’t what you want to hear bc it isn’t stroking your ego (or other bits). So there really isn’t much else to be done - your problems are yours to solve, and all we can do is try some damage control for ourselves while you guys bang your heads against the floor.
Sincerely - Feminists, who care about men, but not to the point of our own destruction any longer.
The meme is belittling feminism and/or women’s issues. If you don’t want to start a discussion, do not post provocative memes. Otherwise live with the discussion that will ensue.
So you feel like whenever people talk about how there are unrealistic body standards for women they also have to mention and talk about unrealistic body standards for men.
But at the same time you complain about feminists allegedly talking about feminist issues in discussions about men’s issues.
I feel like something doesn’t sound right with that logic…
One of your problems is trying to blame us for many of the harmful things you do to yourselves, or that patriarchy/toxic masculinity does to you.
Ummm… First of all men are not a collective, but aside from that…
Women are complicit in toxic masculinity, and patriarchy, you are aware of that right? Like women have the same ingrained societal baises.
It drives me insane that the academics that created the concept of toxic masculinity would be so friggen sexist in their connotations. That seems like a basic ethical consideration for someone studing gender, but apparently not!
(Proceeds to watch the subject bang his head repeatedly, injuring himself with the very same arguments he thinks he is making. Pointing out failure to read comprehensively might help, but more likely only increase the intensity by which he injures himself. It is a sad sight, one of many. She must move on.)
Feminists are perfectly capable of recognising toxic femininity and toxic androgyny. The difference between those and toxic masculinity is that toxic femininity encourages violence against women and enbies, toxic androgyny encourages violence against enbies, and toxic masculinity encourages violence against everyone. Violence against everyone is a big deal, maybe a bigger deal than lateral violence. I personally am less able to withstand lateral violence than indiscriminate violence, so I personally have more trouble with toxic femininity. But I understand why some have more of a problem with toxic masculinity.
Thanks for pointing this out. I’m trans and I got sexually harassed for being asexual when I was presenting as a man. Ain’t never happened as a woman. On the other hand, the people who harassed me in the first place were men. It was horrible, but it wasn’t gender warfare, it was just the patriarchy being horrible for men. As a woman, there’s no pressure to enjoy sex. Instead, you’re expected to marry a man you aren’t sexually attracted to and have his kids. It’s a whole different kind of awful, and both kinds of awful are caused by the heteropatriarchy.
It’s absolutely the tone. You’re not allowed to complain because we women have it worse. That’s the message that’s being sent across right now.
Men do not experience body policing in even remotely similar ways to women.
That is combative, dismissive, and by the way totally wrong. If the feminists in this thread actually gave a shit about men, they’d be listening, not lecturing. They came here to pick a fight.
No, people in this thread were saying that men and women suffer the same from body image policing. Which isn’t true. Like I said in my initial comment, if that offends you then you don’t understand how misogyny works.
You can read through the thread yourself, there was a massive comment chain already here when I made my initial comment. I’m not going to read and summarize it for you lol.
I think I’ve already more than explained how women’s body image issues are attached to systemic institutional issues that exist across society in my other comments. Feel free to debate against any points I’ve made, but I’m not going to continue reiterating myself.
I came here to respond to anti feminist takes in the thread and to provide a counter to them.
You’re talking like you have some kind of group authority or like this is specifically an anti feminist space that I’m disrupting. I’m allowed to comment here and will if I want to.
It’s not an anti-feminist space that you’re disrupting. It’s also not a feminist space where the topic of discussion is women’s problems. It’s a neutral space that happened to talk about men’s issues right now and y’all came in here with the “BUT WOMEN!!!” stuff and that really bothers me. Men really don’t have any safe spaces to talk about our issues, and as you can see it’s also difficult to even bring them up in neutral spaces without being shut down by people like you.
Dear men: stfu, you are not allowed to have any problems. Get back to your stoicism.
Sincerely, Feminists who claim to care about men.
Nah, men can and do have problems. This post is an example of a man problem. There are people on this post trying to claim that men and women suffer equally in this regard and arguing with people who are pointing out that this is wrong.
Men suffer from toxic body standards and would greatly benefit from body positivity and better representation in media. But men aren’t (as an entire class of people) getting harassed as 10 year olds by 40 year old men making comments about their bodies. Men aren’t (as an entire class of people) having relatives make open comments about the size of their secondary sex characteristics and their bodies in general. As a class you don’t experience this. Some individuals might, I’ve rarely met women who did not experience body policing from their earliest memories, ive rarely met women who have never experienced sexual harassment. The statistics are crystal clear in this regard.
Again, body positivity and better representation for diverse body types would be great for men too. No one is saying otherwise. Even that isn’t enough for women, because institutional misogyny exists at all levels of society and in nearly all people in society. Even well meaning and otherwise progressive people can and are misogynist. Even your family and friends are. Its impossible to simply change one thing. It requires a society wide change in tolerance for bigotry.
/*Pokes circumcised dick.
/*Looks at the countless men living their lives recieving no emotional support.
/*Looks at male suicide rates.
/*Looks at male domestic abuse rates.
/*Looks at history of men getting lynched.
/*Looks at what happens when a man wears a bun, has long hair, has piercings, has any sort of distinguishing features.
/*Looks at classic stereotypes of “fat stupid man”
/*Looks at people casually calling men fat.
/*Looks at stats showing men are more then twice as likely to face assault in public, are twice as likely to experience assault causing bodily injuries, are twice as likely recieve major injuries…
Like how you can look at the male suicide rates and just “nah there’s nothing deeper here” is beyond me.
I never said that men do not suffer in any way, I said that women’s body image issues are systemic ones that affect us for all our lives and from nearly everyone in our lives. It happens to every woman. Men’s body image issues are not systemic ones. Body shaming is a thing, but its not a social institution to severely sexually harass and assault men and boys. Almost every woman will experience sexual harassment and assault to some degree. It affects the entire class of women.
So a bunch of men experience the same thing completely independently from each other, and you’re here just assuming there aren’t systemic processes at play? Like do you just think men have some biological affinity for suits and ties? or Jeans and T-shirts? Or it’s just a coincidence or what? Like we live in a world of cause and effect, everything you see in society is a matter of systemic influences.
There are systemic problems for men as well. This conversation has gone largely beyond its scope, that being the way that body image issues for women are unique and particularly abhorrent. Misogyny is a system that also affects the lives of men by devaluing specific activities, clothes, opinions, personality traits etc. that society associates with women and girls. It reinforces misogynistic principles and affects the lives of women too. Men should be allowed to dress how they want to (so should women), work what jobs they want to, present themselves however they want to, and so on. All those things also affect women and the majority of them are based around discrimination towards women. “Pink is girly and therefore boys shouldn’t like pink” only functions if you think that being girly is bad or worse or lesser.
But there’s lots of systemic issues in society. Misogyny affects the entire class of women directly and the entire class of men indirectly. There are other systems that devalue men such the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, rape culture that discourages male victims from coming forward, and the wage slavery of late stage capitalism. Those things also affect women. And intersectional feminism examines the way that those systems interact and build upon one another. Misogyny is one of the most abhorrent things man has ever created, and me and all my friends live with and struggle against misogyny every single day. I think the scale of the problem is hard to understand if you don’t talk to a lot of women about their struggles. And when we do speak up more often than not we’re barely acknowledged at all, look at the backlash to misogyny in video games or the backlash to the epidemic of rape on college campuses. Those problems have never adequately been addressed in any capacity. When its women’s issues a quarter of society listens and cares enough to acknowledge the problems we face, half of society is ambivalent and does not react at all, and the remaining quarter actively believe in misogyny.
Can you define your use of misogyny?
The system of violence, subjugation, discrimination, hatred and prejudice that directly oppresses women.
And your definition of misandry?
Piss off with the oppression olympics please.
That phrase is meaningless lol, what part of my comment are you saying that to? The horrifying things that women experience every single day? Is the lived experiences of women and girls “oppression olympics” to you?
Yes! Literally yes! You’re close to getting it!
“Women have it worse” is participating in oppression Olympics and it’s belittling men’s problems. I am not disputing the facts of how bad women have it. I don’t think anyone in this thread is.
I’m saying it’s irrelevant to the conversation at hand, and at BEST it’s a distraction.
This isn’t a men’s space. This is a public forum. I’m allowed to respond to anti feminism here and I will. That’s your own problem if you do not like it. And you’re openly using anti feminist nonsense yourself, shocking you didn’t like my initial comment.
True, you’re allowed to come in here and pick a fight if you want to but I don’t see why you would want to.
I’m not picking a fight. I have been patient and fair in all my responses. I’ve already said this many times, but people were already talking about the way women suffer from body policing when I first viewed this post.
Your very first post was saying “men’s issues don’t matter because women have it so much worse”
So you mean, this meme should piss off? Because it is what started the oppression olympics.
Only if you read it as “women’s issues don’t matter because men also have issues” which is honestly a problematic place for your mind to go. And clearly not the intent.
I am pretty sure that’s the punchline of the meme. “Women say they are unrealistically portraited in media, but look at how men are shown!”. That’s the oppresion olympics you pretend to be against, is it not?
It never said that womens issues didnt matter
Have you ever heard of “two for flinching”? That was (I hope) a thing back in my school days, whereby another boy would mime a physical attack, like a punch to the face, or body slam. When you instinctually recoiled, the other boy would delightedly proclaim, “two for flinching,” and punch you hard in the arm, twice. The message was clear.
Men as a class certainly do get policed by boys, girls, and adults about affect, height, weight, voice change, et cetera. I say this not to dismiss or downplay what girls experience, but to say that certainly happens. In fact, I’m certain that it’s two sides of the same coin, and it all needs to go away.
No, the ruling class of men is not made to suffer as a class of men. There is no power structure against men.
My other comments more than explain it.
Dear confused men (hashtag: not all men): You have lots of problems. The vast majority are not caused by women. One of your problems is trying to blame us for many of the harmful things you do to yourselves, or that patriarchy/toxic masculinity does to you. Another problem is loathing it when women try to help you by explaining this to you but it isn’t what you want to hear bc it isn’t stroking your ego (or other bits). So there really isn’t much else to be done - your problems are yours to solve, and all we can do is try some damage control for ourselves while you guys bang your heads against the floor.
Sincerely - Feminists, who care about men, but not to the point of our own destruction any longer.
Thank you, oh glorious and righteous Angel of Feminism, for educating us lowly male peasants on Our Problems.
No one was blaming you all for shit until you came in here belittling male issues out of nowhere.
Bunch of feminists came in this thread and picked a fight. Piss off.
The meme is belittling feminism and/or women’s issues. If you don’t want to start a discussion, do not post provocative memes. Otherwise live with the discussion that will ensue.
No it wasn’t. It was pointing out that unrealistic body standards for men are never part of the conversation, despite being so blatant.
So you feel like whenever people talk about how there are unrealistic body standards for women they also have to mention and talk about unrealistic body standards for men.
But at the same time you complain about feminists allegedly talking about feminist issues in discussions about men’s issues.
I feel like something doesn’t sound right with that logic…
Ummm… First of all men are not a collective, but aside from that…
Women are complicit in toxic masculinity, and patriarchy, you are aware of that right? Like women have the same ingrained societal baises.
It drives me insane that the academics that created the concept of toxic masculinity would be so friggen sexist in their connotations. That seems like a basic ethical consideration for someone studing gender, but apparently not!
Ideological holes.
(Proceeds to watch the subject bang his head repeatedly, injuring himself with the very same arguments he thinks he is making. Pointing out failure to read comprehensively might help, but more likely only increase the intensity by which he injures himself. It is a sad sight, one of many. She must move on.)
pee pee
poo poo
Feminists are perfectly capable of recognising toxic femininity and toxic androgyny. The difference between those and toxic masculinity is that toxic femininity encourages violence against women and enbies, toxic androgyny encourages violence against enbies, and toxic masculinity encourages violence against everyone. Violence against everyone is a big deal, maybe a bigger deal than lateral violence. I personally am less able to withstand lateral violence than indiscriminate violence, so I personally have more trouble with toxic femininity. But I understand why some have more of a problem with toxic masculinity.
Thanks for pointing this out. I’m trans and I got sexually harassed for being asexual when I was presenting as a man. Ain’t never happened as a woman. On the other hand, the people who harassed me in the first place were men. It was horrible, but it wasn’t gender warfare, it was just the patriarchy being horrible for men. As a woman, there’s no pressure to enjoy sex. Instead, you’re expected to marry a man you aren’t sexually attracted to and have his kids. It’s a whole different kind of awful, and both kinds of awful are caused by the heteropatriarchy.
This is not what anybody is saying, except for the meme bit towards women. Did you read the top line on it?
It’s absolutely the tone. You’re not allowed to complain because we women have it worse. That’s the message that’s being sent across right now.
That is combative, dismissive, and by the way totally wrong. If the feminists in this thread actually gave a shit about men, they’d be listening, not lecturing. They came here to pick a fight.
No, people in this thread were saying that men and women suffer the same from body image policing. Which isn’t true. Like I said in my initial comment, if that offends you then you don’t understand how misogyny works.
Show me the posts.
And not “the same TYPE OF body image policing” because you’re insane if you don’t think that’s the case.
Show me the posts where people say men face the same degree of body image policing
And then explain why, even then, being combative and dismissive is in any way a good idea.
Again, I think you came here to pick a fight, and that offends me because that’s how men’s issues are always silenced.
You can read through the thread yourself, there was a massive comment chain already here when I made my initial comment. I’m not going to read and summarize it for you lol.
I think I’ve already more than explained how women’s body image issues are attached to systemic institutional issues that exist across society in my other comments. Feel free to debate against any points I’ve made, but I’m not going to continue reiterating myself.
I came here to respond to anti feminist takes in the thread and to provide a counter to them.
EXHAUSTIVELY, yes. Thank you. We get it. We agree.
Now please, STOP
You’re talking like you have some kind of group authority or like this is specifically an anti feminist space that I’m disrupting. I’m allowed to comment here and will if I want to.
Don’t poke it. It might bite!
It’s not an anti-feminist space that you’re disrupting. It’s also not a feminist space where the topic of discussion is women’s problems. It’s a neutral space that happened to talk about men’s issues right now and y’all came in here with the “BUT WOMEN!!!” stuff and that really bothers me. Men really don’t have any safe spaces to talk about our issues, and as you can see it’s also difficult to even bring them up in neutral spaces without being shut down by people like you.