Parththakkar12

In that case, according to a quality feminist, which one is the problem : Men having male privilege, or men misusing it? Can a man cease to have male privilege if the whole issue of unequal representation/unequal power gets resolved?

Ohhh!!! I didn't think about that. The PR war can work cuz they're triggered, so it's easy to make it seem that they're talking out of their ass. Makes sense.

There's reasons for the popularity of such statements and that it's okay to be public about your hatred for men, getting overwhelming support for that! There's shadows which don't show those reasons. This isn't what feminism represents, right? I want this to be clear because there's cultural phenomena doing this stuff in the name of feminism. Ah okay gotcha. Makes sense. The demonization of masculinity in the name of feminism runs pretty deep though. I shared a Teal video which talks about the Castration Dynamic which explains this.

I'm not talking about the fight for women's rights per se. The literature you're directing me to will talk about that, and I get that. What I am talking about, though, is the open hostility towards men which happens under the name of feminism. https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/white-men-are-bad-even-six-year-old-tells-me-so https://quillette.com/2018/08/15/why-its-not-ok-to-hate-men/ https://gen.medium.com/why-do-some-men-hurt-women-b6a8e97f872b https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/13/feminists-do-not-hate-men https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/08/ironic-misandry-why-feminists-joke-about-drinking-male-tears-and-banning-all-men.html https://medium.com/humungus/should-we-stop-saying-men-are-trash-684ec1357440 https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/opinion/why-all-men-are-trash-and-need-to-take-responsibility-for-gender-based-violence-32326101 Slander works! I've seen dozens upon dozens of such articles! The only reason I'm still having this conversation is to know why are you defending such behavior? Why does this stuff get swept under the rug or rationalized away?

I'm sure that's possible to do. Can you tell me how can I see the following as an expansion of consciousness, love and self-identity : Everyone is basically calling masculinity toxic, i.e. being a man is a bad thing now. Aggression is bad/dangerous, stating the facts is mansplaining, power/authority is oppressive, competition is sexism, women can do everything men can do so men have no value, etc. All of this is circle-jerked among feminists. The explanation is 'No we're not anti-male, we just make an enemy of everything that is masculine!' These things make me conclude that it's an all-out war on men for women's rights. It's not oppression per se, but it's very very concerning and definitely mistaken. It results in men having to suppress their masculinity and it has vastly negative implications on our emotional health. Now before someone says 'Men's emotional health is not important cuz they're the oppressors!!! Men should die!!', we wouldn't get the same response if we put women's emotional health there. This is collective emotional abuse and humiliation and it gets trivialized mercilessly. Very disrespectful towards men. Also, how does making an enemy of men for being men help you get women's rights, let alone expand consciousness and love?

@Arcangelo I think there's some truth to what you're saying. I'm not saying that men can't overcome this, but it's important to look at and consciously overcome. Raised by a single mother, I know too well what this is like!

A right is defined along with rules on what to do if that right gets violated. All of this legislation has to go through an authority which everyone abides by. So it's this authority (which the community has put in place) which gives people rights and decides what to do when a violation occurs. Now, this authority will act according to what the overall community wants! The important people in the authorities/communities have predominantly been men, in the case of women's rights movements. That's what I meant when I said 'Men give women rights in response to feminism' Five hundred years ago, consider a situation in which there's a king who is this authority. Women are treated like the property of men. Now lets say, a group of women does a feminist protest. What do you think the king will do? He'll crush it completely with violence! It will not work. Lets say the king was nice to his subjects, and took a poll of the people on this issue. People voting, predominantly male. What do you think will the outcome of the poll be? Will the men be like 'We love our wives, so let them be free'? Nope. The response will be more like 'Crush this nonsense! We need women in the kitchen cooking for our children, while we work hard outside bringing home food.' And that is exactly what will happen! No conversation about 'rights for women'.

How's it circular? I thought you were the one claiming that women can get their rights with zero help from men! You guys, I understand the barbarity of the situation I'm describing. I recognize that women have not had it well in history. If male privilege is dripping from me (even I feel it now) that's right! I am a privileged male and I have the balls to own said privilege. But the good news is that I care about women enough to stay tapped into the consciousness of this discussion the whole time and doing internal work alongside! It's important for me to understand the feminist perspective, that's why I'm playing devil's advocate here to contrast it with the opposing perspective.

Exactly! Women rely on the traditionally tyrannical patriarchy for survival, cuz there is no other system. That's why they rely on men to give them rights.

Then why did women choose to get oppressed instead of creating their own system? Women have always had the option to not be reliant on the patriarchy and create their own system (if they could), but they chose not to.

The concept of equal rights for men and women is fairly recent. What belongs to whom, is a subjective conversation which depends on the time, and the perceptions of good and evil at that time. Always keep in mind that human rights aren't an absolute, they're a human creation and they weren't originally created equally for men and women. Equal rights for men and women is a fairly recent conception, and both men and women made it happen!

No! It's like saying that if you don't have the police to catch the robbers, you're pretty screwed as the robbers are armed. This is the case as it's a system by men, and men are physically stronger than women.

@Annoynymous Feminism is a fight for women's rights! If women are the ones fighting for the rights, guess who's giving the rights? Men! Have there been feminist movements in your country? Did they succeed or fail? If they failed, why so?

@Eph75 I have parts of me which are dogmatic and purposefully so. The purpose is to take a stand for inspired and decisive action. I don't want to be willy-nilly and weak in my action, that's why a few dogmas are in place for that purpose!

I said that feminism has had its success because of support from men. The failure of feminism has also been because of unconsciousness of men! One day, when the men in your country will become conscious enough to support feminism (with contribution from feminist women) the level of oppression will go down! Until then, feminism will not work, in fact chances are even the women will resist it.

The purpose of taking a stand isn't to debate and prove yourself right! That's the whole point, you can never be 100% right. You want your action to be uni-directional. So, the stand you take is like an agenda which informs your course of action so that action goes seamlessly according to what you want to do. If you're certain about your stance, debating is just a waste of time and won't get you anywhere. Debating is useful when you're wanting to rub up against people you disagree with so that you're able to work on yourself/find your authentic beliefs/what you authentically want. At least that's how I decide to enter debates!

Women's problems with this system go a lot deeper than inequality/oversexualization/sexual vulnerability. Equality is not the cure-all that most people make it out to be. The ultimate conclusion of that would be that we'll live in a world of one homogeneous gender. But that's not the world we live in! There are very very fundamental differences between masculinity and femininity, even on an energetic level. Tell me this, have you felt into masculine energy/feminine energy? Have you studied the dynamics between them first hand? If you leave your paradigm of separation/zero-sum games and look at that, you'll see that what's good for one is good for everyone, because everyone is one! Deep emotional healing and conflict-repair is required on both sides. The physical embodiments of the masculine and feminine, aka men and women have hurt each other a lot and all of it needs to be brought to the surface and healed with each other. Now before women say 'No I didn't hurt men at all!' or 'I'm not responsible for what men did to me!', an implication of oneness is that you are the oppressor who's oppressing you! So doing this healing will take intense amounts of responsibility on both sides.

I know this! Everything I say comes after taking all of this into consideration. Women have had to fight tooth and nail against the status quo for their rights, and there've been men who resisted that. However, there've also been men who wanted these changes to happen and still want them to happen. Feminists would literally be dead in the water without these men! Imagine a scenario where all men ever wanted was to dominate, subjugate and control women. Feminists wouldn't stand a goddamn chance against that! Look at the times before the feminist movements happened. I'm not saying what anyone should do. I'm just telling you how it is. When I said 'all men' I meant 'men as a whole'. Men in general have chosen to implement and accept the changes proposed by feminists out of their free will, never forget that. (sometimes willingly, sometimes with resistance) If that weren't the case, women wouldn't have voting rights today. I see you having a filter of 'Feminism good, status quo bad' or in some cases 'Man bad, woman good'. There've been women who resisted feminism! How about you expand your perspective to integrate the ones that may not agree? It'll add nuance to your reasoning. (Just a suggestion, it's okay if you don't want to) I used to have this perspective, believe me, I've seen women suffer! My biggest concerns when I was a kid was that movies are male-oriented and male-dominated, and that they don't show me the female perspective.

All of these are perfectly legitimate problems. Not everyone would agree, but I do. The reality is, that we live in a patriarchy which is occupied by men. All solutions to these problems have to be approved by these men in power. Up until now, all men have been on board with all the equal rights, women in the workforce, overall betterment of women, etc. Had they not been on board, none of this would have ever happened! Potential solutions to these problems which arise from hate-mongering and vengeful ideations will literally not fly with the men in power! They will not help the feminist cause. If your solutions don't work for men, good luck implementing them!! Even if we solve all the inequality problems, heck if we reverse the 80/20 to 20/80, it'll still be a patriarchy, but with women in power! The system structure is fundamentally patriarchial and masculine in nature. Changing this would literally mean feminists design a new system from scratch, and then compare it with the current one. Then we'll consider uprooting the patriarchy! If you ask me what I think would work, I honestly have no clue! Solving problems like these isn't a one-man show (or even a one-committee show), the society literally has to evolve into a new system where both men and women find their authentic niche.

Also, the whole theory of 'Empowerment of women entails dis-empowerment/reverse oppression of men, so we'll empower women by dis-empowering, shaming and scapegoating men' assumes that if one side wins, the other one has to lose. It assumes separation and absolute existence of zero-sum game. A more conscious way of going about this would be to find the win-win scenarios which work for both sides. It'll require commitment from both sides to care about each other!

@Leo Gura Makes sense. There's aspects of Stage Blue that India hasn't gotten over yet like caste-system problems, cohesive positions on national security, problems with Pakistan, religious dogmatism, arranged marriages, etc. Then there's gonna be Stage Orange which will entail real industrial development and raising of the standard of living, which is not good currently! After that happens, we can maybe think about being libertarian/liberal and care about each other. India has a lot of people and will plod along slowly for the time being!

Ah okay now I get why you have a problem with the whole 'controlling the narrative' thing. When you have different 'lenses' in the society that don't get along, both will compete for dominance! The key here is to integrate both of them. That's where the resolution to this whole thing lies. It's the best we can do, given that all lenses are limited in their own ways. Nice! I'm happy to see that you're not just brainwashed by one perspective/the media. I do the same with the collective egos in the world! I learn a lot by seeing that they're a part of me and integrating them. Now about taking action : You HAVE to take a stand in order to take action. I'm not saying that the stand you take has to be absolutely true, in fact it's relative to the situation at hand. It also doesn't mean that other perspectives aren't valid, they are. However, you need to be 100% on board with a certain course of action, which requires some degree of black-and-white thinking. Also ,this is the case on a social level cuz most people are dogmatic and will passionately support your stand/action in an absolutist way! The stand you take may or may not be what you authentically believe, but the sole purpose of doing it is to take the action you want to take. What do you think about this?

I know that men are privileged. Does that mean that any guy who wants to critically look at feminism is wrong? I never said the whole movement is full of shit, I'm just wanting to critically look at it. There's fundamental problems with the whole notion of equality/privilege which I'm pointing to. There's also fundamental problems with the whole patriarchy-bashing thing. Do you see that? I never said I want to maintain the status quo! Quite the opposite, in fact, I'm discussing actual potential change here. You tell me, how are we supposed to create actual lasting change without critically looking at the positions of people for and against it?

That's a feminist projection. They're the ones making false equivalencies! But I guess mods gotta be politically correct... Are you being PC cuz you're a mod? Again, what you're saying is true, just not relevant to this conversation.

@Serotoninluv ^^ If we threaten each other's niches, that's a huge issue for both sides. We understand that adults and children have different niches, don't we? Mixing these niches together would mean making child-labour legal and giving children the right to have sex! Imagine what'll happen if a group of 5 year olds starts protesting for the right to have sex with adults! You're right on every count! This conversation was never about 'should'-statements though. When I use the word 'niche', it's not a one-size-fits-all for all men and all women. All I'm saying is that they're different and why.