Decentering Man.

[Rafael Thundercat]

This a long substak post. I good that is long a complex because this way this post will avoing the usual commenters who just jump into the talk to be a contrarian. So my friends read it all and bring deep grounded opinions. Otherwise I may invite the writer into the Forum to answer the objections. 

Have a good read. 

https://sorayachemaly.substack.com/p/26-decentering-men-is-not-misandry?r=71pq&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=ig&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAdGRzdgRoFHVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA81NjcwNjczNDMzNTI0MjcAAafqlzvBCQBnkU2KXpOrHl14-naCDwVbLic27je-mfnktVeN3Xzxavk6nB_RXA_aem_xdnrRbB7tl1XWIRmHWpeIw&utm_id=97760_v0_s00_e0_tv3_a1dennhcopqa1q&triedRedirect=true

A small part to sparkle the curiosity:

 

 

. No One Told Men the Floor Was Made of Women

On decentering men, loneliness, men's desire for recognition, and why persistently misdiagnosing men's crises is making everything worse for everyone

Soraya Chemaly

Last week, German police association chief Dirk Peglow provoked a heated public debate when he announced, only partially joking, that, to be safe, women should “not get into a relationship with a man. If you do, the risk is much higher of becoming a victim of psychological or physical violence.”

 

He is essentially saying how much sense it makes for women to avoid men as much as possible. This, if you think about it, is a way of suggesting that women…decenter men.

 

Peglow, who was threatened for his efforts, later explained. “It was not meant as advice to be taken literally. The overwhelming majority of men are not violent and are not criminals.” Man meet bear. Bear meet man.

 

Until relatively recently, most women could do very little to mitigate the risks posed by men, known or unknown. Today, however, women are increasingly able to distance themselves from men with more deliberation and intent, which is the officer’s suggestion.

 

Formally or informally, women are decentering men, even if they never use that word. This is not because women actively hate men but because women have access to the education, money, birth control, some reproductive rights, and legal standing that make male centrality and approval optional rather than necessary.

 

It turns out that for a variety of reasons, it’s easier for women to live without men than the other way round. No one, no society, prepared men for this reality or changes in women’s status and their effects on gender relations. This is true despite gender norms for women evolving continuously over a century. In fact, most parents have protected boys from this shift, opting to teach most how to be men in much the same way their fathers and grandfathers were taught. Every generation of girls, on the other hand, had to adapt to a new reality.

 

But the real problem, the deepest cut, is that no one told men that the floor was made of women. Not the floor of the family household, managed and maintained by unpaid domestic and child care. Not the floor of the economy, held up by unpaid and low-wage care work that kept social reproduction artificially cheap and racial hierarchies in check. Not the floor of men’s emotional lives, built on women’s emotional and hermeneutic labor. Not of men’s protecting and sense of courage, made possible by women’s fear and silent, vigilant risk-bearing. Not of men’s purpose, which required women’s public and economic purposelessness to be evident by contrast. Not the floor of masculine identities, which begin with women’s reliably provided recognition. Lastly, and critically, not the floor of men’s public authority and power, which depends on violently or coercively suppressing women’s public voices, participation, and desire for authority.

 

This operates at every level, but, as a reader pointed out, in the United States the floor is Black women, the people whose bodies have most absorbed its violence, and whose political organizing has repeatedly changed the nation but has never been rewarded (TY Barry LaFleur). Their reproductive, domestic, economic, political labor infrastructure beneath every other group's ascent, including white women's provision of care and support to white men.

 

Additionally, to make things even worse, equality was supposed to mean women being treated like men, not men being treated like women. Today, more men are expected to do things that women have always had to (emotional work and child care); to work the way women have always had to (precariously, with flexibility, with less security and lower wages); to modify their bodies to meet market needs (“looks maxxing,” disordered eating, plastic surgery); to move through public space with heightened awareness of how they are perceived, what they can say, and whether they are safe; to manage their desirability as a condition of their worth; and to absorb institutional indifference to their suffering without complaint, subject to the whims of far more powerful elites.

 

The difference is that men are expected to do all of this while supporting a system that is simultaneously telling them that being a man means never having to do any of it at all. Men, much of the culture still insists, are supposed to make money (see “wallet dads”), be strong, pursue status, do whatever it takes to provide, protect, and procreate. Women’s role was to do whatever needed doing to make this possible and that is no longer true.

 

I can imagine, if I were a man, being put out by what I’m saying, by the policeman’s suggestion, by the discomfort my generalizations may provoke. But, in fact, free associating, I resent my own imagining because, frankly, so relatively few men have ever seemed genuinely willing or capable to do the same in return — imagine being a woman, on behalf of women.

Edited 18 hours ago by Rafael Thundercat

[enchanted]

Yes people like you bring much needed attention to the plight of women. That's great! In some pockets of North America this is already the mainstream view. 

What's been getting my attention recently how actually the average man has far more to fear than the average woman. 

Men make up the majority of victims for random violent attacks, homicide, suicides, job death, over-doses, war, natural disasters, emergency scenarios (women and children first after all). 

Men are victims of or die in greater numbers from all causes with sole exception of domestic violence.

I know what you will say: it's the evil men's fault and so who cares. But it doesn't matter who the perpetrators are as what I am highlighting is as a man the world is more dangerous place than for a women, statistically speaking. 

I doubt you can appreciate it but I thought it was an interesting perspective. 

Edited 15 hours ago by enchanted

[Raze]

Article is an example of how feminist ideology blocks people from understanding the actual cause of issues and eco rushes behaviors that hurt their own life but make their complaints a self fulfilling prophecy 

[enchanted]

1 hour ago, Raze said:

Article is an example of how feminist ideology blocks people from understanding the actual cause of issues and eco rushes behaviors that hurt their own life but make their complaints a self fulfilling prophecy 

It also seems that modern feminism gets itself confused with environmentalism.

Edited 12 hours ago by enchanted

[Breakingthewall]

The problem is the other way around. It's men who don't want to enter into serious relationships with women because they don't want a tyrant with absurd ideas about life constantly complaining that things aren't the way she wants them to be and demanding that the man be the emotional support for her unstable mind in exchange for the dubious privilege of having a secure emotional bond with a narcissist.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Man this forum has become such a dump

[aurum]

17 hours ago, Rafael Thundercat said:

It turns out that for a variety of reasons, it’s easier for women to live without men than the other way round.

Such nonsense.

[Wilhelm44]

17 hours ago, Rafael Thundercat said:

This a long substak post. I good that is long a complex because this way this post will avoing the usual commenters who just jump into the talk to be a contrarian. So my friends read it all and bring deep grounded opinions. Otherwise I may invite the writer into the Forum to answer the objections. 

Have a good read. 

https://sorayachemaly.substack.com/p/26-decentering-men-is-not-misandry?r=71pq&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=ig&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAdGRzdgRoFHVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA81NjcwNjczNDMzNTI0MjcAAafqlzvBCQBnkU2KXpOrHl14-naCDwVbLic27je-mfnktVeN3Xzxavk6nB_RXA_aem_xdnrRbB7tl1XWIRmHWpeIw&utm_id=97760_v0_s00_e0_tv3_a1dennhcopqa1q&triedRedirect=true

A small part to sparkle the curiosity:

 

 

. No One Told Men the Floor Was Made of Women

On decentering men, loneliness, men's desire for recognition, and why persistently misdiagnosing men's crises is making everything worse for everyone

Soraya Chemaly

Last week, German police association chief Dirk Peglow provoked a heated public debate when he announced, only partially joking, that, to be safe, women should “not get into a relationship with a man. If you do, the risk is much higher of becoming a victim of psychological or physical violence.”

 

He is essentially saying how much sense it makes for women to avoid men as much as possible. This, if you think about it, is a way of suggesting that women…decenter men.

 

Peglow, who was threatened for his efforts, later explained. “It was not meant as advice to be taken literally. The overwhelming majority of men are not violent and are not criminals.” Man meet bear. Bear meet man.

 

Until relatively recently, most women could do very little to mitigate the risks posed by men, known or unknown. Today, however, women are increasingly able to distance themselves from men with more deliberation and intent, which is the officer’s suggestion.

 

Formally or informally, women are decentering men, even if they never use that word. This is not because women actively hate men but because women have access to the education, money, birth control, some reproductive rights, and legal standing that make male centrality and approval optional rather than necessary.

 

It turns out that for a variety of reasons, it’s easier for women to live without men than the other way round. No one, no society, prepared men for this reality or changes in women’s status and their effects on gender relations. This is true despite gender norms for women evolving continuously over a century. In fact, most parents have protected boys from this shift, opting to teach most how to be men in much the same way their fathers and grandfathers were taught. Every generation of girls, on the other hand, had to adapt to a new reality.

 

But the real problem, the deepest cut, is that no one told men that the floor was made of women. Not the floor of the family household, managed and maintained by unpaid domestic and child care. Not the floor of the economy, held up by unpaid and low-wage care work that kept social reproduction artificially cheap and racial hierarchies in check. Not the floor of men’s emotional lives, built on women’s emotional and hermeneutic labor. Not of men’s protecting and sense of courage, made possible by women’s fear and silent, vigilant risk-bearing. Not of men’s purpose, which required women’s public and economic purposelessness to be evident by contrast. Not the floor of masculine identities, which begin with women’s reliably provided recognition. Lastly, and critically, not the floor of men’s public authority and power, which depends on violently or coercively suppressing women’s public voices, participation, and desire for authority.

 

This operates at every level, but, as a reader pointed out, in the United States the floor is Black women, the people whose bodies have most absorbed its violence, and whose political organizing has repeatedly changed the nation but has never been rewarded (TY Barry LaFleur). Their reproductive, domestic, economic, political labor infrastructure beneath every other group's ascent, including white women's provision of care and support to white men.

 

Additionally, to make things even worse, equality was supposed to mean women being treated like men, not men being treated like women. Today, more men are expected to do things that women have always had to (emotional work and child care); to work the way women have always had to (precariously, with flexibility, with less security and lower wages); to modify their bodies to meet market needs (“looks maxxing,” disordered eating, plastic surgery); to move through public space with heightened awareness of how they are perceived, what they can say, and whether they are safe; to manage their desirability as a condition of their worth; and to absorb institutional indifference to their suffering without complaint, subject to the whims of far more powerful elites.

 

The difference is that men are expected to do all of this while supporting a system that is simultaneously telling them that being a man means never having to do any of it at all. Men, much of the culture still insists, are supposed to make money (see “wallet dads”), be strong, pursue status, do whatever it takes to provide, protect, and procreate. Women’s role was to do whatever needed doing to make this possible and that is no longer true.

 

I can imagine, if I were a man, being put out by what I’m saying, by the policeman’s suggestion, by the discomfort my generalizations may provoke. But, in fact, free associating, I resent my own imagining because, frankly, so relatively few men have ever seemed genuinely willing or capable to do the same in return — imagine being a woman, on behalf of women.

I'm curious, in your version of feminism, what is the ideal societal outcome you are looking for ?