Can I talk about men ?

Typical, I start a thread about men and someone derails it by making it all about the women........ lovely ironic/comedic comment there, and so unrecognised thus far! Like it.

I don't fear men as a class and I have never been frightened of them as a class or of an individual man (I realise I have been lucky. So far).

I do resent the privileges that men enjoy and there are things I don't do because I am female which I find quite myself but find to uncomfortable to change.

I have a loving father (who is a raging sexist, not so much misogynist - he does love women - but not for a moment thinks they are equal to men), lovely brother (who is probably more of a feminist than I am), a DH (who is a work in progress) and 4 sons I am hoping to raise as non-rapists.
I have been physically threatened by men in my line of work but have always felt in enough control to not be (too) afraid. I have also been threatened and assaulted by women btw which is just as horrible.

I think many of the more controversial posts are because many people struggle to look beyond the horizon of there own experiences. I find this quite tiresome at times tbh but I feel the same on some politics boards or anything else vaguely divisive.

so how do you think we should talk about these things damsili? what language should we be using?

I couldn't possibly lump in all men in a class and fear them. Not when I had the most wonderful loving amazing father, and I am married to a wonderful man, and my brother is bloody awesome too.

One of the things I have noticed reading FWR is just how many regulars have accidentally stumbled upon such decent men and chosen them as life partners. Some of them did so long before they discovered feminism. What are the odds on that?

This is on another thread right now. Just been posted:

Girls are taught to be compliant so men don't assault them.

So women never question men and just accept everything because if they do, they'll be physically attacked. Is this actually a dynamic that anyone can generally apply to their actual relationships with the men they live, work and socialise with? Of course not. It's a case of describing the general through the use of the specific.

men, as a class, I fear

I couldn't possibly lump in all men in a class and fear them. Not when I had the most wonderful loving amazing father, and I am married to a wonderful man, and my brother is bloody awesome too.

I think if you fear men as a class then you must have had some pretty poor pivotal men in your life. Am I right?

I disagree Petula I think the forum is littered with phrases that will say society thinks x about women when what is actually meant is that the attitude can be found within society, but is by no means prevailing or without opposing attitudes. Additionally, it's usually inferred that attitude x is the sole responsibility of men and that women have no influence or complicity in it. Women as a class have less power in society, but they still have a great deal of influence - and feminism does too.

If you wish to state that priests 450 years ago had a dim view of women and their value, you will get no argument from me. Nor that those views were far more prevalent in the 16th century.

There are individual men whom I trust but it has to be said, not unreservedly

Are you seriously suggesting that all men are rapists?

i fully understand what you are saying. but what i am saying is that when feminists are talking about MRAs they are usually very careful to distinguish the actions of MRAs from those of men-as-a-class

Are you seriously arguing that feminists have brought it on themselves when they are considered to be man haters?

I love it when people critique a whole position by taking a single aspect away from its original context, change all the words such that it means something rather risible and then hold it up with . Love it. It aids discussion so much.

The answer to your question is no, I am not. Stop being so absolute.

Not really, it all makes sense. The fact that you're pushing it as a response to what I've said before doesn't suggest to me that you've really understood my point though. (That sounds more aggressive than I mean it to).

My point is that if someone British was to read a forum of recently-arrived-to-the-UK Pakistanis and a great many posters referred to the British in the context of what Britain First were saying or were up to, it could lead to a notion that said Pakistanis were not terribly fond of the British - and unfairly so. The fact that the forum was regularly trolled by Britain First activists being incredibly aggressive and silencing would not detract from that first observation - Which is why you repeating what you said seems to suggest you think it would.

The fact is that most men are probably feminist-ally in their everyday attitudes and actions - even if they wouldn't necessarily recognise that they were or even think about it; most people just get on with their lives and don't spend a whole heck of time pondering matters of social politics. Life's pretty busy as it is. Yes, they may be complicit in certain ways with a system that supports problematic areas, but that's because we live in a patriarchy and everyone, men and women, generally just accept the general norms and values. These - both men's general decency and women's complicity in supporting patriarchy - are often ignored. I completely understand why that is, obviously. Rape, domestic violence etc etc need talking about - and isolated men can affect all women, as the recent bit of hashtag activism tried to tell us. But the question here is why are feminists sometimes seen as man-hating. My answer is that, from the outside looking in, the discourse is based around holding up the worst examples of male activity as representative - with only an occasional and cursory NAMALT thrown in as an after-thought.

my first experience of realising that men hated women was at primary school and discovering that John Knox had written about how women....

Hmmm. This is where the disconnect comes for me. John Knox is a man.

My mum can't reverse park. The first time I saw that, I realised.....

that's fine, but if you are a feminist involved in activism, or any woman really who sticks her head above the parapet in public (online or not) you may well find yourself the target of MRAs and it isn't targeting that is easily dismissed - it is directly threatening and it is intended to be. this can easily have the effect of silencing women who want to do something to improve the lot of women

any comment on the rest of my post above?

As I said before, talking about MRAs in the context of women's place in society has comparisons with talking about Britain First in the context of discussing immigration in the UK.

yes, they have only felt the need to define themselves as men's rights activists when women started to gain the same rights

If you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem.

Sorry, but this is dreadfully trite. You can't confer responsibility for things on people in such a glib way.

damsili (have you namechanged btw?) on the contrary, feminists i communicate with are concerned about how embedded many of these things are within our society. it is a huge mistake to imagine rapists, perpetrators of dv and misogynists as "others" who live separate lives - women, self-defined feminists or not, work, live and socialise with them all the time. we can't not unless we choose to live a separatist lifestyle which isn't feasible or desirable for many women. that's why it is often so vertigo-inducing when women first start to explore feminist issues. feminists also examine their own lives frequently and try to minimise the harm they perpetrate and perpetuate towards other women - how could they not? i see it frequently on here, though from your post i'm wondering whether i am seeing entirely different threads

and while only a few men are self-defined MRAs of course, in the context of attempting to congregate as a group of women/feminists, whether online or in RL, they can be enormously disruptive and threatening, and it's no joke being on the receiving end of that. it really does take very little for those spotlights to turn towards a woman sticking her head above the parapet

MRAs have existed for centuries. They may have called themselves by other names but their ethos was the same.

MRA mens rights activist
NAMALT not all men are like that

If you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem. Take the Everyday Sexism site for example. All those women suffering under a patriarchal society on a low level scale to high level outrageous behaviour . Some men may not identify as MRA but their actions,words and behaviour say otherwise. Using phrases like man hating is trying to silence womens voices.

men's rights activists

not all men are like that