'If masculinity needs to be revolutionised, so does feminism'

While this Daubrey is trying to declare himself the emperor of the new gender theory, Jessica Valenti has written a Guardian article in which she seems to think too many people who are not really feminists are calling themselves feminists, including some women with a very long history of fighting for women's rights.

So maybe those two should get together and create their own movement.

I think he was putting 2 and 2 together a lot and getting 5.

Men have a higher propensity to violence than women and so no doubt women and other men when placed in front of those people will suffer disproportionately to women. By that I mean women don't seek to dominate other women and men to the same degree and to level of violence.

With suicide I thought it was found that men are more often found to have chosen options for which there is no coming back or window to be discovered compared to women?

I would agree masculinity needs to change, as from the suicides there are a fair number of guys who need to talk.

Though isn't it femininity not feminism needs to change away from kowtowing to a male defined image and behaviours?

All those women (and men) who thought Dapper Laughs was funny need to question why.

'Trolls' and the 'internet hard man' need to be addressed.

Feminism sometimes seems like the elephant with three blind people all thinking its something different.

makes sense for him to be writing open letters to a feminist who has won a human rights award, inviting her to join him, because it creates the perception that he is some equivalent level of activist and they are in dialogue with each other to create some new movement that he will be at the forefront of. Totally agree but wouldn't have realized it. I think this is a very very smart point almond

They had the Being a Man festival at the Southbank early on in the year. Dunno if it was a full-on masculinity festival; I didn't go.

Yes, think-ins.

Although, by the time I'd got to his lovely feminist credentials, I'd mostly given up giving him any sort of benefit of the doubt. I think that someone from here has been to each of the big feminist things this year, and I don't remember him at RadFem, anyone else?

A 'masculinity' festival sounds like a hoot though, would that be where they all hang out naked in boiling hot tents and then run about freezing cold fields? Or is that a bit 1980's?

it is not just that he wants there to be a replacement movement for feminism, it is that he wants to be one of the people leading it, despite not stating any actual solutions to the problems men face, and having no particular expertise in the matter.

He believes otherwise:

Since my time at loaded, I have become an advisor and consultant on the biggest masculinity and feminism festivals and think-ins in the UK because I believe common progress is about diversity of thought.

He apparently thinks that due to this he is amply qualified to lead us all over this glorious new horizon. But as you say, I didn't notice many solutions being offered to the problems of either men or women.

'Feminism has fought justly hard for its victories. But these victories cannot be at the expense of men'

Huh? So it's okay for women to continue to suffer as long as men aren't inconvenienced?

I'm fairly sure that when slavery was abolished, there were both financial and practical costs to the white slave owners. No-one to cook their tea, or they had to pay someone to do it. Poor things.

So men-as-a-class being asked to share All The Things, which might mean that they no longer get jobs just because they are men, or have to take care of their own children or clean their own toilets is unfair, is it? Poor things.

Oh no, multiple post and very long! Stupid phone

The bonkers thing is that CCP first rose to prominence because of campaigning for a single woman to be on banknotes, where there were none, and receiving rape threats as a result,

Those things are unquestionably issues related to the position of women in society, not the position of men.

Agree with Chunky, think the crux is that he's saying feminists say "women good, men bad" - whereas it's perhaps more accurate to say feminists say* "current notions of femininity and masculinity are damaging to both women and men, particularly women - see data on power, pay, violence etc. These notions are rooted in patriarchal power structures."

So, I think he's ignorant, probably willfully ignorant, about what feminism is. I guess if he accepted my version of "what feminists say", he'd still worry about what we want to replace patriarchy with. He assumes some.kind of matriarchy perhaps (amusingly ascribing us with a stereotypically masculine desire to dominate?) and he worries that we want to define what men are or should be.

For me, feminism is basically about freedom from restrictive expectations that are based on gender.* It doesn't at all follow from that that I want to go round defining acceptable manhood. I want every man and woman to be free to grow into the best person, the best human being that they can be, without the weight of gender-dependent social expectation. (It sounds like I want to abolish gender roles entirely - do you think he'd mind?!)

• aware that I'm being simplistic here, forgive me - this is how i see it.myself, in simple words for a.simpleton!

Agree with Chunky, think the crux is that he's saying feminists say "women good, men bad" - whereas it's perhaps more accurate to say feminists say "current notions of femininity and masculinity limit everyone's freedom and are damaging to both women and men, particularly women - see data on power, pay, violence etc. These notions are rooted in patriarchal power structures."

So, I think he's ignorant, probably willfully ignorant, about what feminism is. I guess if he accepted my version of "what feminists say", he'd still worry about what we want to replace patriarchy with. He assumes some.kind of matriarchy perhaps (amusingly ascribing us with a stereotypically masculine desire to dominate?) and he worries that we want to define what men are or should be.

For me, feminism is ultimately about freedom from restrictive expectations that are based on gender. It doesn't at all follow from that that I want to go round defining acceptable manhood. I want every man and woman to be free to grow into the best person, the best human being that they can be, without the weight of gender-dependent social expectation. (It sounds like I want to abolish gender roles entirely - do you think he'd mind?)

I think taking this and his other article about feminism, it is not just that he wants there to be a replacement movement for feminism, it is that he wants to be one of the people leading it, despite not stating any actual solutions to the problems men face, and having no particular expertise in the matter.

It then makes sense for him to be writing open letters to a feminist who has won a human rights award, inviting her to join him, because it creates the perception that he is some equivalent level of activist and they are in dialogue with each other to create some new movement that he will be at the forefront of. Even if she responded in public by disagreeing with him, it would only perpetuate the idea they are connected in some way.

'Let’s call our allegiance a Gender Revolutionary Exchange: you show me your ideas, and I show you mine. You never know, we might even make unlikely associates.'

Ridiculous.

Reads to me like he's come up with a load of issues that men need to solve, and he wants feminism to also make some changes, because feminists think that women are good and men are bad.

Well, that's easy. I don't think that at all, and neither to the vast majority of feminists. So he can crack on with male violence, suicide etc.

"Then maybe he ought to be pitching to men rather than women. Why isn't he, do you think?"

Because in this case the writer is identifying feminism as the obstruction to a better gender consensus.

I agree it's quite a confused argument, but reading a couple of times it's basically that old anti-feminist chestnut - as a reasonable person you shouldn't want to be a feminist, as we should all strive to be "equalist" or "humanist". That feminists by their nature seek to monopolise the discourse for the benefit of women to the detriment of men. Because he clearly doesn't understand why there is any real need for feminism in itself or how it's not in any sense a level playing field.

It's a bold bit of mansplaining transparent clickbait, certainly. And as other posters pointed out, he seems to expect feminists to do all the work.

This because the type of people because sadly, some of them are women who comment like that are fucking idiots.

There are so few good reasonable comments, which leads me to believe that all the good reasonable people stay well out of it, or come to FWR

Never read the comments!

"And yes, most people believe that feminism is hostile towards men, both individually and as a class. This is hardly a controversial statement."

Yes, it is a controversial statement.

HTH.