A good job there aren't many men on MN

[Truckulent]

I think men would be shocked at the level of resentment leveled at them on MN. Almost a seething mass of contempt at times.

I'm a man, been on here for years. And I was surprised by it.

AIBU to think it's a good job there aren't many men on here, or would more men posting help men and women understand each other better?

i love men,just not all at once

Since you all spectacularly missed my earlier point about miners let me put it another way.

I agree with pretty much everything that feminism argues about men and women being paid equally and 50% of all Company Boards, Parliament and all other positions of power and influence in commerce and politics should be women.

However, I just dont hear feminists arguing that equality should extend down the payscale and across all jobs to ensure that 50% of those people who die, or are maimed, injured, suffer long term disability and or illness due to their work are women too.

Nope never once heard that arguement.

I hope that clarifies things. I bid you all a good night.

Beenbeta, never wanting to be provocative, but .... could it be that women have had their fill of all the dying, maiming and long term illness stuff for too long already?Being as they have usually been fairly near to the bottom of the food chain for the first couple of thousand years or so, compared to male type people? And maybe feel they're entitled to a bit of the top of the pile stuff instead? Just a thought.

oh bugger, sorry SGM. Was I making a stand for feminism in any way by staying off this thread watching the football?

BeenBeta - you might be astonished to learn, since you are usually quite a decent chap, that that is a classic MRA line. In fact feminists have argued and fought and sued and struggled to allow women to do pretty much every job out there, barring the traditional childcare and domestic service roles. The fact that you don't hear it happening, is probably more to do with the fact that you don't live in a mining community (I'm guessing), or you don't pay attention to the feminist press. There are a lot of things I don't hear happening - I don't hear people campaigning for a better care system for children in India for instance - but I don't assume that a campaign's absence from my field of vision means that it doesn't exist.

In most places employment is pretty scarce, and where employment is available - and I don't know why you assume that e.g. mining is likely to be the worst paid job in that community, often far from it - women will be extremely pissed off if they are barred from taking part in it. I am sure there would be feminist campaigns for women to have access to the more dangerous work, if it came with a salary they needed.

You put the argument for choice, choice and more choice across really well Elephants .. and also for highlighting the fundamental difference between men and women, that men can only seem to focus on what's important to them , bless em, and where would we all be without em, eh? We wouldn't be doing anything stupid like digging for coal, flying to the moon or spending a lifetime's wages on a bit of metal on wheels that goes quicker than someone else's bit of metal on wheels, that's what!

an instance from the UK

This is an interesting article partly about women struggling to be allowed to work in hazardous jobs, from which they have been exluded on the basis of their capacity for child-bearing. Some women have even been compelled to undergo hysterectomies if they want to keep their "dangerous" jobs.

BB, you have actually repeated the "But men are miners" line. That line is shorthand for "I don't see women lining up for the worst jobs in the world" (= "women's work is relatively easy and women only want selective equality"/ "women's work may be poorly paid but at least they're not more likely to die doing them".)

And actually you are mistaken about women wanting to do the kind of work that might put them in danger -- women struggled to be allowed to join the armed forces and join now in considerable numbers and to campaign for advancement and a combat role. Women have always been part of the medical staff on the battlefront, since the first days when medics attended the wounded (Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton). In the Soviet Union women worked alongside men in every sort of labour and also fought in the Red Army during WWII, to the astonishment of the Nazis.

OMG BeenBeta - I replied to your most recent post in good faith, not realising that you'd been paraphrasing my comments on another thread in the most horrible and misleading way earlier in this thread. I really think you should apologise.

What I actually posted on the other thread (one about phrases commonly heard from people criticising feminism/feminists), as you know full well, was: "men are the ones being discriminated against. Because mining"

The point of this is that I have heard from many people on many occasions the example you give, that because you haven't had a magical visitation from The Angel of Feminism to tell you about campaigns to get women the right to work in dangerous jobs, that means that women never campaign to be allowed to work in dangerous jobs. Mining is the example almost always used. I have explained above why I think this is a misguided argument so I won't go over that again here.

To extrapolate from this that I am chuckling about miners dying, and have a callous attitude towards the relatives of miners who have died is just...well, I can't understand why you would want to even pretend I had said that?

Not that it's particularly relevant but nearly all of my mother's family were miners or worked in the mines in other capacities. For several generations all of the women in my family were effectively single parents, and the men were often forced to emigrate to find work, and then died young of lung diseases. Add to that the fact that I am a normal person who watches the news and could break my heart over the families of the poor men who have died this week.

No-one is laughing at mining, miners, or the dangerous type of work it is.

Please apologise for your totally unjustified comments.

All I read was the word miners. BeenBeeta, you do know that women were miners as well, don't you. Yes, you must know that. CHildren too.

Funny, I came back here thinking that reasonable discussion may have arisen from the other side, but I find the usual avoidance with 'aren't I funny/witty' side tracking.

Pay gap explained away, lmao. Does anyone really think blaming women for their 'career' breaks or flexible working hours are to blame......stupid statisticians not thinking of that and comparing like with well not like.
Even if that assumption was correct it's still not right that women's pay is far less than men's.

I've got to repeat a post by StacySolomonismyHero on another thread:

"Women are paid less because they take maternity leave and don't put themselves forward for promotion because they want to prioritise their children.

To whch the response is: So why have we constructed a society where child-rearing is penalised, when it's actually the basis of all human society?"

Well I see no one has addressed or been willing to accept that in some areas of life women have more rights and advantages than men do. It doesnt make me part of the MRA to point out an observable fact that whether be it in facing less risk of death and injury at work, access to paid parental leave or access to their children in cases of divorce, men are significantly less advantaged than women.

Nor does it diminish the fact that women face unfairness and inequality in other areas if life. Is anyone prepared to admit that in modern Western society women have rights that give them advantages over men?

Oh and please do stop with the faux outrage about me mentioning a topic raised on another thread. In case you hadn't noticed, this entire thead is about the level of resentment leveled at men on MN across all sorts of threads.

BeenBeta we didn't miss the point. And you know why we didn't miss it?

Because we have heard that idea in the mouths of anti-feminists and MRAs about a million times.

That doesn't make you either of these things but it does show a lack in your knowledge of feminism.

You said;

"Beechcomber - I'm not ignoring your request for examples. Just a bit busy.

As it happens though if you go and look at the Anti Feminist Bingo thread you will see posters dismissing the fact that men are overwhelmingly employed in the mining industry where many men are killed. That caused a chuckle among some MN feminist women on the thread.

Not so much hilarity among the mothers, wives, daughters, girlfriends of the Chilean miners, the Chinese miners and the New Zealand miners trapped and killed in the last few months though.

I won't go on."

Sorry but this sounded like sanctimonious will-full misinterpretation to me. Even if you did genuinely think that regular MNers are evil feminist witches are laughing at dead miners, the right thing to do was to go on the thread in question and discuss the issue. Popping over here instead, to give us an example of what evil mad extremists feminists are, was rather dishonest, no?

I'm all ears for when you want to discuss examples of "elements of the feminist movement want to see men's rights diminished".

I replied to this that feminists wish to diminish male privilege which is an entirely different thing to rights.

If men and women are to be equal, women must get an equal share of the pie, maths and logic lead to the conclusion that men will have to relinquish their greedily grabbed bigger slice of pie AKA unearned privilege.

You also seemed peeved that the women's rights movement puts women first!

some feminists "do not address or care about areas where men are disadvantaged compared to women".

First of all this is not entirely true (feminists do a lot to help children of both sexes for example), but even if it were, please refer back to long post about why should (non privileged) black people fight the battle of (privileged) white people.

The women's movement is not a human rights movement - it is a women's rights movement. As it happens feminism does help men too which is a nice side effect. Sorting out male problems generated by a male dominated society is never going to be top of the list for feminists, and nor should it be.

If men want more equality for themselves they need to do something about it and not wait for women to do it in the manner of some sort of magic laundry fairy.

You're the ones with the privilege, the influence, the status and the power - use it!

yes, I wish men would get men to stop raping, par example

BB....I think you'll find that the reason men do more dangerous jobs is because men created those jobs, no woman is preventing a man from getting another job. It's got nothing to do with 'rights' in fact I expect it's unfair that women don't do these jobs and are probably not allowed.

Men are the policy makers so if men are penalised blame men.

BB....I feel really let down by your last comments. You have shattered my illusion that you were, indeed, an equalitist.

in modern western society, being a poor man trumps being a rich woman.
A woman will still not be believed if she is raped; two women a week are murdered by their spouse- so she is likely to be murdered in a way that men are not- and even when men are murdered, it's by men, not women.
Men can put a stop to these travesties, because it's men doing them.
All the trade, political and financial institutions are run by men. Men make decisions that affect the lives of all women, but women barely have the power to stop them let alone have the agency to stop all the unecessary wars and exploitation that is going on around the globe under our system of global patriarchy.

last month I past through china, and happened to stop by the EXPO trade conference. It was full of men, chinese men, BRitish men, German, Arab, American men. The only women there were for decorative purposes

rich western women continue to be mutilated by male men in white coats posing as doctors, who are in fact eugenisists, as they chop up women's bodies into acceptable shapes. COuntles women have died from this procedure but noone is putting a stop to it. INstead the men who profit from it are rubbing their hands together in glee at the prospect of expanding the market to other, poorer countries.

There is something almost impressive about the twisted logic that tries to blame women for the fact that in a male dominated society, some men do dangerous jobs.

Anyway, I though being a prostituted woman was one of the most dangerous 'jobs' going?

ignore typos, especially 'male men'

prostitute and nurse are the most dangerous jobs going.
Nurse,
because all the drunks punch them in the face as they're trying to do their stitches

To hear men tell it you'd think it was the fire service- rescuing cats on trees, more like it
or the army? nope, women civilians and children are more likely to be injured, raped and killed in wars than soldiers

Sorry - that was unfair.

I need to learn to read your posts as impassioned dialogue, rather than barely concealed contempt for men.