a question for the men here

[Mitchy1nge]

what makes you think you have anything of real value to bring to discussions about women's experiences and expectations?

obviously some men can make interesting contributions (although those sorts of men don't often announce themselves here) to some discussions but generally, on the whole, everything everywhere else is already pretty saturated in Male Voice so was just wondering where you got the idea from

Daddelion - good idea. Off you pop then.

Not really tho'. It just results in the same discussion and bun fight as in the F/WR.

"I agree, you rarely see a man say he is rethinking and act graciously. No not at all. Isn't that genderisation in practice though, men refusing to back down in case they look........well........ less than masculine"

I'd say more men back down than women on these boards. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

So, is feminism a political movement or an academic discipline? Or is it a lot of different things to a lot of different people, as I strongly suspect. I have many female friends who would identify themselves as feminists but have never read a feminist academic treatise. Would people on a political discussion board be expected to have read a certain amount of political theory before taking part?

I would never participate in any discussion on academic feminism because I do not have a clue about it (nor would I wish to). On the other hand, where a discussion on this board could just as easily have been posted on chat or relationships or AIBU, is the mere fact that it is posted here a reason to treat it differently?

If there are more men backing down on these boards that can only be a good thing.

In RL though how many men ever concede they may be wrong? they don't which is why we still need feminism.

Reading the comments section of any article in the mainstream media that might be even losely described as expressing feminist ideas illustrates why feminism is so important.

Reading threads on a site called 'Mumsnet' in a subsection about feminism illustrates how relevant feminism still is.

There's a steady stream of people who actively seek out these sites and articles just to pop up just to tell us how wrong we are.

You know, I have a lovely, small, invite-only group of friends On The Internet, and we started from a really common premise. We're all the same age within a few years, all female, all the same socio-economic demographic to the point where we skew very heavily towards two or three professions, we have therefore all tended to have children at the same time, it is as homogenous as FUCK.

And we are all awfully nice people, and all awfully socially conscious, politically correct, small-l-liberal people who are not only not overtly sexist, racist, transphobic, ableist, etc etc., but most of us are consciously not so: we educate ourselves actively.

But of this group of 20 women, only one of us was black. And I speak in the past tense not because she has ceased to be black but because she just left the group. Because no matter how good our intentions, no matter how optimistic our starting point - we did not really understand her lived experience. She understood ours, of course, because the white narrative is the dominant narrative, she's absorbed it in every film and every novel and every power play in her entire life. But we didn't see hers, which means that over and over again we were being subtly racist, we were dismissing her lived experience, mostly we were failing to shut the fuck up and listen when she told us things.

Here's the thing, men. You might be nice men. You might have the best intentions. But when you say shit about 'how can you preference women's lived experience but dismiss men's' and feel that you are not just participating but adding value that wouldn't be obtainable if you didn't chip in. Well, that alone tells me that you don't get it. You don't get it!

In my experience (which is of course limited and subjective), men are socialized not to admit they're wrong, and to feel that their voices are a normal component of every conversation. I think this is something people have researched quite a lot, isn't it? There are lots of experiments that have been done to show that in a class with an equal number of each sex, boys expect to be allowed to talk for more of the time.

I think it's tricky, because none of us can totally help how we're conditioned to behave. But I do think that some men are pretty good at it, and others seem to think it is offensive they're even being expected to fight their conditioning.

Not that it's relevant, but I miss adelaofblois. Despite the name, IIRC he was a he, and an interesting poster. There are loads of posters whose gender I've no idea of, and I think hully has a good point that there is some correlation between posters who make a big deal of being male, and posters who come on FWR for a bunfight.

DadDancer, have you considered how your male privilege is demonstrated in how you talk about and describe pornography? You consistently refer to it as the adult entertainment industry.

Look at it further. The vast majority of pornography is created for and consumed by men. Even gay porn. Women are the objects presented for male pleasure. It's not the adult industry at all, it's the adult male industry as the entertainment is solely produced for men. Yet the term you use implies that adults=men.

It's quite revealing.

LRD is totally right in her last post. Men are constantly told by society that their opinions are always valid and should be listened to and deffered to, and it can be hard to break out of that and conceed, as Tortoise said, that actually their experiences are not relevant to the discussion. Men (not all men, but generally) are just not used to shutting up and listening, nor are they used to the idea that another group might know more about a subject than them, or that their opinion might, shock horror!, not be relevant to a discussion.

And generally, Tortoise, may I say what a fantastic post that was and how relevant it is. I'm sorry that your friend felt she had to leave the friendship group, but it just goes to show how hard it is to check your privledge. It's difficult to do, but so many people just don't even try.

The difficulty for men and porn is very simple.

I like to look at naked women having things done to them

I need to like myself

Ergo there's nothing wrong with it

I don't get that one

because it uses that special male logic with which we traditionally struggle AF

made me snurk anyway

Mine you mean?

Well, noone wants to dislike themselves do they? No one wants to think "I get my jollies from seeing women having things done to them in a misogynistic and vile industry." So they have to convince themselves it's fine, that "normal" men love "adult" entertainment and that people that don't like it are uptight/prissy/frigid/feminist harridans who won't admit that women love being in porn and it's CHOICE becuase er, it needs to be, dunnit?

Shall I go further...?

Oh why not

Who is going to put their hand up and say, "I get off on abuse"?

No one

The bit I've never got is how someone could bath their daughter, read her a story and put her to bed full of love, protectiveness and cherishing, and then go and jerk off to a movie where a nameless 15 yr old Easter European pretends to enjoy being repeatedly raped.

Perhaps it's just me.

^^ QED

You have made me feel quite sick daddancer

well done, no one has achieved that in a while.

But you see how you're making out it's all fun, a bit of a larf? Little more than Benny Hill with minge? With all your jokey jokes, smiley faces and winks?

You see what you're doing there?

Well then maybe you shouldn't state what mens porn habits are then, since you might end u

oh I have had lots of sex with know someone who readily admits to enjoying that sort of thing hully, he says, for example, 1. women enjoy pain 2. have a higher pain threshold than men 3. it's the natural order of things 4. they have the real power over men because men will pay lots of roubles for access to minge 5. they love it really and so on.

I wonder DadD, do you and your wife both earn enough to live on? would your wife be able to support herself were it not for your income as well? What about your daughter, will she have the choice to go it alone without a male partner and still be able to pay rent/mortgage etc on one wage? I wonder.

Because if prostituting yourself in front of a camera is such a liberating thing to do why do women get paid to do, surly we would all do it?

Honestly, why do you think women end up in porn?

Ewww.

That post has succeeded in making me feel ill.

Somehow, I don't think feel entirely comfortable you're ok with responding to hully's post about underage women being raped with a smiley little wink and a condescending claim that you don't watch such things so it's all a-ok.

Yuck.

"then go and jerk off to a movie where a nameless 15 yr old Easter European pretends to enjoy being repeatedly raped.

well you fail with that emotinal argument as the porn i watch doesn't feature any men "

Come on Hully, DD would not like to see men being humiliated in any way. What were you thinking??!?
And added to that, it's a bit gaaaaay to watch another man have sex.