Not all men

[AskBasil]

Interesting article here

Why does my "re" keep disappearing??

Ah, got it back.

Kim147 - you have made some very good and fairly balanced points throughout the thread.

This answer you gave to a point made by Buffy seems very important to me and sums up the problem.

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""I'm sorry but, remind me why we should be tying ourselves in verbal knots in order to make our oppressors feel that they can wriggle out of responsibly again?""

Because maybe you might get your oppressors to actually listen rather than get defensive. And getting your oppressors to listen is important.
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I admit that having slogged through the whole thread my feeling of support for the feminist position has dimmed slightly. I am (apparently) in a group along with rapists, abusers, porn barons and the like. To be honest that isn't making me exactly warm to feminist movement.

Some years ago I posted on a FWR thread and said that I felt 'Feminism' as a brand was dead. It needed a different way to get its message across or it would fail to achieve the aims it wanted to achieve. I got shouted down of course but I think you are saying something similar. If feminism wants men to engage - it has to stop and think about how it might get SOME men to listen. Insulting and attacking ALL men by grouping them with rapists and abusers and porn barons as a single class is not the best way.

For example. I strongly support the idea that all wage/salary information should be made publicly available. That is a very specific thing I want to see because if that were to happen it would make the task of stamping out wage inequality much easier.

I think feminists would want that outcome too. If they were to ask men to support them and produce a public campaign to lobby MPs to vote for that measure of publication of all wage and salary data in Parliament I think many men would support that.

I just get the feeling many feminists just want to have a go at ALL men and if SOME 'nice' men get upset by that then who cares because upsetting as many men as possible is the real aim - as a sort of fair pay back for what women have to suffer in their daily life.

How are you in that group, though, unless you put yourself there?

White people oppress people of colour. I'm white, and I know that.

Men oppress women.

Making that statement is not the same thing as labelling you a rapist or me a Klan member.

When I read about white people's racial oppression, that doesn't make me feel 'not warm' towards black people. It makes me feel, shit, I'd better do my bit to make sure I and other people born with my skin colour don't keep on acting this way.

I also think, btw, that you perhaps shouldn't wait to be asked. If you know you're in a position of power and you see an inequality, why not just go out there? Why say 'oh, but no-one asked me to, so I didn't bother, though I suspected it would help'?

"feminism wants men to engage - it has to stop and think about how it might get SOME men to listen"

Why? Why do men need to be asked nicely? Why don't they just see injustice and speak out?

LRD - OK lets focus on the wage inequality issue. I know a lot more about that than the other issues raised here.

First up. I agree women are unfairly paid less than men. I also agree that it is mainly men in positions of power in business and other organisations that tacitly or actively discriminate against women on pay and promotion.

I don't employ anyone but I have no doubt enjoyed higher pay (and my wife lower pay) as a result of women being discriminated against in the workplace.

So far so good. I don't feel insulted. Those are the facts.

So there you are. I am acknowledging the problem and open to doing something. I am not talking about starting a national campaign but imagine you could get 10 million men to put 1 hour of their time into supporting an initiative to campaign for publication of all pay data. That's a heck of a lot of man hours.

Is this something, for example, that say MNHQ and the EOC could do a joint campaign on? Could all the women ask all the men they know to write to an MP? In the interim, could all the women ask their men to put their actual pay into a public database run by EOC/MNHQ on a voluntary basis so other people could look at it so we can see the true scale of the discrimination?

I'm talking about asking men to help in practical way to support women.

It feels a lot different (nicer) than being shouted at and blamed by association for the DV abuse perpetrated by an unknown man on an unknown woman. Yes I know that happens too and I know that It is mainly men that do it to women.

Thinking about it ... my problem here is - forgive me - the same one we've been having all along. There is a double standard.

manwith feels that, when we say things like 'men oppress women,' we are putting him - an individual and individually blameless of crimes like rape - into a group, then accusing that group collectively of terrible things.

Yet, he's happy to talk about what 'feminists want' and to talk about 'feminism as a brand'.

I don't personally think my kind of feminism is that fussed about men engaging, so I rarely think about whether I engage with men on the subject - but actually, you know, I do. I'm married, I have male relatives, we talk about this stuff. I teach, I have male students, and we talk about this stuff. And actually, now I think about it, several people I've had really productive conversations about feminism with in the last few weeks have been men.

It's strange, isn't it? There's a very emotional response from men like manwith against being treated as a class, yet it doesn't seem to occur (or am I reading you wrongly here?) to extend the same courtesy to us. We're expected to change our way of speaking - which has, I'm afraid, the added justification of being proper class analysis with a long history - but they won't do the same.

But feminists know perfectly well that men who need given Special Treatment and Feminine Reassurance that they are Nice Guys and Not Part of The Problem do not want to engage with what women have to say about women's issues .

We know perfectly well that men like that not only are not allies but that they actually are part of the problem.

And it is a waste of time and self-defeating to engage with such men and allow them to dictate the framework within which women are allowed to talk about male violence against women. Women's time is much better spent on consciousness raising and exchanging with other women, than on wrapping up unpalatable truths about male violence against women in candy floss and glitter so that men who have no sincere desire to support our struggle can feel good about themselves.

Men who whine on about how feminists call ALL men rapists and baddies and that includes them and so they are like rilly rilly hurt and now are forced to turn their back on feminism even though it is rilly rilly important to them, and they would love to be an ally but just can't because they are so wounded and put off the notion of men stopping oppressing women because some women had the cheek to talk about men oppressing women without giving him a cookie first, are to be treated with caution. They generally know a lot less about feminism than they think, don't actually understand the structures and dynamics of oppression and are very resistant to relinquishing any of their unearned privilege (indeed most of them are resistant to admitting to the existence of said privilege). Most of them fairly quickly turn to calling feminists man haters, etc pretty quickly once challenged on the giant egoism of their navel gazing position (a position which they attempt to present as amazingly progressive and the height of reasonableness, especially compared to those men hating ranting feminists who just won't STFU when a man tells them too).

These men are not allies. They are part of the problem and they know it - which is why they get huffy and sulky (and then usually insulting) when women call them on their bullshit.

All they are doing is tone policing. They are telling us to know our place - which is that women's actual real physical suffering, distress, pain, fear, trauma, safety, well being, freedom, rights and autonomy, matter less than men's feelings and their lack of ability to face the truth of what men as a class do to women as a class. And we better comply with that, or else.

Ah, sorry, cross post.

man, these sound like great suggestions, I look forward to hearing how it all goes. Best of luck!

I'm shocked someone shouted at you - what on earth happened?

Sorry, I spend my life double posting, my brain is clearly not functioning.

I am sorry manwith got shouted at because I don't want to minimise that that must've been scary.

But, I do think - if a black man yelled at me in the street that I'd, I dunno, ruined his life, or if he yelled that I'd been giving him racist abuse, I would of course be shocked and upset and horribly embarrassed. I'd probably feel really angry (and honestly, I'd probably think he was not mentally very well, because I'm not actually into the giving of racist abuse).

But I wouldn't suddenly think 'oh, black people messed up again, I shall blame them'.

I think it's also pertinent that there should be spaces (like this board) where women can frame their experiences to one another in a non-male dominated environment. There will be women agree and want to make the message more palatable, those who don't agree and those who do not wish to prioritize it. This thread illustrates that.

What I don't see as unreasonable is that there are spaces that are female dominated, without having to justify themselves to a male paradigm, in fact I'd argue its essential.

I x posted with quite a few replies there. My last posted reply to LRD hopefully addresses some of them.

ManWithNoName, this may come as news to you, but if men wanted to pay women the same as men they could. In the blinking of an eye. Because men are in charge and men run the economy and historically the workplace. It could be done overnight.

Women have been fighting and campaigning for years but equality of pay has not been achieved because men don't want to actually do it or simply can't be arsed to sort it out. If your desire to help in this domain is sincere go and speak to your fellow men about it. They are the ones who have the actual power to make things fair.

YY, I agree with that, dervel. I think it's really fascinating how different women-dominated and women-only spaces can be (and I guess the reverse).

Ok manwithnoname, totally on board with wage inequality, we should make it transparent. Do we have your permission to discuss the societal backdrop that takes place in? As well as the subtle and not so subtle social constructs that have allowed and continued to allow such injustices to exist? Or can we y'know multitask?

Y'know how women consciously and subconsciously couch their language in apologies and "I'm sure I've got this wrong but..."? That we are taught from childhood to make our speech more submissive and non-threatening than men? I think this is more of the same.

Telling men that of course they personally aren't doing anything wrong means they don't have to do anything differently, and nothing changes, so why bother salving their egos in the first place?

Beachcomber - Equal Pay legislation has been in place for many years and as you know, women are still paid less than men.

We need something more practical than just sending out letters asking employers 'if they wouldn't mind awfully paying people equally'. I really think employers need a lot more incentive than being asked to comply with the law. Real enforcement action and exposure of unfair pay through EOC pay audits and compulsory publication of pay data is what will make them sit up and listen.

We need a change in the law to force pay into the open. Its a practical issue I think people can unite behind a campaign to get it through Parliament.

While my ego knows no bounds, I really think my ego alone will not carry the weight of MNHQ and EOC. Millions of voices can make a difference but need a focus.

So what are you saying, manwith? You're up for doing the legwork, or you're not?

Do you think we have a personal hotline to MNHQ that you don't?