Is feminism unfairly demonising boys/men?

[Axolotlquestions]

I'm seeing a lot of pushback at feminism in 'gender critical' circles because it's being lumped in with critical social justice. That is, the mentality that says all white people carry the guilt of centuries of racism is also applied to the concept of sexism, with all men being blamed for patriarchy. I'm trying to get my head around my position on this.

Could the wise feminist minds of Mumsnet take a look at this and give me your thoughts?
genspect.org/girls-are-better-than-boys/

The fact that there is a direct line drawn from girls behaving better at school and getting better grades, to men watching violent porn actually kind of sickening.

School girls are being blamed for a violent rape culture, but sure its feminism that the problem

The more I read this the worse it gets

I'm not. It's not the first time she's fallen over herself to give a man an easy ride

Another example of the discussion on this boards making more sense than the article.

When I read it I immediately thought of the Relationships board, and the men that post and ask for pity or an explanation of her awful behaviour. It always starts off 'poor me, I'm treated terribly by my wife, look what she did!' and ends with him leaving in a strop after he outs himself as the instigator.

I'm surprised they published it. It suggests they don't have anyone on their staff with a background in DV or perp behaviour, and maybe they should fix that. If they are going to carry on posting articles pushing the backlash against women's rights, they lose my support.

Gender is a topic that feminists talk about all the time, and so I posted it here. The organisation that posted this article is a respected one and one that psychotherapists turn to when dealing with the gender issue. The writer is a respected psychotherapist who has published lots of other stuff, and who tries to understand the reasons for boys getting caught up in the trans trend.

As I said in my OP, I am seeing a big kickback against critical social justice that is including feminism in its critique. I am seeing women who broadly align with feminist views rushing to condemn the stereotyping of men, and the concept of "toxic masculinity" as being counter-productive. I do understand their rationale - it just creates defensive men who will not engage further.

What worries me is that people involved in the GC side might be letting men off the hook for their AGP. Asserting patriarchy doesn't exist is convenient because, apart form being gaslighting, it also makes out that there is nothing systemic about sexism - it's just a few bad apples. It also ignores the fact that sexist stereotypes are pretty central to what is driving this trans trend.

I just find myself constantly thinking 'dick pandering'.

Men are aware of and negatively impacted by all aspects of feminism except the bit that goes 'stop being violent to women'.

I'm a feminist because I believe in equality. I'm not anti man, or anti boy, I'm a mother of boys, and I want them to be successful happy men. But not at the expense of women and girls. Because there is a power imbalance, evening the scales will seem to men and boys like they are having something taken from them, but what is being taken is something they shouldn't have had in the first place if it was gained unfairly through patriarchy. The same with affirmative action for racial reasons, it's about trying to get the balance right. It's not done easily, and in order to give somebody the place they should have had all along, it means moving somebody out of that poison who gained it through unfair advantage, and of course the person who has then been misplaced will be pissed off. They are having to get used to their new place, and they don't like losing place, Role or status but that's the only way to adjust the balance. Of course it's going to be upsetting to reorder society, it's not an easy thing but that doesn't mean it's wrong

This is an excellent point, thanks.

@MillyMollyManky
Likewise CSJ- I don't think the argument is that every white person is to be blamed for the existence of racism. Rather, we should recognise that we live within a system that privileges white people over people of colour, and white people should do what we can to counteract and end that unfairness. The blame lies in not doing so, rather than simply in having been born white.

I think we see the demand for abject guilt and restitution at the heart of the 'white fragility' idea, and of course it is just a sort of reverse racism when it starts to demonise all white people.

What is happening is men are reacting to feminism the same way. Logically, it works. If there is structural sexism which we call patriarchy, we are calling on men-as-a-class (however they treat and view women) to actively challenge sexism, and to radically change the way they behave towards women-as-a-class.

This is what I struggle with - and I am a feminist. I am hoping there can be a way of talking about this in which we don't make everyone so defensive as to want to retreat to our cosy shell of whatever privilege it is we enjoy!

Enjoying my cosy shell of privilege with menopause symptoms that no man can ever experience.
Anyone else enjoying their cosy shell of privilege?
WTAF, OP

Yes, slightly. Men can really do no right on MN and a lot of women seem to forget they’re still humans with foibles/problems/feelings.

The current ‘model’ of feminism has done nothing but make women miserable IMHO.

A bloke with prostate cancer etc could sit posting exactly the same thing 🤷🏼‍♀️

Blame nature, not men.

I'm happy blaming men. Men who don't call their mates out when they indulge in sexist "banter" or slap waitresses on the backside etc.
Or beat their wives and girlfriends. Stand by when awful things happen in front of them
Don't treat the women in their lives with respect and kindness.

When men start to step in more, I'll have more sympathy.
Up until then? Meh.

OP, I don’t think that article linked supports your question - about feminism being comparable to crude, flawed notions that violence and racism are irredeemably intrinsic to whiteness, as though whiteness were a meaningful specific property, and this idea of “all men being blamed for patriarchy”.

For a start, we have NAMALT, WAM and WDIT - these initialisations of defences of men which are strewn across the path of feminist discourse so frequently, not just by antifeminists, but by women who are discussing issues, as well as feminists themselves, that it’s hard to talk in a straight line.

Maybe I am not part of the conversations, but there’s no comparable need for initialisations when discussing race.

In the linked article, the author discusses the biological basis for male dominance (which do not exist for racial inequalities):

“your fantasy life starts revolving around your erections and online porn, you hear about “rape culture.” Even if you don’t follow the news, it’s hard to avoid hearing about the scandals, about #MeToo, and the names of all the bad white men wielding toxic masculinity to exploit and humiliate the women in their power. You see it in the porn you like to watch, and your excitement frightens you. Maybe you’re a rapist, too.”

Yes, maybe he is being groomed into becoming an abuser of women by the porn he is consuming during his sexual formation. Many women are up against the warped sexuality of pornsick partners’ with the self-pitying male entitlement to inflict it.

The article also talks about the subtle male dominant behaviour in classrooms because of an agitation boys have that girls don’t share, which gets them in trouble at school. With my children, they are frequently reporting that boys get preferential treatment, let off for things, girls end up getting told off and blamed for them, and teachers deliberately sit difficult boys next to hard-working girls as a way of managing their behaviour, but this just gets the girls into trouble. So it’s not as though the girls are getting off lightly.

However, I think the big, glaring flaw of feminism, is this idea that you can socialise boys and girls the same and they’ll turn out the same. It doesn’t deal with the biologically more aggressive and sexually charged nature of males, or the existential panic they have because they can never feel the peace of being part of the mother-baby diad again.

I think boys need additional socialisation tailored to resolving these things to limit them being a nuisance.

@EndlessTea , thanks - I found that really helpful.

I agree about the need to socialise boys differently - because as a sex they are working on old and out-of-date data (biological programming around violence and sex) that doesn't serve them or society well. I see males as having failed to evolve where women have.

Yes @Carpoor I can see how anyone with no empathy for the deeply ingrained fear and self loathing many men who were brought up as 'council house scum' would see him like that.

Not stopping to consider that his reaction is fairly normal for anyone whose sense of self is so tritely dismissed by people with their own identity politics and little care for those who disagree, other than to hold them up as summink summink

Well done you!

You see it in the porn you like to watch, and your excitement frightens you. Maybe you’re a rapist, too

Maybe you should seriously consider that. If you’re watching porn you have absolutely no idea whether it’s consensual. And if you don’t care whether you are masturbating to a rape, are you any better than a rapist?

(No thank you to the manipulative use of second person in this article. Actually no, you’re on your own there, mate.)

Exactly. Until men speak up and tell other men to stop, to shut up, sit down, educate themselves, I too am happy that men are spoken of as a cohort.

We all know if the men in our lives are 'good' men or not. My newly MN labeled DH is - and he works in construction. You'd be pleasantly surprised at some of the discussions he has at work. With men usually stereotyped as the wolf whistling, objectifying pond scum variety.

This!

The BBC reports that women are getting angrier. Some might say its because feminism doesn't seem to make women happy; but women are saying its because men won't grow up and get their shit together.
So women feel angry and are then shamed for that anger.

''She sees much of pandemic related burn-out happening in female-dominated industries like care.
"It's pseudo-maternal work and poorly paid. And it has a lot to do with being expected to work tirelessly. And with no kind of legitimate boundaries.

"Similar dynamics are often found in heterosexual marriage," she says.

''www.bbc.com/news/world-63874001

I think that it was necessary for feminism to pick apart the patronising and controlling nature of male chivalry, but I do believe men do need to be taught a kind of gentlemanly behaviour, in order tame and control their urges so they aren’t a nuisance.

For example “ladies first” is important, otherwise boys and men just barge women out of the way, sometimes even injuring us, if they aren’t taught to treat us with care.

On a positive note, men and boy’s agitated energy can be harnessed in positive ways.

The current crisis for men is that they no longer have a gentlemanly code of behaviour, so I think they can be a bit lost at sea. Damned if they do or don’t.

Don't be ridiculous.

There's definately truth in the fact that boys, especially younger boys, struggle more on average with the sit down/quietly concentrate/listen part of learning. However if you went back in time, 50 years or 100 years (or back to a time when girls weren't educated at all) you would find MORE rote learning, longer lessons, less tolerance for children that couldn't sit still. But in those days, instead of an exasperated teacher telling them to sit down, I don't want to have to tell you again, they would probably have been caned. That's children that were lucky enough to be in school. Children (of both sexes) would also be working long incredibly repetitive, dangerous jobs in noisy mills where a failure to concentrate would have killed them. I definitely don't think we should go back to those times, and I am glad that there is more understanding now of the way children learn aand more child centred teaching. There is probably still room for improvement. But the fact is, (various conditions aside) Children NEED to learn to sit still and concentrate. The teacher who told him to sit still and llisten wasn't doing it because she was an evil feminist who just hates boys she was doing her job - educating him. I have sons and I don't think their lives are a bed of roses because they are male. But the fact that some men choose to view every woman trying to help them as an attack, and then complain that women aren't interested in helping men is exasperating.

@EndlessTea i agree, and I think there is a problem with the application of poorly understood or poorly thought out/developed feminism, a facile kind of “girl power!” feminism that does not take in to account, or actively minimises, the significant physical disparity between the two sexes even from a fairly young age. The end result works for neither boys nor girls.

Yes, slightly. Men can really do no right on MN and a lot of women seem to forget they’re still humans with foibles/problems/feelings.

it is not up to women to socialise men (outside of bringing up their own children and familial relationships)

Men need to understand that we are not here to do their bidding, stroke their egos or any of the other things that so many men seem to think they deserve on account of being a penis-haver. It is exhausting.

We see it all the time on here: women sick of doing all the cleaning and men being excused with "men just don't see mess". Or the natural assumption that after having DCs the woman will stay home because they earn less. Why do they earn less? Many flipping complex reasons, but if men stepped up maybe we could start to tip the balance back towards equality.

I don't agree that men and boys need to be taught not to barge women out of the way. Chivalry is just another way of making out women to be weak and not able to do things for themselves. Men and boys shouldn't be barging anyone out of the way. We should all, men and women, be mindful of those around us who are less able to do things and not push them over in our rush to get on with our important lives etc etc.

Men really only listen to other men. So it's time for all those male feminists or male feminist allies to step up and do the, sometimes uncomfortable, things rather than just giving themselves the label and patting themselves on the back.