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/

@CarPoor
In my first post I did say that they have to be prepared to take on that responsibility, but it may be that their partner wants to work and then they have to co-parent

The automatic assumption is only that men at least need to be prepared to do that role. I still think this is good. And true. They do. Don't they?

While it's clear this author has his own issues of blaming women for his own shortcomings, I think it's a possibility that a lot of young males follow this thought pattern. I've seen it in a few individuals I know well. But instead of blaming the feminists as this author clearly implies, why can't men step up and show these self-hating men how to be better humans, take advantage of their privilege and help out. Stand up to misogynistic behaviors of the fellow men and stop wallowing in pity parties. Take some accountability and practice self acceptance. Take a public stand against pornography. Grow up.

Teaching our sons that they should be sole bread winners and expect their female partners to bear their children and stay at home to raise them, without talking about any other options or supporting their partners with work and taking on equal childcare, is not feminist. It's not insidious, but it's not feminist.

@Dreamwhisper I genuinely didn't say this though, mainly because I don't think it. I said they need to prepare for it by default but it may be that their partners will want to work and then they support that way and co-parent. And I think they do need to prepare for that - I think that is their reality of being a man and also how they will be more likely to have happy marriages and good families.

I find men who aren't prepared to take on that role a little meh tbh, but like you say, we all go from our own experiences and I have definitely seen that play out too many times.

I think boys, men need to be prepared for the possibilities. No one knows what is going to work until the baby is born - it’s a life-changing event and people often have changes to their priorities and wishes that they would never have predicted.

I think the reason why most women would be really put off a man- get the ‘ick’, if he suggested ‘going Dutch’ on a date, is because she subconsciously knows that he’s not going to step up if she wanted to be a SAHM.

The Joseph Burgo article is what he describes as the 4th of his articles for Genspect about shame that drives men to transition.

I read it as Burgo's attempt solely to get inside the shame-based thinking that makes some teen boys and young men think that being a girl is an 'easier' option for them and emphatically NOT that Burgo/Stella was advocating for these warped and sexist views - these are not kids with fantastic mental health remember...

The purpose of this writing on Genspect is not to offer a feminist critique but rather to support parents with sons who say they are daughters and to give a psychological insight into what may be possible Motivation to what is very bizarre thinking.

In terms of the power dynamic it is far easier to see why teenage girls want to identify out of being female - yet even brilliant authors such as Abigail Schrier and Helen Joyce have shied away from discussing the boys as their motivation seems far less straightforward.

So if you are a sensitive boy with undiagnosed ADD and ASD, who likes reading and art and are super bright but struggle to focus at school and therefore constantly feel like you are failing and don't quite sync with the other kids and experience years of low level bullying, then you can feel a nebulous shame at your apparent inability to fit in and cope...

If you are also white and middle class and male and are told as a teenager that therefore you have 'white privilege' and 'middle class privilege' and 'male privilege' you can feel shame that you can't control these 'bad' things about yourself, so then it's maybe not surprising that when, despite all these privileges, you still feel you are a failure that you look for a way out.

To identify as trans with little to no previous evidence of gender non conformity then becomes a magic key for a young person at a time where victimhood has currency.

Suddenly, on transition, other people have 'cis' privileges that you don't have. You shame them, tell them to educate themselves, say they are wrong if they say they don't have a gender identity, that phrases like 'adult human female' are a transphobic dog whistle etc

You are now part of a 'vulnerable minority' rather than supposedly having all the power as a young man. You shame those who question your thinking or transition by saying they want you 'not to exist' /genocide.

If men treat you badly, you think you are experiencing misogyny. You try to shame the women who say that it is definitely/definitionally not the same experience.

Your tribe only allows you to hold progressive or left wing views (the only ones regarded as morally right) and you attempt to shame anyone who disagrees with you on this issue as 'far right/a right wing bigot/right wing Christian' despite their decades long activism or voting record.

You feel shame if you deviate from the accepted canon of your new faith - so you shame all those who do, particularly detransitioners.

You dissociate from the reality of your physical body - or anyone's physical body for that matter - because your life is online and you are squeamish about sexed realities like physical attraction. You therefore shame those who make demands for single sex spaces - the sneering 'genital checks' etc.

You may have swung from 'asexual' to 'pansexual' yet admit that you have never dated or so much as held someone else's hand or kissed - but you contemplate cutting your penis off because you hate it.

You are ashamed of the maleness of your body, your hair, your muscles, your strength, your voice so you do all in your power to modify them and then castigate those that have the temerity to still notice the male.

In your case, my DC, it was grooming on a Pokemon discord server which shamed you rather than porn but otherwise yes, I feel Burgo's words resonate with how we got to this strange place ...

I agree with a lot of this @ANewCreation and think it's critical to try to understand why these young males are transitioning.

I read it as Burgo's attempt solely to get inside the shame-based thinking that makes some teen boys and young men think that being a girl is an 'easier' option for them and emphatically NOT that Burgo/Stella was advocating for these warped and sexist views - these are not kids with fantastic mental health remember...

This may true, but why isn't it prefaced as such? I'm a bit suspect as I've seen far too much "Blame the female friends. Blame the feminists" content on sites like PITT substack.

Yes, I wasn’t picking that up between the lines, at all.

If that was what he was trying to convey @ANewCreation, then he needs an editor or to get someone else to do the writing. Because that is really not what came across.

No. Next?

I read it as Burgo's attempt solely to get inside the shame-based thinking that makes some teen boys and young men think that being a girl is an 'easier' option for them and emphatically NOT that Burgo/Stella was advocating for these warped and sexist views - these are not kids with fantastic mental health remember...

I see. I missed that entirely.

Burgo has been central to creating the recent GETA guidance on working with gender questioning people in a therapy context.

I am really dismayed that he has these views - it's shocked me. Burgo was interviewed on Gender A Wider Lens a while back. He lived as a heterosexual in a marriage until he came out as gay later in life.

This piece isn't gender critical in the slightest. As pp have already pointed out, it's based on all sorts of lazy cliches about girls being naturally meek and good at sitting still, etc. etc.

I know it isn't. But he runs in GC circles in the therapeutic world. He's been shared by a GC feminist I know ...

People who reject critical race theory and the like will always ring alarm bells for me. A lot of people don't understand what it means and there's just a knee jerk reaction because people feel criticised.

CRT is deeply divisive, and in its worst excesses plain racist itself. I'm not sure how you can be surprised that white people being told they carry the sins of their racist distant forefathers wouldn't make them feel defensive. But the most bonkers bit is the way it bakes in incredibly low expectations for POC - they can't do maths, critical thinking, timekeeping or indeed standard spelling, and to expect them to is racist.

Trans is a part of critical social justice, and thus I know a good number of feminists/gender critical people who are worried about all of it.

Burgo has been central to creating the recent GETA guidance on working with gender questioning people in a therapy context.

This really pisses me off. Another bloke who is basically promoting the idea that the male urge to get off is sacrosanct, being given undue respect and authority. It’s not like he has demonstrated any meaningful analysis.

There are various explanations around to try to understand why boys are transitioning. Angus Fox (who worked for Genspect too) thinks it is some really dark grooming of gay teens/young men into self harm for online fetishists. See WPATH suggesting eunuch as a gender identity.

Burgo is apparently suggesting that some boys see masculinity as only toxic, and thus are looking for a way out (as explained above by ANewCreation).

It does need looking at, but I don't especially trust Burgo with the task, going by this.

Yes. I feel that the online grooming on Pokémon, anime, manga forums leading to , Hentai, Futanari, furries, etc, is far more significant than a reaction to #MeToo or whatever.

If girls are transitioning to becoming men to avoid a sexist world, why is it so hard to imagine that there are boys who are transitioning to avoid being blamed for that sexist world?

In both cases it's not 100% of the time, yet many seem to operate in a black and white world where it is all or nothing.

@AlisonDonut where you say "many who played the game of 'I can't see words', who got 'support' at school to write and ended up becoming so far behind all the others they could never catch up" do you mean they were pretending to be dyslexic? Is that really a thing?

why is it so hard to imagine that there are boys who are transitioning to avoid being blamed for that sexist world?

it’s not hard to imagine. It’s just not sympathetic. Leaning hard into misogyny to avoid being blamed for misogyny is a thing misogynists (and not all men) do. Attempting to appeal to a mostly female audience to have sympathy for this behaviour is gross.

Personally, I think the perspective of gay men such as Burgo and Angus Fox on what might be happening with some of the male ROGD cohort is really interesting - but then again I am not expecting gay men to have any particular interest in feminism or greater insight into women than their straight counterparts.

I will say it again. These essays are NOT what Burgo thinks now so I don't think we have to imagine a malign influence in GETA. It is what he thinks these boys and young men are thinking, based on his own experience both as a young man and as a clinician.

His are helpful posts for parents of boys who think they are girls, some of the target audience of the Genspect website. We know that our kids' thinking is messed up, that they believe a lie and they insist that we believe it too. That they are concretising something that should be metaphorical, with potentially devastating consequences for their body. The body we created and birthed and nurtured and nourished and changed nappies for and protected and loved.

This is from the end of an earlier post on Genspect by Burgo talking to and about these muddled young men...

"For young men today, afflicted with internalized homophobia, there’s another cure on offer. Gender transition means you can escape from your shame-ridden self and transcend the failed boy you despise. You’re a girl born into the wrong body, not a failed boy. Another beautiful and beguiling lie.

In future essays in this space, I’ll be writing more for and about these young men. That might be you. If this essay gets close to your own feelings, you might be contemplating transition or have already tried it, only to realize the “cure” didn’t ease your pain. I’ll be writing more about gay shame and all the ways we try to escape from it, and about how we may come to accept and ultimately feel proud of ourselves as men."

genspect.org/the-failed-boy/

When we talk here on FWR about why teenage girls are caught up in this we can speak clearly about the myriad factors involved such as the propensity for girls for social contagion and internalised misogyny and tomboys and the failure of 3rd wave feminism and patriarchy and autism and a sexualised culture and porn addled boys, and creepy older guys and challenges of puberty etc.

When we talk about boys it very quickly seems to boil down to sex/porn/fetish. Which not only is pretty icky as a parent to navigate but really doesn't answer the question 'why these boys' and 'why this response?' and 'how come when you have shown absolutely zero interest in anything remotely feminine all your life do you suddenly think you would be more comfortable as a girl?'

It shuts down discussion of whether there is anything else going on...

So maybe it is a sensitive boy who, horrified by tales of toxic masculinity, wants to have nothing to do with being male? Internalised homophobia? A shame response? Sexist thinking that girls have it easier? Sensory issues around clothing and hair in autism or a special interest or rigid thinking about gender roles? Too much time online leading to treating your body like an avatar? Anxiety and depression leading to a socially sanctioned new form of self harm? Oppression hierarchies being a social currency that you can finally opt into when you are a white male? Gym bodies? Pressure on men to achieve and get ahead and dominate making some boys just want to opt out?

This rings true from the 'failed boy' essay (yes, before anyone is shocked, I don't think that as a therapist Burgo actually thinks that there is such a thing as a 'failed boy' either)

"But as most exploratory therapists have learned, the term [gender dysphoria] has a variety of meanings for different clients and may have little to do with biological sex or gendered identities. Sometimes it simply means – I’m terrified of growing up."

I'm not sure what you mean by believer. But by your own admission your husband gets aggressive and abusive, the epitome of a man who throws his weight around to make his opinions heard and seem more valid. So no I have no empathy for him. You are using the same techniques as the article, trying to tap into female empathy to excuse shitty behaviour.

Mmm! OK! I wasn't actually doing that. I just know that when the "You is a racist, privileged, lucky... whatever" is bandied around on the basis of someone else's ingrained bias that everyone I know, male or female, would tend to say "Fuck off you twat" loudly. My turn of phrase here was intended to indicate that. But then we are all base born, uncouth and white!

It is my observation that the nicest trans-identifying male people I've known, the ones whose access to female spaces I used to defend, all had experience of abusive fathers who brutalised and threatened their mothers.

I think this is a mirroring phenomenon to the internalised misogyny and fear of male sexual harassment that drives teenage girls to avoid being seen as female. In this case, the male transittioners are also disgusted and repulsed by male violence that has traumatised them in childhood/adolescence, just like female transitioners, except they're terrified of growing up and becoming violent men too. They're trying to block that possible future from coming to pass by refusing to become adult men.

Yes it is definitely a thing. They are very clever and saw other kids get support and people who would do their writing, so they deliberately set out on a mission to do the same. We worked with them in their late teens, and our sessions whilst focusing on teaching them 'skills' in a non-classroom situation [ie we'd teach them pruning trees but the main skills were teamwork, safety, taking turns, tidying up after themselves, safe handling of tools etc]...and because it was a social type of session we could get more out of them. We were hired to do things like teach them to tell the time, and what numbers were, get them to read and write - basically what they should have learnt at primary whilst they spent the time acting up and playing the 'I can't understand' game. They were quite open about it once we started to get to know them.

Just to put it into context. Some would swear they didn't know anything about numbers. We couldn't say 'we don't believe you' so we might for example offer them 5 of something whilst one of the others were offered 6. When they complained we would explore how they knew that when they told us all the time that they didn't know numbers. Alot of the exploration was where we found out the underlying reasons and it was mostly that they decided years ago not to know numbers as it got them out of writing numbers as they saw other people getting the help and wanted it.

I'm hesitant to say they did it because they were lazy, they were not all just lazy. They were devious, controlling, jealous - all those other things that we might put down to toxic male pattern behaviours but yes, many of them just played the game. If any of them felt that others were getting 'more rewards' then that's when it would escalate.

I also worked with loads and loads of people who DID need the help - but this particular trait ran through many teens that had got into trouble for their [really bad] behaviour and that's what we found time and again, group after group. Different schools, different areas, but mainly city kids.

If you look at some of the online incel-like communities, I think a lot of young men DO feel unfairly demonised by society. But if you look at the proof that is offered, a lot of it comes from blogs/opinion pieces written by other men on all the ways men are demonised, often including speculative fiction on women's thought processes/whether a woman can ever truly love. Some if it is cherry picked from "Tumblr feminism" and some of the stuff published by newspapers. I actually think there is a small element of truth there - you do get the sort of "fashionable feminism" columnists who will one day write a column on the subject of "the dangers of the male gaze" and the next day "why I feel empowered when I get men to look at me". Basically, completely inconsistent filler designed to meet whatever is flavour of the day. Also, quotes like "the future is female" which I think most people here would see as corporate virtue signalling but which is taken deadly seriously by some men online. Its completely cherry picked - only the bits which fit the narrative are chosen. And all online communities can tend towards this - the difference is most of the time people are also interacting with others in real life so can calibrate what they read online with what they see in real life. Someone who spends their time permanently online isn't doing that- so stories about men constantly being accused of sexual harassment for saying good morning to a woman in the office even though she's sleeping with the boss make sense to a 19 year old who is unemployed and spending most of his waking hours online at home. It also completely justifies their reluctance to actually leave the house/get a job.
I am all for working against that narrative and making young men feel valued and see the good in masculinity. Especially when there are quite predatory people trying to lead them down dangerous paths. But I think Burgo's method seems to work by reinforcing the things they have already been led to think about women in the process of drawing them out of their depression/shame cycle. That mirroring might work in an ongoing therapeutic session, but a series of online articles is different.
I also think he has probably thought a lot about porn addiction in young men. However, in my experience while it makes sense to talk to addicts to understand them, taking their explanations for their addictions at face value is naive in the extreme. Plus, reading some of his other stuff he seems to have a negative view of men/masculinity himself? So maybe it isn't feminists demonising boys/men

My whole assumption is NOT that women aspire to be a SAHM, however I am uncertain as to the classic feminist aim to never be a SAHM. Doesn't this somehow devalue motherhood - a female only role?

It's thorny.

I just don't think motherhood is not valuable.

@hamstersarse I'm sorry, but it's not "thorny" at all becuase everything you're saying is just made up. I don't think classic feminism said never be a SAHM? Or at least, certainly, no feminism of the last 20 years. And no feminist has ever said that motherhood is not valuable. And certainly, most feminists today would argue that motherhood is undervalued - and that the work of being a mother from the physical reality of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding to the emotional elements of taking on more are massively important and not appreciated enough.

If you're raising your sons to accept that they may well have to take on financial responsibility, I think that's fine. But it's part of a much bigger need - to raise boys to understand that they have to take responsibility full stop. It may well be that they need to be the main breadwinner. It may be that they have to take on more responsibility at home because their partner is the main breadwinner or is super passionate about her work or has other responsibilities. It doesn't matter. The point is that bringing up boys to think that their wants and needs are all important is where we run into problems.

I often think about so called "traditional" set ups of the past. In many families, the man might have earned the money but the woman controlled the purse strings - especially true in working class families where money was tight and careful budgeting was needed to ensure everyone was clothed and fed. Then there's the "rich" traditional family where the women might be SAHM but outside services are bought in and this is important to overall standing in community - cleaners, nannies etc. Plus of course, personal grooming etc for the woman - hair, nails, gym, clothes etc. And with middle class families with the traditional SAHM set up, there was a lot of support by the men ito weekend activities, sports, "heavy" lifting etc [obviously, this is all hugely generalised].

And then we get to today where somehow men who are primary breadwinners seem to think earning enough money to (barely) clothe and feed their families makes them princes. THAT is what we have to fight against.

Poor oppressed 1960s men

(Incidentally, the proportion of men doing housework always varied by class- with working class men on average doing more (I am sure some did nothing).

Most women didn’t work. If it was the bloke not working everyone would be saying he should be doing most of the housework