So, I understand I write rambly messes sometimes, but there is one point from that article I do wanna highlight more succinctly, and that's basically this.
I feel like a lot of modern feminism and womens' liberation is hypocritical in the sense that it changed the social contract for women, but not for men. A lot of this comes from the whole ideological privilege stuff. It's only progress if we change things for under privileged groups, but not privileged groups. This approach is kind of one dimensional and ignores the greater context of the suffering that we might engage in in our society. I mean, sure, one group can have it worse, but that doesn't make it right for ANY group.
The traditionalist social contract is this: women stay at home and pop out and raise kids, men get jobs and make the money. Men having control of finances put women in a compromised position, often unable to leave bad marriages, so they wanted more power and the ability to get jobs and climb the corporate ladder. I'm fine with this btw, Im sure AF not a traditionalist. I am, if anything, a more consistent progressive. I mean, I'm the UBI guy. I want everyone to have financial independence and not be dependent on ANYONE. Spouses, employers, what have you.
But...feminism kind of enforces a "rights and empowerment for me but not for thee" kind of mindset. When we talk about the idea of men NOT working or wanting to stay home and be "house husbands" or "stay at home boyfriends", people think those men are losers. I mean, again, this feminism raised women to the status of men on paper, and again, totally a good thing, but it kind of did so within the language of jobs and work, which i see as negative. Because in my worldview, wage labor is just a form of soft slavery and you're forced into abusive relationships with employers instead of spouses. We really gotta get over this idea that hard work makes us financially independent. I mean, it kinda has the same ring to it as "work makes you free"....gee, who else thought that?
And....it's not just this subject where these dynamics are at play. It's everything. I cant stand a lot of pro choice spaces these days because they're full of loud and obnoxious women shouting "my body my choice", but the second we talk about financial abortion for men, the traditionalist sex shaming comes out. All of the sudden these people sound like evangelicals saying you shouldnt have had sex and if you didnt wanna be locked into child support for 18 years you should've been more responsible. Again, these guys embrace all those christian ethics. Just not when it applies to women. but men, well F men.
Feminists push body positivity movements, which, again, IN MODERATION, I dont have an issue with. I mean, we shouldnt act like being fat is "okay" from a health standpoint, but honestly, people should be free to live as they want. But then when it comes to men, well, they want the ideal partner. Under 6 foot, bad. A little bit of a beer gut, bad. Balding, don't even bother. Not financially successful, ew, go away loser. And then they complain there arent any good men out there, ya know, like incels would for women.
Again, its like men shouldnt have standards but women should.
Men are supposed to be the ones to approach women, but then we're chastised or called creepy for doing so. This one is a huge pet peeve for me in particular, given my social anxiety and autism.
And as we know in the autistic communities, despite the vast majority being straight men, their concerns get suppressed in favor of that minority of left wing activists who are women, gay, trans, etc. And we're just supposed to stfu, we're shamed for venting our concerns as straight men, and are often unwelcome in those communities. If we express anything remotely similar to the "there's no good men out there" mindset but toward women even in moderation, we're accused of being incels.
Again, it's the double I standards I don't like.
Men have concerns. Just because we're historically "privileged" in power dynamics doesnt mean those concerns are illegitimate, which, I think, is a HUGE reason this stuff is so massively unpopular with the majority of people (and arguably a reason the orange moron won again).
Men have issues with employment and financial success, especially in the modern era.
We have problems with issues like child support, custody issues with children, etc. We're trusted less in these courts. And the rulings often go against us.
We're expected to be masculine, to not share our feelings, to suck it up.
We're expected to navigate an increasingly dysfunctional maze of confusing mixed signals in order to date. The dynamics have shifted where everything feels like it's on the women's terms and we're just blasted for doing everything wrong.
I mean, younger generations dont even wanna date. And the most regressive of men are going back toward traditionalism and wanting to go back to the 1950s again in reaction to these changes. Which is bad. Again, wanna make it clear, NOT a traditionalist. Not alt right here. You can call me some variation of "alt left", whatever that may mean (left wing but not traditionally left wing?). But yeah Im clearly trying to approach this from an egalitarian perspective.
Honestly, MRA stuff isn't the answer. We need an ethic that sees people as people and tries to push men and women as EQUALS. Instead, it seems like men get all the traditionalist social obligations and none of the progress. Maybe if progress means making women more like men, feminism has done that, but as a man, I think the entire traditionalist framework is dysfunctional in the first place. I dont wanna save or preserve it for either side. Just as I'm a "liberal feminist" if you wanna call it that, I'm just as progressive and egalitarian for men. And that means rejection of the entire old social contract related to traditionalism, which all comes from christianity btw. Like the work ethic is christian, the idea of life being split into institutions like marriage and work with social obligations, that's christian. And I just flat out, straight up reject those "christian" institutions, those "christian" norms, and that entire way of life. I'm anti traditionalist. And I just think, for all the progress have made over the past century, men need to make progress too. That means breaking the work ethic, that means more rights like financial abortion and more equal rulings in custody courts. And that means maybe women have to put up with some uncomfortable advances, at least in moderation (obviously there is SOME level where youre just harassing people and yeah, I'm not supporting anything that actually puts women in danger). And it means that maybe if they wanna find someone at all, they gotta adjust to the market a bit more instead of having unrealistic standards and then asking "where have all the good men gone?"
Again, for me, the big problem here is the double standards. I just feel like to accommodate these changes that have been made over the past half century to a century, that the social contract needs to change for men too. That's progress, not a regression. Again, I'm not regressive. I'm just not a traditionalist who wants to go back to the past. I just feel like feminism only did half the job and now men are taking on all of the social obligations and it's not working for us. And it's time to actually make something that works in the twenty-first century.
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