Men's Liberation

I take it you have not been through the family courts then?

I have not. I also did not say that this aspect of famiy law is not unfair to men. It is grossly unfair! It also has a complex history that isn’t easy to boil down to “men are bad, women are better”. It comes from patriarchal structures than enforce gendered roles that disadvantage both men and women.

But acknowledging is is unfair to men isn’t the same as saying misandry and misogyny are the same, because they have different effects and require different approaches to counteract them.

For example, misogyny accounts for violence against women at a greater extent than misandry accounts for violence against men. And to be clear: I am not saying that one of these situations is not as bad as the other. But they require different resources to manage the consequence and different approaches to tackle them.

I agree with this, and don't think they should be compared. They are separate problems that both need to be solved, not compared. I think problematically, the wealthy would rather pit men against women and vice versa because it diverts anger from the wealthy which are the real priviledged folk. Working class women, and men do not have a good shake of it. People with access to wealth will also get better legal outcomes and suffer less of the same challenges that most would.

Most men aren’t CEOs holding women down. Most don’t feel that theoretical privilege.

Most CEOs aren’t women. While the average man might not feel that theoretical privilege, they are still represented in a way women are not. The discourse around privilege is not about making someone feel bad for having it, it’s about empowering people to recognise when others don’t have it.

What is the value of the representation though. It doesn't bring in material benefit for most, just suppresses women's income, and more specifically parents with the lion share of the responsibility for raising offspring as men raising children as single fathers also have an income penalty. It's less a gender penalty and more of a childrearing penalty. Yes, women will generally be more adversely affected by this, but to treat it as a gendered issue and only solve it for women will not address the issue or make it go away.

The funny thing is that folk are so fixated on dogma around feminism they end up losing their audience in a debate. You see “shut up, man child. Acknowledge your privilege” attitudes followed by “why are men listening to Andrew Tate and not feminists”. The first should be locked up for a long time. The latter do contribute to pushing men away to the monosphere

Here’s a good example of male privilege: for decades, automobile safety systems were designed and tested with dummies that advantaged average males over females. For a man stepping into a vehicle, who had nothing to do with the design and testing of the safety systems, he probably won’t feel any more privileged than a woman in the same vehicle. But if the vehicle is in a serious accident, the woman is less protected.

Acknowledging that isn’t saying “shut up, you have no right to complain about the dangers of cars because someone else has it worse than you”. But it’s a reminder that there are other people with different experiences and needs to yours, because of the privileges not afforded to them.

I think any reasonable person would acknowledge that and want to fix that. It isn't acceptable.

Also, to address your final point: there is a long and storied history of chauvenists derailing conversations about misogyny by centering the dialogue on their complaints and injustices. This is why some men are told “shut up, man child”. I’m not a woman but I can imagine women are exhausted by this.

I think the response is also exhausting and does contribute to the division that is happening now. Unfortunately vast swaths of positive changes for inclusivity and diversity are getting wiped out because people didn't want to have fair debates and pushed folk to toxic content creators. The fact society for a long time made talking about men's issues taboo has created an unfortunate widespread rejection of this which is going to be hard to put back in the box. It is quite disturbing and those negative toxic folks are likely to damage the causes of men fighting against the injustices faced. Ultimately, the goal isn't division, but solidarity. Solidarity and understanding are hard. It's very easy to take the carrots and the rage bait and harden our positions rather than push ourselves to find that common ground.

I don't feel penalising folk or invalidating experiences is fair response to misogynists hijacking men's issues for their own political goals.