As an honest 25-year-old in college who wanted to understand other people’s views, I took a feminist course! Also because my girlfriend challenged me to do so. Gender classes are not a part of the Computer Science articulation at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and I had witnessed sexism towards the minority of women in our classes. So, I wanted to understand what feminism actually thinks about men like me. I have a good relationship, but I’m not completely immune to “toxic masculinity.”
A clue that this perception of society hating men is due to online propaganda and not any feminist theory might be that the types of men griping about this are mostly in their teens, twenties and thirties. AKA people who get their news from YouTube and TikTok. A lot of older men I know are under no impression the world hates men and are disturbed by the anti-women backlash among young men. Older Teamsters in this article talked about having to fight this propaganda infesting their young male union members voting to un-employ themselves over online feminism.
The real misandry doesn’t come from these feminist classes that these boys never enroll in, but from the manosphere. Male-oriented content on social media does everything it can to make men’s lives worse and offers no usable advice except self-pity. Teen boys and men in their twenties are watching TikToks and YouTube videos about how cool, sigma or alpha it is to be a loner and not have friends. How you should suppress your feelings and mental issues and never talk to women except for romance or sex. There are whole seminars by people like Jordan Peterson just telling you to clean your room and that women are teasing them by wearing makeup and sexy clothes.
Femenism benefits men too. I am a man and while I primarily support feminist causes for women themselves, there’s no denying that patriarchy also damages my life as a man. All these toxic behavioral “rules”, the machoism, the competitiveness, the hiding of emotions.
That is the irony, a lot of incels and other misogynistic young men are suffering from that which they are siding with, and are fighting against what could ultimately help them.
Feminism benefits men. Queer acceptance benefits straight people. Trans acceptance benefits cis people. Celebrating diversity benefits everyone. The cost is giving up the smug sense of innate superiority, and it seems like a lot of people just aren’t willing to do that.
There’s a diverse range of opinion within feminism and plenty of their positions put women first and require men to curtail their behaviour. Banning pornography, criminalising the purchase of sex and allowing no fault divorce with alimony and custody awarded to the divorcing wife/ mother are all positions that require male allies to place the needs of women above their own.
If only more people could be open minded.
