I just stepped down as moderator from all five of the subreddits I used to moderate over on Reddit. I just can’t ethically justify continued activity on Reddit, and especially free volunteer labour for an openly greedy company that is engaged in scummy behaviour, forcing mods to open protesting communities or be demoted.

So my online activism for boys and men is now focused here and on Mastodon. And I am welcoming everyone coming over from Reddit, especially from LeftWingMaleAdvocates, the sub I put in the majority of my time and effort as a mod.

Let’s build something good here, as we did previously on Reddit. It appears we have a wider reach here, so let’s debate in good faith and with civil manners.

Here, in this magazine (i.e. community or subreddit in Kbin-speak) we wish to discuss and spread awareness of various issues that disproportionately affect males.

We believe men are not being well-served by either side of the mainstream political spectrum. We oppose the right wing’s exploitation of men’s issues as a wedge to recruit men to inegalitarian traditional values. But we also oppose feminist attempts to deny male issues, or shoehorn them into a biased ideology that blames “male privilege” and guilt-trips men.

We have no objection to the genuinely egalitarian aspects of feminism, but we will criticize feminist ideology wherever it is inegalitarian and/or untruthful, especially now that it holds institutional power. Too often feminism has promoted a one-sided “equality”, dismantling male advantages while exploiting, reinforcing, preserving, and downplaying female advantages - particularly in cases involving alleged abuse.

In practice this means that most of us are politically homeless. The natural home for male advocacy should be the left wing, which professes to be explicitly egalitarian. But in modern practice, men’s issues are habitually ignored, denied, or even opposed.

We seek to address male issues without falling into the traps of an impossible return to the past or a disastrous sexism. Men and women have equal value, and we need to work together for a better future.

  • RandoCalrandian@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The patriarchy is a code word

    It means “men having power, or free of power women hold”

    And if you run into the right ones, the mask comes off entirely. Just look at the production of The Power and you’ll get plenty of great examples of misandry on display, proudly.

    I suppose i’m trying to defend a position that’s not my own, and yeah, using “men” to describe a system created by some men to advantage all (or at least white) men in a broad way is absolutely sexist - but it’s hardly the main issue here.

    the system wasn’t created to advantage men, otherwise feminism wouldn’t have happened.

    The system was created to advantage the wealthy and powerful, and keep them that way. That they were white or male is incidental. Any other race or gender in that position can and will create the same problems.

    Saying something ridiculously sexist like “There wouldn’t be wars if society was run by women” or any other similar forms such as “the future is female” is just as braindead stupid as someone saying:
    “Racism would disappear if X was run by Y people”

    It’s not the color or gender of the people, it’s the incentive that the positions of power create to subjugate others.

    Feminists actively promote the idea that just having women in power solves problems, and that is a blatantly stupidly sexist idea to believe.

    • grahamsz@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Saying something ridiculously sexist like “There wouldn’t be wars if society was run by women” or any other similar forms such as “the future is female” is just as braindead stupid as someone saying:
      “Racism would disappear if X was run by Y people”

      True, but women make up the majority of the population in the US, and so in an equal society we’d expect them to make up a very slight majority of fortune 500 CEOs, congressional representatives, supreme court justices and presidents. Whether or not you think that’d make a real difference in the world doesn’t change that it’s a perfectly legitimate goal and I don’t think it’s one that’s particularly sexist.

      If you were to argue that you should have more women in those roles to make up for the historical injustice… that becomes a bit less clear as it would create a situation where present day men are disenfranchised to make up for the mistakes of our forefathers.

      • RandoCalrandian@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        so in an equal society we’d expect them to make up a very slight majority of fortune 500 CEOs, congressional representatives, supreme court justices and presidents

        Well that’s a load of bullshit.

        You’re treating all of those things as if they were a lottery, and women simply weren’t considered.

        They’re not. ANY OF THEM

        Every one of those positions has an army of men competing to be the next one in the seat. Ignoring all of that because you feel like women should have made it is just stupid.

        Here’s the facts for you: Even with blatant discrimination in women’s favor, they still don’t get into all the “positions of power” people try to cheat them into because those positions often still require work women by and large choose not to do

        Work like taking risks, or being in the public eye and taking responsibility for failures that may not be your fault. Both things women avoid at far greater rates then men.

        Edit:

        And to be very clear, i’m not saying women can’t, I’m saying they don’t, won’t, and will continue not to, in anywhere near the numbers men do, simply due to their personal choices.

        This is why the focus on ‘equity’ is so fucking toxic. It’s basically saying “all power in society should be evenly distributed, i was able to twist data around enough that it i can show a way women have less (ignoring all ways in which men have less), and unless women have all power that men have in equal rates, it’s sexism!” and most of the people who say this with a straight face know full well it’s impossible and the purpose of framing it this way is so they can continue to advocate for free shit, in perpetuity

        • grahamsz@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          women by and large choose not to do Work like taking risks, or being in the public eye and taking responsibility for failures that may not be your fault.

          do you have a source for that?

          • RandoCalrandian@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Many, but female aversion to physical and social risk is a broadly studied field that you are perfectly capable of searching yourself, and especially with the prevalence of cherry-picked studies i feel it’s better you find one from a source you trust on your own.

            • grahamsz@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              I looked and literally everything that comes up suggests the opposite.

              https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/news/2016/why-so-few-women-hold-positions-of-power.html
              https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2015/01/14/chapter-3-obstacles-to-female-leadership/

              Suggesting that the perfect attributes required to lead a major company just happen to coincidentally be those that are bestowed on white men is absurd. I don’t see much point in continuing this discussion.

              • RandoCalrandian@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                wow, guess i should have specified search terms

                Did they include any of the following that you clearly did not use: female physical social risk aversion?

                Here’s an excerpt from a first page result from just those:

                We find the extremely robust result that women are more risk averse than men

                Strong Evidence for Gender Differences in Risk Taking

                Edit:

                Suggesting that the perfect attributes required to lead a major company just happen to coincidentally be those that are bestowed on white men is absurd.

                Or that women specifically preference men who exhibit these traits, rewarding them with sex and status in ways that women generally are not and have not been rewarded for since our species first started to walk might relate to the skills necessary for success in a competitive field.

                As it turns out, reality doesn’t care about your delusions, or how unfair you feel it is

                I don’t see much point in continuing this discussion.

                Of course you don’t, that’s what people who are wrong usually do.