Serious question, why is this a data point we are required to ignore? There's been a lot of discourse about bias lately, so I feel like this is a data point people will welcome hearing. Thanks for sharing it.
Do people really say this? I've seen mens rights issues being raised carefully in the last few years, and I've never seen any backlash when done right. Like when you see articles written about women abusing men, or mens rights regarding children. Even women write about these issues. Feels like it's being accepted, just not being taken seriously enough yet. Maybe it's different in northern europe, but I haven't seen any backlash from international/US websites either.
I think part of the problem is that men are afraid of defending these issues. In part because of projection about how others will react. Either if it's from womens right activists going against it, or other macho men saying men shouldn't care about child custody or equality for male in women-dominated workspaces and such.
And there ARE also mens rights activist who are just using the issue to fight against womens rights, through whataboutisms and such. But don't let arguments against those people deter you from talking about reasonable mens rights issues.
Count how many people immediately jump in to try to ridicule you, typically with something like: there are already 364 mens days in the year, why aren't you happy already?
I didn't see any such replies here -- maybe at some other places some people do (Reddit / subreddits?)
(I didn't downvote)
> don't let arguments against those people deter you from talking about reasonable mens rights issues.
Good point
Discourse about bias usually makes strong distinctions between groups that are known have relative positions of power in their society (because this discourse is mostly held in Western culture, that usually boils down to "white heterosexual christian-adjacent men") and minority/disenfranchised groups (women, religious minorities, ethnic minorities, LGBT people, etc).
Progressive groups are perceived to get extremely testy when it's suggested that minority groups might benefit from / majority groups might suffer from systemic effects in some ways.
This failure to think critically leads to some very silly arguments, for example abortion control being "male politicians controlling women's bodies", when in reality men's and women's opinions on abortions are extremely similar (in the US, at least).
Not only is this toxic, it's also counter-productive when we're supposed to pretend that women aren't half of society and thus perfectly capable of contributing to gender roles, e.g. [1]
[1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/boys-don-t-cry-study-suggest...
I never said or implied that.
The fact that members of oppressed groups can be bigoted (including against their own group) isn't a novel concept.
Yes, women can be sexist against women, and yes, women can be sexist against men. That doesn't mean patriarchy doesn't exist.
> And before someone points to male over-representation in government, maybe think for a moment: whose votes put those men there?
That's not really convincing.
Rich people and families with old money are over-represented in government. And yet we must presume that poor people voted to get them in place too. There are explanations for that (eg maybe rich people can afford expensive schools where they learn to be competent politicians), but overall any system that can select against poor people can select against women too, even if that system is mostly democratic.
If women are being sexist against men, then men are also an oppressed group. This isn't a novel concept.
You're classifying one side as oppressed and the other as oppressor on the basis of a single data point - looking at the very top of society. This would be valid if gender roles were handed down from the top of society, but that's simply not the world you and I live in.
Modern gender roles are a much more grass-roots affair and women are perfectly positioned to influence them. Every complaint about gendered toys, for example, implicates women more so than men.
When mothers push gender roles on their sons that fathers do not, it is absurd to suggest that there is some self-sustaining system called "patriarchy" (literally "the rule of fathers") at fault. You may deny it, but it is a transparent attempt at denying women's agency and placing the blame on men instead.
Frankly, it's boring and at this point I'm comfortable discarding the opinions of anyone who uses the word "patriarchy" outside discussions on religion (i.e. the only context in which gender roles are still top-down).
> Rich people and families with old money are over-represented in government. And yet we must presume that poor people voted to get them in place too
While wealthier people have advantages in terms of getting into politics, they still have to conform to popular opinion to get elected. Most European countries have strong labour movements that reflect this. I don't deny that men have an advantage getting into politics. I do deny that this single data point is sufficient to prove an oppressor/oppressed relationship between men/women. Gender roles are a trade, and women are active participants.
My wife and I talk about these sort of things sometimes: We believe there are differences between man and woman (and between different human descents, like people from the mayan descent [from where I am from] are shorter, while people from Germanic descent are taller, among others). That does not have to mean that one is better/worse than the other. But if society accepted and understood those differences, we could make better use of each feature for good.
This always reminds me of the equality vs equity cartoon ( http://www.vestidosdecordura.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/... )