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Women always had different kinds of rights, like expressing themselves more with emotions and clothing and cosmetics, etc., and taking care of children. Men don't have these rights. A man working in daycare is frowned upon. A man wearing eyeshadow is frowned upon, a man sending heart ♥ emoticons in WhatsApp is frowned upon, etc. It seems fair that if women claim more rights, then men can claim some of these "soft" rights too.
I'm totally on board with people wearing whatever, it's a free country, but equating political rights with social norms is a false dichotomy.
But one begets the other, no? See also all this noise from TN and FL about crossdressing being a sex offense. People are more okay with women looking masculine than men looking feminine, and now we're seeing laws that reflect that.
Similarly, because men aren't viewed as nurturing or whatever, they're far more likely to lose custody cases in court. There's absolutely tight bindings between political rights and social norms, and similarly I think there's a lot to be learned from the contrast between men and women's distinct challenges.
I disagree with the headline that "the left needs to talk about it" because fundamentally we do every day. The problem is that men tense up when we talk about things like "patriarchy" and "feminism", despite every piece of literature that explains that patriarchy and traditional (toxic) masculinity are actively harmful for men too. So men aren't listening to leftist talk about these issues and need to be baby-fed them using different words.
I do post the growing heart and broken heart emoticons all the time on Mastodon but I can’t really talk about my gender much but I am sure people would guess it right.
For example at my undergrad school I made fun of some gay bashers so they came after me instead of going after gay people because this was the 1990s and they probably thought if they actually bashed gays they'd get AIDS or something. Their reign of terror against me and other people like the president of the paint pellet gun club continued for a year until they finally smashed somebody in the face with a rock at point blank range from a water balloon catapult in front of tens of witnesses.
I am still sore to this day at the dean of students who made excuses instead of busting the people involved. A gay man and a lesbian women committed suicide when this was going and I blame that dean of student more than anyone because the key thing about bullying is how the whole institution rallies to the support of the bully (e.g. if the institution can't protect you from that kind of abuse it is showing you you are worthless, not just *telling you.) I heard the ringleader of that gang did time and if he got out and went "straight" and put his life together and stayed out of trouble I would want to shake his hand because I know how hard that is, but that dean of students is celebrated as a hero for all the good things he's done for that school and I think never held to account for his role in that incident. When I really think about it I felt that I belonged there much more than many places in my life but I have not given money, been to reunions, or anything like that.
> It seems fair that if women claim more rights, then men can claim some of these "soft" rights too.
So it seems the argument is that because men prevent other men from exercising their rights, women deserve to be stripped of rights? Interesting logic. If men are stopping you from exercising your rights perhaps you should listen to the folks talking about toxic masculinity -- which is exactly what you're describing -- rather than trying to punish women.
also i believe that this director surely checked if other nearby schools had male staff when evaluating the feedback he got from parents before making a general claim. (because if parents complain about male staff then i'd want to know if they would be able to find any schools that didn't have male teachers.) so i do not believe that this was an isolated incident.
it is possible that this was a regional phenomenon and not indicative for the whole country, but it certainly shows that the sentiment "man working in daycare is frowned upon" is definitely a thing and not something made up nor an exaggeration of reality.
i believe the only way to counter that is to demand gender parity among teachers. children need male and female role models and gender parity or something close to it is the only way to achieve that.
Gender seems to cancel out here
Boys and men do worse on a number of things compared to girls and women within, say, US society:
* Worse grades in school
* More frequently disciplined in school
* Lower college attendance and graduation rates
* Weaker friend networks/less emotional support for adult men
* More likely to be imprisoned/found guilty of crimes (especially violent ones)
* More likely to be homeless
* More likely to have dangerous jobs
* Lower life expectancy
* Less likely to have a real relationship with their kids
This has gone back as far as the 90s. My school, and many in my state, offered coed math and coed science classes, and female-only math, science classes.
A few years of this and they found boys grades had decreased and at an alarming rate. Surprise was expressed by some.
Wouldn't "overpowering" those "competitive values" be using a competitive mindset and sabotage the effort for "values of mutual help"?
Both cooperation and competition is part of the human psyche, and there is a place for competition as well (such as the refinement of personal character and development of capabilities). More problematically are such things as, exploitation, rent-seeking, status-seeking, etc. There are also problems when people in cooperation are not mature or capable enough to take care of themselves and cannot then adequately contribute, and others who contribute to the point of undermining their own health and development.
competition is if course not exclusively individualistic. but overpowering competitive values in my mind needs to mainly happen on the individual level. that is, individuals need to learn to be cooperative. there is still room for healthy competition, like in sports and what not, but only if competition is not permeating through every level of society can we benefit from cooperation to build greater things.
It’s not as if I have a good solution to this. If I did, I would be writing about it.
So far, the person who seems to be able to articulate and implement this I have seen is Carol Sanford.
She does not talk about overpowering, or strength in numbers.
i am seriously interested, because i am more interested in achieving the desired result, not how we get there (unless there is a problem with the approach, like you seem to see here, so i would like to explore alternatives)
Most of her writings and podcasts are geared towards business, but she wrote one book called _Regenerative Life_.
I don't know how exactly that applies to social structures, but "beat to fit, paint to match" is not it.
I'm approaching my understanding of it from the ecology and permaculture side of things. It's really easy to think in terms of, kill all the weeds, kill all the pests, maximize yields, etc. because that is part of the normative, mainstream paradigm. It requires a big shift into becoming a part of the ecology and designing things in that way. But letting the ecology grow, live, die, and heal on its own without as much direct intervention is how you get to a place where the system is resilient and adaptive, and yields something for humans along with all the other participant of the ecology.
There were much more clearly defined gender roles but this wasn't the same as fewer rights. For example lots of people claim that in the past men all had the vote and no women did, in reality the franchise in the past was mostly determined by land ownership and similar. Lots of men also didn't have it.
One obvious right women had in the past that men did not was the right to not be drafted into the army.
It is not required to achieve maximum level of struggling. All that is required, is that Men’s issues are distinct, for instance they die younger, and advice given to women isn’t applicable.
> patriarchal values are compatible with capitalism
Perhaps, but I don’t think Christian values are really compatible with it and yet no one seems to die of the cognitive dissonance. People have a surprising ability to believe in mutually exclusive things at the same time.