I'm a feminist and I think it's harder to be a man than a woman | Hacker News Reader

I'm a feminist and I think it's harder to be a man than a woman

celestemdavis.substack.com

35 pointscolinprince37 comments

> Men suffer under patriarchy because patriarchy is a system set up by a few men over everyone else- including most men. It is a system that allows for the most greedy, aggressive and selfish to rise to the top and dominate over everyone else.

This is essentially what anarchists have been saying about patriarchy and other -archies for a century or so, hence the name (an... archy).

The conflation of patriarchy with "men" is an example of those in power trying to identity-amalgate and shift the blame. By that I mean: the patriarchy is the hand of a few powerful men that oppresses many (men and women), and in order to protect themselves, these men lie and say "actually, all men, you are the patriarchy, the patriarchy benefits you, the patriarchy is not evil, and an attack on the patriarchy is an attack on all of you." I could take this sentence and plop it into so many ideologies. White supremacy, heterophilia, Zionism, Han Chauvinism, all ideologies that seek to uplift a very few powerful people, oppress all others, and then pick an identifying attribute to create a moat of proletariat around them to duke it out in culture wars.

Billionaires claiming the union is an attack on hardworking individuals. Reactionary white supremacists claiming Black Lives Matter is an attack on all white people. Fascist Israeli leaders claiming opposition to their slaughter of Palestinians is an attack on global Jews. The CPC claiming criticism of them is actually racism against all Han people.

But billionaires and their hardworking employees aren't the same at all. White supremacist leaders are the only ones under attack by Black Lives Matter, not random white people in suburbs. A criticism of the terrorist-funding fascist Netanyahu and his government (who is happy to send his police to beat Orthodox Jews) has nothing to do with Jewish people around the world. A criticism of the CPC has nothing to do with Han around the world (and on that note, it's becoming such that anyone with Asianic heritage is becoming "Han" by the CPC's encroaching standards). Yet each of these smaller groups claim to speak for / be one with these larger groups.

I'm sad when see fellow leftists fall into the trap of attacking class allies, but to be fair it's very hard to sit down and convince every single person scared of the big Black Lives Matter protest that we probably actually share a cause and common enemy.

I have no solutions other than personally always trying to remember who really is the source of so much suffering in the world and avoiding lashing out against class allies. This article is a great example that I feel follows the same strategy.

Thank you for bringing clarity to the conversation.

As a fellow anarchist, I tend to forget to ask simple questions like:

Who stands to benefit?

Probably not poor, misogynist men.

The word describing what you're talking about is plutarchy, not patriarchy. A plutarchy is a system of the well heeled and connected, maintained for the well heeled and connected, everyone else be damned.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy

Patriarchy is grounded in the gendered axis, skewed toward elder men. Sic, patriarchs. One of men in general, regardless of age would likely be an andro-archy or some such.

You're correct in that the Western world is highly plutocratic. That is the inevitable outcome of power laws in economics, combined with wholly private ownership of the means of production without a sufficiently strong regulatory apparatus capable of thwarting the natural tendency of humankind to conspire to improve their lot at other's expense.

Just letting you know that using the right word can help you hone in on what you're trying to say. Vocab is worth investing in! Names have power!

This is also a cultural thing. Eastern cultures gives more leniency to what men should and should not act like.

Could you detail that some more? Because my understanding is anything but. Especially Korean, Japanese and Indian culture.

Gender performance is very much a cultural thing. I could see some seeing these cultures as being both more and less forgiving depending on the performance in question.

Crying would probably be an example. US culture has a pretty strong demand that men never show tears (or most emotions in general). That's not really true of a lot of other cultures.

> Women read books by men, but men don’t read books by women.

WHAT?

It's an exaggeration but there might be some truth in it. For example, J. K. Rowling was advised by her publisher/agent to use those initials rather than a first name because a feminine name would have discouraged boys from reading her books.

On the other hand, I read somewhere that a lot of romantic novels (Mills & Boon, etc.) are written by men using a feminine pseudonym so probably someone should check the stats to see if there really is an asymmetry here.

This may be true, but only insofar as men don't read many books, period.

Are you a woman or a man?

I'm going to do something anti-woke and assume that Celeste with the blog Matriarchal Blessing whose profile picture is this: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr... -- is a woman.

This belongs to a category of rabbit holes of the human condition that are entirely pointless to argue or worry about.

While I agree to some extent, it's good to have a discussion on this from time to time as it's an important social topic. Especially when young girls became acquainted with history of women's rights and so on, they immediately tend to become convinced that men are the source of all evil. Some spit it out explicitly, some just hide that feeling in their hearts and go through lives like this.

For this reason, it's worth remembering that the source of these problems for women and men is the same, even though effects differ.

(1) For individual asault cases, these are violent people, almost always men, who choose men and women as their victims. (2) For systemic issues, it is the law. (3) For cultural issues (e.g expectations that men should "take care of the family" while women should take care of children/older family problems) this is the society with its prejudices.

And while we can't do much about (1), there is a lot to be done for (2) and (3), and an honest and civilized discussion rather than flagging all posts on the subject is a part of it.

Worrying about dying by meteor impact is a waste of life because you can't do anything about it, and so is this. Internal locus of control has boundaries of what is and is not worth worrying about. And this clearly isn't except for other people tend to be fixated on victimhood/oppression Olympics, tend to be unreasonable, and disinterested in accomplishing anything of positive social change.

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I believe this is the first time in history that the 'oppressed' class has better average material conditions (measured in things like life expectancy, serious workplace injury and death, imprisonment, suicide rates, outcomes in courts, genital mutilation, educational attainment) than the 'oppressor' class.

I feel like that should give more pause to people to check priors. I'm not sure aliens landing on earth today would come to the same conclusion that most people have as to who is oppressed here.

Yeah, we're living on some strange version of Angel One.

news you can use

While there are certainly areas, where boys and young men are now in a disadvantage (college degrees, high school grades) - something that we should try to mitigate - in other social contexts, women are still heavily discriminated against.

Asserting that one group has it “harder” than the other, speaks to poor methodology and understanding of the situation.

Tell me even one metric women are doing worse than men or boys regarding life?

- Most suicides, men - Most homeless, men - Most with out partners, men - Most with out child (even though they would wanted one), men - Most dying at work, men - Most getting divorced, men - Most with out college or other degrees, men - Most died by violence, men

and so on...

so why don't men start cuddeling groups then?

Women experience more sexual violence than men. Women experience more instances of genital mutilation, are more often sex trafficked and enslaved, and experience more instances of domestic abuse.

Most getting divorced as "men" makes no sense unless you mean that homosexual men couples more frequently get divorced than homosexual women couples, considering a heterosexual divorce results in +1 count of divorces-per-gender equally.

But the point is that a lot of the things that men suffer under is exactly the same thing under attack by feminists. Feminists aren't your enemy and "all the men on earth" isn't the enemy of feminists or people resisting patriarchy.

Do you believe the assigned-male-at-birth person who chooses to resist gender hierarchy by dressing in drag and protesting at the capital is your enemy?

> Women experience more sexual violence than men. Women experience more instances of genital mutilation, are more often sex trafficked and enslaved, and experience more instances of domestic abuse.

I believe the parent meant Western societies.

In any case, even though I agree with the spirit of your comment (in theory, feminists should fight with the very same root causes that make both men and women suffer), in practice their focus is very much shifted towards women. And when we get to the point where systemic oppression/privilege is considered (military service, being able to save one's life during a war), most of them suddenly become quiet.

- most Firearms possessed

- most paid sports employment

- most elected office positions

- most leadership position in private companies

- most physical strength records

- most Chess grandmasters

- most Nobel prizes

Yes you are pointing the top 1% of the most skilled people in the world and you do know most men don't own firearms unless you are talking about US which seems to be the "whole world" for you people.

is the distribution at other groups beyond the 1% different ?

Does the Physical strength ratio flip at some point ?

Firearms: all the worlds militaries, police departments, paramilitaries, criminal gangs, habitual hunters, etc that at some point in the day possess a firearm

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Apex_fallacy

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