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Comment by mattstreet | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what you mean by "the American academy" but modern feminism has a lot to say about the negative effects of the patriarchy on men. One major example of this is the way men are pressured to work certain jobs rather than others, or to not seek help for physical or especially emotional problems.

Saying that men cannot be oppressed because they are the oppressors seems to come out mostly from MRA strawman talking points.

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>Saying that men cannot be oppressed because they are the oppressors

There is a very vocal group of feminists who claim this very thing

You can find vocal groups advocating any old thing. This is not an invitation to sweeping generalisations.

Which is exactly what the post I quoted was doing, I'm not sure what you are trying to say

Third-wave feminists' deliberate use of the word "patriarchy" to describe modern western culture is itself a class-conflict power grab.

But to directly address your point, the OP's argument isn't a strawman. I could compile a list of fifty feminist articles, blog posts, and comics espousing minor variations of:

- "Men can be oppressed, but not for their maleness"

- "Misandry isn't real"

- "Anything that systemically hurts men is simply their privilege backfiring"

But someone will still say that those examples don't represent true feminism.

Talking about “true” feminism is almost meaningless (or at least very imprecise). There are several strands of feminism. Radical feminism in particular tend to have a complete disregard for men’s issues, but my experience is that there are many moderate feminist who do care about gender issues on all sides.

Caring about it and doing something about it are two different things. There is a huge disconnect between theory and practice. In theory feminism concerns itself with the effects of "patriarchy" on both men and women. In practice, groups ordered around feminist ideology are women's groups and other groups that consider themselves in an adversarial position to men as a class.

While I can hardly blame a women's group for focusing entirely on women's issues rather than men, the way they attack and berate any attempt to do so by other people ("oh, boys are now doing poorly in school? the poor menz, why will no one think of the menz!!", "oh so now that boys are doing bad in school it's an issue?", "let's see how you like it for a change") is spiteful and hypocritical.

We're wasting time trying to convince hacker789 of anything. Check his comment history - it's like a work of art. He just repeats the same drivel on this topic.

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