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Kaliko -> RE: What does feminism do for men? (10/22/2016 6:50:23 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
quote:
ORIGINAL: respectmen
Jesus, Peon, talk about intellectual dishonesty.
RM, you could have googled that yourself. You could have got your answers, had you wanted to find them. What's the point in asking here? You don't want to hear any answers. *That* is intellectual dishonesty.
Well, a couple of things here. First of all, as I always do, I will argue against Googling something versus bringing it up on a discussion board. He brought it up here because he wants to have a discussion.
Now, that being said, I do understand why you and others might think at this point that his motive is not to have a discussion at all. Fair enough (though I disagree). But personally, I'd rather the discussion.
I have Googled it. What I generally see is that feminism "breaks men free from the restraints of patriarchy" or the like. In fact, Peon, I looked somewhat closely at one of the search results from the link you provided to RM. There are a few impacts of feminism on men that I think had merit, one of which I'll mention in a moment, but there were also some that made me roll my eyes, such as "It encourages men to rethink outdated masculinity standards" and "It demanded that the media change its representation of men." These are really reaching, and not necessarily something that could definitely be called positive, in my opinion.
I did look a little more closely at the Rape is Rape campaign. It does seem, with the little research I did, that including males in the definition was part of the campaign from the get-go. Regardless of whether one agrees with the definition the FBI now uses, yes, feminists did push for that.
But here's the thing. (And here is where discussion can come in handy rather than Google - because we all know that we can find anything we want to find on the internet. I'm more interested to see what you and others have to say about this, not what I can find about this.) It seems to me that the benefits of feminism to men are incidental. If men benefit from something feminists have fought for, it is alongside benefits for women.
Okay. I'm told that feminism is about equality for all genders, so that makes sense.
Feminists have also fought for issues that are strictly for women. I'll reference here again that ridiculous issue in Florida in which feminists argued against men having equal footing when starting off a child custody determination, during which the clear message was to protect women and children, not men. There is also the push for girls to have more exposure to STEM subjects and other traditionally male studies, but I don't see a similarly powerful campaign to increase enrollment of boys in nursing, childcare, elementary education, etc. Feminists have opposed male conscription in the U.S, yes. Decades ago, they opposed it because the jobs they could fulfill within the military wouldn't be good enough for them, and decades after that they opposed it because the implication that women were the homemakers was sexist. Today, they oppose it because women are now threatened with it. (Interesting, I found this from 2015 regarding Norwegian conscription. The argument is basically that women should be treated equally, but not that equally.)
Is feminism fighting for men? I don't get that impression. I get the impression that feminism fights for women and men, and that feminism fights for women.
I have Googled (though I didn't devote hours to it, I admit.) And so I'm asking - has feminism fought for something that improves the circumstances for men which had no impact on also improving circumstances for women? Because to me, to say that feminism is about equality for all, when the issues are 100% for women without fail, with or without the rights of men and children riding those coattails, is not quite honest.
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