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by Anonymous User on Saturday May 10, @12:12PM EST (#1)
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I find an even more disturbing trend to be the depictions of men in popular culture and news media. The equation here seems to be men can be depicted in any role as long as they are depicted in a negative way.
Sure men can be lawyers or doctors as long as they are greedy, abusive, opressive or submissive to women. Men can be shown as caregivers and nuturers of children and the family as long as they are incompotent, molesters, lazy, deadbeats or submissive to women AKA Mr. Mom style.
Women can be shown in any role as long as it's a positive or victim role. They can be doctors or lawyers as long as they are righteous, struggling against the "patriarchy", superior, ethical or hapless victims. They can be caregivers or nuturers as long as they are hapless victims, stressed out and overworked moms or superior to men. They can even kill and still somehow come out untarnished. I'm expecting a big influx of these types of shows with mother's day coming up.
Of course there are exceptions to this. Theatre movies seem to have a the widest range of choices. Television mostly adheres to this. For the news media this is there bread and butter. I don't know what it's like in the states with the news media, in my country certain american news programs are blocked out like FOX news but this is the way it is here constant degredation of men in the papers and news programs on television.
An example-I opened up the paper today, a supposedly 'right wing' paper. On the second page what greets me is a story about how they have caught a deadbeat dead. He's one of the stereotypical deadbeat dads that cruises around in a yacht evading his payments. It mentions that he's one of 37 of 56 listed chronic deadbeats that have been caught using tips from the government deadbeat website. I found it of intrest that only 56 dads are listed as chronic deadbeats in my country sure is a diffrent number from the thousands upon thousands that the feminist are always harping about.
I flip a few more pages and come to the editorials-One catches my eye, Masculinity the Cause of Men's Health Problems. I begin to read and it starts out really great. The article mentions how men are at higher risk of dying of all of the leading causes of death. It even has a sentence about how funding for men's health is almost non-existant! After the first two paragraphs it then goes on to say that men are still getting advantages over women in healthcare because pharmacetucal companies use men as subjects much more often then women. It doesn't mention these men are most likely low income individuals that don't have money to get there prescriptions so they sign up as test subjects. Then numerous 'experts' are paraded out to show that it's men's fault that they suffer because they are to macho to go and get help.
I flip a few more pages-well you get the point and this is just the amount of man bashing in one 'right wing' paper from one day of the week. The only men positive articles I usually find are an occasional editorial or a letter to the editor from someone like me that gets published.
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Saw that one on Men's New Daily - here, right?
I think the column is pretty positive, in its way - it's about men's issues at least, and as you say, raises some useful points. Columns like this would have been hard to sell even 5 years ago, so I consider this a good sign.
Perhaps you should make the point about how most of the pharmecutical test subjects are low-income men because they need the money, and because men get used for the initial (dangerous) tests first. Can't move the wall if we don't keep pushing.
I sent a letter to the editor, as follows:
To the Editor, Edmonton Sun
I do not disagree with Ms. Jacobs' observation that men are dying more often than women - the evidence is plain to anyone who examines the statistics. However, I disagree with the researcher's suggestion that men should, in effect, become more like women in order to live longer.
Dr. Levy's comment that "...women lead much more rounded lives." may be indicative of a source of the stress that he believes kills men. Women have a great many options in modern society - they can be stay-at-home parents, they can enter the work force full-time, they can even work part-time on a job that pays less but is more to their taste and rely on another income-earner. Women are greatly under-represented in dangerous jobs - they choose not to take those jobs, and have the freedom to do so. Women have the right to allow a family to come into being or not, depending on their abortion choices. More women than ever have the lesiure and freedom to attain higher education, at a time when fewer men are attending university. Women do more spending, whatever the source of income, and hence enjoy considerable economic power. In many situations, women enjoy a favored legal status as a minority, despite the fact that they are a majority of the population. Women's preferences have a powerful impact on the media - indeed, a good deal of media programming is directed specifically at women. Inevitably, this tends to make popular culture more 'feminine' in outlook. Women lead more well-rounded lives because they have many choices.
In contrast, men's choices are often limited. It is difficult, to say the least, for a man to choose not to enter the work force. Job choice for men is not limited in theory, but in practice a man must find the best paying job available, regardless of stress and risk. To do otherwise will affect his ability to be chosen as a partner by a woman, and would limit his ability to support a family. Men have little actual voice in family planning unless their partner permits it. Women have choice over their own bodies in the matter of abortion rights, but men do not have choice over their own bodies and lifespans in terms of child support. In divorce, child custody is granted to the mother in the overwhelming number of cases. As a result, the mother and her children remain a 'family', (with all the structure and intimacy that implies), leaving the father as an occassional visitor in his children's lives. Fewer young men are gaining a university education - possibly because young women "need a start in life" and young men "should be able to look after themselves" and simply don't have the means.
The researchers suggest that society socializes men in a very limited number of roles, most of them high-stress. This seems a correct (and obvious) conclusion to me. I don't think the solution is to socialize men to express their emotions as women do - men can express their emotions in their own way quite well, given the opportunity. Men and women both had comparatively circumscribed choices 50 years ago. Women have a much wider range of choices today. Men's choices remain circumscribed. Perhaps we don't need to socialize men to be like women so much as we need to socialize society to treat men and women equally before the law and in fact.
Thomas Parker
tparker
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by Anonymous User on Saturday May 10, @07:50PM EST (#3)
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"Saw that one on Men's New Daily - here, right?"
No, I actually live in Edmonton and read it in the paper.
"I think the column is pretty positive, in its way - it's about men's issues at least, and as you say, raises some useful points. Columns like this would have been hard to sell even 5 years ago, so I consider this a good sign."
If you knew the history of Mindelle Jacobs you might not think it is so positive. Mindelle is a tireless crusader of man hate and hatred of everything masculine. Her columns almost always bash men or for some reason indians, she hates indians to. It's intresting how she managed to turn men killing themselves, mostly teenagers/young men and the elderly into a masculinity bashing session.
Once she wrote a column that went as far as to suggest bar hookers (hookers that work in bars, they don't call themselves hookers just act like them for free drinks all night) are poor victims of men that seduce them into one night stands then impregnate them. This actually wrose the ire of common non-activist people that she would suggest women are to stupid to make choices for themselves.
I did write a letter but I didn't save it to post here maybe I should have.
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by Anonymous User on Saturday May 10, @10:59PM EST (#4)
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thank you for writing your letter to the paper. It's amazing how people from all over the world can stand together over important issues through the internet.
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by Anonymous User on Monday May 12, @12:49AM EST (#5)
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((("She hates Indians too.")))
No shocker, here, anon.
The reason feminists (and frankly alot of women) hate Indians is the same reason the federal government (ie. the B.I.A.) does.
We (Indians) cling tenaciously to our ways and beliefs. and at least for those of us who consider ourselves "Traditionalists", they can NOT break our spirit, no matter how long they've tried. That is why they HAD to kill us.
But even killing us didn't stop us. That is how stuborn and single minded we can be.
Anyone who wants to control you will naturaly DESPISE those qualities in you, because it makes their "job" much more difficult, or more over impossible.
This is the way we as men's activists should be.
This is the way we as MEN IN GENERAL should be.
No matter what they say about us, no matter what they do to us, directly or in-directly, the way to beat feminism and like-minded women and their pet fem-boys is to stay true to who we are, no matter WHAT they throw at us, piriod.
Not only will that preserve the cause, but it really pisses off your enemy.
-Thundercloud.
"HOKA HEY!"
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Tansi Thundercloud. I posted these articles, couldn't find my password. I've since set up my browser to automatically sign me in here.
I'm really not sure why she hates indians, in Canada feminisim has embraced indian 'culture' and vice versa. I put culture in quotes because a lot of it really isn't indian culture but some sort of feminist revisionist history. Kind of like how in the states feminism has embraced the cause of blacks. The sad thing is many indians here have accepted it as history. Feminists in Canada like to make out indians as a peaceful matriarchy before the evil patriarchal white europeans came. The 'New Age' types are the worst at doing this.
I would say that the indian people in Canada have been one of the prime victims of feminism. The British and French came and conquered then feminism completed the conquering by rewriting west indian culture and history. Indian reserves are almost the perfect matriarchys. The women go through men like they are nothing and have little regard for males. While doing this they are supported by the state and reserve money. The men mostly wander around in gangs with little meaning in there life. This is how feminists would like all of society to be.
There is hope! I took Cree in high school and we had a speaker come in that really wanted things to change and for indian men to take up old traditions not the feminist rewriting of indian culture. Of course there are people like you also, so keep on fighting.
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