What About the Men? Why Our Gender System Sucks for Men, Too

Submitted by Mastodon on Wed, 2012-07-11 20:44

Article here. Excerpt:

'We live in a sexist society, one where gender programming starts at birth (though the advent of the sonogram has allowed parents to get a head start by painting the nursery pink or blue and stocking up in advance on gendered toys and clothes) and is so pervasive as to be inescapable. Feminism has done an excellent job analyzing and challenging the ways that these assigned and enforced gender roles damage and deform the lives of women. The same tools of analysis can be applied to the damage and deformation that men suffer. And that damage, sad to say, is severe.

The general term for the incredibly restrictive social codes on male behavior is hegemonic masculinity, though Paul Kivel refers to it as the “Man Box” in his work, and Charlie Glickman clarifies that to the “Act Like a Man Box” to emphasize the performative nature of the restrictions. We choose to use hegemonic masculinity as our term because it is less likely than “Man Box” to be used in a trend piece about how it’s okay for men to own steamer trunks now.'

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Comments

I'm going to save all of you the trouble of reading this mess. This pretty much sums it up:

While a men's rights movement exists, MRAs can't be trusted regarding gender issues, because they're all bitter due to their lack of success in life, and do nothing but blame women. Therefore, feminism should take over masculism and give men a place to 'unlearn their sexism', while women still have free reign to be sexist towards men.

Right...

This one had potential, but then again, usually mentions of feminism and patriarchy are indicators that what you're about to read is not going to be male-friendly.

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Submitted by xtrnl on Thu, 2012-07-12 21:53

Yeah, those two are a couple of mangina's that honestly believe feminism is willing to help men. The irony is, they do speak up about men's issues, and get flack from many feminists, but they've managed to build themselves a little community of (allegedly) concerned internet feminists that reinforce their belief.

They post at the good man project, and to it's credit, it has become a fair bit more balanced, and Tom (site founder) has come to the conclusion that feminism is not the answer, but still leaves the site open to content submissions by any and all. There are actually a couple (Julie and Lisa) who identify with feminists that I actually believe have genuine concern for men, and one is even critical of many feminists elements (Lisa).

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Submitted by Kratch on Fri, 2012-07-13 04:48