How Can We Help Women? By Helping Men

Submitted by Mastodon on Sun, 2014-01-19 18:49

Article here. Excerpt:

'In her thoughtful op-ed in the New York Times, family historian Stephanie Coontz answered the question "How can we help men?" with a ringing endorsement of gender equality: "By helping women," she answered.

I'd like to suggest the converse is equally true. How can we help women? By helping men.

Women's progress towards equality is incontestable; it seems obvious that we are, today, more gender equal than we have ever been in our history (I hasten to point out that we are not "there" yet, that we have not fully achieved gender equality, just that we are closer than we have ever been.) But progress towards greater equality has slowed: Women have pushed the glass ceiling higher on the corporate ladder, but all that leaning in has not crashed through to the board room. Girls and women compose half of all students in our law, medical and business schools, and have made enormous strides in STEM courses, yet working mothers are doing more housework and child care than they did 30 years ago. Every day, we read stories of sexual assault -- in our schools, homes, at parties and in our military.
...
In reality, much of the cause of the "boy crisis" in education lies with the definition of masculinity held by the boys themselves -- the notion that academic disengagement is proof of masculinity. Helping boys to engage academically requires that we recognize different learning styles along an array of measures -- which in turn leads to recognizing diverse aptitudes and competencies, enabling everyone, girls and boys, to better achieve to their potential.'

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Comments

Not most MRAs' first choice, but at least he's calling out the dbl-standard embodied in the NYT Op-ed. The gynocentricity of social activism is hard to dispute. Offering counter-examples helps point this out, even if you aren't totally down with the case.

I have a feeling if Mr. Kimmel remains long enough in this pond, he'll start to sound less like a feminist ally and more like an MRA. Feminists have a way of driving their male fellow-travellers towards men's rights. The reasons are pretty obvious. =)

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Submitted by Matt on Sun, 2014-01-19 19:09

The title of this article draws men's movement types in, but once you get into this article, you will find that it's the same old male-bashing. The author drones on and on about how men have to change, the definition of masculinity has to change, etc. Yea, yea, yea - feminists have been saying the same tripe for decades. So what's new here? Not much. Likewise, the notion that we help out women by improving the lot of men brings it all back to what society says should be the paramount goal of us all - helping women. Forget that. We need to help men because men need help, without ulterior motives. Help men for its own sake.

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Submitted by redwoodwriter on Tue, 2014-01-21 02:33