I just stepped down as moderator from all five of the subreddits I used to moderate over on Reddit. I just can’t ethically justify continued activity on Reddit, and especially free volunteer labour for an openly greedy company that is engaged in scummy behaviour, forcing mods to open protesting communities or be demoted.
So my online activism for boys and men is now focused here and on Mastodon. And I am welcoming everyone coming over from Reddit, especially from LeftWingMaleAdvocates, the sub I put in the majority of my time and effort as a mod.
Let’s build something good here, as we did previously on Reddit. It appears we have a wider reach here, so let’s debate in good faith and with civil manners.
Here, in this magazine (i.e. community or subreddit in Kbin-speak) we wish to discuss and spread awareness of various issues that disproportionately affect males.
We believe men are not being well-served by either side of the mainstream political spectrum. We oppose the right wing’s exploitation of men’s issues as a wedge to recruit men to inegalitarian traditional values. But we also oppose feminist attempts to deny male issues, or shoehorn them into a biased ideology that blames “male privilege” and guilt-trips men.
We have no objection to the genuinely egalitarian aspects of feminism, but we will criticize feminist ideology wherever it is inegalitarian and/or untruthful, especially now that it holds institutional power. Too often feminism has promoted a one-sided “equality”, dismantling male advantages while exploiting, reinforcing, preserving, and downplaying female advantages - particularly in cases involving alleged abuse.
In practice this means that most of us are politically homeless. The natural home for male advocacy should be the left wing, which professes to be explicitly egalitarian. But in modern practice, men’s issues are habitually ignored, denied, or even opposed.
We seek to address male issues without falling into the traps of an impossible return to the past or a disastrous sexism. Men and women have equal value, and we need to work together for a better future.
The difference between feminism (or even feminists) and men is that the former is a movement or a chosen label, while the latter is not something one can choose to be. So when you generalize the latter (“men are pigs”, “men are responsible for the world’s problems”, or even “Kill All Men”), it really comes across as outright hateful. At least more so than criticizing a movement (feminism) or generalizing feminists (although I don’t believe in doing that too). Seriously, if you were to replace “men” with “blacks”, or even “women” in feminist drivel, you’d be (rightfully) called out for spreading hate. For how much feminism pushes inclusivity and careful, considerate use in language (think: using ‘police officer’ instead of ‘policeman’), when it comes to men, they just give fuck all.
And for the ‘wage gap’, it should really be renamed the ‘earnings gap’ as for the same amount and type of work, men and women are generally paid the same. The main reason there’s a gap is that men generally work more and in higher paying fields. Now why they choose to do so is certainly worth discussion, but to frame it as men being paid more with the insinuation that they both do the same amount of work, is disingenuous.
Men taking on less domestic responsibilities is part of gender roles, no? In exchange they are expected to earn more by working more. Not to mention when you say domestic responsibilities, I doubt you include male dominated tasks like mowing the lawn, or fixing the car. Again, framing it as one-sided privilege (‘men have the privilege of doing less house work”) is disingenuous. I don’t think housekeeping or child-rearing, which is female-dominated, is a walk in the park either, for reference.
If you believe the system allows specifically men to vote away women’s rights (abortions I believe?), and that men shouldn’t have a say in that. Do you also believe women shouldn’t have a say in voting on issues like Selective Service or even conscription, in some countries, that primarily or uniquely affect men? Furthermore, in many countries, women are outright born with the right to vote, whereas men have to sign up for Selective Service or Conscription (what happened to ‘My Body, My Choice’?)
E: grammar