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Gen Z boys and men more likely than baby boomers to believe feminism harmful, says poll
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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Although I understand the importance of feminism, I never had the impression that feminists are good at PR. Somehow, most articles written by feministsI've read love to stereotype and bash men.
Feminism is something with many internal factions. But yeah, the loudest ones aren't usually interested in genuine discourse. Some of those factions can act every bit as unhinged as 'persecuted' Christians about total non-issues, like Oscars nominations despite womankind as a whole having some very real issues to worry about.
People who say reasonable things most people can agree with rarely get their own platform.
Also, lots of people who say reasonable things have lies spread about them by misogynists and get made to look unreasonable
That too, that too. There are a lot of times something sounds absolutely nuts without context (and reasonable with it) and that is frequently used against certain folks as well.
Does anyone have a link to any of these? I keep hearing recently that somehow this has been a thing for ages, but last I checked "wanting gender equality" was the driving idea of feminism, and that a large portion of women and men agreed with this.
I'm in my early 40's and I definitely haven't seen some deluge of articles by women, who while proclaiming feminism, "stereotype and bash men."
EDIT: Seven downvotes, zero links. Pretty par for the course, guys. I'm not surprised, just disappointed.
EDIT 2: To any men, or boys, reading this who have been assaulted, there are supports for you. Feminism is as much about getting you the support you need that you don't have just as much as it is about getting women the support they need. I can't cover every country here, but if you're from Canada like me here is a government link to services for men and boys in intimate partner violence situations, and for 'general abuse' there is this link. There are people out there who care, please reach out to them.
Well, the problem is that nobody collects history of feminism articles they have read. I'm not gonna spend time on collecting them. Even if I did, you don't know how fair my collection strategy would be. I have no idea what Google query would reproduce the samples the average person encounters these things online. So, to do this fairly requires a dedication akin to writing a scientific article on this topic... Nobody has the time.
And if I presented such a survey, you'd do your own research to verify the results anyway. So, I hate to say this, but why not check the web yourself?
If you don't, I think the most feasible you could try is to summarize people's replies.
Apparently you don't have to, because 'Somehow, most articles written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men.' So go find some of these articles.
It's not my job to verify your insulting, reductive, broad-sweeping claims. Feminists have fought for equality for both men and women, this is a fact. The missive is "... a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes.[a][2][3][4][5] Feminism holds the position that societies prioritize the male point of view and that women are treated unjustly in these societies.[6] Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women."
How we go from that to 'most articles just stereotype and bash men'? You don't get to make a claim like ' most articles written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men' and then literally provide zero examples. This is just Hasty Generalization and it's depressing to watch another man do this in a thread about the sudden decline in men agreeing that gender equality-seeking is somehow 'stereotyping and bashing men.'
I agree with you on what it is, though. The problem, if the problem exists as I wrote, is the PR.
PR is different from what feminism is.
I guess what I wrote is too nuanced to understand in the first sight. I advice you to temporarily assume I'm correct, so that you can calm down and see what I really mean here.
Not really, you said:
And, to this point, still haven't posted a single one.
To quote a philosopher from my youth:
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
Can you explain to me how you interpret this one, then? I'm pretty sure it's just misunderstanding.
I don't agree with you, because you said the 'issue with feminisms PR' is posts on twitter, reddit, and 'most articles I read'. You didn't respond with any of the articles, and people say all sorts of things on twitter and reddit. They don't encompass the entirety of a group like people who want gender equality.
Here's an example of how feminism helps boys and girls, and the positive impacts of it.
That's two articles I've posted here, feel free to post your myriad misandrist feminist articles.
I mean, how many URLs do you want from me?
Edit: you ignored my question btw...
Edit 2: You don't understand my point. The only thing I can do is to tell you to read my past comments carefully at this stage.
I mean, one? You've literally posted zero. In the time it took you to reply to me a half dozen times you could go look up articles you vaguely remember that are '... written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men', take some, and then post them.
Or (see above)
I think you misunderstood what I mean by "most articles". I mean the articles that reached me. That's different from the articles that's online.
If you just want one, there was already someone who posted two for you. Can you explain to me the point of me adding one?
Go take a look at the UN's Twitter account on National Men's day. Or I remember articles about how 1 in 4 homeless are women and it's a tragedy for women. Honestly if you have seen articles like these before you're either not reading many of them or you aren't noticing what they are saying.
So an article, and some twitter comments. That's not exactly "...most articles written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men."
How dishonest can you be? You specifically asked for a link to ANY of these. You got a response that gave you some examples, and you respond:
You didn't ask for most of the articles and it isn't reasonable to expect someone to provide you 50-100 links.
If you have a genuine disagreement with what they provided you should present that, but as it stands you're being terribly dishonest and disingenuous.
What examples? The guy said look on twitter on National Men's Day, and a reference to an article (without linking to it) for a hand sweeping 'Most articles written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men.'
(EDIT: To be specific, here's EXACTLY what I said:
No-one here has linked to any deluge of 'feminist' articles that 'love to stereotype and bash men'.
What is the actual, legitimate complaint against this:
The ones you were given.
No, they didn't. They told you to look at a specific account on a specific day.
Yes, which you could have easily googled if you wanted to read it.
Regardless you asked for examples, and then upon receiving them stated "that's most?". No amount of examples was going to be sufficient, your response would have been the same regardless. Your original question was dishonest in that you weren't interested in the answer.
Edit: As for your definition, I don't think anyone opposed that definition. Feminism is a large banner under which a lot of groups identify. So your extremely generic definition doesn't encapsulate all persons or groups.
Not the OP, and still not any links. 'Go take a look at the UN’s Twitter account on National Men’s day.' isn't an article written by a feminist. 'Or I remember articles about how 1 in 4 homeless are women and it’s a tragedy for women.' that's both not a link, and doesn't 'stereotype and bash men.'
Still waiting for a link of an 'article written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men.' Feel free to post one.
OP had mentioned feminists being bad at PR and then mentioned negative articles.
They supported that with the Twitter content being bad PR and an article they remembered seeing. OP also responded to you saying that they didn't maintain a log of all feminism articles they had read. Apparently you expected them to source links to all the articles they've read in the past.
No one's going to do that, if they do supply links it would only be one or two, at which point you'd have made your "that's most" comment, which was the whole point. You're a dishonest interlocutor.
Not 'negative articles', he said 'most articles written by feministsI’ve read love to stereotype and bash men' (emphasis mine.)
Again not an, most. That is dishonest and disingenuous. Either 'you're' looking specifically for feminist articles negative towards men, or 'you're' being dishonest.
Caitlin Moran even wrote a damn novel on issues and challenges facing straight, white, able-bodied men that need to be solved. If feminist PR sucks, you're reading right-wing articles/twitter posts/apparently reddit posts according to another post of theirs.
(I put 'you're' like that because it's a royal 'all of us/you' and also you're responding to me within minutes of him, so it feels like the same person I'm responding to.)
Yes, the articles were negative in their views.
At this point you're (2nd person, singular) either stupid or spectacularly dishonest. You keep referencing most, so apparently he needed to cite, with links, 50.1% of all articles by feminists or you'd bring your same criticism. Guess what, "most" could be true and he could only cite a single article. They are not mutually exclusive. (I've never accepted or rejected the most claim). Maybe the majority actually are negative, maybe he's only read three articles by feminists and at least two were negative, maybe he only reads negative articles, and yet you still attack most. Rather dishonest.
Umm...and? One person wrote a novel? A novel isn't an article and one isn't most! Obviously OP is right because you didn't even give links to most articles. See how easy it is to be a dishonest interlocutor and not meet people where they're at?
That actually doesn't follow at all. Feminist PR could suck and none of those things be true. Mainstream media, like "most" media, likes to present items that will drive clicks and viewership. People with preposterous views have an easier time getting traction because their comments will drive interaction. So the majority of feminists could be levelheaded and pragmatic, but the minority with outlandish takes on issues will likely get more press attention.
We're on day two of not a single link from him or you. I'm done with this, if you want to keep screaming to the winds that 'most feminist articles are...' then prove it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
Especially the history section will be relevant to you.
When people complain about feminism they generally complain about forth wave or maybe third wave feminism. When people point out all the good feminism they usually mean first and second wave feminism.
Edit: chances are you'll have to watch with subtitles (it's in German), but here's a documentary (with commentary, because the documentary fucked up hard in some parts) about feminism: https://youtube.com/watch?v=I-OFCy-NrU4
And here is an interview with one of the subjects of the documentary who felt wrongly presented (rightfully so): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tvPExRR_GRg
That's selection bias. Reasonable feminists usually don't crow about being feminists, probably because they don't want to be judged based on stereotypes about feminists.
... just curious, but are you perusing a lot of feminist literature?
I know I'm not.
But what I do see are the articles that the right wing has decided are rage inducing and fair game and that they plaster everywhere to try to influence people.
So ... maybe worth some thought.
this is the correct analysis. true feminists are fine at PR, but unfortunately grifters who profit off of right wing ideas being spread have a vested interest in making feminists appear evil in order to maintain the status quo.
No. And I don't think I've encountered these articles on right-wing webpages when I vistas there out of curiosity. I instead think some were rants on Reddit written by feminists (while I can't recall how I encountered others). So maybe a selection bias on my side, or the loudest feminists get more upvotes even outside rightwing subreddits.
Not everyone claiming to be a feminist is actually one. There's a lot of misandrists that use the feminist label to spread their bullshit. But feminism in of itself is meant to be an egalitarian movement, it's about equality. It was never meant to bash men or make them unequal to women.
I do agree however that many feminists often look away when these type of people spew their garbage out into the public. I think especially women need to make sure to tell these people where to stuff it and that their shit isn't welcomed.
A good chunk of the "feminist" who are guilty of it are also TERFs. To them, trans women are just creepy men, and trans men are women trying to cheat into getting male privilege. They started from a place of hating men, and that's where they went.
Feminism as a whole has also been trying very hard to kick them out of the club. That's difficult when there's no central authority figure who dictates what is and is not feminism, but TERFs don't last long at most of the meetups.
That has nothing to do with feminists as a whole, it's just how the media works. You don't get clicks without controversy. The vast majority of feminists I've known irl are chill people.