Important clarification/FAQ
I am not calling to coddle or excuse the behavior of bigoted men in any way!
I am calling to be kind and understanding to young men (often ages 10-20) who are very manipulable and succeptible to the massive anti feminist propaganda machine. Hope this clarifies that very important distinction. :)
Very good comments that express key points:
- Detailed summary of the situation if you’re wondering what’s going on
- The rhetorical value of the bear hypothetical and what this means for you
- One example of why the long-term rhetorical value of the hypothetical is poor, in the context of intersectionality
- What does disenfranchisement mean in this context?
- The importance of not asking women to tone down their expressions of fear and frustration
- “But why can’t they just say it nicely?”
- The importance of participation in kindness toward young men, specifically outside the context of people speaking their experiences
Edit: This post has now been removed and restored twice. I want to encourage you all:
Be decent to one another
I think this post is a valuable thing given the current state of the Fediverse, please don’t fuck it up for us by being toxic in the comments.
Social media doesn’t often reward kindness, but that’s what is needed. Show kindness to young men, when you can. They need better guidance.
Needing to be rewarded in order to act is a property of children
we need a nuance posting rule on the internet i think.
For every sensational shitpost you must provide at least one nuance.
honestly i would smash the subscribe button so hard on a c/nuanceposting community. verbose and carefully worded memes are my absolute jam. 😎🙂↕️
there is only one truth, and it is that there is no gender war, only misdirection from class warfare that has monetized and monopolized even our interpersonal, romantic, and sexual connection.
when people don’t have problems, you can’t sell them solutions.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.
No, we also have a sickle
I’ve got a guillotine in the garage I can break out, too, but I might need you guys to help me move it.
I don’t think this is a good example of class struggle, at least not directly. The bear meme is valid in as much as it describes one woman’s feelings, but the truth is that in 85-90% of cases, the woman knows her attacker1. The random man is simply not the issue.
The issue is power disparity. Teacher vs student, employer vs worker, landlord vs tenant. It’s difficult to reduce the power difference due to physical strength, but the others are all changeable. More (meaningful) oversight for police, better tenancy boards, and stronger unions are all examples of structures that might make it harder to victimize women.
Class struggle explains economic, and maybe political power, but those are not the only types of power in play.
And if I’m wrong? Then we’ve made a better society for nothing.
1 https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/most-victims-know-their-attacker
i fundamentally agree with you. i think it depends on how loosely you define ‘direct’. class struggle has its fingers in many pies including
- marketing saturation / materialism
- mental health availability
- quality of education
- overall day-to-day stress levels
all of which are at odds with encouraging a more empathetic, happy, and healthy population of men. people who are angry and fearful and deprived are easier to control and sell products to than people who are kind and understanding and satisfied. a higher quality of life breeds a higher quality of people and interpersonal interactions.
The shackles of sexism, racism, and homophobia do not simply fall off when you accept class consciousness. These are still fights for awareness which must continue to be fought. Otherwise, we risk allowing toxic mentalities into our midst, which will only serve to alienate and expel our minority brethren.
The cages built by the state which cordon us off from one another exist in the mind, but they are very real in impact. We must fight by destroying the cages in each of our thoughts, and pass our knowledge to others so they can do the same. That is the only means to stand as one.
Let’s also not forget that there are very real shackles placed on many groups - many real cages - which we must work to destroy as well.
Here’s Orwell in “Homage to Catalonia”:
“There were perhaps a thousand men at the barracks, and a score or so of women, apart from the militiamen’s wives who did the cooking. There were still women serving in the militias, though not very many. In the early battles they had fought side by side with the men as a matter of course. It is a thing that seems natural in time of revolution. Ideas were changing ready, however. The militiamen had to be kept out of the riding-school while the women were drilling there because they laughed at the women and put them off. A few months earlier no one would have seen anything comic in a woman handling a gun.”
This was in an overwhelmingly leftist camp. Orwell sees glimpses of an anarchist collective based on mutual aid popping up. Yet, sexisim clearly persisted after a period where it had been pushed aside.
These issues don’t go away just because people become class conscious.
Even if we take gender-based issues as very real (which is often not quite true since we target a demographic of literally half the planet, which is never representative), they come second to the class warfare.
A poor male worker holds way less power than a rich businesswoman.
