4 ms·

> Menism Everytime an issue is brought up.. people just completely ridicule the person bringing up the issue.

by monksy 5y ago

whatshisface 5y ago
If you sound like the biases against you are significant, you're sounding like you don't have a lot of extra resources to absorb the biases with. It's not possible to complain about biases from a position of strength, and it's not possible to get anyone to care about you from a position of weakness. As long as that catch-22 exists there won't be a way for menminists to frame their issues that will be accepted. There is a way around that, which is smuggling menminist issues in cultural devices that result in menminism but don't advocate for it. One example would be the precepts of organized religion which often given certain privileges to men, but on the basis of an authority less pitiful than "the guy from Ms. Doubtfire seems really sad, we should help him." That attitude gets people mocked on Twitter. If I had to predict where menminism will go in the next 100 years, I would expect someone to invent a way to motivate it on anti-pitiful non-victimized grounds. Then it will start gaining traction in modern culture.
- leereeves 5y ago
  > it's not possible to get anyone to care about you from a position of weakness If that were true, there would never have been any civil rights movement anywhere. Civil rights exist because people do care about oppressed people.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    Let's break down what we saw in the Civil Rights movement. There were speakers and big marches. There was a lot of pride. MLK focused on appealing to morals and the economic problems caused by discrimination, and the people who were defying authority were doing it to thumb their noses at it. The pathos wasn't, "help me they're fire hosing me :'(" it was, "I am tough and determined enough to get beat up and keep going. We're on the right side of history and they will give up before we do." The victims were calling their victimization endurance. The peace movement, the origins of labor organization... almost every popular movement in US history has been conducted from the perspective of class solidarity, endurance under difficult conditions, and an intent to fight to change something that forces outside the movement didn't want changed. How they're going to make that work for menminism is beyond me, but we're living in the time before the talking points seem obvious. When someone figures out what they are, then everyone will start repeating them until we all have them memorized. That's the way things go.
    - leereeves 5y ago
      Yes, the activists were tough and determined enough to get beat up and keep going, but they were badly outnumbered and would never have won by their own strength. Their goal was to keep going long enough to make other people care, not despite but because of the forces deployed against them. Not by enduring oppression long enough that their oppressors got tired of fire hosing them; but long enough to awaken the conscience of people far away. That does take a lot of strength and endurance, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but one can be strong and still be greatly outmatched and in a position of relative weakness.
      - whatshisface 5y ago
        The people in the civil rights movement did eventually win the majority, but my point is, they didn't do it by appealing to pity. I would argue that they could never have done it by appealing to pity.
        leereeves 5y ago
        I agree, they didn't appeal to pity, they appealed to outrage. They turned their opponents' strength into a vulnerability by exposing the mechanism of oppression.

> Menism Everytime an issue is brought up.. people just completely ridicule the person bringing up the issue.

by monksy 5y ago

> Menism Everytime an issue is brought up.. people just completely ridicule the person bringing up the issue.

If you sound like the biases against you are significant, you're sounding like you don't have a lot of extra resources to absorb the biases with. It's not possible to complain about biases from a position of strength, and it's not possible to get anyone to care about you from a position of weakness. As long as that catch-22 exists there won't be a way for menminists to frame their issues that will be accepted. There is a way around that, which is smuggling menminist issues in cultural devices that result in menminism but don't advocate for it. One example would be the precepts of organized religion which often given certain privileges to men, but on the basis of an authority less pitiful than "the guy from Ms. Doubtfire seems really sad, we should help him." That attitude gets people mocked on Twitter. If I had to predict where menminism will go in the next 100 years, I would expect someone to invent a way to motivate it on anti-pitiful non-victimized grounds. Then it will start gaining traction in modern culture.

leereeves 5y ago
> it's not possible to get anyone to care about you from a position of weakness If that were true, there would never have been any civil rights movement anywhere. Civil rights exist because people do care about oppressed people.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  Let's break down what we saw in the Civil Rights movement. There were speakers and big marches. There was a lot of pride. MLK focused on appealing to morals and the economic problems caused by discrimination, and the people who were defying authority were doing it to thumb their noses at it. The pathos wasn't, "help me they're fire hosing me :'(" it was, "I am tough and determined enough to get beat up and keep going. We're on the right side of history and they will give up before we do." The victims were calling their victimization endurance. The peace movement, the origins of labor organization... almost every popular movement in US history has been conducted from the perspective of class solidarity, endurance under difficult conditions, and an intent to fight to change something that forces outside the movement didn't want changed. How they're going to make that work for menminism is beyond me, but we're living in the time before the talking points seem obvious. When someone figures out what they are, then everyone will start repeating them until we all have them memorized. That's the way things go.
  - leereeves 5y ago
    Yes, the activists were tough and determined enough to get beat up and keep going, but they were badly outnumbered and would never have won by their own strength. Their goal was to keep going long enough to make other people care, not despite but because of the forces deployed against them. Not by enduring oppression long enough that their oppressors got tired of fire hosing them; but long enough to awaken the conscience of people far away. That does take a lot of strength and endurance, I'm not suggesting otherwise, but one can be strong and still be greatly outmatched and in a position of relative weakness.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      The people in the civil rights movement did eventually win the majority, but my point is, they didn't do it by appealing to pity. I would argue that they could never have done it by appealing to pity.
      - leereeves 5y ago
        I agree, they didn't appeal to pity, they appealed to outrage. They turned their opponents' strength into a vulnerability by exposing the mechanism of oppression.