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Exactly. I think there's a pretty simple answer to this question: > What explains this asymmetry? What explains it is an asymmetrical history: millennia of op

Exactly. I think there's a pretty simple answer to this question: > What explains this asymmetry? What explains it is an asymmetrical history: millennia of oppression of women, often violently enforced. E.g., if you read the Iliad, it's basically a who-stole-my-woman story inside a who-stole-my-woman story; at the time, women were pretty close to property with opinions. An easy way to see the through-line to today is the history of "marital rape", where society did not see married women as being able to choose whether or not to have sex with their husbands. That was always the case under English common law, and was not fully outlawed in the US until 1992: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape#Legal_aspect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape#Legal_aspect We may have removed most of the gross legal infrastructure of patriarchy, but the cultural aspects are still only slowly dissolving. We have generations more work to do there. The reasonableness you mention is exactly what amazes me. Think of all the men who haven't been murdered as the slept. And I think this history also explains why the Men's Rights movement is so bonkers. A shift toward fairness is a loss for the people who used to benefit from the unfairness. This has left a lot of men upset that they aren't getting what they feel they are due. Some handle that well, but the ones who don't are going to fight to turn the clock back. And as Corey Robin points, out, reactionaries like that often cloak their efforts in the progressive language of the day. So we end up with "men's rights" as a bizzaro-world mirror of women's rights. And one of their heroes, one with 4 million Twitter followers, getting arrested as an abusive sex trafficker and international pimp.

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ 4y ago
Kindly visit the Men's Rights Movement wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_rights_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_rights_movement Go through the issues in the second section and tell me what Andrew Tate's position was on any of them. Spoiler alert: you can't. Tate was not an MRA, he was a pickup artist. Male feminists also tend to find themselves in trouble, by the way. Michael Kimmel used to play the same game of lumping legitimate issues (suicide/education/family courts) in with incels upset they can't get laid. He had to retire after getting #MeToo'd, heh. Tiresome and predictable. Perhaps I should add a Google Alert for your name ;)
- wpietri 4y ago
  Is this just a nitpick on Tate in particular? That was a side note, and one I don't think you quite got, as I didn't say he was an MRA, just popular among the same sort of people. Which I think you'd have a hard time denying. And my point isn't that the men's rights people don't have legitimate points about how patriarchy also harms men. They do! My point is that for an awful lot of people, those points are a cloak for a deeply emotional backlash against feminism. So I'm less interested in what they claim motivates them than what we can learn from what they actually spend their time and attention on.
  - ZGDUwpqEWpUZ 4y ago
    > just popular among the same sort of people. Which I think you'd have a hard time denying. I'd have a hard time denying it because I have no idea what that "sort of person" is even supposed to be. Is it just people you don't like? I went down the Men's Rights rabbithole because I got sexually assaulted by a woman as a teenager and didn't know how to deal with it. They were the only ones talking about it, and I assure you nobody involved had any interest in relegalizing marital rape. Rather, that seems to be a bit of DARVO given that feminist thinkers like Mary Koss would see happened to me reduced to "unwanted contact". > And my point isn't that the men's rights people don't have legitimate points about how patriarchy also harms men. "Patriarchy hurts men too" is empty handwaving, not a substitute for genuine solutions. Given your little quip - "think of all the men who haven't been murdered as they slept" - I doubt you'll be interested in providing help for men (or boys, as it was) like myself. If that's the feminist line, then it is clear that feminism, to put it mildly, isn't for me.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      > that "sort of person" I have a hard time believing you can't figure this out on your own, but briefly, the manosphere. As to the rest, I am truly sorry to hear about your sexual assault. But I'm also sorry that you, like so many of the "sort of person" I'm talking about, have turned a bad experience into a reason to bash feminism rather than a reason to fight things like rape culture. If even with your experience can't figure out why serial rape victims might murder their attackers and why somebody might be surprised that doesn't happen more, then I'm not sure how I can clear up my point for you.

ZGDUwpqEWpUZ 4y ago

Kindly visit the Men's Rights Movement wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_rights_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_rights_movement Go through the issues in the second section and tell me what Andrew Tate's position was on any of them. Spoiler alert: you can't. Tate was not an MRA, he was a pickup artist. Male feminists also tend to find themselves in trouble, by the way. Michael Kimmel used to play the same game of lumping legitimate issues (suicide/education/family courts) in with incels upset they can't get laid. He had to retire after getting #MeToo'd, heh. Tiresome and predictable. Perhaps I should add a Google Alert for your name ;)

wpietri 4y ago
Is this just a nitpick on Tate in particular? That was a side note, and one I don't think you quite got, as I didn't say he was an MRA, just popular among the same sort of people. Which I think you'd have a hard time denying. And my point isn't that the men's rights people don't have legitimate points about how patriarchy also harms men. They do! My point is that for an awful lot of people, those points are a cloak for a deeply emotional backlash against feminism. So I'm less interested in what they claim motivates them than what we can learn from what they actually spend their time and attention on.
- ZGDUwpqEWpUZ 4y ago
  > just popular among the same sort of people. Which I think you'd have a hard time denying. I'd have a hard time denying it because I have no idea what that "sort of person" is even supposed to be. Is it just people you don't like? I went down the Men's Rights rabbithole because I got sexually assaulted by a woman as a teenager and didn't know how to deal with it. They were the only ones talking about it, and I assure you nobody involved had any interest in relegalizing marital rape. Rather, that seems to be a bit of DARVO given that feminist thinkers like Mary Koss would see happened to me reduced to "unwanted contact". > And my point isn't that the men's rights people don't have legitimate points about how patriarchy also harms men. "Patriarchy hurts men too" is empty handwaving, not a substitute for genuine solutions. Given your little quip - "think of all the men who haven't been murdered as they slept" - I doubt you'll be interested in providing help for men (or boys, as it was) like myself. If that's the feminist line, then it is clear that feminism, to put it mildly, isn't for me.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    > that "sort of person" I have a hard time believing you can't figure this out on your own, but briefly, the manosphere. As to the rest, I am truly sorry to hear about your sexual assault. But I'm also sorry that you, like so many of the "sort of person" I'm talking about, have turned a bad experience into a reason to bash feminism rather than a reason to fight things like rape culture. If even with your experience can't figure out why serial rape victims might murder their attackers and why somebody might be surprised that doesn't happen more, then I'm not sure how I can clear up my point for you.