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No one group defines society. It's fair to say men hold a disproportionate amount of power, and its admirable to acknowledge your own privilege as you are doin

No one group defines society. It's fair to say men hold a disproportionate amount of power, and its admirable to acknowledge your own privilege as you are doing here, but it's critical to not start believing that the cultural narrative du jour is somehow the ground truth. The minute we do this, we feed political polarization between genuinely good people, and open the door for liars and sociopaths to manipulate us like herd animals to their own ends.

mpweiher 4y ago
> It's fair to say men hold a disproportionate amount of power No it's not. It's neither accurate nor fair. A disproportionate amount of power is held by people who happen to be men. That does not mean men as a group hold a disproportionate amount of power. People always confuse these things. Treat people as individuals, not as instances of groups.
- dasil003 4y ago
  I feel you are fundamentally in agreement with my point and splitting hairs to satisfy a pedantic desire to make a very specific semantic distinction. It might feel good, but you're not going to win anyone over with this type of nitpicking.
  - norwalkbear 4y ago
    It's not pedantic. It's a damn good point. Most men are shit out of luck just like most women beholden to whims of those with money and power.
    - dasil003 4y ago
      It is pedantic because it's nitpicking my choice of words to make a completely separate point. This attracts people with the same concern (like you), but does nothing to bridge the gap to people with an alternate viewpoint (like the OP I responded to). Put another way, I could have made my point with a different choice of words that would not have drawn the response from mpweiher (and you). The problem is, any choice of words is open to be misinterpreted by someone with an axe to grind. If you want to be angry and find like-minded angry individuals, be my guest. If you want to build empathy and mutual understanding, then it's worth it to try to engage with people's primary point rather than seizing on an uncharitable interpretation of a particular phrasing or choice of words.
  - mpweiher 4y ago
    You feel wrong. The distinction is absolutely fundamental.
  - throway33 4y ago
    It's actually an important point. For example, one of the most misogynistic societies I can think of are the polygamous communities like Bountiful, BC, which are basically ruled by a small cadre of elite senior men with multiple wives. Women are very oppressed. However young men are just as oppressed; they are treated as competition by the elite, and essentially exiled or put to work as child labour in dangerous jobs. This community is very misogynistic and ruled by a patriarchy, and clearly the power is concentrated in the hands of men; at the same time it is not a community that you would want to be born into as a man or a woman, and the median man will end up with none of that patriarchal power or status. https://thetyee.ca/News/2006/05/26/Bountiful/ https://thetyee.ca/News/2006/05/26/Bountiful/ This is why it's important not just to average over groups. Dear Leader might always be a man, but that's not relevant to the fate of 99.99% of men who will never be Dear Leader, nor will they receive favour from him for sharing his gender. This is why a lot of people are sensitive to arguments that use language that equivocates between the entirely non-equivalent propositions "if you have power, you probably are a man" and "if you are a man, you probably have power". And yet the confusion between these two propositions is so widespread that probably most of the arguments in this HN comment section will come down to it.
- Zetice 4y ago
  Sorry but no, it is completely accurate to say not only do men hold a disproportionate amount of power, but that they obtained that power by virtue of being men. It’s institutional misogyny, it’s morally bankrupt, and it needs to change.
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
    Essentially every tech firm is run by a man, yet, they were not awarded those jobs because they are men. They tended to get them by founding those companies successfully, or being very early employees who did major successful initiatives. The US President has always been a man, but that's because the men always win the votes, not because the competition is tipped in their favor. On the other hand, in some countries there are now laws forcing women into corporate boards. You have to have women there even if they did nothing to deserve it. > It’s institutional misogyny, it’s morally bankrupt, and it needs to change This is so far from reality you need to do some grounding exercises. Institutional misogyny would look like written down, formal and openly acknowledged mechanisms that systematically block women from certain opportunities. Can you write down a list of such things? Probably not because in the west, no such mechanisms exist. The same is not true in reverse, where there are actually many such mechanisms that specifically grant women those opportunities by banning men from competing. Board seats, all-women selection lists in politics, recruiters told to only search for women, jobs that are earmarked only for women, laws that grant women child custody by default, the US VP being selected because it had to be a black woman and so on. People like Andrew Tate get audiences because it's completely accurate to say our society is institutionally misandrist. To claim the opposite is to simply replace reality with ideology, which is always dangerous.
    - Zetice 4y ago
      Straight, white men have the privilege of being taken seriously, of being heard. The further you drift from that "ideal" mold, the less seriously you are taken. The roles that men fill in society are filled because people don't attach negative connotations to what those people do or say, and therefore leadership roles are massively disproportionately filled by men. There are so many more qualified women in this world that could do as good of a job, if not better, than the men who are leading, but those women are never given a chance because of their gender. People like Andrew Tate get an audience because hatred is easy to fall for, and misogyny is sadly all to common in western society. Our society not only is not misandrist, it's actively pro-men in so many ways, on so many levels, that the mere notion that the playing field should be leveled gets thought of as "misandrist". If you're a healthy straight white man and you're struggling in western society, it's got nothing to do with other people; it's firmly a you problem. Andrew Tate gives those people a way to pretend it isn't their fault, but that's all it is, pretend.

mpweiher 4y ago

> It's fair to say men hold a disproportionate amount of power No it's not. It's neither accurate nor fair. A disproportionate amount of power is held by people who happen to be men. That does not mean men as a group hold a disproportionate amount of power. People always confuse these things. Treat people as individuals, not as instances of groups.

dasil003 4y ago
I feel you are fundamentally in agreement with my point and splitting hairs to satisfy a pedantic desire to make a very specific semantic distinction. It might feel good, but you're not going to win anyone over with this type of nitpicking.
- norwalkbear 4y ago
  It's not pedantic. It's a damn good point. Most men are shit out of luck just like most women beholden to whims of those with money and power.
  - dasil003 4y ago
    It is pedantic because it's nitpicking my choice of words to make a completely separate point. This attracts people with the same concern (like you), but does nothing to bridge the gap to people with an alternate viewpoint (like the OP I responded to). Put another way, I could have made my point with a different choice of words that would not have drawn the response from mpweiher (and you). The problem is, any choice of words is open to be misinterpreted by someone with an axe to grind. If you want to be angry and find like-minded angry individuals, be my guest. If you want to build empathy and mutual understanding, then it's worth it to try to engage with people's primary point rather than seizing on an uncharitable interpretation of a particular phrasing or choice of words.
- mpweiher 4y ago
  You feel wrong. The distinction is absolutely fundamental.
- throway33 4y ago
  It's actually an important point. For example, one of the most misogynistic societies I can think of are the polygamous communities like Bountiful, BC, which are basically ruled by a small cadre of elite senior men with multiple wives. Women are very oppressed. However young men are just as oppressed; they are treated as competition by the elite, and essentially exiled or put to work as child labour in dangerous jobs. This community is very misogynistic and ruled by a patriarchy, and clearly the power is concentrated in the hands of men; at the same time it is not a community that you would want to be born into as a man or a woman, and the median man will end up with none of that patriarchal power or status. https://thetyee.ca/News/2006/05/26/Bountiful/ https://thetyee.ca/News/2006/05/26/Bountiful/ This is why it's important not just to average over groups. Dear Leader might always be a man, but that's not relevant to the fate of 99.99% of men who will never be Dear Leader, nor will they receive favour from him for sharing his gender. This is why a lot of people are sensitive to arguments that use language that equivocates between the entirely non-equivalent propositions "if you have power, you probably are a man" and "if you are a man, you probably have power". And yet the confusion between these two propositions is so widespread that probably most of the arguments in this HN comment section will come down to it.
Zetice 4y ago
Sorry but no, it is completely accurate to say not only do men hold a disproportionate amount of power, but that they obtained that power by virtue of being men. It’s institutional misogyny, it’s morally bankrupt, and it needs to change.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  Essentially every tech firm is run by a man, yet, they were not awarded those jobs because they are men. They tended to get them by founding those companies successfully, or being very early employees who did major successful initiatives. The US President has always been a man, but that's because the men always win the votes, not because the competition is tipped in their favor. On the other hand, in some countries there are now laws forcing women into corporate boards. You have to have women there even if they did nothing to deserve it. > It’s institutional misogyny, it’s morally bankrupt, and it needs to change This is so far from reality you need to do some grounding exercises. Institutional misogyny would look like written down, formal and openly acknowledged mechanisms that systematically block women from certain opportunities. Can you write down a list of such things? Probably not because in the west, no such mechanisms exist. The same is not true in reverse, where there are actually many such mechanisms that specifically grant women those opportunities by banning men from competing. Board seats, all-women selection lists in politics, recruiters told to only search for women, jobs that are earmarked only for women, laws that grant women child custody by default, the US VP being selected because it had to be a black woman and so on. People like Andrew Tate get audiences because it's completely accurate to say our society is institutionally misandrist. To claim the opposite is to simply replace reality with ideology, which is always dangerous.
  - Zetice 4y ago
    Straight, white men have the privilege of being taken seriously, of being heard. The further you drift from that "ideal" mold, the less seriously you are taken. The roles that men fill in society are filled because people don't attach negative connotations to what those people do or say, and therefore leadership roles are massively disproportionately filled by men. There are so many more qualified women in this world that could do as good of a job, if not better, than the men who are leading, but those women are never given a chance because of their gender. People like Andrew Tate get an audience because hatred is easy to fall for, and misogyny is sadly all to common in western society. Our society not only is not misandrist, it's actively pro-men in so many ways, on so many levels, that the mere notion that the playing field should be leveled gets thought of as "misandrist". If you're a healthy straight white man and you're struggling in western society, it's got nothing to do with other people; it's firmly a you problem. Andrew Tate gives those people a way to pretend it isn't their fault, but that's all it is, pretend.