One of the biggest social issues in the 21st century is the rather controversial topic of sexism. One particular movement has decided to attempt to combat against sexism. This movement known as the feminist movement.
Over the years an antithesis of the feminist movement has arisen, this movement is known as the men’s rights movement, otherwise known as the meninist. For the purpose of this article this group will just be known as the Male Men. A common critique of feminists by Male Men is: if feminists are fighting for equality for both genders why are they just called feminists. In their eyes this point raises a lot of questions.
What Male Men see the Feminist movement as is a gross overestimation of the entire movement. Most feminists believe that the reason for all sexism (be it anti-female or anti-male) is gender roles.
Because our society is dominated by men and for the most part it is women who are victims of sexism the movement is called feminism.
So why don’t the Male Men see this?
Because to recognize that those societal problems stem from a male dominated patriarchy would mean recognizing themselves as part of the problem and would require them to actually take action to make a change. It’s much easier to simply demonize feminists. The demonization process allows them to place the burden on someone else’s shoulders and makes them innocent victims as opposed to real life participants in a vicious never ending cycle.
It really depresses me because as much as I am horrified by most of Male Men rhetoric, it is obvious at least that some of them are aware on an instinctual level that something is very wrong with this system. If they would step back and see that the dismantling the societal institutions as called for by feminists would actually help alleviate a number of their problems as well.
I’m going to visualize this idea with an example: It’s like their ancestors designed and built this house. This aforementioned house has been standing for a long time and they’ve lived in it for so long that they have no way of seeing that it’s a badly-built house. The “others” who were never considered worthy enough to actually own part of the house are stuck in there with them and now the house is starting to crumble.
Pieces of it are falling down all around them hurting them the way it’s been hurting the “others” for millennia. Some other party finally has the gall to say, “Look, get out of the house! It’s coming down around you. It’s hurting you. We have to take it down and build a better house. Help us and help yourselves!”
But they can’t see it. They just see the “other” trying to take down the house in which they’ve lived for so long and their instincts say to attack the “other” instead of taking a few moments to consider that the other might actually be right.
So, they’d rather stand there in a mess of their own making, debris pelting them from all sides, blaming the other for the pain instead of blaming the architects and getting the hell out of there.
Sure, it’s possible all Male Men may not be terrible. Just as with any movement the original message can be bloated out by a rather vocal section of the group. We see that happen in the majority of movements. Yet I believe if a common consensus can be reached with all we can come together and begin to unshackle ourselves from the bonds we have come enslaved to.
