#men's issues

[st-dionysus]

I want to take a moment to talk about transandrophobia and cisgender men. I've spoken a lot in the pass about cis women and other trans people who attack or dismiss transgender men for being men out of the fear of men or the fear of their daughters becoming men or the fear of lesbian lovers becoming men.

However, cis men also fear trans men's manhood. Cis men often feel threatened by our existence, since they view us as a challenge to their identity and their manhood. Cis men are terrified of the concept that a "woman" can become a man. So often they are horrified by the concept of us growing cocks or getting srs, of use having facial hair, gaining muscle, behaving masculine or feminine, walking into the showers, their gym spaces, using the urinal, pissing on the side of the road, or just being in any way male. Cis men don't just dislike that we're trans, they actively dislike that we're men, they fear us being men because if a "woman" can become a man, that challenges the structure of the patriarchy, it challenges the system, and it "perverts" the meaning of male and redefines manhood and masculinity. In doing so, we force cis men to consider these binaries and that scares them, we terrify them with the concept of "women" gaining access to male spaces where they might see them vulnerable.

[alwaysbewoke]

"The Left has FAILED Men"... I guess

[theexodvs]

Do MRAs who believe sexual assault and false accusations of sexual assault should be punished equally also support the death penalty or life sentences for false accusations of murder?

[nirivenova]

Idk who needs to read this but men are people who deserve to feel and express openly without shame or ridicule.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

It’s International Men’s Day 2024.

And I know, if there’s one place we don’t need to be validated, it’s by a faceless, nauseatingly-“woke” trillion dollar global tech company like Google.

But still, it’s a great opportunity to ask; what might such an acknowledgment look like, if it were to exist?

Would Google nod its head to men’s mental or physical health?

Would it salute dads, who continue their renaissance into modern fatherhood?

Might it send up a flair for the deteriorating rates of boys in education?

Or could it acknowledge the sacrifice men around the world make, even with their own life, to keep our lights on, water running, and kitchen stocked?

Well, we won’t be finding out this year.

So let’s design our own Doodles…

To be frank, I don’t care what Google big wigs say.

But as the front page of the Internet, this lack of visibility is a good barometer for a world that still looks the other way when it comes to men and boys advocacy, and this is what I see when Google leaves its iconic search bar unchanged.

A world not ready to accept that we all face hardships, regardless of sex, and all deserve visibility, if even just for one day a year.

So, what does International Mens Day look like to you?

And how would you like to see it celebrated?

(Also to be clear, Google designed none of these IMD artworks, I did, so please don’t sue me for doing your job)

[cooltmoney95]

I genuinely believe that stuff like "toxic masculinity" and the "male loneliness epidemic" wouldn't be an issue if more people realized that it's a consequence of the systemic neglect and rejection of nurturing emotional intelligence in young boys.

But that's just me.

[radmalenia]

waaaahhhh waaahhhhhh waaaahhhh

Nothing on my blog should make you cry like a baby like that.

Unless maybe you're a girl or woman processing severe trauma from patriarchal abuse, or one who has detransitioned and is mourning what genderism did to you/processing trauma from what you went through during that. If so please know you are not alone at all, a great many women have your back wholeheartedly, all are in the same boat to varying degrees; and we are fighting for you💜

But I'm guessing you aren't one of those, anon. I'm guessing you're trying to mock women for discussing the misogyny they experience. Well, you can just go cope with it 🖕 women are people and therefore we have something called "the human spirit" - which is viscerally resistant to oppression, domination, abuse, lack of freedom, disrespect, etc. Therefore, women are never going to just shut up and back down let males continue to treat us as worse than objects the way they've been doing for centuries.

We will continue until they can no longer do that shit to us. And so men have a choice...they will either:

1: Get their act together and learn to both make and function in a world that is NOT based around enslaving half the human population and treating them as inferior - or

2: Men will continue down this path of destruction where they continually choose to perpetuate the enslavement of women, over choosing the health and progress of the human race as a whole.

So far they've repeatedly chosen to do misogyny and abuse over doing unity and ethicality (despite the huge progress for all of us that would come with that. Despite it just being the right thing to do, also...instead they repeatedly choose evil). Their ego, their evil, their inhumanity; will be the death of them if they never change. Perhaps the death of all humanity, if they take women down with them.

Maybe that truth is something for you to cry about? But you shouldn't cry over it, you should channel the rage and disgust into fighting for the betterment of us all - you should be aware more and more women are waking up to this reality; and if all humanity is eventually going to go down because of males then at least all us women will go down swinging.

Whatever your deal is, go get some therapy. I am not your parent or your therapist, I obviously don't know you at all; and I get the impression you're very immature and ignorant and just trying to be a little misogynistic twerp. Go take that bullshit somewhere else.

Maybe you'll learn something from this response if you even see it. Or maybe you just see multiple paragraphs and don't bother to read it - which would be more expected of someone who doesn't understand the misogynistic issues women face and just wants to mock them.

Regardless, you've done nothing but make a fool of yourself with this ask.

[dkettchen]

✨ Men's day PSA ✨

by your friendly neighborhood transmasc men's lib activist ⁓

To the women, male feminists, gays, nonbinaries and transmascs who haven't gotten with the program yet:

If you want the rest of us (incl all trans & otherwise genderqueer ppl) to be free, cishet men need to be freed, because misandry and gender roles affect all of us, but they're the ones defining society's mainstream conception of what it is to be a Man™.

And cishet men can't do that by themselves, so they need your allyship!

Here's my old video on men's issues if you need a general intro to men's lib. Feel free to also check out my videos on men's studies and matriarchy, as well as the various things linked in their descriptions.

Here's some simple things you can do for the men in your life:

question your misandry & anti-men/-masculinity biases

ex. do you think it's fine to make fun of/be mean to men? how do you feel about your own masculine qualities? would you do/think the same thing to/about them if they were a woman/queer person? etc

meet men with kindness & give them the benefit of the doubt

men, like anyone else, are people and not a monolith, the vast majority of them are perfectly lovely and safe to interact with and don't deserve your prejudice, they deserve to be treated as well as anyone else & are usually used to being treated significantly worse

include them in stuff & teach them skills they traditionally don't get to participate in

there are plenty of matriarchal skills that are hecking useful & not available to a lot of cishet men the way they are to women and queer people, ex. make-up, hair/nails/skin care, fashion, sewing/knitting/crafting, or even just like base social skills/presentability

value them

ex. show that you want for them to be alive, healthy, and happy; compliment them/their looks; (where applicable) express your attraction to them incl what abt them you're attracted to; etc

support them in their own self-liberation efforts

ex. emotions/mental health/self-worth, fashion/self-care, parenting/home-making, etc

respect their current limits & comfort zone

ex. if they're not/not yet comfy w something more extremely out of their comfort zone, don't push it, as it might discourage them; understand that certain things don't come to them as easily (yet) as they do to you

remember intersectionality as with all things

ex. don't forget that plenty of men have marginalised identities (mental health, disability, class, race, queerness, etc) and therefore are not the Image of Privilege you may make Men™ out to be; don't invalidate/erase transmascs' & queer men's claim to female gender role things/femininity in order to validate their manhood/masculinity; be mindful of different issues & stereotypes affecting men of different ethnicities; etc

[isaacsapphire]

Gender and IF

[generalchelseamayhem]

It's nice whenever men open up about issues they may or may not have locked up inside for a long, long time. The world should head in that direction, worldwide.

I resist the urge to groan when they say they're better than preexisting MRAs. "That aren't trying to silence innocent women!" because female MRAs don't exist... ... ...

Thoughts?

I'm not in the business of taking credit, but one of the things I strongly advocate for, and that I try to spread day after day, is caring about men for men's own sake, because that alone is a good enough reason to care.

When the subject of "I'm doing [thing MRAs have been talking about for years], but I'm not like those icky MRAs" comes up, I think of things like The Good Men Project, a transparently intersectional-feminist attempt to capture this discussion. Take this Ask An Ally column, an example I just pulled out randomly from searching their website for 2 minutes.

There's a lot of therapy-talk in here that frankly I wouldn't use for this discussion if given the choice, but in broad strokes, I agree with what's being said here! This is all good stuff to talk about!

And then it pulls the rug out from under you.

It's not that any of this is wrong, per se, but it betrays the fact that the person responding to the question doesn't actually care about men for men's sake, but for women's sake. And sure, wanting to reduce domestic violence done to women is a noble goal, but we need at least some people to care about men for men's sake, you know? Otherwise we're reinforcing yet another harmful stereotype of the True Male, which is that a man's greatest and perhaps only worth is protecting women from harm. This never occurs to people like The Good Men Project because they only care about men insofar as they care about the wellbeing of the women around men.

So when people go out of their way to say "I'm not like those icky MRAs", I think about how stagnant and unmoving the conversation around men's issues would be. I think about how many people over the past few years have, one way or another, broken out of that Good Men Project mindset and started appreciating men as men, not as some kind of accessory to people who really matter.

And sometimes I feel like I might have made a difference after all, even if that difference goes unnoticed and disavowed.

[itsbansheebitch]

Breast Cancer "Awareness": Let's Talk

The breast cancer awareness movement used to be a very important part of our history, but recently it has been seen as a target for scams, fraud, and fake charities.

I always was confused as a kid why breast cancer "awareness" ALWAYS focused on women (see pink bow, pink boxing gloves, and "fight like a girl") when men can ALSO get breast cancer. WHY are we gatekeeping a life threatening disease???

Not to mention the sexualization of breast cancer. Why is the body part more marketable than the person? You aren't donating to save boobs, you're donating to SAVE LIVES. Why is that so hard to market?

Anyway, if you see an organization say that x% of donations/profits goes to breast cancer AWARENESS you can know with certainty that that money is going straight to more marketing. Don't waste your time with donating to those people. Instead, get annual or 6 month checkups and remember to remind your friends that no matter your gender or sex, you too can get breast cancer. THAT will ACTUALLY help with "Awareness."

[transgender-png]

hate when someone refers to a guy being stubborn/hotheaded/hard to open up/other bad trait as "being a guy/a man thing".

i KNOW if a woman was being emotional or defensive or hell, even one of the things i mentioned before, and i said "it's because she's a woman" i would earn myself a one way ticket to Asshole Town and rightfully so! but someone saying the same thing about a man is apparently okay, because he's a man?

this is an issue i noticed long before i started transitioning, but i notice it a lot more now.

it's no wonder men act like douchebags when theyre taught from a very young age that that's how they're supposed to be. if you teach someone they're supposed to be aggressive and tough and emotionless because that's what it means to be their gender, of course they're going to grow up to act like that.

and if you read this post and think that because im standing up for an issue men face, that i cant also believe in women's rights and stand up for them, then i think you need to reassess your reading comprehension skills and how open-minded you really are, because the fact that women have issues that are caused mostly by men in our society and men have issues that are caused mostly by women in our society are two things that can, and do, coexist, and you should be including men in your feminism too. no one benefits and everyone is hurt under the patriarchy.

[catboypalug]

Looking, in retrospect, at the wreck of the not-quite-relationship that was the closest I ever got to dating, I'm coming to terms with how I caused part of it.

That girl was a crazy bitch, but I was also unhealthy in how I approached it. When she showed interest in me, I had this constant feeling of "this is the only girl who will ever like me, I HAVE to date her, this is my only chance to have a relationship, this is it, this is the one." And, well, that kind of mindset makes you act weird about someone. I'm realizing I probably seemed like a creep to her at times. Like a drowning man clawing at the first hand to reach out and dragging them under, my desperation just hurt everyone involved. And it made me think about how many other lonely dudes trying to date are probably suffering with the same problem. They start socially awkward, don't have much success, and the more they remain alone, the more desperate they become to find someone, anyone who would be willing to be with them - but that very desperation drives people away. The failure causes self-hatred and insecurity that only causes more self-hatred, more pain. Things only seem to get worse, a downward spiral of loneliness and desperation.

I don't really have any advice to give that hasn't already been said a thousand times over - pick up a hobby, work on a creative activity, cultivate good friendships, find happiness in your life and don't attach your self-worth to the idea of having a relationship. I just want to point out what a vicious, self-reinforcing cycle it can be, and say: I get it. I know how awful it can be, but things can get better.

[alwaysbewoke]

unless you're a highly religious man, marriage just isn't worth the risk if you're a guy. you don't realize this when you're young, which is when you're most vulnerable, but as you get older, as you learn more about life, as you learn more about women, as you learn more about the games that are being played in relationships, as you learn more about divorce rates, as you learn more about people staying in unhappy marriages for the sake of kids, appearances, finances, etc., the more you realize that marriage is a gamble where the stakes are stacked against you as a man. this is especially true if you're not a wealthy man. if you're wealthy (like say a net worth of 50 million) and you lose half of that, you're still really rich and chances are you have the know-how and connections to make back what you lost. however, if you're a guy just making 50k a year and you suddenly lose half or more, you can literally find yourself homeless. it's crazy.

[the-healing-mindset]

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