Let's all take Blindboy seriously now...

Silentcorner wrote: »

But what if Feminism is not the answer for these young men.

What if, what we are seeing with young males is a diminished sense of self worth as a consequence of a very narcissistic society we all find ourselves in

What if it's both? Again we have a few users above pretending that his statements mean he things ALL mental health issues in ALL young men with mental health issues in Ireland stem from this one source. But that is not what he said. People are just distorting it to sound like that to feed a narrative they really want to hold.

There are MANY reasons for mental health issues within that population. And the quote we are discussing focuses on ONE of them. I have heard him talk in other quotes about others ones.

Silentcorner wrote: »

Would it make more sense to tell young people, who are feeling vulnerable, to stay away from social media and the selfie culture? Would that not be valid also?

It would make sense on paper for sure, but none at all in practice. It simply is not going to happen I expect. So rather than try to keep young people away from it, I think we need to focus more on developing a maturing and education and so forth on it's use. And that is going to take time and effort. Especially since we are only really beginning to understand the effects of it as whole anyway.

Pandora's box on that technology has been opened and we are not going to close it I suspect. So we have to move forward on better ways to integrate it into our culture and lives in ways that are less toxic and damaging to the users, vulnerable or otherwise. And good luck to us all with that, as it is no small mountain to climb.

Silentcorner wrote: »

Feminism, is merely infusing a toxic sense of self entitlement in women today, as far as I can see, every day my social media feed is offering new ways that the "Patriarchy" are screwing women...how in gods name could that ideology help a young man?

Again the only thing that is going to "help a young man" is the description the speaker gave of what he thinks "feminism" means. You are coming in with YOUR different understanding of the word and thinking his position must be rubbish because what YOU mean by it does not seem helpful. And much of what you say, I agree with. So like I said to another user earlier, we likely disagree on much less, and agree on much more, than you think. But a single common word, that we each have different understandings of, divides us and makes it appear otherwise. Which is, of course, not good.

Deleted User wrote: »

Which is not Feminism.

To you.

But that is what HE defined it as WITHIN the point in which he used the term. So whether or not he used the word correctly is an argument you can take up with him. But it is a separate discussion.

Whether you agree with how he defined the word "feminism" or not, if you stop to parse the point he made USING his definition of the word, there is little in the point to take exception to.

Deleted User wrote: »

You and Blindboy refer to feminism as seeking equality, but where's the evidence to support that stance?

Again I do not need to, because that is NOT the point I am making. The only point I have been making is that to understand the point he made you have to parse it through the meaning of the word HE gave while making it. Only then can one consider the point, what he was saying, and why.

A linguistic argument about what YOU think the word means is a separate discussion. One you should by all means have, but not at the expense of understanding what his point was.

Deleted User wrote: »

So... how does Feminism help the mental health of men? (your rather limited example doesn't really cut it)

Except it does. But you just bypass that by making up other definitions of the word. AGAIN the point can be made without the use of the word feminism. Which is simply that one valid way to alleviate mental suffering caused from perceiving (real or imagined) differences between the sexes...... is to remove those differences or the perception of them.

There is nothing wrong in that point other than people getting triggered by that point being made using the word "Feminism". If he had made the EXACT same point without the trigger word, I doubt any of us would be here having this conversation at all. People are more interested in trigger linguistics than the actual substance of points made alas.

Deleted User wrote: »

However, defending his statements on Feminism as a way to help men doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

And as I said many times, including now several in THIS post alone..... I am not defending anyone's "statements on feminism". I am discussing the statement he made WHILE using the word feminism. A statement I have said numerous times could have been made without that word just as well, or perhaps even better.

But no one seems to want to discuss the actual statement in and of itself. They want to discuss the word feminism, through THEIR understanding of it rather than the understanding of it used in the context of that point. And I do not see that as an honest move to make. If you want to critique the use of the word, have at it. Not my problem. I have only been discussing the point he was making in which he used the word. A point that I have RE-made without using that word many times, only to have people contrive to keep making it about the word, and keep ignoring the actual point.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Clearly you never wrote a PhD I type exceptionally fast. Posts like the above take me very little time. Whatever you think it took me, half it. I also read huge tomes on many subjects daily. It is a shame the twitter generation find such things "long" with their curtailed attention spans. But for me a post that length is like Twitter might be to you.

That said though I am not defending Blindboy at all. I know very little about the guy and I care less than that. What I AM defending though is a single statement. And I would be defending that statement equally had a homeless person said it, our president, Trump, Clinton, Merkel, Dara Obrien, or David Beckham.

I am rarely (never?) interested in WHO said a particular statement. I am only interested in it's content. And when I see the content distorted, lied about, misrepresented and used to feed a narrative it never supports.... then THAT interests me.

Well then it seems you're defending a botched point.

Either he, like everybody arguing with you is saying, lumped a good point in with an overall toxic movement for the forwarding of some sort of agenda, or, he made a mistake in his execution by saying that "Young men need feminism", rather than "Young men need to abandon these stereotypes. Feminism, for example, teaches that....."

He threw the baby out with the bathwater. The explanation that he gave isn't ALL of what Feminism is, its just a small part to a much larger, much more toxic pie.

kubjones wrote: »

Well then it seems you're defending a botched point.

No one seems to be able to explain why. The point seems perfectly coherent and valid. The only people who have an issue with it seem to have no issue with the point itself. Just that he used the word "Feminism" while making it.

I genuinely believe had he made the EXACT same point, only without that word, hardly anyone would be discussing it now.

But as I said before, which partially agrees with you, I think he could have done that. Made the point just as well, or even better, without using that word.

However since he included WITHIN the point the definition of the word he was using, I think you are entirely wrong to say he "lumped a good point in with an overall toxic movement". It is people with their own definitions of a more toxic variation of "feminism" that are parsing his point through their own use of the word. Rather than his. Which is a remarkably distortionary thing to do.

Is distortionary a word? I think it should be

kubjones wrote: »

The explanation that he gave isn't ALL of what Feminism is

Nor have I seen him, me, or anyone else claim it is. Which makes this somewhat of a moot point.

flookdgates wrote: »

I used to think the RIDF (Rubberbandits Internet Defence Force) was just a myth. Nozz has proven otherwise.

Yeah because defending a single statement someone makes, without hardly referencing the person who made it at all, you are defending some group that person happens to be part of.

Cause that makes sense.

kubjones wrote: »

That's the point. The word Feminism is not what he claimed it to be. Either

To you. It is to him. And, having typed "Define Feminsm" into google it is to the first definitions the results threw out such as "the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes."

I honestly do not care what you or anyone else thinks the word means. The only definition of the word important to understand the point he made, is the one he included in the point he made.

kubjones wrote: »

The argument is that it was the wrong way of expressing what he meant if that was in fact what he did mean.

Not so sure anything is THAT wrong with it though as he included his definition of the word in the point while using that word in the point. That is, as I said to someone a couple of days ago, the perfect way to make a point. If your point is self contained, and less common words are defined WITHIN the point, then you have made your point well.

But as I said a number of times now, I am not at all defending how well the point was made or not. If you scroll back to my first post on the matter a couple of days ago my position on this has been about what the point MEANS. Because I found a very disingenuous, to the point of being malicious, summary of it that was not at all representative of what the guy was actually saying.

Discussing what a point means, and how well it was or could have been made, are two tangential and interesting discussions. But it pays to be clear which one you are actually having at any given time. And the majority of my discussion the matter has been the former, not the latter.

That YOU have differing ideas of the word is a-ok. Nothing at all wrong with that. But they are totally irrelevant in parsing his point, and what he meant by it. Which is all I have been doing.

kubjones wrote: »

(I realize its a bit of an extreme example, not equating Feminism to Nazism, was just the most extreme and therefor most translatable example I could think of. No offense meant. :P)

None taken, but to make the comparison you had to NOT do what he DID do. Which is include in your statement a definition of what you mean by Nazism. Perhaps you, while making such a statement, might mean something else by it. Otherwise we would have to assume you DO mean the genocidal, tyrannical movement.

The problem here, which your example does not capture, is that he included a definition of what he meant by "feminism" and that definition carries the point. So what some people on here are doing are putting the label "feminism" on all kinds of OTHER things..... things his point was not talking about in any way..... and parsing the point through that. Which is not an honest or fair move to make.

It is 100% clear to me, to the point that it is confusing people keep feeling they need to tell me, that "Feminism" has come to be applied to all kinds of other things. Some of them quite toxic and harmful and sexist and maybe worse. But none of that has anything to do with this.

People are just more keen to discuss, and throw bile on, the word itself. Entirely ignoring anything the person USING the word might have actually been saying. And that is not a great direction for human discourse to take.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Personally, I do not believe it is appropriate for someone who is not a qualified mental health practitioner to give out mental health advice.

I also do not believe it is appropriate for anyone, qualified or otherwise, to give out one size fits all mental health advice to a diffuse group of people.

I also do not believe that it is appropriate for someone who is clearly aligned to an ideological position to try to shoehorn that message into areas that it doesn't belong. I mean, it's no different to someone saying that the root of most people's unhappiness is capitalism and if they would just become socialists then they would be happy!

I like the show but I agree he talks a lot of shíte too but that bit in bold is definitely not true. He always states that different things work for different people and specifies that what worked for him might not work for other people.

Cienciano wrote: »

I like the show but I agree he talks a lot of shíte too but that bit in bold is definitely not true. He always states that different things work for different people and specifies that what worked for him might not work for other people.

I was just about to say this, I've only listened to the podcast a couple of times. Its not really my thing. But he has always stated the above anytime I've heard him mention it. I'm starting to wonder about the people harping on about him here, have they even listened to him...

hetuzozaho wrote: »

I'm starting to wonder about the people harping on about him here, have they even listened to him...

I wonder that about a lot of things. The revival of this thread followed the podcast he did with Louise ONeill. And one user called the entire podcast something like "The sh*t show you would expect".

So I listened to it and not one statement in it seemed all that objectionable.

So I questioned the user what the issue actually was, who then said they just meant it was mundane. Which seems like quite a different thing to me entirely.

I did not say it at the time, but part of me felt that the person in question did not actually listen to it, but thought they were on safe ground declaring it to have been what THEY expected it was going to be.

It makes me suspect people here are reacting to what they WANT him to have said, rather than what he actually did say. For example if you take something said to me yesterday you will notice the contrived vaugeness of it.....

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

what you fail to appreciate is that the users you are conversing with here are well versed on just what particular brand of feminism it is that Blindboy subscribes to, and so it is in that context people are showing their incredulity. I among them.

.... where the user does not in any way tell us what that "brand of feminism" is. They do not cite a single thing the guy said or wrote. They do not quote him. They do not define the "brand of feminism" and show how the definition links back to this speaker.

Nothing. Nothing at all. Basically they think if they say "his brand of feminism" in ominous enough terms they can instill the impression it must be something awful he subscribes to without every having to ACTUALLY discuss what he says, does, believes, writes or subscribes to. And that borders on a level of malicious desperation I really have no explanation for. Or even theories for to be honest.

PlaneSpeeking wrote: »

But show how the modern day definition of "feminism" (i.e. the current third wave feminism) will alleviate the mental health crises of young men.

Why? Since neither blind-boy nor anyone on this thread, least of all me, has made such a claim, why would anyone want to spend time defending such a claim?