Is feminism a dirty word?

The Corinthian wrote: »

No more than flipping a coin on a yes-no question won't get you the right answer.

As explained, repeatedly at this stage, you cannot claim to be for equality if that is not your aim. Your aim and that of equality may align upon occasion, but you're still following your agenda, not that of equality. That's all well and good, until you begin to claim that you are pursuing equality to others, then you're just misleading them.

The Corinthian wrote: »

Worse still, as you approach women's equality, as is the case in the West, in areas where women were previously disadvantaged, those aims will align less and less and you'll start seeing policies such as abolishing custodial sentences for women or quotas appear, ironically in the name of equality.

The Corinthian wrote: »

I hope so, but not until even feminism accepts that it does not and cannot fulfill that role. Otherwise, you'll continue to see hostility from feminists whenever someone suggests that such an equality movement is necessary.

gozunda wrote: »

True however feminism in seeking to improve the position of women does not preclude men doing the same for men.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Many feminists believe that it does, that feminism is the only legitimate ghender rights movement and that the MRM is pure evil. Engage with Reddit's /r/Feminism or /r/AskFeminists for half an hour and you'll see what I'm talking about.

The Corinthian wrote: »

Actually loosening feminism's monopoly in such areas so that it is easier to get representation is likely the right direction, I'm afraid.

See above.

The Corinthian wrote: »

Ironically, in my experience, it would be the extreme misandrist feminists who would be more likely to admit, or more not to care, that feminism is about representing women's interests, not gender equality.

The vast majority seem to hold onto this fairy tale either because it gives greater advantage to feminism or because they're not comfortable that ultimately they support a movement based on self-interest and not higher ideals. Most I suspect have never really questioned this fallacy and we've already seen what happens when they are faced with it here.

You can hardly blame them. Cruelly derided as man-children and crybabies for objecting to absurdly unfair conditions in college, bars, clubs and beyond, men are damned if they do and damned if they don't: ridiculed as basement-dwellers for avoiding aggressive, demanding women with unrealistic expectations, or called rapists and misogynists merely for expressing sexual interest.
Jack Rivlin is editor-in-chief of student tabloid media start-up The Tab, a runaway success whose current strap-line reads: "We'll stop writing it when you stop reading it." As the guiding intelligence behind over 30 student newspapers, Rivlin is perhaps the best-placed person in the country to observe this trend in action. And he agrees that the current generation of young men find it particularly difficult to engage with women.
"Teenage boys always have been useless with girls, but there's definitely a fear that now being well-intentioned isn't enough, and you can get into trouble just for being clumsy," he says. "For example, leaning in for a kiss might see you branded a creep, rather than just inept."
The new rules men are expected to live by are never clearly explained, says Rivlin, leaving boys clueless and neurotic about interacting with girls. "That might sound like a good thing because it encourages men to take the unromantic but practical approach of asking women how they should behave, but it causes a lot of them to just opt out of the game and retreat to the sanctuary of their groups of lads, where being rude to women gets you approval, and you can pretty much entirely avoid one-on-one socialising with the opposite sex."
"There are also a lot of blokes who ignore women because they are scared and don't know how to act. It goes without saying that boys who never spend any time alone with women are not very good at relationships."
Rivlin has noticed the increased dependence on substances, normally alcohol, that boys are using to calm their nerves. "I've heard a lot of male students boast about never having experienced sober sex," he says. "They're obviously scared, which is natural, but they would be a lot less scared and dysfunctional if they understood 'the rules.'"
The result? "A lot of nice but awkward young men are opting out of approaching women because there is no opportunity for them to make mistakes without suffering worse embarrassment than ever."
Most troublingly, this effect is felt more acutely among poorer and less well educated communities, where the package of support resources available to young men is slight. At my alma mater, the University of Cambridge, the phenomenon barely registers on the radar, according to Union society president Tim Squirrell.
"I don't think I've really noticed a change recently," he says. "This year has seen the introduction of mandatory consent workshops for freshers, which I believe is probably a good thing, and there's been a big effort by the Women's Campaign in particular to try and combat lad culture on campus.
The atmosphere here is the same as it was a year ago - mostly nerdy guys who are too afraid to approach anyone in the first place, and then a smaller percentage who are confident enough to make a move. Obviously women have agency too, and they approach men in about the same numbers as they do elsewhere. There certainly haven't been any stories in [campus newspaper] The Tab about a sex drought on campus."

"I think that people are probably having as much sex as ever," he adds. At Cambridge, of course, that may not mean much, and for a variety of socioeconomic and class-based reasons the tribes at Oxford and Cambridge are somewhat insulated from the male drop-out effect.
But even at such a prestigious university with a largely middle- and upper-class population, those patronising, mandatory "consent" classes are still being implemented. Squirrell, who admits to being a feminist with left-of-centre politics, thinks they're a good idea. But academics such as Camille Paglia have been warning for years that "rape drives" on campus put women at greater risk, if anything.
Women today are schooled in victimhood, taught to be aggressively vulnerable and convinced that the slightest of perceived infractions, approaches or clumsy misunderstandings represents "assault," "abuse" or "harassment." That may work in the safe confines of campus, where men can have their academic careers destroyed on the mere say-so of a female student.
But, according to Paglia, when that women goes out into the real world without the safety net of college rape committees, she is left totally unprepared for the sometimes violent reality of male sexuality. And the panics and fear-mongering are serving men even more poorly. All in all, education is becoming a miserable experience for boys.

In schools today across Britain and America, boys are relentlessly pathologised, as academics were warning as long ago as 2001. Boyishness and boisterousness have come to be seen as "problematic," with girls' behaviour a gold standard against which these defective boys are measured. When they are found wanting, the solution is often drugs.
One in seven American boys will be diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at some point in their school career. Millions will be prescribed a powerful mood stabiliser, such as Ritalin, for the crime of being born male. The side effects of these drugs can be hideous and include sudden death.
Meanwhile, boys are falling behind girls academically, perhaps because relentless and well-funded focus has been placed on girls' achievement in the past few decades and little to none on the boys who are now achieving lower grades, fewer honors, fewer degrees and less marketable information economy skills. Boys' literacy, in particular, is in crisis throughout the West. We've been obsessing so much over girls, we haven't noticed that boys have slipped into serious academic trouble.
So what happened to those boys who, in 2001, were falling behind girls at school, were less likely to go to college, were being given drugs they did not need and whose self-esteem and confidence issues haven't just been ignored, but have been actively ridiculed by the feminist Establishment that has such a stranglehold on teaching unions and Left-leaning political parties?
In short: they grew up, dysfunctional, under-served by society, deeply miserable and, in many cases, entirely unable to relate to the opposite sex. It is the boys who were being betrayed by the education system and by culture at large in such vast numbers between 1990 and 2010 who represent the first generation of what I call the sexodus, a large-scale exit from mainstream society by males who have decided they simply can't face, or be bothered with, forming healthy relationships and participating fully in their local communities, national democracies and other real-world social structures.

Letree wrote: »

From that article: "I do see a lot of young men who would otherwise be dating and marrying giving up on women," he explains, "Or giving up on the idea of having a wife and family. This includes both the kind of men who would traditionally be a little awkward with women, and the kind of men who aren't awkward with women at all.
"They've done a cost-benefit analysis and realised it is a bad deal. They know that if they invest in a marriage and children, a woman can take all of that away from them on a whim.

I have no intention of going down the marriage with children road. I have been in to many relationships that have broken down for one reason or another. There is no way i am putting myself in a situation where i can invest in setting up a family environment with a wife and children and then have it all pulled from under my feet if the woman decides she no longer wants me as part of that family unit. Thereafter i would get to live in a dingy flat while paying towards the upkeep of the house and children.

I have no problem getting into a relationship with a woman who has equal resources to me. If we split up i won't be fleeced. But marriage is a no no.

gozunda wrote: »

I have to take serious exception to this. No reasonable parent of children is going to treat a boy as a lower class individual to a girl. No reasonable parent is going to raise a female child with an 'easy to get crap' attitude to sexuality. Most parents wish to raise responsible and sensible individuals who hopefully will do the best they can in the modern world.

gozunda wrote: »

Are you suggesting then that they should be raised with an 'easy to get' attitude? Seriously? Modern media often portrays sex as something easily obtained - and unfortunately some teenagers are buying into this and then acting out the fantasy. As said social skills and role models are very important for both boys and girls growing up. Where these are absent some teenagers may find it difficult to properly engage with each other in a responsible and respectful way.

In adults there have always been a certain element of the fem fatale and the lothario type individual who play on the boundaries of normal behaviour but these are not the norm in my experience. Where I have encountered such individuals it is best to give them a wide berth imo.