CMV: Feminism needs to recognise and grow to support men's issues, in order to successfully dismantle the Patriarchal system of society.
As the title says, I think the success of feminism can be seen as the point where society no longer adheres to patriarchy or any of its core ideals. Patriarchy, of course, is built around strong gender roles where men and women are assigned duties, responsibilities and stereotypes to explain why they are assigned such. It is also built around violent repression of anyone that does not fit this stereotypical role.
"But misandry doesn't exist it's actually just negative effects of misogyny."
Misandry: Hatred or prejudice against men.
Prejudice: The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions.
By definition, a patriarchy assigns men a role, with aspects to it both positive and negative, and these have no basis besides gender. This should be enough to prove that misandry in patriarchy does exist, but I'll show further.
Patriarchy supports emotional abuse of young boys, to make them believe that showing softness or pain is weak and unmanly. This stunts significant emotional development, and leads to issues further in life like what is referred to as the male loneliness epidemic. This is not just a case of feeling lonely, but being unable to connect significantly with friends and family because that feeling has been literally stunted through abuse.
Patriarchy further pushes young boys to become more violent as a show of strength. Military ability is glorified, sexual success is seen as a sign of dominance. Success as a man is tied inherently to competition, whether it be victory in sport or war, or whether it be in abundance of sexual partners, money, political power, other resources. Those who lack the competitive drive, the drive to fight and take from others are not fit for their role and hated.
None of this occurs due to misogyny alone. These are independent stereotypes built for that gender role. Notably, these are the exact opposite of the stereotypes women face. Weakness - Strength, Emotion - Logic, Submissiveness - Dominance, etc. While this creates the error that men's issues exist due to misogyny, such things lack the critical fact that women's issues may also be described as occurring due to stereotypes about men.
Women work in the kitchen because it's men's responsibility to earn, women care for children because men are not soft, women do not go to war because men are strong and it is their duty. All of these can be described in opposing manners. However, one must realize that both statements, though independent, are simultaneously held as true by a patriarchy. Neither form of prejudice is more or less real.
Further proof of this is in present times. Countries like UK, Switzerland, Canada etc are placed higher than most countries in terms of gender equality. However, these are also countries without significant laws for male victims of rape, Swiss laws support mandatory conscription for men and impose fines on a gendered basis for refusal, Canada lacks Domestic Violence shelters for men.
Special mention to Canada, where Earl Silverman, a male abuse survivor, ran out of funds trying to maintain a domestic abuse shelter for men. he did not receive sufficient help from the government or feminist groups, and later committed suicide. This is in Canada, and not Afghanistan. Feminist groups exist, women's rights are known and understood, and male survivors of domestic violence still have nowhere to go.
If misogyny caused men's issues, then less misogyny would mean less issues. More feminism would mean less men's issues. And that IS somewhat true. but the difference in reduction is so great, where modern, developed countries don't acknowledge a crime as gruesome as rape or the 17th ranked country in terms of gender equality considers it right to violate a person's consent on the basis of gender, it cannot be the primary explanation.
"Even if some level of discrimination exists, male victims are too rare for it to matter."
In this regard, I quote a comment I made recently:
>Firstly I'll say that any possible resource I link will be downplaying the rate of male victims. They have many more factors which discourage them from coming forward than women (I am not saying all women come forward, I know that rape against women IS underreported, I'm simply comparing that men are less likely to do so because of more reasons). The numbers I produce underreport men that are victimised.
>That said, I'll first link this study in the US, which checks for sexual violence and intimate partner violence amongst men. However, it establishes that
>"About one in three men experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime."
>which is a number that corresponds near perfectly to women's experience of violence from domestic partners, which is also roughly one in three. However, domestic violence against men is less reported. There are also few shelters and resources from them. I will also point to Earl Silverman, who set up the only privately funded domestic abuse shelter for men in Canada. Earl died by suicide on April 26, 2013, shortly after selling the shelter due to bankruptcy and ridicule.
>Now that we have established men can be victims at rates which are sufficient for legal action to be taken, even with severe underreporting, I will post this article where a researcher, Lara Stemple, who works with the Health and Human Rights Project at UCLA, went through multiple past surveys about such violence against men. This is a woman, in case you suspect further bias. Now a quote from the article:
> "Stemple parses several other national surveys in her new paper, “The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions,” co-written with Ilan Meyer and published in the April 17 edition of the American Journal of Public Health. One of those surveys is the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, for which the Centers for Disease Control invented a category of sexual violence called “being made to penetrate.” This definition includes victims who were forced to penetrate someone else with their own body parts, either by physical force or coercion, or when the victim was drunk or high or otherwise unable to consent. When those cases were taken into account, the rates of nonconsensual sexual contact basically equalized, with 1.270 million women and 1.267 million men claiming to be victims of sexual violence."
>This corresponds quite well to the feminist idea (this is not sarcasm, I am a feminist) that women and men are the same in terms of mental capacity and awareness. With that, there is no reason to believe that only men would commit such crimes. Obviously, socialisation exists, and much sexual violence is a crime of opportunity where having strength plays a role.
Separately, there is good reason to believe that male victims are underreported, likely more so than female victims.
Here is a study dealing with barriers to help seeking amongst male victims of female perpetrated intimate partner violence. It lists the common reasons but the most common listed reasons include stuff like:
>concerns that their partner would falsely accuse them or get revenge in some way (47.8%), concerns that the service provider/resource would blame them (47.5%), and that they did not think they would be believed or that the service provider/resource would be biased against them (46.8%)
Notably, there exists a concern about their partner's testimony being believed off of gender and concerns that they would be blamed. Women are, of course, also blamed in such situations but the nature of the issue is different.
These victims are concerned that a) as is present in female victims, they would be blamed for enticing the rapist but also additionally b) as is unique, that they would instead be considered the rapist or perpetrator of abuse.
Another factor is that they have concerns of a) as is present in all victims, not being believed, but also b) a unique factor, that the service provider would be biased against them in specific due to gender.
Apart from this, one can also point out that male rape is unrecognised in many countries, that it isn't considered real by many people INCLUDING prominent "feminists" (in quotes since this is not feminism), and if real is considered too small to be relevant. Clearly, multiple factors here are completely unique that contribute to further underreporting. This is merely logical. If person A has 5 reasons to not say something, and person B has 7 (including the previous 5), then person B will be less likely to speak.
This combined with the previous referred studies, and clearly the understanding that men and women are psychologically equivalent, neither superior nor inferior, must lead us to the conclusion that men are victimised in numbers that are at least significantly close to that of women.
"These laws are setup by men and thus it is men's responsibility."
Perhaps the most shameful and disgusting excuse of all. To state the obvious, it doesn't matter the gender demographics of lawmakers. If black lawmakers made segregation laws, it doesn't make it a black issue, it is still fundamentally racist.
Second, many of the nations in question are DEMOCRATIC. Women and men get equal votes and responsibilities. If a law is passed and accepted in society, then that means that an equal number of women are accepting that law. As many women as men are accepting that their fathers, brothers and sons can be raped and find no legal recourse higher than assault, if they are believed. They are accepting and tolerating laws that conscript these men, that ignore their issues, that have few resources for their abuse, that is actively FIGHTING those who are trying to treat the issue. Nobody is absolved from blame.
Finally, lawmakers mean nothing. As there have existed women who have passed on misogynistic beliefs to their sisters and daughters and taught them to live according to the patriarchy, even so there exist men who pass law upon their brothers and teach their sons to live according to the patriarchy. This is toxic masculinity, which is just another term for internalized misandry. To belief that one's own self is undeserving of consent or the right to refuse is surely hating oneself. Internalized misandry, internalized patriarchy is the only proper term here. They are working against themselves.
To consider oneself a feminist is to believe in gender equality. Rape laws that do not recognise the rape of one gender are not equal. Resource distribution for violence and abuse that ignores one gender is not equal. Conscription is not equal. Many, many laws and societal beliefs are not equal. It is the moral and ideological responsibility of all feminists to work towards our stated cause for gender equality. To avoid working towards that purpose just so that one gender doesn't benefit is clearly and glaringly a sexism issue. A person who ignores these issues is going against the feminist ideal and cannot be considered one.
Furthermore, if these issues are ignored, this means patriarchal ideals will still remain alive and patriarchal social structures will remain, even if they primarily affect one gender. And as long as these issues are not acknowledged and eradicated, patriarchal ideals will remain. To allow this would lead to nothing but a failure of feminism.
I am a feminist and I believe Feminism needs to support men's issues, without which patriarchal ideals cannot ever possibly be eradicated from society.