A lot of issues that men face are directly because of the patriarchy so dismantling it is the only way to fight for men’s rights.
Not being taken seriously in sexual assaults, not being equally considered for custody, not being able to express emotions - all of these come from the bullshit patriarchal view of strong men and weak women that the patriarchy enforces.
It’s all the same fight.
So my mother is an old-school feminist. Part of the women’s army core back when that was a thing, a STEM graduate and worker in the 80’s. She’s seen some shit.
What she says about the feminist movement (and having been in three relationships now with men I agree) is that it advanced women, but men didn’t step up. Women became able to do it all, childcare, homemaking, AND working and even breadwinning. Many men took this not as an opportunity to step up and do more themselves, but as an opportunity to do less. They just let women do 50% of the work now, plus 100% of the housework. So modern women average out to doing like 75% of the work!
I can confirm that this was present in 2/3 of my relationships with men. The men involved were practically children I had to care for. They would do some work but would then spend the money on themselves and maybe give me some of it to make sure the bills got paid. They did nothing to clean or maintain the area around them. They did nothing to ensure the laundry got done or that decent food got made. Both of them I had to encourage to clean themselves. They spent the rest of their time playing video games. Sometimes for 16 hours a day if I didn’t “harass” them. I suppose I’m glad I had teenagers with part time jobs instead of something more akin to toddlers but either way they were confused when my attraction to them rapidly vanished due to their childlike behavior. I now have an actual grown man who is comfortable completing household tasks, perhaps even moreso than me. This is fine by me, as I am much more comfortable working 48+ weeks outside the home if needed.
I cannot speak to what branding would make this palatable to men, but I hope you find some way of encouraging them to see cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry, as general adult tasks instead of women’s ones. Please. For all of our sakes.
Men’s rights is a fundamentally reactionary movement found solely to counter the revolutionary movement of feminism. It’s just like ‘All lives matter’. Let’s change some words in your question to expose it’s absurdity
'Not the right wing All lives matter, Some kind of left version that would fundamentally be a BLM movement but with different branding. Different branding would be necessary to absorb a bunch of white people into it.
The men’s rights shouldn’t be an offshoot. It should be an integrated part of whatever you are calling ‘left wing’. Same with feminism, of course. Why create these false dichotomies?
The gender divide, political or otherwise, is another classic tactic by the rich ruling class to ensure we never organise enough to overthrow them. They pit us against ourselves so we don’t attack them. If we’re to have a successful revolution, we must be a united front, not have separate competing movements along arbitrary lines like gender, race, etc.
Talk to any male marxist and they will tell you that the way they experience oppression under capitalism is different than the way women do. Of course, there are differences between experienced oppression of say, for example, different minorities, but some of the common/shared ways that men experience oppression include things like mental health outcomes and incredible social isolation. These are factors that are contributory to the fascist pipeline.
So obviously, patriarchy doesn’t advantage men so much as it advantages wealthy men, or maybe perhaps it’s better to say it advantages well-off men. But for minorities, poorer men, neurodivergent men, or trans, it’s still a hell hole as they contend with a society that treats them as disposable, and failures for being unable to provide. This shuts them off from forming meaningful relationships and social opportunities. So it advantanges certain men, and disadvantages the rest.
I think being aware of that is very important and can help win over men to the cause of Marxism, and provide common ground with women and a personal cause for men to improve their material conditions, which is insanely important.
That being said I do think looking at countries that have won their revolution, that simply reclaiming the means of production does outright improve the material conditions of men by default by improving health care, better career opportunities, and lowering income inequality. Men (particularly white men in america) are already advantaged generally under capitalism and so therefore there will be some inequality inevitable during a socialist period of government (this is consistent with what Marx says about inequalities being inevitable as capitalist infrastructure remains during transition).
So I think my answer is similar to what some other people have said already - that the base form of Marxism/socialism does much already to help men. But yeah, at some level we do need to explore ways of bringing men into the fold by exposing how patriarchy works against men, and showing how socialism benefits men. I think it’s become a bit taboo discuss this stuff and that’s probably simply because of the efforts by the ruling class to divide us, using rainbow capitalism and the alt right as ways to smear any real dialogue.
I’m not sure what the point would be, or what the exact plan is.
If it’s making male-only online spaces to talk about Left-Wing men’s issues, then I’m not sure what the point is, and we already have mostly-male spaces all over the internet, some of which talk about Feminism.
If the idea’s to focus on men’s issues, then we also have plenty of spaces for that already. I’ve known a few Feminists who take time to look at men’s problems (mostly women), but Feminist movements usually focus on women’s issues because the biggest problems lie there atm, at least as far as I can see (e.g. right now, Roe V Wade’s being overturned).
As a male leftist, i’m critical about that - i think the biggest danger of such a group is that they would not be able to dismantle patriarchy and male supremacy behavior. So the danger would be: if queerfeminist activists criticize this mens group because of patriarchy, their response is “yes, thanks for the critique, we fix that” - but everything stays the same because those men care more about the feminist label and the reputation and the feeling of being feminist than the actual dismantling of male supremacy and patriarchy in leftist groups.
For instance: currently, leftwing groups also have sometimes sexual violence towards women or queer people. From experience (as a male leftist), what happens in many cases is that - especially men - have a bad/superficial understanding of patriarchy and therefore do not stand in solidarity to victims of sexual violence. Patriarchy means that it is quite likely some male friends either have been abusive in the past - or will be abusive in the future. This is a consequence from our society not explaining how good sexual consensus work, how manipulative some behavior can be, etc.
So in short: it is quite likely that those men would not held their friends accountable and talk about how patriarchy works etc, and NOT make sure that something like that (patriarchal behavior) doesn’t happen again.
tldr: as a male leftist working in this area, i am not sure if this group would be able to gain the necessary knowledge about patriarchy, sexual violence, abusive behavior, and other aspects of “toxic” masculinity.
but then the problem is that for instance women are excluded from such movement (probably?) -> and i think the criticism of women in such movements is very important.
so yes i agree that leftist men need to do some work in that area, but i think it is better when noone is excluded from that.
A lot of issues that men face are directly because of the patriarchy so dismantling it is the only way to fight for men’s rights. Not being taken seriously in sexual assaults, not being equally considered for custody, not being able to express emotions - all of these come from the bullshit patriarchal view of strong men and weak women that the patriarchy enforces. It’s all the same fight.
I think this is important to understand for all people, not only for men. and i think the quality of understanding is higher when all views are included, from all genders.
How can you put politics before men in a mens’ movement? Men’s rights IS politics. Feminism is politics. Politics isn’t some abstract separate entity to society.
Try and detach politics from these things (a contradiction, but people try to) and you have nothing left but discussion and complaining that can go nowhere.
I don’t think a snapshot of one subreddit is enough to judge their core values. Perhaps your right that we just see it from different perspectives. But let me state how I perceive the mens’ rights movement:
Mens’ rights came about because feminism became so dominant that some men felt left behind. The feminist movement is almost equal parts political and social while mens’ rights is primarily social.
I think the success of a leftwing/feminist men’s movement depends on how you resolve the paradox (whether apparent or real) of the “feminist man”.
I think it’s near impossible to resolve. My reasoning is that for projects like these, the scarce resource is focus, and focus by definition must be undivided, not divided. Feminism seeks to improve the status of women, a men’s group seeks to improve the status of men, and this means focus will be divided, if not conflicted.
However, any obstacle can be overcome with sheer willpower, which is even more scarce than focus.
Like men’s lib, but Marxist? I think that would be neat. It’s definitely necessary. The way men are socialized + all the incel/fascist pipelines is creating so much misery. And literally killing people. We should try to combat that as much as we can.
As a woman I really wish we would put more focus on the patriarchy. I think many communists, particularly male communists, tend to underestimate the importance of it. Maybe because whenever the patriarchy is discussed, it is usually to point out the misogyny. I wish empathy for women could be enough, but if men are taught from birth that we are their servants and accessories then their empathy has already been dampened. So it’s not enough to talk about women’s issues. We also need to talk about men’s issues in a way that keeps all this in mind.
Men’s rights movements tend to devolve into incel hellholes, but so long as a feminist lens and Marxist perspective is being utilized then there’s at least a chance that it won’t.
I hope there can be a movement of men supporting men in a non-toxic way. I really think you could accomplish so much if you made a movement based on radical compassion for each other. Men supporting men, in the ways that men need to be supported. Open up to each other, display your vulnerabilities, be soft. That would be brave.
The Men’s Liberation subreddit also goes along these same lines, as a feminism-aligned counterpoint to MRA’s that instead seeks to free men from society’s harmful restrictions instead of feeding traditionalist’s grievances.
The reason young men went hard-right in the last decade is because left-wing movements stopped talking about issues that affect men. The vacuum was filled by people like Jordan Peterson.
You can’t build a popular movement and be dismissive of half of the population.
Completely agree, I’ve been repeating this to all the people I am able to discuss with: Marxism, being most of the factory-worker Proletariat composed by men, was fundamentally a men’s right movement.
I also find saddening that so many believe that you can’t create a movement that champions men’s wellbeing without it devolving into the terms of the “patriarchy”. How are socialist parties going te even figure in government if they abandon their main strenght, which is to be for the whole labor class?
I recommend you read some history. Many popular uprisings have been led by women at the forefront. That organized workers movements gave them little space/autonomy (much like for non-white people) is undeniable, but to say that worker struggles were a “men’s right movement” is a REALLY far stretch.
I’m not from the USA but for example there two major figures of the workers movement in late 19th century / early 20th were Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons. That they’ve been mostly erased from history books tells more about who writes/distributes the books and their agenda than about a perceived lack of women in social struggles.
For example, when it comes to anarchism people usually recommend reading Kropotkin/Bakunin/Proudhon, slipping under the carpet the many theoretical contributions of women. If only to name one, read Emma Goldman ;)
There’s inklings of this kind of thing already here and there, one example: https://goodmenproject.com/
A lot of issues that men face are directly because of the patriarchy so dismantling it is the only way to fight for men’s rights. Not being taken seriously in sexual assaults, not being equally considered for custody, not being able to express emotions - all of these come from the bullshit patriarchal view of strong men and weak women that the patriarchy enforces. It’s all the same fight.
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So my mother is an old-school feminist. Part of the women’s army core back when that was a thing, a STEM graduate and worker in the 80’s. She’s seen some shit.
What she says about the feminist movement (and having been in three relationships now with men I agree) is that it advanced women, but men didn’t step up. Women became able to do it all, childcare, homemaking, AND working and even breadwinning. Many men took this not as an opportunity to step up and do more themselves, but as an opportunity to do less. They just let women do 50% of the work now, plus 100% of the housework. So modern women average out to doing like 75% of the work!
I can confirm that this was present in 2/3 of my relationships with men. The men involved were practically children I had to care for. They would do some work but would then spend the money on themselves and maybe give me some of it to make sure the bills got paid. They did nothing to clean or maintain the area around them. They did nothing to ensure the laundry got done or that decent food got made. Both of them I had to encourage to clean themselves. They spent the rest of their time playing video games. Sometimes for 16 hours a day if I didn’t “harass” them. I suppose I’m glad I had teenagers with part time jobs instead of something more akin to toddlers but either way they were confused when my attraction to them rapidly vanished due to their childlike behavior. I now have an actual grown man who is comfortable completing household tasks, perhaps even moreso than me. This is fine by me, as I am much more comfortable working 48+ weeks outside the home if needed.
I cannot speak to what branding would make this palatable to men, but I hope you find some way of encouraging them to see cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry, as general adult tasks instead of women’s ones. Please. For all of our sakes.
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I don’t think many would be opposed, there aren’t many places for men of domestic abuse. HR will take men serious when sexually harassed. etc…
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Men’s rights is a fundamentally reactionary movement found solely to counter the revolutionary movement of feminism. It’s just like ‘All lives matter’. Let’s change some words in your question to expose it’s absurdity
'Not the right wing All lives matter, Some kind of left version that would fundamentally be a BLM movement but with different branding. Different branding would be necessary to absorb a bunch of white people into it.
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The men’s rights shouldn’t be an offshoot. It should be an integrated part of whatever you are calling ‘left wing’. Same with feminism, of course. Why create these false dichotomies?
See other posts like: [1], [2], [3]
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The gender divide, political or otherwise, is another classic tactic by the rich ruling class to ensure we never organise enough to overthrow them. They pit us against ourselves so we don’t attack them. If we’re to have a successful revolution, we must be a united front, not have separate competing movements along arbitrary lines like gender, race, etc.
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Talk to any male marxist and they will tell you that the way they experience oppression under capitalism is different than the way women do. Of course, there are differences between experienced oppression of say, for example, different minorities, but some of the common/shared ways that men experience oppression include things like mental health outcomes and incredible social isolation. These are factors that are contributory to the fascist pipeline.
So obviously, patriarchy doesn’t advantage men so much as it advantages wealthy men, or maybe perhaps it’s better to say it advantages well-off men. But for minorities, poorer men, neurodivergent men, or trans, it’s still a hell hole as they contend with a society that treats them as disposable, and failures for being unable to provide. This shuts them off from forming meaningful relationships and social opportunities. So it advantanges certain men, and disadvantages the rest.
I think being aware of that is very important and can help win over men to the cause of Marxism, and provide common ground with women and a personal cause for men to improve their material conditions, which is insanely important.
That being said I do think looking at countries that have won their revolution, that simply reclaiming the means of production does outright improve the material conditions of men by default by improving health care, better career opportunities, and lowering income inequality. Men (particularly white men in america) are already advantaged generally under capitalism and so therefore there will be some inequality inevitable during a socialist period of government (this is consistent with what Marx says about inequalities being inevitable as capitalist infrastructure remains during transition).
So I think my answer is similar to what some other people have said already - that the base form of Marxism/socialism does much already to help men. But yeah, at some level we do need to explore ways of bringing men into the fold by exposing how patriarchy works against men, and showing how socialism benefits men. I think it’s become a bit taboo discuss this stuff and that’s probably simply because of the efforts by the ruling class to divide us, using rainbow capitalism and the alt right as ways to smear any real dialogue.
I’m not sure what the point would be, or what the exact plan is.
If it’s making male-only online spaces to talk about Left-Wing men’s issues, then I’m not sure what the point is, and we already have mostly-male spaces all over the internet, some of which talk about Feminism.
If the idea’s to focus on men’s issues, then we also have plenty of spaces for that already. I’ve known a few Feminists who take time to look at men’s problems (mostly women), but Feminist movements usually focus on women’s issues because the biggest problems lie there atm, at least as far as I can see (e.g. right now, Roe V Wade’s being overturned).
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As a male leftist, i’m critical about that - i think the biggest danger of such a group is that they would not be able to dismantle patriarchy and male supremacy behavior. So the danger would be: if queerfeminist activists criticize this mens group because of patriarchy, their response is “yes, thanks for the critique, we fix that” - but everything stays the same because those men care more about the feminist label and the reputation and the feeling of being feminist than the actual dismantling of male supremacy and patriarchy in leftist groups.
For instance: currently, leftwing groups also have sometimes sexual violence towards women or queer people. From experience (as a male leftist), what happens in many cases is that - especially men - have a bad/superficial understanding of patriarchy and therefore do not stand in solidarity to victims of sexual violence. Patriarchy means that it is quite likely some male friends either have been abusive in the past - or will be abusive in the future. This is a consequence from our society not explaining how good sexual consensus work, how manipulative some behavior can be, etc.
So in short: it is quite likely that those men would not held their friends accountable and talk about how patriarchy works etc, and NOT make sure that something like that (patriarchal behavior) doesn’t happen again.
tldr: as a male leftist working in this area, i am not sure if this group would be able to gain the necessary knowledge about patriarchy, sexual violence, abusive behavior, and other aspects of “toxic” masculinity.
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but then the problem is that for instance women are excluded from such movement (probably?) -> and i think the criticism of women in such movements is very important.
so yes i agree that leftist men need to do some work in that area, but i think it is better when noone is excluded from that.
For instance, as @Grograman@sopuli.xyz said:
I think this is important to understand for all people, not only for men. and i think the quality of understanding is higher when all views are included, from all genders.
at the same time:
i recommend to read JJ Bola’s book “Mask Off : Masculinity Redefined”.
Probably a good short version is “Why toxic masculinity hurts men: JJ Bola explains all” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekPg-ZGqvb8
i think this is a good starting point in dismantling patriarchy. But still, dismantling patriarchy is very important.
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@meloo
The way this post is written, I would be very opposed because it puts politics before men.
How can you put politics before men in a mens’ movement? Men’s rights IS politics. Feminism is politics. Politics isn’t some abstract separate entity to society.
Try and detach politics from these things (a contradiction, but people try to) and you have nothing left but discussion and complaining that can go nowhere.
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@meloo
I think it’s “mens’ rights”. And no, from what I can tell, politics is secondary at best, not primary.
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@meloo
I don’t think a snapshot of one subreddit is enough to judge their core values. Perhaps your right that we just see it from different perspectives. But let me state how I perceive the mens’ rights movement:
Mens’ rights came about because feminism became so dominant that some men felt left behind. The feminist movement is almost equal parts political and social while mens’ rights is primarily social.
I think the success of a leftwing/feminist men’s movement depends on how you resolve the paradox (whether apparent or real) of the “feminist man”.
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@meloo
I think it’s near impossible to resolve. My reasoning is that for projects like these, the scarce resource is focus, and focus by definition must be undivided, not divided. Feminism seeks to improve the status of women, a men’s group seeks to improve the status of men, and this means focus will be divided, if not conflicted.
However, any obstacle can be overcome with sheer willpower, which is even more scarce than focus.
Like men’s lib, but Marxist? I think that would be neat. It’s definitely necessary. The way men are socialized + all the incel/fascist pipelines is creating so much misery. And literally killing people. We should try to combat that as much as we can.
As a woman I really wish we would put more focus on the patriarchy. I think many communists, particularly male communists, tend to underestimate the importance of it. Maybe because whenever the patriarchy is discussed, it is usually to point out the misogyny. I wish empathy for women could be enough, but if men are taught from birth that we are their servants and accessories then their empathy has already been dampened. So it’s not enough to talk about women’s issues. We also need to talk about men’s issues in a way that keeps all this in mind.
Men’s rights movements tend to devolve into incel hellholes, but so long as a feminist lens and Marxist perspective is being utilized then there’s at least a chance that it won’t.
I hope there can be a movement of men supporting men in a non-toxic way. I really think you could accomplish so much if you made a movement based on radical compassion for each other. Men supporting men, in the ways that men need to be supported. Open up to each other, display your vulnerabilities, be soft. That would be brave.
deleted by creator
The Men’s Liberation subreddit also goes along these same lines, as a feminism-aligned counterpoint to MRA’s that instead seeks to free men from society’s harmful restrictions instead of feeding traditionalist’s grievances.
deleted by creator
The reason young men went hard-right in the last decade is because left-wing movements stopped talking about issues that affect men. The vacuum was filled by people like Jordan Peterson.
You can’t build a popular movement and be dismissive of half of the population.
Completely agree, I’ve been repeating this to all the people I am able to discuss with: Marxism, being most of the factory-worker Proletariat composed by men, was fundamentally a men’s right movement.
I also find saddening that so many believe that you can’t create a movement that champions men’s wellbeing without it devolving into the terms of the “patriarchy”. How are socialist parties going te even figure in government if they abandon their main strenght, which is to be for the whole labor class?
I recommend you read some history. Many popular uprisings have been led by women at the forefront. That organized workers movements gave them little space/autonomy (much like for non-white people) is undeniable, but to say that worker struggles were a “men’s right movement” is a REALLY far stretch.
I’m not from the USA but for example there two major figures of the workers movement in late 19th century / early 20th were Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons. That they’ve been mostly erased from history books tells more about who writes/distributes the books and their agenda than about a perceived lack of women in social struggles.
For example, when it comes to anarchism people usually recommend reading Kropotkin/Bakunin/Proudhon, slipping under the carpet the many theoretical contributions of women. If only to name one, read Emma Goldman ;)