The gist of it is that I think feminism would have far more success convincing a great number of men, and no small number of women, if some of its most vocal proponents stopped talking about 'male privilege' like it's this universal, absolute thing that gives all men an inbuilt advantage over all women in all possible respects. No doubt you're rolling your eyes and thinking "Oh come on, of course it's not meant to imply that", but it very often is used in a way that implies exactly that.
Well, no its not really meant to imply that. At least, not the way you put it.
Male privilege
is a universal thing in all societies across the world however. Yes, of course gender intersects with economic class, race and so on, and it becomes incredibly complex to pick apart and see the nuances (which is what feminist studies of intersectionality do). But there is no society where women overall are not subordinate to men in terms of political power as a sex class, which affects every part of our culture and lives , public and private. As far as I know, pretty much every society in the world is patriarchal. The world is run by men.
If you're having a hard time understanding this, maybe its useful to compare it with that other great system of oppression, racism. A non-white man in the US can be relatively wealthy, middle-class and yet still be oppressed and discriminated against in other ways that aren't economic because the system is racist. Racism subsumes economic class differences, and so does gender on an arguably even more fundamental level.
And if you went up to a critical race theorist with a 'what about the whites?', 'why are you centring non-whites all the time?' jive I'd imagine you'd get pretty short shrift too. And so it goes with feminists.
Anyway, I think you're in danger of contributing to the demonisation of feminists here by misrepresenting their position (who are these 'most vocal proponents' you're talking about anyway?). My understanding is that gender critical feminists do not regard male privilege as an 'inbuilt advantage' anyway. On the contrary, they analyse how society imposes these roles and behaviours upon them. This is actually being very generous to men (much more so than vimothy's 'violence is a part of man' doom anyway!), leaving open the possibility and hope that men can work on unlearning these socialised behaviours.
Feminism is a woman-centred movement by definition. It is never gonna be easy on men. One thing maybe men should do is learn to take criticism better, and take responsibility for doing a bit of self-examination instead of sitting back and waiting to be 'convinced' by feminists.
Now if you take the position that neuroses are the product of structural oppression, it's worth remarking on that depression and other kinds of mental illness, severe behavioural disorders, heart disease, substance abuse/addiction and suicide are all more prevalent among men than among women (by a factor of more than 3:1 for suicide, in this country).
Of course its worth remarking on and feminists do so. Obviously feminism is more female-centred but there is plenty of stuff to be found about how masculinity is damaging to men too, if you do your reading. Again, I don't think you're being fair.
There's another big divergence here between traditional macho values, which would brush all this off with a smirk and a remark about wimps and pussies, and the kind of internet-enable misogyny discussed in this thread, which comes from young men who are justifiably concerned about these issues but wrongly identify feminism, or women in general, as the root cause. And while I've read some great stuff that goes into detail about how these specific problems for the most part also come from patriarchal values - for instance, the idea that it's 'gay' to talk about feelings, fuelling the epidemic of mental health problems among teenage boys and young men -
I'm with you on this, but then...
I've found many other instances where even trying to bring this up triggers a barrage of simply hilarious "WOT ABOUT TEH MENZ?!?!?!?" type responses. Whereas I'm inclined to say that, well actually, with suicide the leading cause of death among men under 45, "What about men?" is a perfectly reasonable question to ask.
Haha, well what I see happen A LOT more often is guys bringing this question up in conversations with feminists in terribly clumsy, inappropriate, often patronising ways (if not actual out and out MRA misogynist types) and then they wonder why they get laughed at and derided. Whether you deserved it or not, if a woman has laughed at you for saying 'what about men?' and you don't think that's fair, I'd suggest just taking it on the chin or maybe avoid getting into these types of conversations in the first place, find someone else to talk to it about.
Maybe men need to be asking each other 'what about men?' first before getting sniffy that a woman hasn't given them the time of day for whatever reason. Many women are understandably very angry and the last thing they want to hear is 'what about the men' when they've heard it a millions times before, used against them. Believe me, I've read a lot of these sorts of exchanges on the net and its almost always just some sexist, whinging man-baby berating a woman.
It just needs to be wrested back from the so-called MRAs who are only making things worse both for women and for themselves.
Yeah, I mean it is essentially a good question, don't get me wrong. And feminists do have a lot more sympathy for men's problems than you might think, even radical feminists, and are more than willing to have these conversations about men. Its just that it tends to get asked with the wrong intentions.
