N.B. misandry is not real because men are not systemically oppressed (uninternalize your reddit MRA today: men suffer some drawbacks under the patriarchy but ultimately still maintain it due to the large amount of privileges they receive under it!)
The drawbacks men suffer from under patriarchy are also all directly linked to how they're broken and molded for their role as opressors. The suffering of men under the patriarchy is inseperable from how they are trained to inflict suffering upon others. There is no non-reactionary activism for men's rights that isn't just a specific angle of feminism, the one that is concerned with understanding and overcoming toxic masculinity.
how they're broken and molded for their role as opressors. The suffering of men under the patriarchy is inseparable from how they are trained to inflict suffering upon others.
I can barely talk to people and almost never leave my house, what makes me “trained to inflict suffering upon others”?
Aaaaaaand here we go with the full on antifeminist chud shit about how "feminism 101 holds that it applies to him regardless of his personal circumstances", like mfer that's literally how some redpilled techbro would describe feminism.
Not that women who are bad at talking to people don't exist but you can rest assured this inability would not have been tolerated by whatever parenting or social pressures existed when you were growing up if you were a girl/woman.
I’m not denying that women experience these problems of intolerance and social pressures and I’m not denying that they’re worse and more common than what guys experience. They do and they are. But the ideas that all guys are “trained to inflict suffering” [the comment I initially replied to] and that guys never experience the same or similar problems (although to a lesser degree) [your comment] are ridiculous.
Most autistic people experience problems related to their social inabilities. I’ve been spanked for crying when my dad didn’t understand why I was crying (which in retrospect were mostly things related to me being autistic, like experiencing sensory overload) and yelled at me to stop which just made me cry more. That didn’t train me to inflict suffering on others, if anything it did the opposite. A large part of my social anxiety that developed as I got older is not wanting to bother others to any extent or make them uncomfortable.
To use as a metaphor a related topic that’s IMO more straightforward to discuss and understand due to its direct physical consequences:
CW: sexual violence
I completely recognize that female genital mutilation is much much worse than circumcision. But that doesn’t mean that circumcision isn’t a problem or that all guys in a society that practices FGM are accepting of and perpetuating FGM.
As somebody also on the autistic spectrum I can tell you we experience the same gendered social conditioning as everybody else, and we have an even harder time realizing it due to difficulties accessing the emotions driving our own actions. A lot of autistic people like to think of themselves as martians come to earth who exist outside of human cultural mores. This is a very flattering self-deception. We have to do the same work as everybody else unwinding the things we were taught. It's fine that you withdraw so as not to inflict yourself on other people, I do the same thing. But is this not an admission that we do in fact inflict suffering on others? How much of that is due to patriarchy and how much is due to autistic social skill shortfalls, perhaps exacerbated by patriarchy?
I really didn’t want to comment on anything in this thread because it looks like a shitshow, but I would caution against implying or even believing that any harm inflicted on others is “caused by” autism. Indeed, everyone experiences the same patriarchal conditioning, including autistic people, but a few things to note.
Be cautious about unilaterally assuming said conditioning. This does not apply to this thread, because this thread appears to be about a man, but many trans women and non-binary people who are AMAB are accused of having “male social conditioning” (and “having experienced male privilege”), which is problematic because it ignores the ways gender dysphoria can outright undermine those forms of conditioning and privilege.
While patriarchy may be able to exploit certain facets of autism to convince or indoctrinate autistic people and then cause harm, autism as a whole, ESPECIALLY the supposed “low social skills” associated with it, does not inflict harm on others. This is a flipping of blame from the oppressor to the oppressed on the part of neurotypical society. If you have low social skills, ESPECIALLY if because of autism, the blame absolutely falls on others for not accommodating for them. Neurotypical society likes to pretend we are the ones causing harm by not understanding social cues or weird invisible implications, but it is that society causing harm by refusing to accommodate our differences that is to blame, not us for having those differences in the first place.
Maybe. There are a lot of times where I've caused hurt feelings for reasons that I later came to understand and internalize. I would not put the blame for those feelings on the people I hurt. It's easy to talk about accommodations for low social skills in the abstract but when you get to what it actually entails it puts a lot of burden on others to not take offense to objectively bad behavior.
There are a lot of times where I've caused hurt feelings for reasons that I later came to understand and internalize. I would not put the blame for those feelings on the people I hurt.
If it was because you "misunderstood" a weird neurotypical implication they made that they weren't explicit about, actually you should blame them for it.
objectively bad behavior.
"Misunderstanding" someone's weird "implications" and invisible social cues is not "objectively bad behavior". In fact, it's closer to objectively GOOD behavior because way too many people rely on that shit instead of actually directly communicating which people like us force them to do.
probably your immediate reaction to defend yourself and your gender. If you hadn't been trained, your knee jerk reaction would be to look for ways to accept a viewpoint like that, rather than to poke a hole in it. I know it sounds serious and scoldy, but just let it sit with you for a while.
Perhaps I'm projecting, but I noticed it was something I was guilty of at times.
For starters, you're really good at immediately trying to silence women criticizing the patriarchy and centering yourself in a conversation about the systemic opression of women. I'd hazard a guess that traditional concepts of masculinity where men have to be the strong stoics working through every problem on their own at least contribute to your problems, but in spite of patriarchy having harmed you that badly, you still run to its defense in the expected ways like the good pupper you are.
It's not one of those "I am defending patriarchy" moments.
Its more the conditioned response of "what about me, a [member of the dominant group]?" whenever liberation or the conditions of the oppressed are being discussed.
It is in effect a defense of patriarchy, regardless of the benevalence of intentions of the poster.
Notice that, even here on Hexbear, the conversation is centered on whether misandry is real rather than ways to tackle the problems of systemic violence against women.
i still don't understand how it's doing a defense of patriarchy. i'm not even bringing edge's intention into it. he asked about himself in reply to a comment that was already about the suffering of men under patriarchy so i'm not even sure it was derailing the way we usually mean talking about men making discussions about feminism about themselves.
Notice that, even here on Hexbear, the conversation is centered on whether misandry is real rather than ways to tackle the problems of systemic violence against women.
The OP is about these ideas not being equal, the way the tweet is written takes misandry for granted and rightly says they are not equivalent. We don't organize on here, the "what is to be done" kinda shit is basic stuff that everybody already knows like the men here not themselves doing violence, yelling at people we should probably stop being friends with, and running our orgs so it doesn't happen (or holding them accountable if necessary) and there's not really any conversation to have there unless someone has a specific question about running orgs or deradicalizing someone.
i still don't understand how it's doing a defense of patriarchy
It's reaffirming the centrality of men, that he, as a man, has to be considered in his particular case as a matter of course in this discussion. You might disagree and think that it was an appropriate place for such a question; however, there is also an implicit refutation of the claim that men are trained to inflict suffering by asking how he has been if he never leaves his house. It's honestly kind of a non-sequitur; you don't have to be engaged in inflicting suffering to have been trained to do so.
It's not an exact process, but the result of social conditioning -- the outcomes differ a little for everyone. I can't speak to your personal experience, but a culture that expects men to cut themselves off from their feelings, to never cry or show vulnerability, to treat women as some distinct other? It can't help.