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Men Without Work (2016)

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Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#131

Post by chasd00 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #65
afavour wrote: post #8

I'm very far from a red-pilled anti-feminist but I do think this is a hugely overlooked problem. Perhaps too much of an aside but I was lucky enough to be able to take an extended parental leave when my child was born, being a "stay at home dad" for the best part of a year. It was incredibly hard work, incredibly rewarding but also a real eye opener at how society still doesn't know what to do with a full-time parent…

I get the "are you babysitting today" whenever I take the kids to the grocery store, but only from women. If men say anything, it's usually a joke about a vasectomy. I find both off-putting, but the "babysitting" thing really is odd. It's Saturday! We're buying groceries!

yeah i get the "babysitting?" thing a lot which is awkward. I never really know how to respond, like "no, just doing regular stuff as usual.."

I know this thread is about a different topic but i went to a dad's lunch at my oldest's middle school. The school put on this presentation about how to be a good dad, it was very humiliating. Like it wasn't even about being a good parent it was just about how not to be a terrible parent, interviews where the guy says things like "i'm a good dad because i'm sitting at the table when my kid is eating dinner" or "i'm a good dad because i don't make jokes about my daughter's weight" etc. I was embarrassed to be sitting there and just turned around and talked, and had lunch, with my son which was why i was there to begin with.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#132

Post by giantg2 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #112
giantg2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree. I feel like some people will gravitate back towards self sufficient activities. There are a lot of people on this site doing stuff like building their own furniture, gardening, etc. Of course I do think there will be a subset that use their time for more destructive things, as happens even now.

Try doing that in a studio apartment

There are productive hobbies that can be preformed in a studio apartment, even if those options are more limited.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#133

Post by xg15 »

javajosh wrote: post #51
afavour wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The American Zeitgeist around gender issues is distorted to dehumanize men and alienate anyone who even dares to recognize this fact. I'm conflicted about that. Not denying that what you've said is true but I specifically chose the term "red pilled" because there are huge toxic (predominantly online) communities that are openly misogynistic. e.g. in theory I'd like and participate in the "men's rights" subreddit, i…

>in theory I'd like and participate in the "men's rights" subreddit, in reality it's a pit of toxicity. Indeed, but so is the equivalent feminism subreddit (try "r/askafeminist" for example). And yet "women's rights" don't have the same stigma as "men's rights". What explains this asymmetry? Why is it some movements get defined by their extremists, and others don't? >: a lot of this societal pressure against men bein…

Depends what the goals of the movements are. Most feminist discussions I've seen acknowledge that "the partriarchy hurts men as well". So highlighting issues like being discriminated as a male single parent or stay-at-home dad would probably find support in feminist spaces: Dealing with them shares the same vision as feminism does, just from the perspective of men instead of women.

In contrast, many spaces that are branded as "men's rights" today seem to go for an entire different vision of society, which often looks like a cartoon version of the 50s (if consistent at all). If lots of men find themselves lonely, unfulfilled and unable to find a girlfriend, I think that is a serious issue, but the solution of the "men's rights" groups - that it's the women who have cut back their own goals and ambitions, just so some men they don't even know have a chance to have sex - seems pretty insane to me.

Also note, not all women are feminists either. There are plenty of women who have issues with men taking on traditionally feminine roles because they it violates their own conservative worldview. I believe that's where the "Karen" slur originated from.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#134

Post by dgfitz »

mfer wrote: post #99
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no, I think. I agree in abstract, because I am sure it is a factor, but I will give my personal anecdata. Covid was a stroke of good luck for me, because I effectively was able to be a father and work from home at the same time ( 1st year kid - and she slept on a tight schedule ). And I will admit it was incredibly fulfilling ( albeit tiring ). We are a dual income household and above average in terms of inco…

> "Do I want my daughter to be a plumber? No." How many people want their son to be a plumber? Likely not many of the people on HN. Does a lot of this view have to do with what people think of jobs like plumbers?

Plumbers, at least on the East Coast, make good money. If one of my kids became a plumber I would have no problem with it. Do I WANT them to become a plumber? Not really. If school is just not interesting to them and they like working with their hands a trade isn't a bad way to go.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#135

Post by patorjk »

asperous wrote: post #50

I wrote the original wikipedia article for this! I haven't read the book just thought it was notable. It was a little tough getting past the editors (the section referencing all those news articles they made me put in to reach notability). I also got called a shill for the publisher.

I don't understand why some people feel the need to be so snarky in their summary messages:

> I'll bet this clown got paid to write this article and they did a poor job of it, too.

It's really turned me off from contributing. Years ago I got into a spat where someone didn't like something I added to an article and said my sources weren't valid since they were blog posts. I went and found a mainstream magazine article on the topic and they still balked - but eventually relented since they really didn't have a leg to stand on. They silently removed the addition a few months later. However, at that point I was over it and didn't care. The fact eventually made it back into the article a few years later when someone else added it in.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#136

Post by Mezzie »

friedman23 wrote: post #95
TylerE wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that hard to understand the difference between a historically oppressed minority and the minority that historically was doing the oppressing?

Ok, so when do historical victims stop being victims and stop being treated like victims?

This is a fascinating question because we're in a transitionary period.

Like my mother, who is very much alive and still working, was 100% a victim of sexism: She was alive in and grew up in times where she couldn't have a credit card or mortgage, when jobs were sex-segregated, and wasn't allowed to go to college to be an engineer like her brother because she was raised to stay at home and pop out babies. (She bailed at 15 instead of conforming.)

On the other hand, that's very different from the experience of a woman born in 2003. They're both adult parts of society.

And that's without getting into the experiences of women in their 30s and 40s which, depending on where they grew up, could go either way.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#137

Post by monksy »

afavour wrote: post #74
javajosh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in theory I'd like and participate in the "men's rights" subreddit, in reality it's a pit of toxicity. Indeed, but so is the equivalent feminism subreddit (try "r/askafeminist" for example). And yet "women's rights" don't have the same stigma as "men's rights". What explains this asymmetry? Why is it some movements get defined by their extremists, and others don't? >: a lot of this societal pressure against men bein…

I’d argue that women’s rights, from Suffragettes on, has a widely documented history of… reasonableness, for want of a better term. Men’s Rights doesn’t yet. It’s a much newer movement, things may change. But right now I’m struggling to think of the sane, sensible organisations out there promoting men’s rights. I’d also question whether /r/askfeminists is “the equivalent”. It has 100k followers, /r/twoxchromosomes ha…

> /r/twoxchromosomes

That is a sub in which nearly every post that rises to this a "my partner/male-acquaintence did x I'm shocked" and it's nothing but a pile on about how "bad men are". Even if not every post is male critical a lot of the positives seem to be shaping on behavior. It hasn't always been radicalized like that, nor has it been focused on that type of content.

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#138

Post by [deleted] »

chasd00 wrote: post #83
blahblah1234567 wrote: post #53

I think "Men Without Work" is a euphemism. The problem is: - Men without Skills in-demand-- skills which are at least somewhat fulfilling & interesting to those men. Solution: Research labor data for careers in high demand, then cross reference those careers with skills a person is interested in. Then identify resources & a roadmap for learning those skills. And sit down, and put the time in to learn & apply those sk…

many many people simply won't work if they don't have to. If they're able to live off parents or significant others and can get enough entertainment/stimulation online to keep them satisfied then that's all they're going to do.

[deleted]

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#139

Post by ZGDUwpqEWpUZ »

wpietri wrote: post #126
afavour wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue that women’s rights, from Suffragettes on, has a widely documented history of… reasonableness, for want of a better term. Men’s Rights doesn’t yet. It’s a much newer movement, things may change. But right now I’m struggling to think of the sane, sensible organisations out there promoting men’s rights. I’d also question whether /r/askfeminists is “the equivalent”. It has 100k followers, /r/twoxchromosomes ha…

Exactly. I think there's a pretty simple answer to this question: > What explains this asymmetry? What explains it is an asymmetrical history: millennia of oppression of women, often violently enforced. E.g., if you read the Iliad, it's basically a who-stole-my-woman story inside a who-stole-my-woman story; at the time, women were pretty close to property with opinions. An easy way to see the through-line to today is…

Kindly visit the Men's Rights Movement wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men%27s_rights_movement

Go through the issues in the second section and tell me what Andrew Tate's position was on any of them.

Spoiler alert: you can't. Tate was not an MRA, he was a pickup artist.

Male feminists also tend to find themselves in trouble, by the way. Michael Kimmel used to play the same game of lumping legitimate issues (suicide/education/family courts) in with incels upset they can't get laid. He had to retire after getting #MeToo'd, heh. Tiresome and predictable. Perhaps I should add a Google Alert for your name ;)

Re: Men Without Work (2016)

#140

Post by danaris »

javajosh wrote: post #51
afavour wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The American Zeitgeist around gender issues is distorted to dehumanize men and alienate anyone who even dares to recognize this fact. I'm conflicted about that. Not denying that what you've said is true but I specifically chose the term "red pilled" because there are huge toxic (predominantly online) communities that are openly misogynistic. e.g. in theory I'd like and participate in the "men's rights" subreddit, i…

>in theory I'd like and participate in the "men's rights" subreddit, in reality it's a pit of toxicity. Indeed, but so is the equivalent feminism subreddit (try "r/askafeminist" for example). And yet "women's rights" don't have the same stigma as "men's rights". What explains this asymmetry? Why is it some movements get defined by their extremists, and others don't? >: a lot of this societal pressure against men bein…

I'm not familiar with r/askafeminist (or any other part of Reddit, really), but from what I've seen, the mirror "equivalent" to MRAs more generally is radical feminism, or radfems.

For those who are unfamiliar, the basic tenet of radical feminism is that the source of women's oppression is the patriarchy (OK so far, if reductionist), which is run by and for men (broadly true), and thus men are all inherently bad (whoops that's where they lose me).

In many cases, it's an ideology that ends up repeating many of the aspects of Christian fundamentalist patriarchy, just from a different angle: men and women are fundamentally different; biology dictates your role in society; etc.

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