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Why are people so against feminism?

People don't seem to understand what feminism is these days, and are so poorly educated about it that they jump on the 'meninism' bandwagon. I'm all for men's rights - the patriarchy affects men too, quite a lot - and if meninism was genuinely about that then I would understand it a little more. But nowhere have I seen meninists fighting for the rights of transgender men, MOC, men having to fight twice as hard to see their children than the mothers or the huge amounts of men who commit suicide due to being unable to express their feelings. Instead they seem to talk about unimportant things such as the 'friend zone' or trying frantically to make women seem as 'bad' as men. And before you say meninism is a joke/parody, don't forget the large amounts of people who take it seriously.

Over the past few years, feminism has allowed me to see the world more clearly. I no longer identify solely as female (I'm genderfluid) but I did for the first 16 years of my life, so I saw the little ways in which men and women are different. Boys openly talk about sex and their experiences and are called 'lad' and 'player', but when I do the same I am a 'wh*re' or a 'sl*t'. And I thought 'man, that sucks!', so I did my research on feminism, and learnt that there is so much more to it. Feminism is about solving problems for everybody, not just middle-class white women in developed countries. I hadn't even considered young girls in third-world countries being raped and forced into marriage and pregnancy, nor had I given a second thought to trans women and the struggles they face in comparison to trans men. Women of colour, disabled women (in a physical or mental sense)...nope. But feminism opened my eyes to all of these issues and more.

So why is it that feminism is trashed so openly? Personally I think it's because people make assumptions based on the loud, extreme 'feminists' who do not approach things in the right way (e.g. suggesting men are inferior, or that men do not have issues). But in the same way that a religion is not made up of extremists, the loud feminists do not necessarily represent all of us. I just wish people would get their facts straight before generalising a group of people who, on the whole, are working towards making the world a better, tolerant and more equal place for everyone. Seriously, there's no reason to hate us...we're friendly people! :smile:
I think it's more a case of disliking those super aggressive feminazi type women.
Reply 2
This really:

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Original post by kka25
This really:

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So workers who have to sell their labour are oppressed? Whilst a woman who is not working class is not oppressed. Is that what you are saying?
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by kka25
This really:

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That picture gets me every time
Virgin guys hate feminists for the same reason poor people hate the rich.
Reply 6
Original post by Danny McCoyne
That picture gets me every time


Sad or happy?
Original post by racheltriggs4

So why is it that feminism is trashed so openly? Personally I think it's because people make assumptions based on the loud, extreme 'feminists' who do not approach things in the right way (e.g. suggesting men are inferior, or that men do not have issues). But in the same way that a religion is not made up of extremists, the loud feminists do not necessarily represent all of us. I just wish people would get their facts straight before generalising a group of people who, on the whole, are working towards making the world a better, tolerant and more equal place for everyone. Seriously, there's no reason to hate us...we're friendly people! :smile:


I think it comes down to this. People who are so against feminism often don't seem to understand what it's actually about. Either that or they know they don't have any answers to feminist arguments so just attack the extreme fringe of feminism.
Original post by kka25
Sad or happy?


No I meant it makes me laugh. Because the guy is making himself as small as possible.

I don't think it's completely fair to use that picture as proof that women are no longer being oppressed. In fact in the background you can see a man walking behind them. So what caption would you give it then when it's the man's turn to walk past the plumber while staring at him.
Reply 9
People aren't generally against feminist ideas (gender equality, some positive discrimination) but they are put off by self-proclaimed feminists because many of them are aggressively political and appear to have no sense of humour. There is lack of critical thinking in many younger feminist spheres, and many people dislike the militant, all-or-nothing, with us or against us mentalities.

Many older people remember feminism from the 70s and were put off by the same things. It seems silly to me that younger/modern feminists can't understand that they would get more people actively supporting their cause if they didn't seem as unlikeable as 70s feminists.
Reply 10
Original post by Danny McCoyne
No I meant it makes me laugh. Because the guy is making himself as small as possible.

I don't think it's completely fair to use that picture as proof that women are no longer being oppressed. In fact in the background you can see a man walking behind them. So what caption would you give it then when it's the man's turn to walk past the plumber while staring at him.


How do you know it's a man?
Reply 11
I reject the theory that women are systematically oppressed by men in modern Western society, as it is baseless; I see a lot of people claim "patriarchy hurts men too" while the whole point of patriarchy, according to many, seems to be "patriarchy benefits men and not women", which is nonsense as women clearly benefit from prevailing perceptions of femininity and masculinity (just as one example, consider a woman physically assaulting a man in public; unless it was extremely severe nobody would care and would probably just laugh at him, whereas a woman can, if in public, bank on the protection of those around her if a man assaults her - you can say this arises from our "patriarchal" view of women as weak, but it's obvious that even if this is the case that the "patriarchy" system can work in women's favour. Not exactly an empirical example but I hardly think you'll disagree)

And if there are so many feminists actively working to end real oppression, in third-world countries, then they don't seem to being very vocal about their activities. I've heard a lot of people say "this is bad!" but I haven't seen anybody doing anything about it. I do agree that men's rights movements are too focused on bashing feminism, but the problem is that if anyone actually does talk about men's issues then the Tumblr and Twitter feminist mobs have a tendency to shout them down for misogyny.

edit: Also I think a lot of people, myself included, dislike the heavily sociological and sometimes nebulous approach feminism seems to have. It seems to work under the assumption that all our perceptions, all our biases, are societally engineered, ignoring the biology of men and women and the very apparent differences and general trends of behaviour. We should look at everybody as individuals, but feminism takes that too far by trying to act as if, without this vaguely defined, unproven oppressive structure, we would see no difference in how men and women behave and what men and women choose to do on average.
(edited 8 years ago)
I have spoken to quite a few people who say that its the name. They say that if feminism is about gender equality them why is just 'fem' in the name and why isn't it just referred to as gender equality? I personally agree to an extent that there are two types of 'feminists' - people who believe in gender equality, and then the people who believe in female superiority. The people who believe in female superiority are claiming to be feminists when they really aren't which tarnishes the 'feminism' name, and so it would just be easier if we called it gender equality rather than feminism.
I'm against feminism, in our society, because I don't agree with feminist theory.

I reject the idea that we're currently living in a patriarchy

I reject the idea that men as a social class are oppressing women

I reject the idea that men are given rights that women aren't

I reject all this special snowflake BS that's spawned from tumblr (which isn't strictly a part of feminist theory, but is so intertwined with the movement it may as well be)

I reject the idea that representation needs to be forced into media

I disagree that men and women's behaviour is only different because of socialisation.

Just to clarify I'm not a "meninist" either
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by Alesha1991
I think it comes down to this. People who are so against feminism often don't seem to understand what it's actually about. Either that or they know they don't have any answers to feminist arguments so just attack the extreme fringe of feminism.


People might be sympathetic to the general feminist cause but I think they get very irritated with feminists fudging statistics, criticising everything, attacking men, etc. so they decide that they can't be bothered with any feminists.

You can't say that they don't know what feminism "really" is, these outspoken feminists are not an extreme fringe -- they're a very large fraction of the cause. It's a little patronising to say that people don't know what feminism is because they choose not to be outspoken about gender equality.
I reject feminism in a modern western society because I use the Occam's brand of razors to shave daily.

I.e. I do not need to imagine up imaginary oppressive forces and statistics (such as the oft-quoted false gender wage gap) to know that someone is being treated unequally and unfairly.
The people who are at the forefront of the movement are either agressive nutcases, those that attempt to find sexism in literally everything and conjure issues that don't exist (I found out about an old article yesterday saying that people's tastes in books were sexist and I just... no) or people who use faulty stats. It's not a good look for y'all.

What needs to happen is the various people from the different "sects" of feminism need to have some form of fight to the death so that the movement's actually coherent so people can see with certainty whether it's a bad thing or not.

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