Yeah, this has been an ongoing struggle at least as long as I’ve been in feminist spaces (one would assume much longer). I remember it getting rehashed many times back on ShitRedditSays, back when that was a relevant place. And I agree, Hexbear is kind of shitty about men’s issues - not the worst by far, but also worse than SRS was ten years ago, so nothing to be proud of.

Body shaming isn’t good, no matter how many people are about to jump out of the woodwork to tell me they only do it to acceptable targets (fuck off with that bully logic).

Men should be able to wear colorful clothing without society judging them. “just be queer” isn’t actual advice (some unfortunate sods just aren’t born that way). Telling people “ignore what society thinks” is ignoring the problem in the first place.

Societal expectations that men are stoic islands with no emotions or needs are, indeed, really fucked up and damaging.

You don’t have to have a solution to these problems, and if you don’t, the best thing to say is “yeah that sucks,” or “I’ve been there,” not “not a real problem” (fuck off), or “women have it worse” (yeah we know).

There’s a big obvious difference between MRA types and just men talking honestly about how the patriarchy affects them negatively - MRAs don’t actually want to fix these things, but instead to use them as a cudgel to tell GSMs their problems are fake. If the conclusion someone is pushing isn’t “uppity women should know their place” then it’s probably genuine. And yes, you can tell MRA types to fuck off, if they show up.

It is a shame that we don’t have a leftist, feminist, positive example of masculinity to point people at. I agree with folks here that it’d be a worthwhile project. We also talked about it back on SRS 10 years ago and nobody has gotten it off the ground. Do it if you think you can. If it helps, I think the most obvious starting point for that is some dudes running a fitness youtube channel.

One simple thing that SRS did that Hexbear doesn’t is to call out gender policing (:gender-policing:). Dropping instances of gender policing in the dunk tank would probably help people internalize that this is a bad thing that should be called out.

Good post. Patriarchy hurts us all, cis men (and even tall, packing, white cis men) included. Even those who largely benefit from it still have legitimate grievances, and the reason that so many cis men gravitate rightwards is that the rightist platform actually addresses those grievances (terribly of course). Many spaces on the left ignore or belittle the legitimate grievances of men in order to center the discussion around their advantages under patriarchy. That’s technically having your priorities straight, but if men have brushes with leftist discourse and are made to feel lesser over their patriarchy-built insecurities, they will absolutely not be drawn in.

Discourse about how patriarchy largely benefits men is still necessary, but the time to bring it up is not when a human being is expressing vulnerability about how they have been made to feel lesser by the impacts of patriarchy. This is true whether you’re trying to recruit for a platform, or just trying to be a decent human being. Dick size and height are two classic examples.

As always when any remotely related discussion comes up, I’m gonna plug The Will to Change by Bell Hooks.

100% correct and based. I get annoyed sometimes because I see female presenting(or perhaps just appearing) people say things like “it’s not my job to help emotionally stunted men.” Which yeah, I guess technically it isn’t, it is unfair that a lot of women have been used as crutches for men and that isn’t good, and you don’t always have the energy for it. That’s all fair, but it was someone’s job, and that person failed. This is a hard problem to fix alone, you cannot get better at relating to other people and seeing them as human without other people being present. And are they going to talk to other men about it? The people that in many cases berated and hurt them to instill this belief, this emotional weakness? It’s not any one person’s job to fix a broken man they are around, but it is all of our jobs to help each other. If you saw someone bleeding out in the streets, would your first thought be “it’s not my job to get them to the hospital”? I’m not expecting every woman or female presenting person to out themselves in harms way to help every man they meet that isn’t perfect, I get lack of emotional space, personal trauma or just general distaste for the work, and genuinely valuing their own time, but the smugness some people post about this with is disgusting. You should never be proud you saw someone hurt and didn’t help them.

And the doubling down on sexist language towards men. It’s not okay to make fun of a guy for being short, or not being muscular, or being shy or nervous, or any of the other things which it is just mean to mock people for. It doesn’t break down gender walls, it reinforces them. It also reinforces transphobic rhetoric. If being a short man is bad, or not having facial hair, or not being muscular, and so on, for men but not for women, seems like anyone with those traits who wants to live as a man would feel like garbage all the time. It also breeds the idea men are stronger and more brutish than woman, and deserve more abuse because they can take it. The fact that I, living as a man, have been called sexist because when a woman insulted me I insisted her back is absurd. She is not porcelain and I am not steel. Anyone who disagrees with that is not a feminist.

I’m lucky to have had supportive men and women growing up, and now have people of all genders around me who encourage emotional vulnerability and openness, and don’t expect stock masculinity from me. I wish everyone had this opportunity. Until they do, it’s my job to try and provide it for them, so they don’t fall to the manosphere. Because it is tempting, it’s easy to blame all your problems on others if they seem adversarial to you, and society blame your problems on them, or their problems on you when you’re still growing. The solution is the same as it always is to us as leftists: we reach out, educate, and build solidarity.

Yeah personally I’m not a big fan of dick shaming. It just feels like an extension of body shaming in general and something we should be above as leftists. Though I will say it’s ridiculous how men today who are 5’9", my own height, now think that’s somehow short and not the norm for north american men. Hollywood, porn, capitalism in general have skewed the fuck out of people’s perception of reality.

Joe Rogan should be sent to the Hague.

Wait what?

I thought he was just some dumbass who takes steroids and has a podcast.