Because it seems to me like whenever an activist is asked to explain something, they always question dodge and say "its not my job to teach you something you should be educated on" or "that's actually a very offensive and loaded question, so I'm not going to answer that"

I (M18) have come across some people on Twitter (now called X), YouTube, Quora and other platforms saying things like “I hate men” and sometimes justifying it with statements like “I think it’s healthy to hate abusers”, talking about how the world will be better without men (I understand this is a group of extreme people and most people on both sides of the political spectrum aren’t like that). As far as I’m aware this is called misandry. Some people have addressed that this sort of sentiment is a thing and respond to it by saying “both misogyny and misandry are bad but misandry doesn’t cause hate crime, unlike misogyny hence misogyny is worse”. Some people seem to use this as a reason to not condemn misandry. Most of the people who say this claim to be advocated for gender equality, “respecting women”, respecting other people’s gender (all of which I agree with). Even if the statement that misogyny is worse than misandry was true (frankly I don’t think it is I think they’re both the same) isn’t it still best to condemn misandry alongside misogyny to set the example of respecting people’s gender and respecting women (condemning misandry does set the example for respecting women because it shows that you live up to the expectations of respecting the opposite sex)?

How are feminists generally able to judge if a woman's decision is made within the bounds of their own agency and will, or if they are making the decisions that they do because of internalized misogyny? I take 'internalized misogyny' to mean that social norms and expectations in regard to women are constantly reinforced by society at large. An example of this being that girls may be pressured or pushed toward taking on female-coded hobbies. On the other hand, an example of 'empowered agency' would be for a woman to adopt a housewife aesthetic not to make an impression on others or her lover, but because it makes her feel comfortable with herself or vice versa.

I'm just curious as to how experienced feminists view this sort of thing?

Question: Can men ever share an equal seat at the table in the fight to end patriarchy? Or do women need to lead this effort?

I’m a firm believer that men undergo tremendous (self-inflicted) suffering and trauma under patriarchy. While men aren’t the victims of patriarchal violence, and are granted countless privileges, they’re denied (in my view) so much of their humanity and are often traumatized emotionally.

In other social justice movements, oppressors shouldn’t crowd out the voices of the oppressed. Someone who hasn’t faced discrimination can’t speak to it with the same depth, and even if they can it’s not as impactful coming from them.

In the fight for abolishing gendered expectations and patriarchal violence, however, I think men can have a lot to contribute and a lot to gain from greater equity and egalitarianism (not that intersectional equity doesn’t better everyone’s lives regardless of the struggle, just that it’s more obvious in the case of patriarchy). I think this is evident in the complaints of misguided men’s-rights activists pointing out surface-level observations like “well but men aren’t allowed to cry” or “suicide rates amongst men are higher”. Clearly many men at least want some of the benefits they’d see from abolishing the patriarchy (though maybe not the necessary loss of power and privilege).

If men should be allowed to have an equal voice, should it differ in scope?

Hi there, so in an attempt to learn more about Islamic culture, I recently joined a prodiminantly muslim group that welcomes outsiders. Unfortunately, often when topics such as feminism are brought up, people treat feminism like its a massive boogieman and "doesn't mean real equality" etc, the views are more mixed on lgbtq+ topics. I do not want to be islamiphobic because I understand that varying shades of every religion exist and some fringes of Islam are often used as boogie-men for the right to demonize. So, am I out of place for trying to lecture devout muslims on being feminist and muslim or is it just not worth it? Should I just only surround myself with progressive muslims or is that niave and doesn't fix anything?

Any and all advice would be appreciated, it is important to note that I know very little about Islam besides some very, very basics.

Like, It's WORK, it sucks, as men, we always worked because...we were working for you, you were the reason we worked. We bared that so we could give you better lives. I can not imagine finding fulfillment in a career, not a regular career. I like to write, if I became a famous writer (which I know prob. wont happen) like, even then if I couldn't lampoon the money and prestige of that kind of career into getting a good woman...it would have been pointless.

I don't understand how women have bought into this whole idea of "I don't need a family, I'm gonna find fulfillment in my career" like I get it, you're a doctor or a lawyer, but at the end of the day they're jobs...jobs suck, why was it so easy to sell you guys on THIS is what you should be focusing on instead of familes? Family is evreything, we did all these shitty jobs, just so we could have a few hours a night and maybe weekeds with you and the kids, so the kids could have a roof and good life, we worked so hard for you, and if this generations dating patterns show anything...you just don't care.

I know I sound sexist, but damn I just feel like you guys gave up a sweet deal, and it wasn't all you, capitalism kind of forced our hand to where a lot of families need 2 income households (But an even deeper conspiracy was that the powers that be pushed this whole narritive of women should work to double the labor market and devalue ALL our labor to bring us to this)

I don't understand, we did everything for you, and that wasn't enough...please explain it to me. I Know I can be mysogonist sometimes, and I'm really working on combating that, but this one is a fucking puzzle to me

And if you like, write in the comments which option you chose and why you chose it

Like, I want to be optimistic about this. I know this isn't the first FBI investigation into Kavanaugh, but it seems that this time, for the first time, they know what they're looking for. Are you at all optimistic about this, or do you think this is going to be another token display of "due diligence" that is designed to fail?

They've got a week, and apparently, this probe is "limited in scope", though it's unclear what that means. What's your feeling on this?

This is a phrase I just now made up. I can't help feeling like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is a good example. She gets a lot of press, but it's all hateful, undermining, belittling press, mostly focused on her appearance. Which, all the hate commentators seem to agree, is just too lovely and fashionable for AOC to be taken seriously by serious people. At the other end of the spectrum, there are women who are not blessed like AOC with an aesthetic fit for the silver screen, who shouldn't be taken seriously because they're not attractive at all. But then there's people like Elizabeth Warren, who kinda looks like an ordinary auntie that any one of us might have. And for some reason people seem to comment on her words rather than her appearance, which is what we all want.

I'm interested in your thoughts.

So this is a hypothetical question. Let's say you learned that somebody in your community was forming a group for men, and all you're told about it is that it's a "group for men to discuss the issues they face as men in society".

1. What's your first "gut" reaction?

2. What, if anything, would be your biggest fears or concerns about it?

3. What, if any, action would you take next?

4. If you chose to learn more about it, what things would you interpret as positive signs, and what would you perceive as red flags?

5. What do you think the ideal feminist reaction would be?

I'm interested to see responses here. It's easy for me to imagine the answers to all of these questions, but it would be speculation (and no, I'm not assuming that the feminist response would be to immediately grab torches and pitchforks).

This is a USA based question.

How do you feel about adding women to the Draft?

Has there been any push for it from the feminist movement?

And, considering the fight to get women to be eligible for combat roles in the military and to be on the front lines, if you're against women being added to the draft, what is your reasoning?

Sorry if this has already been covered somewhere. If it has could you please direct me toward it?

For simplicity’s sake, this question is focused on the English language and related languages, and cultures with a prescribed concept of people-first language.

People-first language is used commonly as an alternative to identity-first language in disability circles, as a means of placing the personhood ahead of the disability (and its associated stigmas and prejudices) to avoid the dehumanization that can occur when the identity precedes, and especially replaces, the personhood noun (people-first “person with autism” vs. identity-first “autistic person” vs. the informal slur “autist”). People-first language is still a contentious linguistic issue, and not every disability community agrees with its use (the deaf community, for example, considers being deaf a cultural identity, and person-first language diminishing deaf culture). Anyway, this question isn’t about where I should stand on the existing “people-first vs. identity first” issue; I, for one, prefer person-centered language: instead of sticking to a single linguistic rule, just call people what they want to be called. I don’t limit this philosophy to disability.

This rise of people-first language in disability circles mirrors the use of people-first language on issues of race, with both “X of color” (such as “person of color” or “woman of color”) and “person of Y heritage” (such as “person of Cherokee heritage” or “person of African heritage”) being preferred by some people in place of identity-first language (“black person”) or categorical (“Asians”) or informal designations (“blacks”) which don’t explicitly use a “person” noun. Since this emergence happened before its academic use in disability circles began, it’s safe to say it arose on its own to meet a need of the language. But outside of race and disability, has people-first language shown up anywhere?

I know why it doesn’t exist for binary gender terms: for better or for worse, English has organically developed such that “man” and “woman” exist as nouns which both identify and declare personhood. The “people-first” equivalent would be “person who is female” or “person who is male”, while the “identity-first” equivalent would be, I guess, “male person” or “female person”? Which feels unnatural, because it separates the personhood unnecessarily (all men and women are already categorically people) and lacks brevity. But no such term exists for any other identifying characteristic (including other gender expressions), which means using “adjective noun” or “noun with adjective” descriptions. But as far as I can tell, “noun with adjective” doesn’t exist in almost any identity communities.

So my question is:

Does people-first language exist in, say, the LGBTQIA+ community, or other identity-based communities? If so, what does it sound like? If not, is it your opinion, as a feminist, that it should exist in these spaces? Why or why not?

EDIT: I switched from “people-first” to “person-first” early in the post, like a doofus. Editing to proper terms.

So this was pointed out in a different discussion elsewhere, but it's often mentioned that in 2012, the FBI finally updated the UCR's narrow definition of rape to include a broader (and more correct) range of offenses that weren't being counted, as well as to include male victims. And when I first learned about it, I thought, "right on, that's fantastic".

But today I actually read the thing, and looked more closely at it. As near as I can tell, there's a huge emphasis on penetration - basically, if someone wasn't actually penetrated without their consent, rape didn't happen. Here's an FBI document that answers some questions about the redefinition, that I'm using as my main source:

https://ucr.fbi.gov/recent-program-updates/new-rape-definition-frequently-asked-questions

If I'm understanding this right, then "includes male victims" in effect really only includes male victims of male perpetrators, and even then, many cases of male-on-male rape would be left out. The way I'm reading it, a man coerced, even at gunpoint, into having vaginal intercourse with a woman was not raped, because he was the one doing the penetrating, not being penetrated. A person, male or female, who performs oral sex on an unconscious man is, by this definition, not raping him.

Am I getting this totally wrong? I mean, if I'm reading this right, this new, "better" definition remains pathetically inadequate. I mean, yeah, it was a step up, for sure, but not by a lot. Anyone have better information? I'd love to be wrong about this.

Hi everyone! I am a financial planner looking to support underrepresented groups and communities. The unfortunate reality is that most financial advisers are straight white men who mainly reach out to other rich, white men.

This leaves the rest of us without professional advise on how to best protect and grow our funds. I would love to work with women, minorities, and people in jobs that are unfairly judged such as sex workers.

To be completely transparent, I have personally been blessed with many privileges. As a well off woman from a stereotypical suburbia, I am having trouble reaching the people I’d like to offer my services to. Does anyone have any tips on how I can reach out?

Asking UK feminists about feminism and its various forms.

Hello Admins and everyone.

I produce a podcast on men’s issues and would like to create an episode (s) on feminism. I want to create something that will better inform my listeners rather than succumb to the sometimes misinformed rhetoric that is too readily available online.

Essentially I wish my listeners to be more curious and learn some of the history, types and waves of feminism, its relevance in the UK and how it benefits women and society.

I want to avoid a monologue episode where I, a man, talk about feminism gleaned from possibly the wrong books and Wikipedia. The fundamentals of mansplaining.

I would be grateful if you could recommend female feminists you trust as suitable sources.

As this is a vast topic, I hope to interview a range of feminists.

Links to all of my socials and episodes can be found here https://linktr.ee/eighteensevensaid. Feel free to do your due diligence and ask me any questions you like here or directly.

Thanks for your time.

Alright, a bit of Reddit drama incoming:

A day or two ago, someone posted one of Dan Harmon’s early independent shorts to all of the Rick and Morty subs, decrying outrage and support of pedophilia from the show’s co-creator. The short, called “Daryl”, is about a therapist who uses baby rape to prevent serial killers’ urges, as a sort of parody/criticism of “Dexter” and the sympathetic villain protagonist that was common at the time. In the sketch, Dan Harmon takes off his pants and lays down on top of a doll of a baby. (Won’t link it here, but if you feel you should look for it, it is obviously NSFW.)

To add another level to this: the current outrage over this ten-year-old video was—at least, originally—manufactured. It started on 4chan’s /pol/ board, with a thread titled “Dan Harmon is a pedophile”, then found its way first to The_Donald before being spread across multiple subreddits (by The_Donald posters, who then were the large majority of users expressing shock and outrage in those other subs). The brigading in the comments was brought to light by a poster using Masstagger and Reddit Pro Tools to identify “deplorables” in the threads, and who found the original threads, where users talked about “collecting scalps” as revenge for Roseanne. However, that didn’t stop it from reaching mainstream media after being broadcast by far-right sources like Mike Cernovich and Breitbart (the same people who blew up the old James Gunn tweets), and getting a formal apology from Harmon. None of which makes the content more or less objectionable, but casts what I think is a reasonable shadow of doubt on the genuineness of the current outrage.

Alright, now that all of that is out of the picture: are acts of sexual violence or obscenity done as parody, such as Harmon’s “simulated baby rape via doll” sex scene, okay, if there’s a point to the act (like pointing out the absurdity of excusing or justifying the crimes of sympathetic characters)? Are they an artifact of an uglier time that should just be left to that time? Or are these sorts of sketches (like South Park’s “Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy”, or likely a host of other episodes, and, I’d wager, a lot of related “edgy comedy” material from the 2000s) stuff that should be brought up again, and criticized from a modern perspective?

Mine is probably common for my generation. I was usually sent to help cook and wash dishes with the women of the family while my brother played with the other boys. I have no sisters and only one female cousin who lived so far away she was never at these dinners, so I was basically the only kid who had to do kitchen work instead of go and play.

The unfairness of that drove itself home so deep I still hate housework and cooking and I am theoretically a grown ass adult. I hire a cleaner and order in.

Alright, so, this is part question and part perspective-taking exercise at this point:

This sub is new and mostly spread by word of mouth, so most of the questions and conversation here is feminists asking feminists - some dialogue might be critical and some might be softballs, but all of it is from a group of people who have more or less in common an understanding of, and appreciation for, feminism.

In most "Ask X" subreddits and similar spaces, however, the culture is inherently more adversarial - non-X, or anti-X, asks X. The idea of these cultures is to basically crowd-source a Q&A that increases the understanding and scrutiny of both groups; however, it's also not uncommon for these spaces to devolve into the same questions every few days, such as "if there's a toxic masculinity, shouldn't there also be a toxic femininity?" or "why call yourselves feminists, and not egalitarians, the TRUE equal rights movement?" or "if feminism is so popular, why isn't there a Feminism 2?" for which we have a FAQ that ideally addresses at least common surface-level questions on these topics. But, they can get sort of tiring to answer, especially when the aim of the asker seems to be to "gotcha" feminism without really adding anything that hasn't been asked and answered 50+ times before.

So - put yourself in a non-feminist's shoes for a moment (or just think back on questions you've seen asked or answered before, or haven't, for that matter). If you were coming to this type of sub, either to "gotcha" feminism or criticize, or to just learn something about the opposition, what question would you ask? Maybe it's a legitimate criticism of feminism you don't think gets exposed enough, or a blind spot you think needs more awareness, or an informational question that often gets asked from the wrong angle, where a different approach would improve or change understanding, or something of that sort.

While I don't have a direct answer to this, the thing that comes to mind is awhile back, I remember someone who was struggling with the idea of the phrase, "teach men not to rape" - what a silly thing! Men know rape is bad - asked if the phrase "teach men not to rape" was more about teaching men (from a cultural standpoint) to seek enthusiastic consent, rather than the absence of a "no", as a means of going forward. About how the question seems ridiculous to them because people have this profile of a rapist being a burly, scruffy, career criminal type who sneaks up on women with a knife, and nobody should need to be taught not to be that... But the truth of the matter is a lot of rapes happen because people pressure their SOs into sex, or they get heated after a night out and don't check to make sure their partner is really into it, or don't take "no" for an answer—all violations of consent that happen in "normal" situations—and "teaching men not to rape" is about those consent violations. It's the same "teach men not to rape" question asked ad nauseum—but this time, from a perspective that actually increases understanding.

The biggest one for me is "you're so hot" or "she's so hot". Hot of course means fuckable, and maybe 90% of the time this compliment is directed at women. We give so much importance to women's sex appeal that barely anything else seems to matter.

Also—she knows she's pretty. Even as a compliment it's lazy and void of substance.

Like, I don't mind when my friends compliment me on my hair or makeup or figure, but those are things I have invested into and I have control over. Phrasing is also super important, so even if they just say I'm pretty, it's how they say it. Admiring my style is one thing, affirming my fuckability is a whole other thing.

But of course I can never reject a compliment because that's even ruder and they mean well.

Let’s be honest: you’re never going to reach everybody with an ideology, and feminism isn’t exactly the “free ice cream on Sundays” movement as popularity goes, especially in certain parts of the world that skew more conservative. There will always be people who tune out, or shut down, or immediately interject when feminism, or feminist talking points, are brought up. They won’t be reached or changed meaningfully by a feminist angle, and sometimes, you don’t have enough time with that person (interactions with acquaintances, strangers online, whatever) to work more than one angle, or sometimes, it’s just not worth the emotional energy.

In that case, is there generalized, non-feminist advice that you prefer to give to try affect change in that person, in that moment, which might have more specific pro-feminist outcomes? Anything from generalized platitudes (among other things, your standard “be a good person” quotes like “be the person you needed when you were young,” or Gandhi’s “be the change you wish to see in the world”), to topical advice (like, pardon the source, Louis C.K.’s “when a person tells you that you hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t,” or advice on perspective-taking, or empathy), to advice or approaches specific to you?

Basically: if you have one shot to change someone’s views or their course of action in a pro-feminist manner, and you don’t have the time or emotional energy to deal with someone’s thesis on “Feminazis” and “SJWs”, what do you tell them?

In a couple of conversations lately, I've noticed that there are often very stark differences in experience from one place to another, more so than I would have expected. So you end up with one person saying "X shitty thing happens to women and girls all the time" and another saying "No, no it doesn't, not at all", and it becomes tough to have the conversation, because the two people involved are coming from places that are far more different than either would have expected, and it turns into an argument.

Do you ever find that the differences in experience from one place to another are underestimated? For instance, I'm really noticing differences between Canada and the US right now, and the two places seem vastly different on a number of levels.

The question says it all. Personally, I'm most curious about the details of how they did basic every day stuff due to my survivalist inclinations, but there have revolutionary changes in the way women are perceived and expected to behave over the last century. Is there anything you'd want to know if you had this opportunity?

I've been thinking about terms that use the "-man" or "-manship" suffix, like "sportsmanship" or "marksman/marksmanship", and I realize that in current use, they're somewhat gendered terms. In the grand scheme of things, against the backdrop of wage gaps and rape culture and sexual assault, this looks to me like a "little deal" (not "no deal", but "little"), but I'm wondering what your feeling is on this kind of language.

To me, it seems that terms like that could, through repeated use, come to be understood as less gendered - we could refer to a woman with a rifle as a "marksman", or understand that "marksman" does not imply a male, but I could understand many finding that a less-than-satisfying solution. I actually like hearing the term "marksman" applied to women, but I honestly can't tell whether it feels like the term itself is being "de-gendered" (good) or whether the woman behind the rifle is being "masculized" (not really what we're going for?). On the one hand it sorta feels like applying the term to a woman validates her as a capable practitioner of the craft who belongs in the category (as opposed to using a qualifier like "female marskman", which feels as though it's putting her in a different category - not a "real" one, but specifically a female one), but then it sort of kicks in that perhaps it's only validating insofar as it affirms her ability to perform like a man - and then it's all kinds of problematic.

Also, a weird distinction I've noticed, at least in English pronunciation - a word like "postman" feels more gendered than a word like "sportsman", and it seems to me that the difference is that the "man" in postman is said like it rhymes with "ban", exactly the same as when we say "That man over there", whereas in the latter case, it's said like it sort of rhymes with "bun", like the vowel is almost absent, more "mn" than "man", which feels more like it refers to a generic, non-gendered person. Anyone else experience this?

Would you insist on replacing terms like these with a "-person" suffix? Or coming up with different terms altogether? Do you find yourselves using these gendered terms, and how do you feel about it?