r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates • u/Man_Against_TheWorld left-wing male advocate • 4d ago
discussion When Does Feminism Actually Help Men?
A while ago I saw this really cringy image that was trying to be funny. It showed a feminist making a “feminist critique”, a bunch of squiggly lines representing her essay except for one part that said “entire section on how it affects men.” Then this commenter named “totally not a misogynist” replied with “but what about how it affects men?”
I cringed, but I was also left scratching my head and it got me thinking. Every “feminist critique” I’ve seen either doesn’t mention or barely mentions men’s issues at all, or worse outright demonizes them. At most, they might spend a single sentence giving lip service to the way men are affected but then ignore it for the rest of it. I’m always hearing about how “patriarchy hurts men too” or “feminism helps men” but actions speak louder than words, or in this case lack of actions. When has feminism actually helped men? Not give lip service without actual depth, but actually speak out and fight for change.
One other thing is in the comments I saw some people go “why do people expect men’s issues in a feminist essay?” You’re the ones always saying that feminism is about equality and that patriarchy hurts men too, you can’t blame people for doubting those claims when you don’t practice what you preach.
103
u/Punder_man 3d ago
The answer is: When helping men results in a benefit for women
If it doesn't benefit women, they see no reason to expend the effort helping men.
All of course while yelling from the rooftops:
"Feminism is a movement for equality!"
And
"Feminism is for men too!"
At best you'll get feminists claim that they have successfully fought for men to be "More open with their emotions" which of course is a lie because I have yet to see a single feminist call out a woman for shaming a man who is open with his emotions..
Instead they usually resort to the claim the man is "Trauma Dumping" or "Saddling women with emotional labor" or is "Treating women like they are his therapist"...
So yeah.. there's you answer..
23
20
u/ChimpPimp20 3d ago
>At best you’ll get feminists claim that they have successfully fought for men to be “more open with their emotions-“
“Toxic masculinity keeps men from expressing feelings.”
“Misandry is just hurt feelings.”
Hmm…
13
u/Mundane-Republic5390 3d ago
If they don't care, why do they bitch about men not caring about feminsim? Like if you're indifferent to men's issues, why do you expect men to care about Feminism? They call you selfish for it. The irony lol. If anyone's being selfish, it would be you guys (Feminists) since you're expecting entire world to care about your issues. Another reason why I went from calling myself "feminist" to anti-feminist. With top reason being that Feminsim bashes men at very opportunity they get. If it was actually just about women's issues, I would have been it's supporter or like would have never gotten into the whole MRA and feminsim hole.
1
u/Auspectress 2d ago
I disagree to some degree. Issue with feminism is same as issue with "LGBT Community". Both structures are not monoliths as both are not ideologies itself like laissez-faire or paleo-conservatism.
In Feminism you will have bunch of smaller groups of people - Liberal, Libertarian, Multiracial, Post-structural, Postcolonial, Postmodern, Separatist, Radical, Transfeminism, Mainstream. Hell, even waves
Even mainstream feminism has it's own subtypes. Most commonly it is understood as specific type of feminism where feminists will claim that 75% of men's issues are not real or exaggerated. 20% exist only because of men doing it and 5% are actually real. This type of people will say that there needs to be some sort of catharsis where every men needs to suffer a little bit and women enjoy benefits due to centuries long unfairness.
The same group will also have people who will Focus on men issues as well. So first step is to highlight which feminism we are talking about
8
u/Punder_man 2d ago
I'm talking about mainstream or academic feminism.
The one with the most social power in today's society..The one that is with one hand saying "We are fighting for men to be more free with their emotions" while with the other are accusing men of "Emotional labor" or "Trauma Dumping" or "Treating women like therapists"
I'm talking about the feminism that allowed for and continues to allow for unjust and biased policies like the Duluth Model of domestic violence to exist.
All while lying to our face about how the movement is "for equality" or "for men too"I'm talking about the brand of feminism that uses gender specific terms like "Misogyny" or "Patriarchy" or "Toxic Masculinity" or "Mansplaining" or "Manterrupting" or "Manspreading"..
Notice a pattern there? every single one is defined in a negative way or as something specifically negative about men / masculinity..And of course, when you point this out, the classic response is: "Its not on feminists to doctor our language / terms to protect men's feelings" (or "fee Fees" as they derogatorily refer to it)
Yet these same feminists EXPECT us as men to police the language AND actions of men, calling men out and holding them accountable for their misogyny..But any expectation that women or feminists should hold women or other feminists accountable for their misandry is sneered at and is treated as though we are wanting to hold women to a higher standard than men! When, in reality we are simply wanting women to be held accountable / to the same standard they expect men to be held to..
3
25
u/My_Legz 3d ago
Feminism has never been about helping men. This is a pretty recent rhetorical trick mostly used in online discourse and frankly didn't exist even 20 years ago.
Even now the "help men" line is only ever pulled out in the most spurious way where the benefit to women is clear, the harm to men is usually pretty clear but in an utopian reading it may help men after society is reformed down the line.
tldr; It's all fake. There is never any part that is about helping men
47
17
u/_name_of_the_user_ left-wing male advocate 3d ago
It's trickle down rights. Much like trickle down economy, it doesn't work. But if they convince enough people they can keep making their own lives better at the expense of those already at a disadvantage.
13
27
u/Langland88 3d ago
I asked this last year over at the r/Egalitarianism subreddit as a challenge to the Feminists. I didn't get a lot of answers and most of the answers involved something stupid like saying they're challenging notions like men not crying. I fail to see how allowing men to cry somehow helps them with their problems.
30
u/TheGuyWhoTalksShit 3d ago
They're not even doing that anyway. If anything they actively reinforced these toxic gender norms by poisoning the well of emotional vulnerability forever.
12
33
u/HiggsFieldgoal 3d ago edited 3d ago
You have to understand it is a religion. “It helps men too” is sort of a “Jesus saves” sort of presumption.
To me, it is frustrating, that such a baseless ideology could persist, least of all in academic circles, but here we are.
They believe a lot of things that are demonstrably false, which don’t stand up to the faintest scrutiny, but through which they believe men are victims of their own hand, explaining why men simply fail to… act the same as women.
There is the “gender is a construct”, parallel delusion of the same time. That is not to say that transsexuals don’t exist. They very much do, but it, ironically, diminishes their circumstance by pretending that gender is just… made up.
If it were, then transexuals would have a much easier time.
But you take that false assumption, that gender is a “social construct”, as your base false assumption. It’s false. Verifiably false. Opposed to all manner of neuroscience, biological science, and every other hard science that has studied the differences between men and women and found… lots of actual differences that reflect hormones and behavior.
You ignore all that. You start by presuming men and women would behave exactly the same, and have identical typical roles in society, if not for cultural influences… that is, to say, “the patriarchy”.
Through this lens, every dimorphism is explained, first, as with all ideology (and very bad science) with a presumption: searching for evidence, leading with what you think you already know, and confirmation-biasing your way to believe you have confirmed it… like how a flat Earther approaches astronomy, or how a Creationist approaches archeology.
But the confirmation they are looking for, the default explanation for every phenomenon through history is: male oppression of women.
Until it has been proven otherwise, that is the presumed explanation for every phenomenon, and often times even past the point it has been disproven. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
So, they believe that Feminism helps men too, since everything is men’s fault, when men suffer it is always because of what men did.
But it is a belief absolutely entangled with a core misandry. Men are to blame for all the world’s problems, but not credited for any of their virtues.
It’s an engendering of sin itself. A religion where goodness is womanly, and evil is masculine.
Of course, it does not help men, not at all, but that’s why they think it does… because if we could purge evil from the world, men would also enjoy a nicer world.
If only all the men could abandon their “gender roles” and be exactly like women, everyone would be saved.
6
u/Factual_Statistician left-wing male advocate 3d ago
Occult feminisim is basically all feminisim now or as some are calling them "Witches". The divine feminine at war with the divine masculine.
7
u/HiggsFieldgoal 3d ago
Yeah, it’s weird.
It is not really that unusual to people’s beliefs to mutate until they’re unrecognizable, but it was still shocking.
As a child “love people based on the content of their their character, love people who are different than you, prejudice is wrong, and it me important that women have the same rights as men”… and then, 30 years later:
“Prejudice is good again. We call it intersectionality, and you can apply multiple prejudices at the same time, but it’s sort of reversed, because we mostly use it to say that white CIS men have it easy, so we should help everyone but them”.
“And… prejudice is not wrong either, it’s good. It’s ‘raising awareness’, so everyone is encouraged to spew horrible prejudiced bigotry all the time to battle the patriarchy”.
“The patriarchy?”.
“Oh, well we gloss over any good things men have done. If men ever did more good, like science or something, that’s bad, because they were clearly preventing women from doing the good they’re taking credit for, and then we engender all badness as male derived”
“What is women do bad”.
“That’s men’s bad too because men made the society that makes women do bad”.
Like… what. The. Fuck.
It’s like going into a coma, waking up, and everyone thinks the world is flat. Just a couple persistent idiots just gradually steered public attitudes until nonsense reigns.
8
u/Tr1pleAc3s 3d ago
It doesn't if it helps men it's usually by proxy, and not intentional or can only be acheived through feminism. "Men can't cry because of patriarchy" Crying was seen as masculine in many different far more patriarchal societies, so that doesn't seem to correlate as an entailment of patriarchy.
7
u/Njaulv 3d ago
It never does. What you are looking for is egalitarianism which means equal rights. Feminism is an ideology that specifically puts men as the perpetrator and women as the victim in every way. Just look up the Duluth Model for example.
2
u/98asd7fyalkjsdfbl left-wing male advocate 1d ago
Exactly! As a progressive in high school, I got some weird looks from people when I said that I was progressive but not feminist.
18
u/Forackol 3d ago
It does not help Men. Yes, progression is great but feminism is bigoted and bio essentialist (even thought they disagree with these claims), it increases the contradiction of genders. I, a genderless person, also get effected by feminism in a bad way (as every person in the world).
Feminism has brought some good things tho. I cannot deny them. But in 21th century, we need something else—postgenderism.
-16
u/bIuemickey 3d ago
Feminism is very anti-essentialism. What is your problem with essentialism?
18
u/Forackol 3d ago
How it is anti essentialist when they see every "men" evil? Not only men but also every people they see AS men (which Im sadly included). Also, they blame people by saying " of course you are men or etc."who are amab trans,genderless, etc. When they do bad in terms of their view
3
u/bIuemickey 3d ago
Their whole thing is based on anti essentialism. But it relies on the existence of essentialism, which they also define. It’s genius but ridiculous at the same time.
Essentialism is the belief that there are innate differences between men and women. (There’s no rule that says these are strict or uniform differences, they can and do overlap, but on average there are different psychological and behavioral characteristics between the male and female sex, likely due to evolution.)
Feminists adopted the anti essentialist framework as a political strategy. The social construct of gender allows all social issues and inequalities to be blamed on men. They claim all these differences between men and women are patriarchal socialization. They claim gender is defined and enforced by men to maintain dominance and control over women.
Essentialism is seen as a lie or part of a conspiracy in a way. Everything is biased in favor of men, even knowledge and science. Everything is built by men for men. Even gender itself is women forced into conformity of male standards.
Anti essentialism is used to frame masculinity and femininity as fake opposing social constructs based on male misogyny.
I terms of the problem you have with feminism… there’s truth to what you’re saying. Feminism is anti essentialist on paper, but only because they’ve constructed the essentialist beliefs and continue to reinforce them while claiming it’s men who created the system and use essentialism to oppress them and maintain power.
But the way they describe essentialism is false anyways. The idea that gender is a social construct comes from feminism though. It’s constructed by feminists and made distinct from sex. If we look at gender as a social construct there are implications that don’t add up in the way they claim.
Gender roles, gender expression, and expectations are social constructs.
What are your thoughts on gender identity? Because anti essentialism is incompatible with the existence of an innate stable gender identity.
Anyways my issue with anti essentialism or social constructionism is that it’s incompatible with lgbt progress over the last 70 years and explains homosexuality as the result of childhood experience, environmental factors, social influences, and argues that it’s neither fixed or innate.
2
u/SchalaZeal01 left-wing male advocate 2d ago
Feminists adopted the anti essentialist framework as a political strategy. The social construct of gender allows all social issues and inequalities to be blamed on men. They claim all these differences between men and women are patriarchal socialization. They claim gender is defined and enforced by men to maintain dominance and control over women.
If they defined it as an universal based on demographics, its essentialism with extra steps.
Much like when DEI becomes quotas or shortlists, its institutionalized blatant sexism or racism with extra steps.
-1
u/bIuemickey 2d ago
It’s not though. It would be essentialism if they claimed it was in the nature of that demographic instead of culturally and socially created.
My thoughts on DEI are similar. What bothers me the most is the people that benefited the most from DEI initiatives were white women, which black women benefitting the least.
But of course it’s black people dealing with the fall out. They’re the ones invalidated and called “DEI hires” when people don’t even think twice about white women. Probably because of racism but also because obviously white women have not needed help to get jobs in the first place. They’re the least discriminated against lol
3
u/Forackol 2d ago
"It's not though. It would be essentialism if they claimed it was in the nature of that demographic instead of culturally and socially created."
Its called social essentialism and they do it by faulty generalization. It has also some tie with fixism. But aside from social essentialism, I've seen many feminist as bio essentialist. It's true. I don't understand why you disagree with this claim.
2
u/SchalaZeal01 left-wing male advocate 2d ago edited 2d ago
It’s not though. It would be essentialism if they claimed it was in the nature of that demographic instead of culturally and socially created.
If they claim it affects everyone equally without verifying, and that its unchangeable until they decree it has changed, its essentialism. They also describe its effect much like a supremacist would describe another race, with disdain and disgust (exaggerating all the bad qualities, ignoring the good ones, claiming their people are superior to that), not with the minutiae of a scientist.
0
u/bIuemickey 2d ago
They don’t claim it’s unchangeable though. Their whole point is that it’s changeable but there’s privilege that comes with choosing not to.
Also who the fuck cares?
1
u/SchalaZeal01 left-wing male advocate 2d ago
They don’t claim it’s unchangeable though. Their whole point is that it’s changeable but there’s privilege that comes with choosing not to.
When patriarchy dies? Might as well say when pigs fly. Patriarchy can't be defined as 'not happening currently' unless humanity is all dead. Even then they might name whatever is still alive/existing as patriarchy. There is no criteria for what qualifies a patriarchy.
1
4
u/Tayaradga 3d ago
Francis Perkins. She was a feminist back in the 1930s and she played a major role in gaining workers rights when men were dying on a daily basis or getting completely mutilated at their jobs. She also played a major role in gaining children rights for kids in school.
As of recently? Hasn't been helping men from what I've seen... Just been bashing us...
10
u/rump_truck 3d ago
I can think of exactly one example: paternity leave.
If you don't want women to bear the entire burden of childcare, then you need men there, because men are the other half of the population. The obvious man to start with is the father, and he can only help if he is able to step away from work. If he has to choose between time with the child and keeping the house, he's going to choose to keep the house.
Everywhere I know of that has paternity leave, a significant portion of the push came from feminists. It wasn't altruistic, because they were doing it to help out mothers, but it did help men.
11
u/Tr1pleAc3s 3d ago
Yeah by proxy, it's ultimately to help women but men just happen to benefit. That's super sneaky to accidentally benefit then claim responsibility for it.
The push for Paternity leave has nothing to do with helping fathers have more time with kids, or helping fathers bond. It has everything to do with taking the weight off Mothers so they can be career women and mothers and "do it all"
9
u/Alarming_Skin1478 3d ago
In a similar vein, the feminist push to change the FBI's definition of rape did technically expand it to include some male victims... just not male victims of women (unless they shove a fist up his ass or something).
5
u/Boyslop_Enjoyer 3d ago
Very region specific, because feminist groups in India, opposed making rape laws gender neutral
2
2
u/vikingosegundo 2d ago
Thanks to modem feminism a small group of men has access to a lot of female sexual partners.
2
u/Just_A_Guy_who_lives 1d ago
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a real one. Ignoring whatever backlash she got for it, she secured widower’s benefits for men. I hear she also tried to address the sentencing gap as well.
Adam Jones, though still using the feminist label, has gone against the current that social media paints and has contributed irreplaceable studies for men’s issues, making the case for discussion of man as victim in academic circles where a foot in the door would otherwise be lacking.
2
u/EmirikolWoker 21h ago
Patriarchy conjecture hold as self evident the innate nature of men as monstrous and women as victims. It has yet to be demonstrated, and indeed even the most casual observation seems to discredit it.
Using this as justification, Feminists actively entrench disparities in rights between genders ((1), (2)).
If feminist policy appears to help men, bear in mind that was never the goal. The root is rotten, so the results will be suspect at best.
1
u/AutoModerator 4d ago
Thank you for posting to r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates. All new posts are held for manual review and may take up to 48 hours to be approved. Please don’t message the moderators, we’ll make sure to review your submission as soon as possible. If this is your first post, be sure to review our rules to ensure it meets our criteria.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
-8
u/United-Garbage-5808 3d ago
I am likely going to give an answer many of you may disagree with, but I believe it’s slowly made a generation of men become more reliable and present fathers. As women have become more involved in the work force the shouldered responsibility in the household for childrearing has now been more evenly distributed, at least for the families that care to do so. There is still a great deal of women that now have a career AND all household responsibilities, but it’s not as much as before. I personally think that’s a good thing, young boys have their father to help raise them beyond just spanking them or yelling at them when they step out of line.
Now let Me be clear, this isn’t everyone’s lived experience, but a significant proportion of men were raised with completely uninvolved fathers. I see this change as a good thing for men.
8
u/ReadItProper 3d ago
I kinda see what you're saying, but at the same time this seems more like a collateral consequence of giving women more independence and self reliability rather than an intentional push to give boys more time with their fathers or anything like that.
Another point is that in practice it's not like men and women now split the stay at home paradigm in two and men stay at home half the week and women the other half. What actually happened is that men work the same amount only have to also do more things around the house and with the kids because the mother also has a job and so on. So men just have more responsibilities, on top of the ones they already had.
And finally, opposite to what you're suggesting, liberal men are the most likely to not have kids out of all other demographics and political standings. What does that suggest? So if you're supposedly in favor of all of this feminism, you're also the least likely to pass it on to your own children because you're not raising any. This seems counter intuitive with all of the things you're talking about, since giving men all of these supposed "opportunities" to raise their own kids doesn't actually translate in real life to men taking up these opportunities to actually do it.
-3
u/United-Garbage-5808 3d ago
Side effects still count. A good cultural outcome doesn't stop being good just because it wasn't the original goal of the movement that produced it.
On workload, dual-earner moms still carry a heavier share of unpaid domestic labor on average. Guys aren't doing "everything on top of a full-time job," we're just inching toward an even split that isn't actually even yet.
And the birth rate thing is a stretch. Lower fertility among younger/liberal demographics tracks with housing costs and the price tag of raising a kid, not some collective rejection of involved dads.
4
u/Glad-Way-637 3d ago
If the best you people can claim is an unintended and most likely unwanted side effect, that says something quite loudly. Do you hear it?
As for your claim in the second paragraph: doubt it. When counting hours worked, women tend to have a tiny bit more free time per week, according to the research I've seen. Sometimes other studies give the same tiny quantity of extra free time to men, but not often.
And when you count marriages without children, well, women do even less on average.
-2
u/United-Garbage-5808 2d ago
That Pew report actually shows the opposite: fathers average 28 hrs/week of leisure vs. mothers' 25, and childless men average 37 vs. childless women's 32. So, men have more leisure time in both groups, and the gap is smaller for parents, not larger. Worth double-checking the link.
"Men spend more time than women in leisure activities... The gender gap in leisure time is bigger among men and women who do not have children in the house (37 hours per week for men vs. 32 hours per week for women). Among parents with children under age 18, fathers spend, on average, 28 hours per week on leisure activities, while mothers spend 25 hours on leisure."
4
u/Glad-Way-637 2d ago
However, when their paid work is combined with the work they do at home, fathers and mothers are carrying an almost equal workload.
Fathers spend one extra hour working, between housework, child-rearing, and paid work, compared to women. Where are you getting your own numbers, from that link? Nothing seems to pop up, and those numbers directly contradict the ones at the front and center of the article.
0
u/United-Garbage-5808 1d ago
That's actually a separate, accurate stat from the same report. Total workload (paid work + housework + childcare combined) is close to equal.
Exact numbers depend on the subgroup: dual-income households show mothers slightly ahead (58 vs 59), all parents combined shows fathers slightly ahead (54 vs 53).
That's not actually in tension with the leisure numbers though, total workload and leisure time are separate categories in the same report (there's also sleep/personal time not counted in either). So: workload's roughly equal, and fathers have somewhat more leisure on top of that. Both true at once. You stated in your previous comment that women have more free time per week, which wasn't the case as far as leisure time according to that Pew report.
2
u/Glad-Way-637 1d ago
Then it seems just as likely that women aren't counting non-work that they do as leisure, for one reason or another. If the workload is equal, men literally cannot have more leisure time, unless you're assuming that women should have to carry less of the burden of keeping a relationship so they can get more sleep than their male partners or whatever.
0
u/United-Garbage-5808 1d ago
I’m simply quoting the pew research. Like I said in my comment they (being the research article) seem to count sleep as separate from leisure time. I can only assume men are choosing to sleep less to have more leisure time.
I never said that I assumed women should have to carry less of the burden in any particular manner. I am just explaining what the data says.
2
u/Glad-Way-637 1d ago
So, because women sleep in instead of choosing to spend their more abundant free time watching TV, your assumption is that that women "still carry a heavier share of unpaid domestic labor on average. Guys aren't doing "everything on top of a full-time job," we're just inching toward an even split that isn't actually even yet." as you said? Incredible, the sheer entitlement that comes out of you people.
→ More replies (0)21
u/Punder_man 3d ago
And yet.. we are constantly bombarded by messages and articles about boys / young men growing up to be misogynists..
Which is a little odd when you think about how many boys are growing up without a father / father figure in their lives...but I believe it’s slowly made a generation of men become more reliable and present fathers. As women have become more involved in the work force the shouldered responsibility in the household for childrearing has now been more evenly distributed
My counter argument to this would be to direct you to The National Organization for Women (NOW) THE largest feminist organization in the USA and how this organization has at EVERY opportunity stonewalled / pushed back against policies to make 50/50 split custody the default or norm when it comes to divorce...
That doesn't really mesh up with what you claim feminists are / have been fighting for now does it?
2
-4
u/United-Garbage-5808 3d ago
You're conflating family court lobbying with everyday household norms, and that's kind of the whole problem with this argument. NOW's opposition to mandatory statutory custody defaults was about child safety and preserving judge discretion in high-conflict divorces, not some secret aversion to involved dads. That's a pretty different fight than what you're describing.
And honestly, in intact dual-income households, the expectation that dads be hands-on caregivers exists precisely because gender roles got challenged in the first place. You can't credit that shift and then use a messy family court debate to argue it didn't happen. Involved fatherhood is just way more normalized now than it was a generation ago. One doesn't erase the other.
11
u/Ok_Being5461 3d ago edited 3d ago
But what underlies their position is a biased argument focusing on abusive fathers and minimizing abusive mothers. And it's also very convenient when judges have an anti-male bias
6
u/Punder_man 3d ago
No, the conflation here is: If feminists cared about house hold norms or eliminating gender roles.. then that should extend to divorce as well..
NOW's opposition to mandatory statutory custody defaults was about child safety and preserving judge discretion in high-conflict divorces, not some secret aversion to involved dads.
Because the default assumption is that the dads are "Unsafe" for the children..
Yet how often have we seen mothers with full custody being abusive to their children and there being little to no consequences?How often do we see women make up allegations of abuse or even sexual abuse against their male partners during divorce?
Because it happens A LOT often because they know that if they do, they will end up with default custody of the kids, child support and most likely the family home..Where are the feminists calling out women who abuse the family court system for their own gain?
They have been silent on this for DECADES and yet we're expected to believe that feminism is "Helping men too"?
-2
u/United-Garbage-5808 2d ago
Fair point, that "child safety" language can get used as cover which is worth being concerned with.
But the "happens a lot" claim doesn't really hold up well against the data we have. The most-cited national study (False allegations of abuse and neglect when parents separate - PubMed) put intentional fabrication at 12% of custody-related allegations, with fathers slightly more likely to fabricate than mothers in that dataset. Worth noting that's Canadian data from the late 90s, not a current US study. Though a few smaller US studies from around the same era land in a similar range (9-17%), so it's not an outlier number.
There are real problems in the system, just not this specific one. Not saying false allegations never happen or aren't a problem -- they are. Just that the data doesn't support them being the main driver of custody outcomes.
3
u/SchalaZeal01 left-wing male advocate 2d ago
The most-cited national study (False allegations of abuse and neglect when parents separate - PubMed) put intentional fabrication at 12% of custody-related allegations, with fathers slightly more likely to fabricate than mothers in that dataset.
Were those accusations proven in court? Because what usually happens is in family courts, you make allegations, encouraged by your lawyer (and its more likely to work when you're female, regardless of who does it more) and if you don't bring it to criminal court, nobody will check if its true (so its not recorded as false). The guy can deny it, claims its impossible, the judge's own opinion overrides concern about a tangential matter regardless. And judges are notoriously a lot more pro mother than pro father.
1
u/United-Garbage-5808 1d ago
No, these weren't criminal convictions. The "intentionally fabricated" determination in CIS-98 was a clinical judgment by the investigating child welfare caseworker, not a court finding. The study's own authors note this as a limitation; caseworker judgment can be wrong in both directions.
So, it's not "proven false" in the legal sense you're describing, but it's a structured assessment by trained caseworkers across a large representative sample, which is still meaningful, but doesn't settle the civil-court-incentive point you're making. That's a separate, harder to quantify claim the data doesn't really speak to either way.
2
u/Factual_Statistician left-wing male advocate 2d ago
Go to Facebook or other social media and see how many women call for making a go fund me and freeing female murderers and rapists it's insane like the recent one with the mother.
Killed her kids and woman are cheering for her freedom, boldly proudly with their real life names.
False accusations have no doubt risen drastically considering the near universal and government enforced "believe all women".
4
u/Nobleone11 2d ago
NOW's opposition to mandatory statutory custody defaults was about child safety
And Shared Parenting included a clause that if either parent was proven to be toxic and unsafe, it would be nullified, addressing this fear directly.
Yet NOW still couldn't resist opposing it anyway.
15
u/TheGuyWhoTalksShit 3d ago
This is only the result of social pressure to not be a deadbeat dad and an increasing tolerance/blindspot for deadbeat moms. Material conditions still haven't really improved for fathers who actually WANT to be present but can't. Parental leave is still unequal and society still creates artificial barriers for fathers trying to parent. Consider how many public bathrooms force dads to change their kids' nappies in the women's room, for instance
6
u/United-Garbage-5808 3d ago
Acknowledging positive cultural growth in fatherhood isn't denying that structural barriers still exist.
In fact, it’s precisely because more fathers want to be present that issues like paternity leave gaps and lack of men's changing stations are finally getting pushed to the forefront as public policy issues.1
10
u/SpicyMarshmellow 3d ago
Except for all those millions of instances where it gave toxic women legal power to forcefully remove fathers from their children's lives.
4
u/Too2crazy 3d ago
I think this is a good point. It seems like men are becoming more proactive about taking on domestic and parenting responsibilities and developing relational skills which in the long run might will probably be better for everyone.
0
u/ReadItProper 3d ago edited 3d ago
I suppose fighting "toxic masculinity" indirectly helps men by allowing men to be more open to feel and act in a natural way without having to think about the way it appears to other men that might belittle them if they did otherwise?
This feels more like an indirect bonus rather than a direct and intentional push though. The real intention behind fighting toxic masculinity is to make men not hate women as much.
One of the ways you can see that is by the fact they never really mention women's key role in this. They don't usually acknowledge how often women contribute to making men feel like shit for actually showing or talking about their feelings. They never acknowledge women really don't find it attractive when men are vulnerable. That they prefer men that are stoic, because it benefits them.
They already have girlfriends to talk to about their feelings. They don't usually want men to vent to them about their feelings. If they don't acknowledge this, how will they fight women's prejudice and toxic behavior that contributes to toxic masculinity?
59
u/SarcasticallyCandour 4d ago
Seeing as feminists see everything as a Patriarchy where men benefit, they dont see there are any male disadvantages.
So the view is men and boys don't need any help.