an attack on men and women! well done @HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works
“Wamen” is one of those jokes that has taken a new meaning in the context of my marriage. But I always come close to saying it around people who don’t know that.
sounds like baby Ramen, and now im hungry
All lives matter type shit. We live in a patriarchy, the least you can do is listen to those most affected, women. Don’t expect compassion if you can’t show it.
Exactly how I am sure poor white people have it bad in this system(and it needs to be addressed), yet those primarily affected by racism have to come to the spotlight, exactly this way men have problems(and need to be addressed), yet those primarily affected by the patriarchy have to come to the spotlight, women.
Conflating one social problem (patriarchy) with others (economic inequality and poverty for example) is harming the cause and it’s disorienting, it’s wrong. When we talk about the patriarchy, the discussion should not be diverted and those mostly affected are women, so we talk about women’s problems and how they experience it. That goes for queer people’s problems as well. It goes for any underprivileged/minority social group. That’s it.
I feel like men do have it tough and when men start talking about it, they get shutdown and told to be a man. Boys dont cry afterall. So some men may feel its unfair when women speak up and are heard. So they want to make it about them. In the comic, just as the men are dismissive of woman problems, she is dismissive of mens problems. Instead of attacking an unfair weath class system, we bicker about shupid shit like men vs women. Its not race, gender or sexuality we should be discussing. Its social, weath classes.
You still hear “man up” a lot and it’s fucked up.
she is dismissive of mens problems.
Not as presented. She’s being actively interrupted and trying to stay focused on her original topic.
The time to talk about men’s problems is any time you like, except when a woman has just started talking about women’s problems. If you redirect a conversation about women’s problems, you’re telling the women that you don’t care about their problems. If that’s the case, fine. Just don’t contribute, and let people who care discuss the women’s problems do that. Start another conversation about men’s problems elsewhere.
Whataboutism at its core I think.
I guess so. Like most whataboutism it’s a deflection for the sake of self- preservation. The truth is that there are specific problems with the way society treats women, and recognising that is disruptive and possibly painful.
The problem is that it’s so easy to see it as a mechanism to maintain the status quo. Which it so often is. Even when men call for change, it’s quite often “women should behave differently” rather than “everyone needs to reflect on their behaviour and start making changes for the better.”
Fair. Just that nobody cares about mens problems, especially women.
I think people do care about men’s problems, but too often it just comes out as “the problem is toxic masculinity”.
Fundamentally yes that is a major problem, and we need to find a better identity that men can subscribe to. But it’s like taking a book and just showing people the last page: it seems like irrelevant nonsense without the preceding understanding.
If we set up a place where we listened to each other, and to the feedback of women, with the intent of forging a new and more functional form of masculinity, I for one would be very interested indeed.
What do you personally see as male problems? Without googling - just off the top of your head. Im intrigued as to what gets broadcast.
Off the top of my head for women - safety (both physical and psychological), financial independence, equality of opportunity, disparate domestic and emotional load, sexual objectification, gender pay disparity (overall), representation.
I won’t say reproductive rights because I don’t live in the US, and while body image is a problem, I think its also impacting a lot of young men too.
Broadcast to whom? I’m a man too, as it happens.
I think we have a lot of problems with mood regulation and emotional control of ourselves. We have problems with empathy, both experiencing it and expressing it. We have problems with sharing power. We have problems with responsibility: taking either too much of it or not enough. We have problems with openness, examining our beliefs, thoughts and emotions, especially with the help of others. We have problems with ambition and identity, aiming for things that are unrealistic or unhealthy, not clearly knowing what successful masculinity looks like in 2024. We have problems with body image, in novel and unexamined ways compared with women: there is absolutely no such thing as male body positivity. We have problems making friends and finding a partner. We have problems concentrating at school. Not all of us have all these problems, but I think there’s a lot in this list that a lot of men will identify with if they’re being honest.
Honestly, that is a good list of the internal struggles, though everything she had said to which you were replying were external pressures. I agree wholeheartedly with your list, but I feel we need to also represent the externalities we face as well.
I can only speak for myself and from a neurodivergent US perspective. I see a society which still applies enormous pressure on men to be the “provider” in a system which as made being a sole provider nearly impossible. A society which ties our worth and value as a human being to what we can provide, primarily, for employers, then secondarily to loved ones. We are expected to sacrifice our health, both mental and physical, to work in often abusive or untenable positions from which we see no escape becacusr to escape is to fail our family. We are told continuously that our only purpose in existence is to sacrifice, and if we try to take some space for ourselves when WE need it, we are selfish, inconvenient, or heartless and abusive.
To expand on HowManyNimons point about making friends and finding a partner, we are still expected, on the whole, to be the instigators of romantic relationships. To place ourselves in the position of being vulnerable, then rejected, sometimes with damaging savagery, repeatedly for a good chunk of our adolescent and post-adolescent years. As to the friendship relationships, as we get older and our focus is mandated by society to be focused on ever increasing sacrifice, we see the potential pools of friendships shrink. We are so stressed from work, money, and family that the idea of having to put in extra effort for finding and developing new friendships just feels Sisyphean. We end up in a negative feedback loop of social isolation which leads to even further mental dysfunction.
Again, this is my self assessment and social observation. I suffer all of this, and more, daily. My family is very worried about me because it has gotten so bad for me that it is like I have forgotten what happiness and contentment feel like.
Guys is it misogynistic to not like misandry?
Also last time I heard anyone even talk about the MRA crowd was like 10 years ago
Ah, yes. Nothing fires up a debate quite like making someone else’s problems about you
WUT ABOUT MEN?!??!?
Ppl that make these kinds of comics clearly do not socialize with others irl. This only happens online with other trolls, from everywhere on the spectrum of whatever group. But irl, most people are pretty decent.
Just like me. Here I am a very toxic one, but in the real world I consider myself a nice person
The internet is part of real life. Internet trolls are real people behind their screens, and they live somewhere. Maybe they live far away from you and near this artist.
If you’re a digital artist, your domain is the internet. Your audience is the internet. Your medium is the internet. In that case, you’ll write about the internet.
Maybe they also don’t socialize because they never actually go out either. Just a bunch of asocials sitting in their respective moms basement trolling away.
Maybe the artist is a mum with a troll in her basement. Or maybe she has a shithead cousin who says this garbage at family reunions.
The vast majority of ppl are decent. If others can’t find them, that’s a them problem.
I’m kinda with you on this. People are complex and for the most of their time they behave okaish.
No. Most people drive cars, despite the fact that they know cars are destroying all life on earth. Most people are capable of rationalising their behaviour to remove culpability for the consequences of their actions. Most people are evil, in the same kind of banal way that most people in Nazi Germany accepted the new way of doing things and didn’t fight back, because they felt they had too much to lose from resisting.
Lmao, way to deflect. I didn’t say most ppl aren’t evil (not even addressing that your definition of evil isn’t even universally agreed upon), but I did say most ppl are actually pretty empathetic to the plight of others and thus decent in that regard.
The way this comment section unironically mirrors the comic perfectly.
So many dudes here unironically talking about how men have it hard too 🤦♂️
It’s kind of crazy and laughable. All these dude unirocally making this about themselves. Make the opposite meme and watch the victim-bros therapy group unfold.
Men have it worse in every way, so you should focus on that.
It’s kinda pathetic lol. How is it so hard for people to understand that maybe the best time to talk about problems affecting you is not when someone else is talking about problems affecting them?
Typical!
When can we talk about men?
Okay, I’ll just say it.
Everyone has it rough right now. Mostly because we’ve been thoroughly railroaded by corporations for most of our lives, but still.
Everything sucks.
I’m just going to speak my mind as a Closeted transwoman who would looks like a guy
I didn’t honestly want to get involved with this thread at all in fear of creating an absolute mess
But being trans myself I see myself having empathy for both woman’s and men’s rights because I know and understand the issues men are facing and see the issues woman are facing
I don’t like seeing the devide on either side and absolutely hate seeing the division and fighting especially when people advocate for men’s rights or woman’s rights
I personally advocate for both because I see everyone having rights as part of equality and equity and if you don’t want any one group to have rights then that isn’t equality or equity
We should be free to talk about both men’s rights and woman’s rights without being attacked for it
YES!
As a person who is just genuinely against all discrimination, including discrimination of women and men, I never quite understood why is this divide so powerful.
We’ll do our best if we work together, not compete for attention. Women face real issues. Men face real issues. Many of them play out of each other, and solving one would help untangle the other.
All while people will seemingly rip you apart for saying we could work together.
No, I don’t want to play the tug of war or steal the attention from the problem of “your side”. I just see how those issues intertwine, and working with both is paramount if we actually want to solve them. Let’s do that instead of whatever mess has been created.
Someone downvoted you which is lame. All you’ve advocated for is that both groups have their issues be respected in public discourse.
Because like the comic is pointing out as the issue and that OP has just done that exact thing - steering the conversation of topic away from the focus.
In a discussion about women by a woman, it sounds crazy but maybe they want the focus to be on women. That doesn’t mean men issues don’t matter or don’t exist. There are an infinite number of venues to discuss it that are not in a thread regarding women issues.
Is this thread really about women’s rights though?
It’s more of a meta thread about the issue the comic brings up, it’s about how some men switch the topic around. If the comic was intended to focus entirely on women’s rights it would end at the first image
Yea, that happens online. It rarely happens irl with regular folk. It’s really quite obvious when you actually interact with the outside world regularly. I’ve found that many ppl do empathize with most ppl’s problems. More often than what online comics imply.
And it’s fine to talk about enby issues in any discussion, because enbies are the most oppressed gender demographic.
Responding directly to the person in the comic
I hear you when you say that as a woman, you feel societal expectations of you can be harsh and contradictory.
There isn’t a way for me to experience the same things that you experience, but I can try to empathise with your experiences by comparing them with my own, and noting times when I have felt the same way. This means that I have to compare my experiences with yours. It isn’t done from a place of contest, but from trying to relate.
Good point. I think in a case like this it’s useful to explicitly point out that you’re trying to relate, and to format your response as a question so as to demonstrate that you’re actually interested in her experience. The fact that she will likely have experienced a lot of bad- faith responses will mean that we need to tread carefully when trying to compare our experiences.
WRT the first panel, I feel that way too.
That said, is this ragebait?
Yes.
Yeah, but no
There are assholes on both sides, like it or not.
Yes, there are loads of men who don’t deserve the name, that put women down, who can only be happy on the back of women. Fuck them
Having said that, I very much remember that video of guys going to a support group for men that committed uicide with feminists waiting for them outside to yell things like “it’s good that he killed himself!”. Fuck those assholes too.
Can we maybe ALL be nice to EVERYONE?
I’m sorry, but this comic doesn’t help. The reality is that both men and women face the same nonsense when they bring up what they have to contend with so how about we don’t try to disparage either side? Listen to both sides? You know, the thing we should be always doing?
I’m sorry, but this comic doesn’t help.
I don’t think it necessarily has to? Like, I agree with pretty much everything in your comment, aside from this part and what it implies. I read this comment as an expression of frustration from the artist, and it’s certainly one that I can relate to. I also realise that there’s a heckton of men who’ll relate too, because of how men who want to carve out space to talk about men’s issues can be cut off, even if they’re not the same men as the assholes who only want to talk about men’s issues when they’re speaking over a woman. However, I think that saying “both sides” to this misses the point of the comic
It can be useful to ground statements in our own personal perspectives because of how it limits the scope of what we’re saying. A smaller, messier example is that I am autistic and have done both disability activism and autism activism in the past. I am autistic and because of that, I am also disabled, and so many of my experiences as an autistic person can also apply more generally to disabled people. However, generalising a statement can be difficult, especially if on a difficult topic, such as institutional ableism. I was able to speak confidently on how that affected me personally, and to a more limited degree, how it affects other autistic people, because of who I am in community with. However, I don’t directly know any deaf people, for example, and thus I am cautious when talking about my experiences as a disabled person, lest I over-generalise. I get a similar sense from the comic’s use of “as a woman”. Grounding stuff in that way is often an attempt to limit the scope of the discussion to something more manageable when grappling with something hard to articulate.
I also do think it’s useful to recognise the difference in experience. As a silly example, I might say “as a woman, I need to breathe air in order to survive”. I could also say “as a human, I need to breathe air in order to survive”. I could also say “as an animal, I need to breathe air in order to survive”, but actually, I’d need to go and double check the facts on that last one. That’s sort of my point — sometimes statements are overly specific and should be simplified, like in the “as a [woman/human]” statements. However, limiting the scope (like in the “as a human” statement compared to the “as an animal” one) actually gives space for the possibility that some weird animals don’t need to breathe.
Apologies if I have explained this poorly. I don’t mean to come off as lecturing or argumentative; I am replying to your comment because I appreciate your points and I am open to discussion.
