November 19th is International Men's Day, if you're one of the many wondering if there is an International Men's Day. But the fact that people ask why there is no International Men's Day, unaware that there already is an International Men's Day, is proof of how underrepresented men's issues are in the broader social justice fight. People wouldn't be asking about International Men's Day if it was talked about as much as the plethora of women's days. But it isn't. At least nowadays International Men's Day is a token gesture. A farce that, at best, exists just so people can say "Here you go, men. You have your thing. Now you can't complain about anything." And at worst, is actually destructive.
Why do I think so? Because society still can't really acknowledge that toxic femininity exists. That misandry exists. That women who oppress men exist. Because when a woman is oppressed or disenfranchised or disadvantaged or held to a double standard, we blame men. Ice-T and Terry Crews and the other Brooklyn 99 guy go knocking on doors telling men to be better men and how men have to take responsibility for the ills of society. We talk about how masculinity is toxic and how we need to redefine it. How the Patriarchy is to blame. But when a man is oppressed/disenfranchised/disadvantaged/held to a double standard? First we dismiss the issue. "No they don't. Women are incapable of oppression because men are winning and women are losing. Men are the predators and women are the victims." Then, if it's proven that men do suffer from a thing, we downplay the issue. "Well it's not as bad as what women go through. There are so few female CEOs and court justices. So you just deal with whatever lesser double standard you have to put up with." And finally, if a man is suffering from something important, important enough that if a woman suffered from it someone would care? We blame other men. "Well that's why you need feminism! Men decided those things for society!" This is how International Men's Day has failed me. Even when men have it bad, even when men are at a disadvantage at something compared to women, no matter how shitty a woman is, somehow it has to be the fault of men. Men in the aggregate. Or "The Patriarchy." Nothing is ever the fault of women in society. No one's going around telling women to be better women for the sake of the men they disenfranchise with their microaggressions. Because we either pretend men don't suffer from them, or choose to blame other men for them.
Now you might say "That's not what 'The Patriarchy' means! The Patriarchy isn't blaming men or saying men decided how society is!" First, if your name is IncelTears, yeah you did. You said "men decided this." Like women somehow can't use their brains.
But this is an excuse TakedownMRAs likes to throw around but never explain. You say it's "The Patriarchy" but that doesn't mean "men." Why is it called "The Patriarchy" then? What do you actually mean by it? Based on the many debates I've had with you and people like you, what you sound like, at the very least, is "Men are the winners and women are the losers." And that's still that same dismissiveness I'm talking about. The worst kind of most insulting kind of ignorance.
Family courts biased against men. Where mothers hold power to deny visitation from devoted fathers because "Mom probably knows better than Dad." Or charge child support from men they've never met because "He's probably the father, men are deadbeats like that." These are flaws in our legal system that we all agree are bad. But where modern social justice fails is how it frames these issues. Won't dare say men are disadvantaged and women hold the advantage here. Won't dare call this misandry. Instead on International Men's Day of all day we say "Actually this is misogyny because the system assumes the mother is weak and fair. The father is actually suffering from how advantaged he is! He only gets dragged around because society believes he as a big strong man can take it." Or how about something a little less tragic: Lady Doritos. Remember Lady Doritos? We were so quick to blame some out of touch old white man for Lady Doritos. But then we learned it was the creation of Indra Nooyi, ex-CEO of Doritos. A powerful woman of color. And so we all kinda ignored that part, and when she retired we threw her a parade for being so feminist. I say no. I say we keep pressing her. People decry Lady Doritos because it's somehow misogynist. Men get to have normal Doritos while women have to have special Doritos because they're so fragile. The Patriarchy must've made this powerful CEO make the decisions she made. It could just as easily be framed the other way: Women GET to have Lady Doritos, the finer, more sophisticated Dorito. Women have too much finesse to debase themselves with the oafish slimy cheese crunch of Man Doritos. It's REGULAR Doritos that are inferior. And so men, the clumsy, stupid brutes, they deal with cheese shards. Women are too good for it. Even withholding women's right to vote could be framed as a positive for women. And it was, way back when. The anti-suffrage message was "You don't want the vote. You don't want the burden. The femininity of not voting is superior to the masculine toil and drudgery being a man pre-1920s." Sounds like bullshit, right? Don't like being told that the double standards you're held to are for the benefit of women, right? Don't sell that same bullshit to me. Don't tell me I'm somehow winning in spite of the double standards I'm held to. Don't tell me I've inherited some mistake my "forefathers" asked for. It's just as pigheaded as saying our foremothers should've earned their rights by being manlier.
But suppose we keep blaming the victims. Keep blaming other men for the disadvantage and struggles that men go through because when women are shitty to men, it's not the woman's fault, the woman who is alive today and capable of making her own choices. Nothing is ever the woman's fault. It's some mythical council of old white men who forced her to do it. Long ago, before she was born. What are you gonna tell this woman when you dismantle the "Patriarchy" she loves so much and chooses to uphold? Take this old 20/20 experiment where they showed the heightism of a bunch of women.
Right in the body dysmorphia. The experiment is obviously meant to say "Hey women, you're being shallow." But this is kind of an old experiment. Today we look at this experiment and say "It's men's fault. Men decided that being tall and masculine was superior." Even though it's the damn women themselves picking which men they deem superior and why. But let's assume they, these adult women, are somehow not responsible for their own choices. The Patriarchy influenced them to make the choices they made. Like puppets or something. If you wanna dismantle the Patriarchy, what are you gonna tell these women? That it's wrong to like "real men?" That it's some kind of "internalized misogyny" because liking a tall masculine man undermines your agency as a woman or some such ass pull? You're not gonna tell these women what they can and can't like. It's not like they're men, who owe themselves to society. No, women have been through too much to be told to do anything. Presently they cannot be shamed, cannot be blamed, cannot be held accountable for their social ills. Not like men can.
This is what I see every year on International Men's Day. Instead of uplifting men, we blame them. And absolve any woman. You might be thinking "So you want Men's Day to be a day for bashing women, huh?" No. I want accountability. I want the kind of justice for my issues that women get for their issues. I only wanna "bash" as badly as I've been bashed. To me, social justice is when I can look at something that's been done to advocate for women and say "That's great, but where's the men's version of that?" And then someone shows me whatever the men's equivalent is. I can't do that yet. Like this shirt.
Oh, I'm mad about a shirt, cried TakedownMRAs self-importantly. Yeah, I am. Obviously some women somewhere had to be mad enough to will the shirt into existence. Mad because someone needed to tell men that women don't have to do the things listed on the shirt. And good for those women. But why isn't there a "Men Do Not Have To Do" shirt??? Why do I not see people wearing "Men Do Not Have To Do" shirts??? The same applies to men, right? Men feel like it needs to be said for them just like women feel like it needs to be said for them? Or this shirt Lindy West gets to wear.
It's funny to make fun of mediocre white men. But whyyyyyy isn't there a "Lord, Give Me The Confidence Of A Mediocre Woman Of Color" Shirt? That a white guy could wear? Or, I guess the equivalent would be a white man wearing a "Lord, Give Me The Confidence Of A Mediocre White Woman" shirt. Why is it so wrong to wear that? Shirts are so important when it's women's issues. Not so much when men suffer the exact same things. And we do suffer these things. Again, that's the first mistake people tend to make. Assuming that men don't suffer from these problems. If the agency of men matters as much as the agency of women, we don't have enough shaming of women who think they're entitled to the agency of men. Like we shame men who feel entitled to the agency of women. Not enough shaming of femsplaining. Not enough shaming of women trying to tell men what their place is. It's only ever other men that we blame. Another difference between the one, single, solitary Men's Day, and the plethora of women's advocacy movements. Women's advocacy is about women rising above the hateful things men say about them. We compliment women for overcoming the adversity of other men. And Men's Day isn't without accolades for men. But it's not about rising above the false slander of women in society. It's about rising above the slander of men in society that we all agreed was true. "Yeah, a lot of men are deadbeats. But not the men we honor on International Men's Day!" International Men's Day is about finding men to blame, yes, and then backpatting the "good ones" left. None of the women's days are that patronizing. Where's the men's version of that? Where's the men's version of what women get? Give me a day of praising men for rising above oppressive, shitty women. But it has to be like women get it. Because granted, I've spoken to a lot of people who realize these are bad things. But they downplay those things. Deflect responsibility, etc. Something like "Yeah, some women are shitty, but I was never in favor of shitty women. This miniscule minority of shitty women that isn't really a problem we need to talk about." No, not good enough. That's like me saying "Well I'm not sexist, so why are you getting mad at me? Your issue is with a miniscule minority of men that most of society doesn't agree with." Beyond a cold comfort. Unacceptable, coming from any man. I want the good social justice. The women's social justice. I don't want "Come on ladies, this isn't us! We're the good guys!" The late night circuit has so much to say about how bad women have it, I want Stephen and Seth and Trevor and Sam Bee and Current Year Man to kiss MY ass for a change instead of telling me how men can only have it good and women can only have it bad. Tell women to stop trying to control MY body. Stop telling ME to smile more. I want whoever the female equivalent of Ice-T is to go door to door telling other women "Society has failed men, and we are complicit."
A woman like Prim Reaper, or Norah Vincent. You know what makes Norah Vincent's brand of "feminism" so attractive? Because Vincent isn't just a good person, but she points out how it's society at large that has failed. There's no "Well, a few women are bad" from Vincent. There's no "Women have made mistakes and they should be better because women are the good guys." Society as a WHOLE has failed. Not some small group of ancient mythical white guys long ago. The society we have TODAY has failed. Both men and women. All colors. And while we've done a lot of speaking up for women, especially recently, it has come at the expense of speaking up for men. While we've held bad men accountable, it has come at the expense of holding women accountable. We could've cared about everyone equally, but we didn't.
If you wanna know why the "manosphere" exists, from MGTOW to incels to men's rights activists to everything in between, look at the thing that we hold in common: We believe men are lacking a voice in the social justice fight. The kind of voice women have. When women are wronged, accountability from bad men is sought. The opposite doesn't happen when men are wronged. We get told the problem doesn't exist, isn't important, doesn't happen enough to get talked about, or is our fault. And that's especially in force on International Men's Day. The last day that should be happening. So I don't waste my time. If social justice was for everyone, the people who supposedly cared about me and everyone else wouldn't be shitting on my holiday. I appreciate the scant few out there who do care. But this holiday is ruined.
Why do I think so? Because society still can't really acknowledge that toxic femininity exists. That misandry exists. That women who oppress men exist. Because when a woman is oppressed or disenfranchised or disadvantaged or held to a double standard, we blame men. Ice-T and Terry Crews and the other Brooklyn 99 guy go knocking on doors telling men to be better men and how men have to take responsibility for the ills of society. We talk about how masculinity is toxic and how we need to redefine it. How the Patriarchy is to blame. But when a man is oppressed/disenfranchised/disadvantaged/held to a double standard? First we dismiss the issue. "No they don't. Women are incapable of oppression because men are winning and women are losing. Men are the predators and women are the victims." Then, if it's proven that men do suffer from a thing, we downplay the issue. "Well it's not as bad as what women go through. There are so few female CEOs and court justices. So you just deal with whatever lesser double standard you have to put up with." And finally, if a man is suffering from something important, important enough that if a woman suffered from it someone would care? We blame other men. "Well that's why you need feminism! Men decided those things for society!" This is how International Men's Day has failed me. Even when men have it bad, even when men are at a disadvantage at something compared to women, no matter how shitty a woman is, somehow it has to be the fault of men. Men in the aggregate. Or "The Patriarchy." Nothing is ever the fault of women in society. No one's going around telling women to be better women for the sake of the men they disenfranchise with their microaggressions. Because we either pretend men don't suffer from them, or choose to blame other men for them.
Now you might say "That's not what 'The Patriarchy' means! The Patriarchy isn't blaming men or saying men decided how society is!" First, if your name is IncelTears, yeah you did. You said "men decided this." Like women somehow can't use their brains.
But this is an excuse TakedownMRAs likes to throw around but never explain. You say it's "The Patriarchy" but that doesn't mean "men." Why is it called "The Patriarchy" then? What do you actually mean by it? Based on the many debates I've had with you and people like you, what you sound like, at the very least, is "Men are the winners and women are the losers." And that's still that same dismissiveness I'm talking about. The worst kind of most insulting kind of ignorance.
Family courts biased against men. Where mothers hold power to deny visitation from devoted fathers because "Mom probably knows better than Dad." Or charge child support from men they've never met because "He's probably the father, men are deadbeats like that." These are flaws in our legal system that we all agree are bad. But where modern social justice fails is how it frames these issues. Won't dare say men are disadvantaged and women hold the advantage here. Won't dare call this misandry. Instead on International Men's Day of all day we say "Actually this is misogyny because the system assumes the mother is weak and fair. The father is actually suffering from how advantaged he is! He only gets dragged around because society believes he as a big strong man can take it." Or how about something a little less tragic: Lady Doritos. Remember Lady Doritos? We were so quick to blame some out of touch old white man for Lady Doritos. But then we learned it was the creation of Indra Nooyi, ex-CEO of Doritos. A powerful woman of color. And so we all kinda ignored that part, and when she retired we threw her a parade for being so feminist. I say no. I say we keep pressing her. People decry Lady Doritos because it's somehow misogynist. Men get to have normal Doritos while women have to have special Doritos because they're so fragile. The Patriarchy must've made this powerful CEO make the decisions she made. It could just as easily be framed the other way: Women GET to have Lady Doritos, the finer, more sophisticated Dorito. Women have too much finesse to debase themselves with the oafish slimy cheese crunch of Man Doritos. It's REGULAR Doritos that are inferior. And so men, the clumsy, stupid brutes, they deal with cheese shards. Women are too good for it. Even withholding women's right to vote could be framed as a positive for women. And it was, way back when. The anti-suffrage message was "You don't want the vote. You don't want the burden. The femininity of not voting is superior to the masculine toil and drudgery being a man pre-1920s." Sounds like bullshit, right? Don't like being told that the double standards you're held to are for the benefit of women, right? Don't sell that same bullshit to me. Don't tell me I'm somehow winning in spite of the double standards I'm held to. Don't tell me I've inherited some mistake my "forefathers" asked for. It's just as pigheaded as saying our foremothers should've earned their rights by being manlier.
But suppose we keep blaming the victims. Keep blaming other men for the disadvantage and struggles that men go through because when women are shitty to men, it's not the woman's fault, the woman who is alive today and capable of making her own choices. Nothing is ever the woman's fault. It's some mythical council of old white men who forced her to do it. Long ago, before she was born. What are you gonna tell this woman when you dismantle the "Patriarchy" she loves so much and chooses to uphold? Take this old 20/20 experiment where they showed the heightism of a bunch of women.
Right in the body dysmorphia. The experiment is obviously meant to say "Hey women, you're being shallow." But this is kind of an old experiment. Today we look at this experiment and say "It's men's fault. Men decided that being tall and masculine was superior." Even though it's the damn women themselves picking which men they deem superior and why. But let's assume they, these adult women, are somehow not responsible for their own choices. The Patriarchy influenced them to make the choices they made. Like puppets or something. If you wanna dismantle the Patriarchy, what are you gonna tell these women? That it's wrong to like "real men?" That it's some kind of "internalized misogyny" because liking a tall masculine man undermines your agency as a woman or some such ass pull? You're not gonna tell these women what they can and can't like. It's not like they're men, who owe themselves to society. No, women have been through too much to be told to do anything. Presently they cannot be shamed, cannot be blamed, cannot be held accountable for their social ills. Not like men can.
This is what I see every year on International Men's Day. Instead of uplifting men, we blame them. And absolve any woman. You might be thinking "So you want Men's Day to be a day for bashing women, huh?" No. I want accountability. I want the kind of justice for my issues that women get for their issues. I only wanna "bash" as badly as I've been bashed. To me, social justice is when I can look at something that's been done to advocate for women and say "That's great, but where's the men's version of that?" And then someone shows me whatever the men's equivalent is. I can't do that yet. Like this shirt.
Oh, I'm mad about a shirt, cried TakedownMRAs self-importantly. Yeah, I am. Obviously some women somewhere had to be mad enough to will the shirt into existence. Mad because someone needed to tell men that women don't have to do the things listed on the shirt. And good for those women. But why isn't there a "Men Do Not Have To Do" shirt??? Why do I not see people wearing "Men Do Not Have To Do" shirts??? The same applies to men, right? Men feel like it needs to be said for them just like women feel like it needs to be said for them? Or this shirt Lindy West gets to wear.
It's funny to make fun of mediocre white men. But whyyyyyy isn't there a "Lord, Give Me The Confidence Of A Mediocre Woman Of Color" Shirt? That a white guy could wear? Or, I guess the equivalent would be a white man wearing a "Lord, Give Me The Confidence Of A Mediocre White Woman" shirt. Why is it so wrong to wear that? Shirts are so important when it's women's issues. Not so much when men suffer the exact same things. And we do suffer these things. Again, that's the first mistake people tend to make. Assuming that men don't suffer from these problems. If the agency of men matters as much as the agency of women, we don't have enough shaming of women who think they're entitled to the agency of men. Like we shame men who feel entitled to the agency of women. Not enough shaming of femsplaining. Not enough shaming of women trying to tell men what their place is. It's only ever other men that we blame. Another difference between the one, single, solitary Men's Day, and the plethora of women's advocacy movements. Women's advocacy is about women rising above the hateful things men say about them. We compliment women for overcoming the adversity of other men. And Men's Day isn't without accolades for men. But it's not about rising above the false slander of women in society. It's about rising above the slander of men in society that we all agreed was true. "Yeah, a lot of men are deadbeats. But not the men we honor on International Men's Day!" International Men's Day is about finding men to blame, yes, and then backpatting the "good ones" left. None of the women's days are that patronizing. Where's the men's version of that? Where's the men's version of what women get? Give me a day of praising men for rising above oppressive, shitty women. But it has to be like women get it. Because granted, I've spoken to a lot of people who realize these are bad things. But they downplay those things. Deflect responsibility, etc. Something like "Yeah, some women are shitty, but I was never in favor of shitty women. This miniscule minority of shitty women that isn't really a problem we need to talk about." No, not good enough. That's like me saying "Well I'm not sexist, so why are you getting mad at me? Your issue is with a miniscule minority of men that most of society doesn't agree with." Beyond a cold comfort. Unacceptable, coming from any man. I want the good social justice. The women's social justice. I don't want "Come on ladies, this isn't us! We're the good guys!" The late night circuit has so much to say about how bad women have it, I want Stephen and Seth and Trevor and Sam Bee and Current Year Man to kiss MY ass for a change instead of telling me how men can only have it good and women can only have it bad. Tell women to stop trying to control MY body. Stop telling ME to smile more. I want whoever the female equivalent of Ice-T is to go door to door telling other women "Society has failed men, and we are complicit."
A woman like Prim Reaper, or Norah Vincent. You know what makes Norah Vincent's brand of "feminism" so attractive? Because Vincent isn't just a good person, but she points out how it's society at large that has failed. There's no "Well, a few women are bad" from Vincent. There's no "Women have made mistakes and they should be better because women are the good guys." Society as a WHOLE has failed. Not some small group of ancient mythical white guys long ago. The society we have TODAY has failed. Both men and women. All colors. And while we've done a lot of speaking up for women, especially recently, it has come at the expense of speaking up for men. While we've held bad men accountable, it has come at the expense of holding women accountable. We could've cared about everyone equally, but we didn't.
If you wanna know why the "manosphere" exists, from MGTOW to incels to men's rights activists to everything in between, look at the thing that we hold in common: We believe men are lacking a voice in the social justice fight. The kind of voice women have. When women are wronged, accountability from bad men is sought. The opposite doesn't happen when men are wronged. We get told the problem doesn't exist, isn't important, doesn't happen enough to get talked about, or is our fault. And that's especially in force on International Men's Day. The last day that should be happening. So I don't waste my time. If social justice was for everyone, the people who supposedly cared about me and everyone else wouldn't be shitting on my holiday. I appreciate the scant few out there who do care. But this holiday is ruined.
