"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

As a white cis hetero American male, trying to have a little empathy is literally the least I can do.

It's not mega surprising seeing what conservatives are trying to impose on women. It's more surprising they have any significant female support whatsoever.

There is a big difference in the messaging to young men by both the parties.

Republican - "You're going to have a job, a house, a wife and kids, and all you have to do is work hard and you can live the American Dream"

Democrat - "You are the oppressor and need education on why men and white people are bad"

You can see how one is more appealing than the other, especially to those who don't pay much attention to politics and maybe only hear a 30s political clip on social media once a week.

Disclaimer: not saying these are actually the alignments/messaging, just major annecdotal perceptions I have heard from people who describe themselves as "not a Democrat" and asked them "why not?"

True equity isn't sexy and doesn't motivate voters or sell ad space. It's much easier to try and shine a light on the plights (real or otherwise) of as large a group as possible and pretend to be behind them. Politics and News are sales, not education.

No paywall: https://archive.ph/MrnR1

The hard kind too, it even persists at https://web.archive.org/web/20240126130159/https://www.ft.com/content/29fd9b5c-2f35-41bf-9d4c-994db4e12998.

I'm guessing it's also clickbait once someone did end up getting past it anyway.

What colour is the smoke going to be

Good list but 7 seems wrong.

Studies I've read for work suggest that around 1 in 10 men have experienced unreported sexual abuse. Same studies suggest the statistic is 1 in 5 women, which is much worse, but it does a disservice to male victims to suggest ten percent is 'negligible.'

(as someone whose crotch was aggressively groped by a female in college and never reported I'm admittedly a bit sensitive)

I’m wondering how old this is because it has some fantastic points but is missing some big ones that are a part of modern feminist discourse and some of its points are lacking some nuance that’s become more common in the current discourse.

That said for the most part it’s very good and is likely to hit on several things that in my experience many men don’t really think about. The bits about having to ask yourself if something was misogyny really hits hard. And I think a reasonable summary of several of these points is that men are treated as the default kind of person

ETA: the nuance here that I think was really missing is that as time has gone on we’ve gotten more acknowledgement of male victims of sexual and domestic violence and the ways in which toxic masculinity uses threats of emasculation to push men into a specific role. This is all bad and the ways in which toxic masculinity hurts men are real things. But it too privileges a theoretical maleness and the punishment it presents to failure is accusations of womanhood or femininity (alongside genuine physical or economic violence). The degendering that women are threatened with is rarely accusations of manhood, but more often accusations of not even being a woman.

And to clarify toxic masculinity is not the claim that masculinity is toxic but that there is a set of expectations placed on men by each other and by women that pushes them into a rigid role devoid of gentleness and emotional honesty. In that role they are granted agency and power as the trade off. It is a role that often would rather they hurt others for their own pleasure than to display vulnerability. And that role comes with varying degrees of manifestation. It can be calls for young boys to not cry but it can also be things like frat bro rape culture. In the end it hurts everyone.

Fantastic list! Thanks for sharing that.