If there's one thing I dislike about 3rd wave feminism, it's the apologists who try and claim that people like me who have an issue with gender feminism are just trying to hold up old feminists and/or radical feminists and ignoring 'real feminism'. The issues that men like me have with feminism nowadays (and I want to make that distinction clear) is because of how we've personally been treated by feminists. There's a clear difference between equity feminism and gender feminism, and there are atleast a few notable feminists who no longer identify with 3rd wave feminism for this very reason. For the record, I'm no more keen on MRA then feminism, the very idea of stepping to 1 side or other of that gender dividing line is repulsive to me. There are inequities in or society that need to addressed, not because they're gender issues, but because they're people issues.
You apparently misunderstood me, but because of how sensitive people can be to this issue, if you misunderstand me again I'll simply walk away. But the idea is pretty simple. If you treat me unfairly, and then turn around start telling me about how terribly someone has treated you, I'm just not going to trust it. After all, I just watched you levy many of the same accusations at me, and I know what my beliefs and opinions are. If you can do that to someone who essentially agrees with you, then I cannot trust your interpretation of something that I wasn't even privy to witness. When feminists run around attacking everything that moves, they hurt their own agenda. Again, you've misunderstood me. Both men and women have inequities in society, this has been well documented, and if you were nearly as educated in feminism as you claim, I suspect you can name atleast 1 feminist (not 3rd wave) that has described these inequities for men. It reframes the discussion from "what can we do to help prevent women from committing suicide" to "what can we do to help prevent people from committing suicide". That is a completely different conversation, the issue is that gender feminism doesn't want to have that conversation. Equity feminism doesn't have as much of an issue with those sorts of conversations. I think telling people they don't know what real feminism is turns into a pretty convenient way to dismiss anyone who disagrees with you. It's certainly lazy. How about we agree to avoid such tactics? This is the sort of thing you see on reddit, can you be better than reddit?A subset of people issues are gender issues. That's pretty much indisputable.
Honestly, it doesn't appear that you know what feminism is actually about. Going back to my original statement: "I find people in general are incredibly misinformed when it comes to feminism.
That's not really what I meant. Men commit suicide 3 times as often as women, but have no systemic access to facilities to help them work through it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide#United_States
There is a 60% difference in the length of jail terms for men and women for the same crime
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2144002 But no one really talks about it the way they do with minorities. Men are statistically more likely to be the victim of domestic abuse than women (this isn't the best source, but google can you give plenty more):
http://domesticviolencestatistics.org/men-the-overlooked-victims-of-domestic-violence/ A quote from the article:
_According to one study, 63% of males as opposed to 15% of females had a deadly weapon used against them in a fight with an intimate partner_. And we haven't even started talking about how men are treated under the family court systems. But the point isn't that it happens and women are terrible, it's that men also face real inequities in our society. I don't mean simple social pleasure, I mean the sorts of inequities that causes a person to commit suicide from the unfairness of it all. both genders face inequities in our society, but when the discussion constantly falls into "men are terrible for X" or "women are terrible for Y", it's hard to have the conversation "lets work together to solve issue X and issue Y". you can also try and refute that with idealistic ideas about what the role of feminism is, but that's different from a discussion about the realistic effects feminism has had on both men and women (the good and the bad).As clearly acknowledged by me, I even gave an example. Women aren't expected to be "providers" like men are, and the stress and social pressure associated with struggling with that can be considerable.
The fact that you're framing my response as an 'us vs them' is exactly what I mean. The point is that men also suffer inequities in society, but these are not addressed by feminism except where the feminist movement deems it to also be beneficial to women. The travesty is that feminism started framing the conversation as 'us vs them', and the MRA continued it. feminism didn't use to be anti-male, it used to be simply pro-female. There's a distinct difference there.
I'd give you times, but honestly you should watch the entire thing. These ideas are being espoused by some of the older feminists, they are not simply the opinion of men who dislike feminism. In particular, fairly early in the talk she talks about how she values clarity of thought, logic, and fairness. As do I, and many other people who don't buy into gender feminism. And now it's time for you to start citing sources.