This is ridiculous! Totally ridiculous. I hate myself!
So I've been off work today and when I'm off work I tend to become very unproductive and slightly obsessive, all at once, and so I've been reading men's activist sites and blogs All. Day. Long. And now it's twelve hours later and my eyes are red-rimmed and I'm fucking starving and my head is filled with useless truisms like
THE SCUM MANIFESTO was MISANDRIC (duh) and terrifyingly colorful
texts that try to explain to me how one incident with a cab driver in 2006 means that 90% of all assault allegations are false. No, wait, 90% of all assault allegations by
women against
men, that is. My bad.
1. The antis.Yes, I have read and read, in that obsessive-compulsive way that, well, people who are very bored or a little bit crazy do. It started with an indistinct feeling that some of the most common rhetorics from swedish antifeminists seemed just a tiny bit...misplaced. So I started looking at american/british/australian antifeminist men's activist sites.
And now I've read about how divorce is a weapon wielded by women against men in order to
punish them and take away their rights as parents and how that is the ultimate goal of the feminist movement. (Även svenska mansaktivist-sidor definierar problemet på det här sättet, även om den svenska lagen automatiskt ger båda föräldrar gemensam vårdnad efter en skilsmässa och i 95% av skilsmässorna är det också vad som sker. Och även om s.k "växelvis boende", där barnet spenderar lika mycket tid med båda föräldrarna istället för - vilket är absolut vanligast - mest med mamman, ökat kraftigt sedan början av 90-talet. Det skulle behöva bli 100%. Fast det är föräldrarna som borde växla boende, inte barnen. Att männens frånvaro i sina egna barns liv är ett stort och sorgligt problem är många av oss överens om men orsakerna att det är så förklaras lite olika.)
I have read about men who are proud and who will defend
their nation, their brothers, and their sex, well, um, except their
homosexual brother who I suspect they keep locked up in a cupboard under the stairs, or are forcing to do housework while they all go to a ball at the castle. Because, if you didn't know it - and I didn't, before tonight - homosexuality is "a feminist power agenda."
I've learned that we need to teach young women about
what consent is, in order to stave off the current "epedemic" of false rape accusations, and that
"instead of feeding young women misinformation that encourages them to invent rape claims, feminists should teach young women what consent means" and that "after-the-fact regret about one-night stands -- although a common, indeed natural, feeling for women -- does not negate consent." That was my emphasis in bold, there. I feel it needs no further explanation.
Similar thoughts about consent and teaching young women about taking responsibility to avoid being raped, can also be found in swedish blogs like this one (thank you, Pär Ström, for recommending it):
http://ingrid-carlqvist.blogspot.com/ for example
here and
here. I notice that there's still no hurry from them to teach young
men about how to avoid being falsely accused of rape (even though there's the epedemic and all) by not having any drunken one-night-stands with ex-girlfriends or women they don't trust. Weird. Maybe men's activists think only young women can be trained into sexually controlling themselves.
Or maybe they're just PLAIN OLD-FASHIONED HYPOCRITS.
I have read about the big, masculinist woe of
local councils' women-only swimming pool sessions (sound familiar?) and how although most of the world's wealth is owned by men (nope, no way they can deny that, is there) women are the ones who
spend most of it, judging from advertisements and number of products targeted at women as oppose to men. I guess that's the masculinist way to break down what's really the problem with the world: Women getting too much spending money from their wealthy husband.
I have read about the problem with men
paying more taxes but, because they die, fall off the twig, kick the bucket, shuffle off their mortal coil, run down the curtain and join the choir invisible (not just shagged out following a prolonged squawk) approximately 7 years before women, they benefit less from it.
Now, I kinda had hoped that the "men die before women therefore feminism is wrong" was just Pär Ström's, shall we say,
special way of analysing problems of male discrimination, but alas, that turned out to not be the case. But I take comfort in the fact that maybe swedish masculinists will notice how - despite Sweden being
the most feminist state in the WORLD - swedish women only live 4 years longer than the men, and that during the 90s and 00s, that gap has
continued to shrink.
"Män har också dött tidigare än kvinnor så långt tillbaka man kan räkna statistiskt - det vill säga ända sedan 1700-talet. Men i Sverige håller männen på att ta in på kvinnorna i livslängd. Deras medellivslängd ökar snabbare än kvinnornas" (Källa)
"Männen i Sverige lever längre än männen i andra länder, men kvinnorna i Sverige ligger inte i topp när det gäller medellivslängd. Jämställdheten kan vara en av anledningarna. Feminismens inflytande i Sverige har betytt att fler svenska män känner samma ansvar för sina barn som kvinnorna, och därmed tar mindre risker. Feminismen har också betytt att svensks kvinnor jobbar mer utanför hemmet, därmed är deras medellivslängd närmare männens än i andra länder" (Källa)
And I have read alot about the "Ladies First" rule which seems to be an issue in the american and british men's rights forums, but isn't so much in the swedish ones, naturally, although I do vaguely remember Pär Ström trying to implement it into the swedish debate by writing something about the "women and children first" rule on the Titanic as evidence of male discrimination and feminist hypocracy.
I have - largely - tried to ignore the fact that so many of the sites I've visited aren't just about "men's right" but "white men's right". Because it's creepy as fuck.
2. The Pros!There are also
pro-feminist men's rights site. This one gives an explanation to why some men's rights groups
are so strongly antifeminist:
They dispute the feminist idea that men (or some men) gain power and privilege in society, claiming that both women and men are equally oppressed or limited or even that men are oppressed by women. Men are "success objects" (like women are "sex objects") and burdened as providers, violence against men (through war, work and by women) is endemic and socially tolerated, and men are discriminated against in divorce and child custody proceedings.
While men's rights and anti-feminist views are in the minority in men's movement circles, I believe that they are gaining in prominence and popularity. Anti-feminist men are among the most politically active men in this movement. Their views have been effective in capturing media attention, and in attracting sympathy from many men around the country. "Men's rights" draws on the ignorant and defensive reactions to feminism among many men, as well as right-wing backlashes (for example against "political correctness" and efforts at social justice).
So, yes, I have read and read, about warren farrell and henry laasanen and matthew o'connor and my eyes are now red and my brain is time-confused and the twin got back from work hours ago and logged into skype and here I am, still in my pajamas, still a (now ice-cold) cup of coffee sitting next to me, and I really, really have to pee.
The twin: Have you been sitting there
all day?
Me: Help me!
Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om feminism, antifeminism, pär ström, truisms