Teachers describe a deterioration in behaviour and attitudes that has proved to be fertile terrain for misogynistic influencers

Teachers describe a deterioration in behaviour and attitudes that has proved to be fertile terrain for misogynistic influencers

“As soon as I mention feminism, you can feel the shift in the room; they’re shuffling in their seats.” Mike Nicholson holds workshops with teenage boys about the challenges of impending manhood. Standing up for the sisterhood, it seems, is the last thing on their minds.

When Nicholson says he is a feminist himself, “I can see them look at me, like, ‘I used to like you.’”

Once Nicholson, whose programme is called Progressive Masculinity, unpacks the fact that feminism means equal rights and opportunities for women, many of the boys with whom he works are won over.

“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,” he says.

But he is battling against what he calls a “dominance-based model” of masculinity. “These old-fashioned, regressive ideas are having a renaissance, through your masculinity influencers – your grifters, like Andrew Tate.”

  • MolochAlter@lemmy.world
    1·
    11 months ago

    However much is intentionally inflammatory controlled opposition, it will never catch up to the work of people like Dworkin, Solanas, or more recently Julie Bindel.

    There are plenty of established, respected feminists, who you could never in a million years claim are a psyop, whose work is taught in academia on a regular basis and whose contents would immediately get me banned off of most social media platforms if I were to swap the genders they’re talking about and post an excerpt.

    And this is just the theory aspect.

    Let’s not forget the revolutionary additions to the legislative side of things like the primary caregiver standard, or the Duluth model for domestic violence.

    There is a reason “feminism” is not called “egalitarianism”.

    Yes more modern waves have put some token effort into at least presenting a path for men to improve their lot in society, but let’s be real, conservatives do that for women too, it’s hardly in good faith and it’s fundamentally useless because the focus of the ideology isn’t to improve the lot of everyone.

    It can’t be, because it starts from the presupposition that men’s lot is the best lot, and women’s needs to catch up to men’s.

    Even when it nominally factors in facts like men being expected to put themselves in harm’s way and die for society it also handily blames men for making the choices that, for instance, lead to war, and it implies that therefore it’s not as important because the fact that the person sitting at a desk sending men to get shot on the front lines also happens to have a penis somehow makes it less problematic.

    So yeah, there’s plenty to criticise.

    Feminism has some very valid complaints, hell, a lot even, but there’s also a shitton of reasons why your average man can look at your typical feminist and ask himself “why the fuck would I ever side with you?”