577
submitted 9 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] CliveRosfield@lemmy.world 61 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

People hyperfocus on the 1% of crazy feminists instead of the other 99% who are actually normal and reasonable. Sadly that 1% are doing more harm to the public image of feminism than good.

We live in an age of twitter screenshot outrage and that pathetically emboldens some peoples beliefs so the root cause really is social media. Nothing more nothing less.

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 53 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The only time I ever hear about that 1% is from the conservative propaganda machine, or MSM rebuttal. They hold zero power outside of the conservative cinematic universe.

At this point I consider it nothing more than manufactured outrage.

[-] winterayars@sh.itjust.works 8 points 9 months ago

Their enemies are shadows on the wall, shadows of their own minds.

[-] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 months ago

I mean there's TERFs, they speak for feminism, no?

[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago

People keep forgetting that until recently, TERF used to be the default position of feminism

[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world -4 points 9 months ago

When recently? Because if you mean 30 years ago, yeah. But by the 00s it wasn’t anymore. And before the 80s it wasn’t yet. It was a powerful force in the second wave.

[-] JohnDoe@lemmy.myserv.one 1 points 9 months ago

i do read that stuff, well, i don't consider it as such but it's been told to me to be as such. i still don't know why as i never got a chance to ask for an explanation

[-] LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I really dislike the way you're portraying feminism as a brand and trying to assign responsibility onto individuals for the public perception of that brand. It's not the responsibility of any woman to convince men that they deserve rights, that they deserve fair political power and representation. If someone is dissuaded from supporting women's rights because someone said something they didn't like or agree with, that person is a misogynist and unlikely to have ever actually supported women's rights in any meaningful capacity.

The caricature of the "crazy feminist" is also in and of itself misogynistic, and is used to silence feminist activism all the time. Not that there aren't legitimate extremist parts to the movement, particularly in the 60s 70s and 80s when feminism had yet to make many major strides towards female liberation. Just that the label is often used to dismiss things like the pink tax, the wage gap, and discussions of rape culture and intersectionality.

[-] homura1650@lemm.ee 17 points 9 months ago

Feminist and women are not synonyms. Feminism is a political movement. Every political movement needs to advocate for itself. That is the way politics works.

[-] LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 9 months ago

Feminism is a political movement in the same way the civil rights movement was/is a political movement or that the gay rights movement is a political movement. It's a rights movement. It's a resistance movement, resisting patriarchy and misogyny.

It is self evidently true that women deserve rights. It is not the job of women to convince you they deserve rights. Feminism organizes women against the systems that oppress them. It does not appeal to the humanity of misogynists.

[-] Cosmicomical@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago

I agree it is self evidently true that women deserve as many rights as men. I''m 100% in favour of this. But words ae important and "feminism" is not called "woman rights". Feminism is often framed as being against patriarchism, which is implied to be a male-generated problem. In reality patriarchism is enabled and often enforced by both men and women, when they pass down to their kids a particular set of toxic and limiting cultural values. I was grown up with the idea that I have some specific duties towards my family such as providing for them. My wife has a job that could never provide for all of us, but somehow that's ok, while I have to strive to get a high paying job or feel like I'm a failure.

Ok this is going to be longer than I expected but I have things to say. I have been on both sides of interview panels. As an interviewer I always used methods as purely objective as possible to evaluate candidates, but i still ended up knterviewing 48 men and 2 women in one of the rounds. Why? Because I didn't receive any CV from women. I mentiond this to my boss (a woman) and within three months all the management layer above me was populated with women. I can't say I liked the solution, especially as the actual teams were still 95% male.

In personal life, maybe this is just anecdotal but my parents never taught me any housekeeping skill and they actively tried to dissuade me when I tried, whether I was trying to iron a shirt or wash some dishes. This is systemic, as the girlfried of my flatmate saw me passing the hover once and said that she would leave her boyfriend if she saw him do that.

So my position on this is actualy whataboutist and the point here is that maybe it's not you but a considerable chunck of women is actively participating in patriarchism while others react to it in a sort of class warfare which puts men, especially ones that are younger and less experienced at navigating life, in a very difficult spot where they are shamed by both sides and end up feeling like failures. Of course they will follow whoever tells them they deserve better.

Soooo maybe I'm full of shit, I actually don't know. I grew up in the 90s, which was a different planet, and I'm just trying to be reasonable.

[-] JohnDoe@lemmy.myserv.one 4 points 9 months ago

i think the cool stuff the suffragettes did would be labeled way more negatively now. the civil disobedience was rad.

[-] CliveRosfield@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I really dislike the way you’re portraying feminism as a brand and trying to assign responsibility onto individuals for the public perception of that brand

Feminism is a brand in the same way civil rights are. There's a reason why MLK succeeded where Malcolm X failed, Gandhi successfully took back India, Obama won the 2008 election, etc. This all has to do with how they're perceived to people not part of their movement. Without a good brand none of these movements would have ever succeeded. And yes it is up to the leaders and each individual member of these movements to uphold a generally good perception. Thinking otherwise is ridiculous. You have to win over the population, always.

It’s not the responsibility of any woman to convince men that they deserve rights, that they deserve fair political power and representation. If someone is dissuaded from supporting women’s rights because someone said something they didn’t like or agree with, that person is a misogynist and unlikely to have ever actually supported women’s rights in any meaningful capacity.

In an ideal world no, but we are not in an ideal world. If someone is a mysgonist what is so wrong with sitting down with them and discussing topics like normal human beings and showing them why that's wrong? Just completely shutting them out like how you're describing is exactly how you embolden an opposition group. Imagine someone on twitter was actually just simple minded and based their opinions on one tweet and didn't actually hear the other side properly? A lot of people like that exist. And if your attitude is "oh they're misogynistic and never cared so I shouldn't even bother" then you're just digging your own hole.

The caricature of the “crazy feminist” is also in and of itself misogynistic, and is used to silence feminist activism all the time. Not that there aren’t legitimate extremist parts to the movement, particularly in the 60s 70s and 80s when feminism had yet to make many major strides towards female liberation. Just that the label is often used to dismiss things like the pink tax, the wage gap, and discussions of rape culture and intersectionality.

See what I, and I'm sure many others dislike is the way you derive misogyny from a simple example. A lot of people simply don't see anything wrong with calling out the "crazies" of a group. Am I islamaphobic for calling out terrorists? No. Am I anti-christian for calling out the Westboro Baptist church? No. Am I misogynistic for making fun of clearly unhinged people on twitter? No. Extreme examples of course, but you get the picture. The instant jump to misogyny when genuinely crazy, unhinged, insane feminists get made fun of is ridiculous. Like I said, >99% of feminists are completely normal and sane. There is nothing wrong or hateful for calling out the crazy people in any group.

[-] LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 9 months ago

Studies have shown for 50 years now that trying to convince a bigot to stop being a bigot is literally not possible. You cannot force someone to stop being bigoted. You can't convince them women should be able to divorce their husbands if they already believe that women shouldn't be able to.

We gain nothing by even speaking with them, literally nothing. MLK didn't just by himself win the civil rights movement, first of all. Nor did he come after Malcolm X or something. They were both a part of the same movement at the same time. The most effective tactics he employed had nothing to do with appealing to the humanity of white supremacist segregationists. The most effective tactics employed were the ones that broadcast injustice to the entire black community, promoting solidarity and resulting in widespread demonstrations, protests, and both passive and active civil unrest. MLK did not call for white saviors to come save them. He fought actively against the system that upheld white supremacy. He appealed to those who already believed that black people should have rights by broadcasting injustice that was self-evidently wrong.

Gays didn't get rights by begging at the feet of homophobes. We got rights by throwing bricks at them. We got rights by rioting, causing unrest and disrupting the homophobic as much as possible. We wouldn't be here if black drag queens in the 60s hadn't punched back.

[-] CliveRosfield@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

The other poster beat me to it but I was going to also cite Daryl Davis as an example. If a black person is able to get Ku Klux Klan members to change their ways then anything is possible. You having a defeatist attitude is what keeps this status quo going.

[-] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

Studies have shown for 50 years now that trying to convince a bigot to stop being a bigot is literally not possible. You cannot force someone to stop being bigoted.

Daryl Davis would disagree with you.

[-] JohnDoe@lemmy.myserv.one 2 points 9 months ago

i think the notion of 'convincing' is the issue. it really needs to be done by men, it's not as though what women are saying is factually incorrect or the content is off, it's often the opposite i find. when i say what women or feminists i respect say i always seem to get a better response than if a woman said it or the original author said it.

it's such a shame, there's already a ton of work done by a sizeable proportion of the population and it's ignored or misconstrued :/

this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
577 points (94.0% liked)

News

23310 readers
3728 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS