Reddit reviews Men and Feminism: Seal Studies

WELCOME! For a fantastic introduction to feminism aimed at an audience of men, check out Shira Tarrant's Men in Feminism. It's wonderfully accessible, quick, and easy to read. Here it is at Amazon. Used copies for under $3! http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1580052584/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

Hold up, I think you're completely misreading my point.

>It protects me as a man in a shitton of things.

Of course it does, that doesn't make it an egalitarian movement though.

>The system is based on woman being submissed to men and men following a gender role of authority, competition, being mainly. They are countering that, for equality of relations.

Kind of, I think your summation of gender roles isn't the best, but yeah. I agree with the general point that men have a masculine role they're supposed to play, and women have a feminine role they're supposed to play. In most cases feminism challenges that or at least advocates for the freedom to choose what role you want.

The thing is that they're only kind of countering it. Feminism only counters sexism that negatively affects women. I don't think you're going to see a largely feminist campaign supporting putting more women in prison or giving women harsher sentences. In fact, the "Stop Violence Against Women" campaign was largely feminist supported, even though the vast majority of victims of violence are male, and, more importantly, the sexist standard that feminism initially challenged in the 1800s was advocating exactly the same thing. A lot of people get the idea that sexism was always "women are worse, men are better" when in reality the kinds of sexism that the initial feminist movements meant to challenge were more along the lines of "women are dainty, men are strong" which again, sounds similar, but isn't the same.

>Besides it's called feminism because they were the only ones defending these ideas for a shitton of time. The name was created because men didn't defend the cause until very recently.

It's understandable that you would think that, but it's factually incorrect, very significant quantities of men have supported the feminist movement since the very beginning.

>If a name called feminism offends you, you should rethink your worldview.

That's not at all what I'm saying. I was never against feminism, I'm saying it's not egalitarian, because it isn't.

Okay! So I have done some digging. And apparently, it takes a lot more digging than I realized. My local library has almost no progressive feminist books and actually no masculinist works. I was disappointed.

However, I was able to find a few books by snooping online that I believe fit the bill of "remotely not pitting masculinism and feminism against each other." I am not positing that they are things that you would necessarily like if you read; I haven't even read them myself. But they appear to be a step in the right direction.

• Men and Feminism by Shira Tarrant. She also wrote Men Speak Out, which looks like it would be an interesting read.
  
• The Gender Knot: Unraveling our patriarchal legacy by Allan Johnson. I don't know much about this work except from a summary found here:
  
  >A powerful approach to gender inequality that empowers both men and women to be part of the solution instead of just part of the problem. We are all living with an oppressive gender legacy called patriarchy. (...) He explains what it's got to go with each of us and reveals how both men and women can see themselves as part of the process of change toward something better (not matriarchy). (...)
  
  
• Ceasefire! Why women and men must join forces to achieve true equality by Cathy Young.
  
  Hopefully that's enough to answer your question. I'm sorry that I didn't find more; they are hard to find, and I have trouble sifting through things.

I'm in the UK, so I guess I could feel rather possessive of git :)

While I know the meanings of these terms, I don't feel that a move to ban them, or discourage their use prehaps, would be wise. As always, the use of language is very context dependant; I would prefer to let each individual evaluate the situation. That's why I don't like the more general statements about insults; I'm more interested in the reasoning behind why x is bad, and the issues surrounding it.

The fact that people get upset about this on reddit annoys me. Had someone say attacked me for using a male pronoun (for example) in one of the comments in this discussion, it would quite clearly be an ad hominem attack. I guess I should mention that I fit all the reddit stereotypes: young white male with an interest in programming :P I've only just started investigating feminism and its surrounding issues properly. I don't suppose you know of any good books? I was thinking of getting Men and Feminism but beyond that, I can't find a SRS reading list :)