@Eaglebauer Said
First, just to get this out of the way, I'm not paring down your post to be a jerk...just cutting some of it out to address the points I mean to address...
I actually agree completely with this statement...THIS is toxic masculinity. It's not "male thought," it's not every time a man disagrees with a woman, it's not men trying to get a promotion at work, it's not men wanting to provide for a family...
It IS men being chauvinistic and taking an attitude toward women that is unhealthy and not supported in any fact. And it's wrong...unfair..indefensible. But I would add the caveat that it's also not nearly as ubiquitous as it once was and that men by and large these days are (correctly) adopting a more egalitarian view along gender lines. Sure, we still have a lot of work to do as men, but I do think we are moving in the right direction and I think that men of my generation and the ones that follow are much more respectful of women as human beings than the generations that we came from.
That last sentence is key: Increasingly, women don't put up with it and increasingly, the situations where they are expected to are dwindling. Thankfully. It's the good fight that most women (not feminazis...but women who believe in the spirit of old school feminism...equality not inequality on both sides) are fighting....and that men should be fighting along side them.
That is my solid stance on the gender issue: that it should not be men against women or women against men...it ought to be men and women working in concert toward a goal of equality.
I'll add another caveat that it's not resented by "Men" with a capital "M." It's resented by chauvinists, who are becoming fewer in number and being outed for the bigotry they promote. And those men who go full ignorance and automatically label women who mention a word about equality as "feminazis" do not represent me as a man and honestly, I don't think ought to represent manhood in general.
Real men care about women as people and respect them. And more and more in modern times, we are overtaking chauvinists both in number and in voice. We fight bigotry on both sides.
Thanks for posting.
You're welcome. I quite agree with your assessment. Thanks for seeing it in the right light.
No, I don't think it is
all men who behave in this way, and yes, the numbers who do are dwindling generation by generation.
I don't think any woman avidly seeks confrontation on gender issues for the sake of it. Conflict is forced upon us. Perhaps Shakespeare summed up being forced into unwilling conflict very well:
"We would not seek a battle as we are, but as we are, I say we will not shun it."
Won't it be a great day when all the refuges and shelters close for good..? Won't it be a great day when Mrs Smith doesn't get a black eye from "walking into a door"... every Saturday night... Won't it be a great day when candidates for jobs are chosen on purely merit, not on gender..? And their labour is considered to have equal value.
It's a cause worth campaigning for and we DO appreciate the support of those men who stand up and be counted among us.
When celebrities like Benedict Cumberbatch wore the tee shirt it sent out a strong message that was picked up on by many. For a time a lot of men wore these shirts and they had an effect.
Unfortunately, as the momentum started to build, extremist right wing newspapers here, particularly the Daily Mail, set out to denigrate the campaign by presenting a false headline that these shirts were being made in sweat shops by impoverished workers, which did a lot to kill the campaign:
The focus was placed upon (falsely alleged) exploitation of migrant workers.... as if the fanatically Brexit supporting Daily Mail ever gave a s*** about migrants...!!
Complaints to the Press Commission forced them to retract the story... which they did at the bottom of page 25 in very small point, beneath the sodoku puzzles some weeks later.
Needless to say, sales of the shirts slumped and politicians like Ed Milliband and Harriet Harman stopped wearing them.
This is the kind of opposition feminism faces.
Overcoming sexism is an uphill battle that we'd rather not have to fight. But we will.
Oh and by the way.... those tee shirts never did cost £45. Amanda and I bought ours for a fiver..!!