While this is true, it’s also true that pendulum swings can go further in the opposite direction than equality.
While a trite example, in the recent Barbie film, at the end when things are going back to the seemingly good way, the men in Barbieland ask if they can have a seat on the supreme court and are told no, which is then explained as Barbieland being a mirror to the real world such that as there’s increased equality in the real world then equality for men in the mirror would increase.
Apparently the writers weren’t familiar with the fact there’s four women on the supreme court right now and a woman has been on the court since 1981 (around twice as close to the creation of Barbie than to the present day).
Even in the context of its justifiably imbalanced equality it failed to be proportionally imbalanced.
There’s interesting research around how the privileged underestimate the degree to which the good things that happen to them are because of privilege, but that at the same time the underprivileged overestimate how often the bad things which happen are because of bias. In theory both are ego-preserving adaptations. But it also means that either side is going to have a difficult time correctly identifying equality from their relative subjective perspectives.
While you are welcome to your take, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and here’s the writer/director responding to that very scene:
Li: Speaking of those video clips, let’s talk more about the ending. Can you tell me about the decision to have the Barbies and Kens reach, not a definitive solution, but kind of a détente? President Barbie, played by Issa Rae, does not allow Ken a seat on the Supreme Court. They’re still figuring things out.
Gerwig: We’re all still figuring things out—that’s part of it. But the only thing I could ever give anyone is that they’re all still in the mess. Maybe it’s a little better for the Kens. You don’t want to tell people how to watch things, but at the end of the movie, the production design incorporates some of Ken’s fascinations into Barbie Land. Like, the perfection is not as beautiful as the thing that started blending everything together. I remember when we went to shoot the finale, when we all walked on set, we were like, This is the most beautiful it’s ever been.
It was a film about plastic dolls from a corporation trying to seem less like a big bad corporation. If you’re using the Barbie movie as evidence in an actual philosophical debate around other human beings having equal rights, you have bigger problems in life.
Do you like having rights? Probably.
Would other people like the same rights? Absolutely.
Do people who want rights deserve your ire because of a movie? Fuck no.
Well if your conclusion is that the pendulum could swing too far, my question would be, “Without actually letting go to find out, how do you know it’s a pendulum at all?” A movie isn’t going to give us the answer.
Sure things could go radically far and we end up in a matriarchal society, but not even trying to provide equal rights isn’t going to prevent radical change. It will force the hand of radical change, if history tells us anything.
If other people having rights is “targeted alienation”, then what should we call denying those people rights based on things they can’t control? Because that sounds like actual targeted alienation.
You’re straw manning here, that’s not what he said at all.
He’s referring to the knee jerk lesser treatment of men, because their men, because some other men have done bad shit. If you’re constantly grouped in with the worst of a group just for existing, of course you get sucked into that group.
If uplifting groups of oppressed people to an equal standard is alienating to you, then you are falling into the tolerance paradox, and you should probably stop that.
The gender pay gap is insignificant and inconsequential compared to the income differences between working and owning classes. Also, much of the pay gap is due to men culturally tending to not have the option of escaping the grindset. “Honey I’m going to quit my job and do something that doesn’t alienate me, yes it’s going to pay less” is not something universally accepted by wives.
Not really, since that’s just the same ill-defined “Earnings Gap” nonsense constantly peddled as a “wage gap” for decades. As this article from Forbes and the sources inside explain, and has been well-known for a decade at this point, “When comparing two people in the same profession, with the same seniority, working the same number of hours, and so forth, women earn $0.98 for every dollar that a man earns.”
Their source for that number has since updated that number to $0.99 for every dollar a man earns for the same work.
So, unless you think that women should be paid significantly more than men for the same work (which wouldn’t surprise me, given your other comments in this thread), Rejoice! for the “wage gap” is no more!
It should be dollar for dollar, don’t act like I have implied anything more. I’m done with this, as you missed my original point:
Giving everyone more doesn’t fix inequality.
In addition to being less likely than men to say they are currently the boss or a top manager at work, women are also more likely to say they wouldn’t want to be in this type of position in the future. More than four-in-ten employed women (46%) say this, compared with 37% of men. Similar shares of men (35%) and women (31%) say they are not currently the boss but would like to be one day. These patterns are similar among parents.
The wage gap exists because women have reasonable expectations for work-life balance (one reason). Men are culturally expected to rise and grind.
This isn’t the win that wage gap enthusiasts think it is. It’s essentially saying:
Still missing the point. Giving everyone more doesn’t fix inequality.
Giving those with less the means to exist doesn’t make what you have lesser.
The point you’ve made here seems to be, corporations are bad, everyone is exploited now, and if anyone wants to make money you have to give up your life to do so.
Also, the part of the paper you’ve cherry picked suits your narrative but doesn’t paint the entire picture.
being gay is more accepted. there’s also much less pressure to conform to masculine standards. e.g., being able to talk about feelings, expressing yourself in fashion/makeup, joining in traditionally feminine careers like nursing/teaching (both of which have exploded in the past 50 years). just to name a few
they also haven’t used the draft in 50 years
edit: striked through things are either factually incorrect (nursing) or more nuanced than my original comment implied (military draft)
there’s also much less pressure to conform to masculine standards. e.g., being able to talk about feelings
Not the wider experience. Men are still stigmatised for expressing themselves. Example: how often do men get to be emotionally vulnerable in a public setting compared to women?
joining in traditionally feminine careers like nursing/teaching
This is flat out wrong, it’s actually getting worse.
you’re right about the teachers thing, my apologies for getting things mixed up. from what i can see, i was right about the nursing thing though. here’s a source from columbia verifying that nursing has increased 10x since 1997: https://www.nursing.columbia.edu/news/many-more-men.
Not the wider experience. Men are still stigmatised for expressing themselves. Example: how often do men get to be emotionally vulnerable in a public setting compared to women?
my claim wasn’t that men are no longer stigmatized, i was only trying to suggest that it’s better now than it was before. there is still a long way to go.
That’s because there are enough men who are financially destitute, who sell their lives into the military. Don’t need a draft when there is enough blood money going around.
i agree with this point is general, but i think financial destitution is something that is on the rise for both men and women. you bring up a good point that the decrease in people getting drafted isn’t the win i originally thought it was, so i’ll take that off the list.
things like this made the original question a bit tricky to answer: i can think of many ways in which things have gotten better/worse for both men and women, but i can’t really think of ways in which things have gotten better/worse for men. i can think of a lot of ways things have gotten better for women though (and some ways things have gotten worse)
The fact that I can’t wear a skirt in public without facing backlash, but a woman wearing pants is seen as normal makes me feel like there is still a lot of progress we have to make. I guess it’s equivalent would be women going topless casually. I really hate conservative/puritan values.
Addressing men’s mental health. Normalizing therapy and talking about issues.
Promoting ideals and examples of healthy intimate relationships: communication, setting boundaries, etc.
Moving a way from the insecure, performative, fucked up version of “masculinity” – e.g. “I can’t wear pink, play with dolls with my kid, or bake because those things are feminine”.
Yeah, fuck men who want to wear blue and play with cars. Being a man isn’t allowed. Unless you accept feminization, you’re the enemy. No wonder men choose to vote for the bad guys, when the “good” side demand that they play a role as weak.
No, I’m not. Regardless, my point is that that list is making requirements on some men to be what they don’t want to be, to not be considered the enemy of the new left. Sure, some men would love to be allowed to wear pink, but some of us would hate to have to wear it. When you present the pink-wearing, baking, doll playing man as the one you welcome on your political “side”, you’re telling every man who doesn’t conform to that, that they’re not welcome. So they join the right, despite it being full of nazis. We don’t want to join the nazi side, but unlike you they don’t hate us for who we are.
Which of those issues are in place because men are oppressed as being inferior instead of being gender expectations that feminism targets? Meaning: which are a consequence of gender expectations?
High suicide rate is connected to men more likely to have access to guns and because they are less likely to go to a doctor because of gender expectations.
Loneliness is on the rise for everyone. Some studies find more loneliness in women. The idea of “the male loneliness epidemic” is meme that just generates tons of clicks and engagement. It’s not real.
For the work place it’s again a problem of gender expectations. It’s not because people see men as inferior.
So are the next three.
Men are actually more likely to get custody if they ask for it. You have fallen for a manosphere conspiracy theory that has no basis in reality. Women more often get custody because when both parents work, the men’s job is respected, the women’s isn’t. They get automatically assumed to be the caregiver because of gender expectations. The only thing a man has to do is literally ask for custody. On the other hand, a single mother who is expected to do the brunt of the caregiving, can’t force the father to take more time with the kids. Simply because of gender expectations.
Literally nobody said anything about “comfort women”, or that male loneliness even has anything to do with sexuality, for that matter.
One thing women could do to help is to stop demonizing and dismantling male-only spaces that provide men an opportunity for bonding and comradeship while hypocritically demanding more and more women-only spaces.
Ok, then stop making those ‘male only’ spaces places where women are employed as sex objects and men are excluding their female colleagues from networking whilst engaging in a bit of fun sexual harrassment.
No, these men need to communicate better with the women in their lives. They need to find and attend regular therapy. They need to practice safety regardless of their peers attitudes. They need to stand up for others rights, so we can all accommodate the burdens of life together. This list reads like a list of things men have imposed on other men from my perspective.
Ah yes, being a reasonable, empathetic member of society. “BoOtStRaPs!!1!”
I’m a depressed male, I have attended therapy, I have talked with those close to me, I have been in dark times, and I’m hella lonely. Being a fascist isn’t going to fix that, if history tells us anything, that’ll make it worse.
Why would anyone go for a worse option for themselves?
Because if everyone only voted for the things that benefit them, then it’s possible to end up in a situation that’s worse for everybody. If the majorities repeatedly votes for a small benefit to themselves and a large detriment to everyone else, this is basically guaranteed to happen. This is also why voting out of spite is a bad idea.
Example: Let’s examine a population consisting of 60% white people and 60% Christians, uncorrelated (so 36% white Christians, 24% nonwhite Christians, 24% white non-Christians, and 16% nonwhite non-Christians). This population is making two votes: one that will be Very Bad for nonwhites, and one that will be Very Bad for non-Christians, with a small benefit to white people or Christians respectively. Both will pass, which results in:
36% of the population (white Christians) gets two small benefits
48% of the population (white non-Christians and nonwhite Christians combined) gets a small benefit and something Very Bad for them
16% of the population (nonwhite non-Christians) gets two Very Bad results passed against them
So the overall result is negative for 64% of the population, despite everyone voting for their interests and everyone voting! This is because the legislation was more bad for the minority than it was good for the majority.
Bonus: I believe you can use this to prove that you can use a sequence of legislation to get into literally any position you want if everyone votes strictly for things that help them, and I saw a good YT video on that topic, but I can’t find it right now.
Only if the appropriate legislation is available to vote on. If the only legislation available is something that hurts you a little and helps someone else a lot, it may be in society’s best interest to vote for it. If you were in a culture that encouraged that, your actions would be repaid by others doing the same, eventually securing large gains for everyone. This is the opposite of my example above, but the math works out the same.
Essentially, there are situations in which the logical choice is to vote for something that hurts you, or to not vote for something that helps you. (Zero-sum-like situations are especially likely to have this occur.) Over a long period of time, what matters is how much each bill helps society overall, not how much it helps you in particular. (Yes, this stops working if the other groups won’t do the same for you.)
Let me get this straight, if you have food to survive, and someone else who doesn’t have food wants some food, not even your food, just some food, you need more food before they get any at all?
“When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
While this is true, it’s also true that pendulum swings can go further in the opposite direction than equality.
While a trite example, in the recent Barbie film, at the end when things are going back to the seemingly good way, the men in Barbieland ask if they can have a seat on the supreme court and are told no, which is then explained as Barbieland being a mirror to the real world such that as there’s increased equality in the real world then equality for men in the mirror would increase.
Apparently the writers weren’t familiar with the fact there’s four women on the supreme court right now and a woman has been on the court since 1981 (around twice as close to the creation of Barbie than to the present day).
Even in the context of its justifiably imbalanced equality it failed to be proportionally imbalanced.
There’s interesting research around how the privileged underestimate the degree to which the good things that happen to them are because of privilege, but that at the same time the underprivileged overestimate how often the bad things which happen are because of bias. In theory both are ego-preserving adaptations. But it also means that either side is going to have a difficult time correctly identifying equality from their relative subjective perspectives.
You mean self aware, hyperbolic satire?
They know there have been women on the supreme court. It was a reference to second wave feminism, and inverted because that was the joke.
While you are welcome to your take, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and here’s the writer/director responding to that very scene:
It was a film about plastic dolls from a corporation trying to seem less like a big bad corporation. If you’re using the Barbie movie as evidence in an actual philosophical debate around other human beings having equal rights, you have bigger problems in life.
Philosophy is all about finding meaning in common life, why shouldn’t we use the barbie movie?
Because pop culture corporate feminism isn’t actual meaningful feminism, it is an entirely different beast the serves to reinforce the patriarchy.
How does it do that?
By claiming to reject hierarchical sexism while reinforcing the structure of oppositional sexism.
Ok that’s reasonable
Do you like having rights? Probably. Would other people like the same rights? Absolutely. Do people who want rights deserve your ire because of a movie? Fuck no.
I wasn’t commenting on the conclusions, only the source of the analogy.
Well if your conclusion is that the pendulum could swing too far, my question would be, “Without actually letting go to find out, how do you know it’s a pendulum at all?” A movie isn’t going to give us the answer.
Sure things could go radically far and we end up in a matriarchal society, but not even trying to provide equal rights isn’t going to prevent radical change. It will force the hand of radical change, if history tells us anything.
It’s not my conclusion, I didn’t even read the original comment well enough to remember what they were arguing for. But I think I agree with you here.
Good old internet arguments. Glad we landed on an agreeable point. 👍
Nice quote. Won’t win over men who are shifting Right because of consistent targeted alienation in involvement from the Left
If other people having rights is “targeted alienation”, then what should we call denying those people rights based on things they can’t control? Because that sounds like actual targeted alienation.
You’re straw manning here, that’s not what he said at all.
He’s referring to the knee jerk lesser treatment of men, because their men, because some other men have done bad shit. If you’re constantly grouped in with the worst of a group just for existing, of course you get sucked into that group.
Hard to Strawman, a Slippery Slope. I was merely pointing out it’s a Slippery Slope without whipping out my Fallacies.
Read my comment again, slowly. What does “alienation in involvement” mean?
If uplifting groups of oppressed people to an equal standard is alienating to you, then you are falling into the tolerance paradox, and you should probably stop that.
Correct. Why would anyone go for a worse option for themselves?
Edit: A benefit to one group does not mean a detriment to others. This is not a zero sum game.
The funny thing is that the left could offer so many things for men:
All of which are mostly men issues.
Is it really worse? Or does it just hurt your feels when women can decide something on their own?
Why not both? Benefit to women, and benefit to men.
This isn’t a zero sum game.
You’re not wrong, but the wage gap? Not going to close if we give everyone a raise. It would be the same wage gap.
The gender pay gap is insignificant and inconsequential compared to the income differences between working and owning classes. Also, much of the pay gap is due to men culturally tending to not have the option of escaping the grindset. “Honey I’m going to quit my job and do something that doesn’t alienate me, yes it’s going to pay less” is not something universally accepted by wives.
I’m pretty sure that by this point most reasonable people have realized that the wage gap is a myth, so that’s probably not your best example.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/03/01/gender-pay-gap-facts/
https://www.allsides.com/news-source/pew-research
A study and a bias check on the source from the study. Happy?
Not really, since that’s just the same ill-defined “Earnings Gap” nonsense constantly peddled as a “wage gap” for decades. As this article from Forbes and the sources inside explain, and has been well-known for a decade at this point, “When comparing two people in the same profession, with the same seniority, working the same number of hours, and so forth, women earn $0.98 for every dollar that a man earns.”
Their source for that number has since updated that number to $0.99 for every dollar a man earns for the same work.
So, unless you think that women should be paid significantly more than men for the same work (which wouldn’t surprise me, given your other comments in this thread), Rejoice! for the “wage gap” is no more!
It should be dollar for dollar, don’t act like I have implied anything more. I’m done with this, as you missed my original point: Giving everyone more doesn’t fix inequality.
The wage gap exists because women have reasonable expectations for work-life balance (one reason). Men are culturally expected to rise and grind.
This isn’t the win that wage gap enthusiasts think it is. It’s essentially saying:
Still missing the point. Giving everyone more doesn’t fix inequality.
Giving those with less the means to exist doesn’t make what you have lesser.
The point you’ve made here seems to be, corporations are bad, everyone is exploited now, and if anyone wants to make money you have to give up your life to do so.
Also, the part of the paper you’ve cherry picked suits your narrative but doesn’t paint the entire picture.
Name one thing thats gotten better for men in 50 years.
being gay is more accepted. there’s also much less pressure to conform to masculine standards. e.g., being able to talk about feelings, expressing yourself in fashion/makeup, joining in traditionally feminine careers like
nursing/teaching (both of which have exploded in the past 50 years). just to name a fewthey also haven’t used the draft in 50 yearsedit: striked through things are either factually incorrect (nursing) or more nuanced than my original comment implied (military draft)
Fair. A win for all.
Not the wider experience. Men are still stigmatised for expressing themselves. Example: how often do men get to be emotionally vulnerable in a public setting compared to women?
This is flat out wrong, it’s actually getting worse.
https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/gender-equality-and-through-teaching-profession
Sex ratios in healthcare occupations: population based study.
That’s because there are enough men who are financially destitute, who sell their lives into the military.
Don’t need a draft when there is enough blood money going around.
you’re right about the teachers thing, my apologies for getting things mixed up. from what i can see, i was right about the nursing thing though. here’s a source from columbia verifying that nursing has increased 10x since 1997: https://www.nursing.columbia.edu/news/many-more-men.
my claim wasn’t that men are no longer stigmatized, i was only trying to suggest that it’s better now than it was before. there is still a long way to go.
i agree with this point is general, but i think financial destitution is something that is on the rise for both men and women. you bring up a good point that the decrease in people getting drafted isn’t the win i originally thought it was, so i’ll take that off the list.
things like this made the original question a bit tricky to answer: i can think of many ways in which things have gotten better/worse for both men and women, but i can’t really think of ways in which things have gotten better/worse for men. i can think of a lot of ways things have gotten better for women though (and some ways things have gotten worse)
The fact that I can’t wear a skirt in public without facing backlash, but a woman wearing pants is seen as normal makes me feel like there is still a lot of progress we have to make. I guess it’s equivalent would be women going topless casually. I really hate conservative/puritan values.
Here’s 3.
Yeah, fuck men who want to wear blue and play with cars. Being a man isn’t allowed. Unless you accept feminization, you’re the enemy. No wonder men choose to vote for the bad guys, when the “good” side demand that they play a role as weak.
Your problem is thinking that wearing blue is masculine and baking is feminine. Neither of those things are weak either.
No, I’m not. Regardless, my point is that that list is making requirements on some men to be what they don’t want to be, to not be considered the enemy of the new left. Sure, some men would love to be allowed to wear pink, but some of us would hate to have to wear it. When you present the pink-wearing, baking, doll playing man as the one you welcome on your political “side”, you’re telling every man who doesn’t conform to that, that they’re not welcome. So they join the right, despite it being full of nazis. We don’t want to join the nazi side, but unlike you they don’t hate us for who we are.
No
Im sorry but if the nazis dont hate you for who you are then who are you? Because they hate everyone who isn’t them.
… Yeah, nobody outside of a minority of crazies are saying those things.
Why do things need to get better for men? Things have been pretty excellent for men for a very very long time.
Pretty excellent, aye? These men just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Which of those issues are in place because men are oppressed as being inferior instead of being gender expectations that feminism targets? Meaning: which are a consequence of gender expectations?
High suicide rate is connected to men more likely to have access to guns and because they are less likely to go to a doctor because of gender expectations.
Loneliness is on the rise for everyone. Some studies find more loneliness in women. The idea of “the male loneliness epidemic” is meme that just generates tons of clicks and engagement. It’s not real.
For the work place it’s again a problem of gender expectations. It’s not because people see men as inferior.
So are the next three.
Men are actually more likely to get custody if they ask for it. You have fallen for a manosphere conspiracy theory that has no basis in reality. Women more often get custody because when both parents work, the men’s job is respected, the women’s isn’t. They get automatically assumed to be the caregiver because of gender expectations. The only thing a man has to do is literally ask for custody. On the other hand, a single mother who is expected to do the brunt of the caregiving, can’t force the father to take more time with the kids. Simply because of gender expectations.
High male suicide rates happen even without access to guns.
Show me your receipts.
You don’t think it’s internal drivers? That man are driven to perform internally and externally?
And how should women help with male loneliness? Do you want a comfort woman assigned to you? Noone is entitled to a relationship.
I wasn’t insinuating that women should help with male loneliness. I don’t think women have the answer here.
Literally nobody said anything about “comfort women”, or that male loneliness even has anything to do with sexuality, for that matter.
One thing women could do to help is to stop demonizing and dismantling male-only spaces that provide men an opportunity for bonding and comradeship while hypocritically demanding more and more women-only spaces.
Ok, then stop making those ‘male only’ spaces places where women are employed as sex objects and men are excluding their female colleagues from networking whilst engaging in a bit of fun sexual harrassment.
No, these men need to communicate better with the women in their lives. They need to find and attend regular therapy. They need to practice safety regardless of their peers attitudes. They need to stand up for others rights, so we can all accommodate the burdens of life together. This list reads like a list of things men have imposed on other men from my perspective.
There’s those bootstraps I was talking about.
Ah yes, being a reasonable, empathetic member of society. “BoOtStRaPs!!1!”
I’m a depressed male, I have attended therapy, I have talked with those close to me, I have been in dark times, and I’m hella lonely. Being a fascist isn’t going to fix that, if history tells us anything, that’ll make it worse.
Because if everyone only voted for the things that benefit them, then it’s possible to end up in a situation that’s worse for everybody. If the majorities repeatedly votes for a small benefit to themselves and a large detriment to everyone else, this is basically guaranteed to happen. This is also why voting out of spite is a bad idea.
Example: Let’s examine a population consisting of 60% white people and 60% Christians, uncorrelated (so 36% white Christians, 24% nonwhite Christians, 24% white non-Christians, and 16% nonwhite non-Christians). This population is making two votes: one that will be Very Bad for nonwhites, and one that will be Very Bad for non-Christians, with a small benefit to white people or Christians respectively. Both will pass, which results in:
36% of the population (white Christians) gets two small benefits
48% of the population (white non-Christians and nonwhite Christians combined) gets a small benefit and something Very Bad for them
16% of the population (nonwhite non-Christians) gets two Very Bad results passed against them
So the overall result is negative for 64% of the population, despite everyone voting for their interests and everyone voting! This is because the legislation was more bad for the minority than it was good for the majority.
Bonus: I believe you can use this to prove that you can use a sequence of legislation to get into literally any position you want if everyone votes strictly for things that help them, and I saw a good YT video on that topic, but I can’t find it right now.
I never argued for this. It is possible to vote in a commensalistic manner.
Only if the appropriate legislation is available to vote on. If the only legislation available is something that hurts you a little and helps someone else a lot, it may be in society’s best interest to vote for it. If you were in a culture that encouraged that, your actions would be repaid by others doing the same, eventually securing large gains for everyone. This is the opposite of my example above, but the math works out the same.
Essentially, there are situations in which the logical choice is to vote for something that hurts you, or to not vote for something that helps you. (Zero-sum-like situations are especially likely to have this occur.) Over a long period of time, what matters is how much each bill helps society overall, not how much it helps you in particular. (Yes, this stops working if the other groups won’t do the same for you.)
So we should just let ‘minorities’ suffer? The term appeasement comes to mind, as I don’t know what else you could be advocating here.
Why not both? Benefit to minorities and benefit to majorities.
This isn’t a zero sum game.
Let me get this straight, if you have food to survive, and someone else who doesn’t have food wants some food, not even your food, just some food, you need more food before they get any at all?
Did … did you even read my post? What is going on?
Let me re-write it using your analogy.
Everyone should have food, my point is, the majority shouldn’t get extra food just because the minority are getting enough food now.