[ This is women-only community. If you do not identify as a woman, please do not comment. Thank you. ]
It absolutely upsets me is that when I bring up women's issues, I often get met with "Men experience that, too!", and that takes away from the attention an issue needs.
This is not me playing to win the "victim olympics", I'm just saying that men really need to listen and realize how exactly women are being treated in these scenarios and why they feel it needs to be brought to attention.
Example: medical discrimination / not having your health being taken seriously as a woman. Do men experience it? Sure! But men absolutely DO NOT experience this in the same way/volume that women do.
Did you know that many clinics will not allow you to get a hysterectomy or your tubed tied without the permission of your spouse? If you are single, they may refuse altogether because "what if your partner wants kids someday?" A HYPOTHETICAL MAN HAS MORE POWER OVER YOUR BODY THAN YOU DO!!!!
Pain being dismissed as "hysterics". Being constantly told that any medical symptoms you are experiencing are a result of """anxiety""". Dismissive of painful menstruation and/or pregnancy, because "woman have been doing this for thousands of years!" Refusing autism diagnosis because "it's not typically a girl thing".. I could go on.
This is not limited to experiences within the medical field. It's.... loooots of things.
Like, fuck.. it's okay to not understand the experience of others. It's like when I hear folks say "Everyone is a little bit OCD! Everyone experiences that sometimes!" like...... no??? Absolutely fucking not, you have no idea what OCD is like, and you're being an insensitive idiot by saying "eVeRyOnEs A lITtLe BiT—" NO THEY'RE FUCKING NOT!
Men face their own issues. Sometimes men's & women's issues overlap. Sometimes there's a little overlap, but women face a much greater degree of fuckery over the issue than men do, and vice versa. That's okay. Just don't invalidate that it may be a larger issue for women than it may be for men.
That's all.
Thanks for posting this!
As a cis man I have to admit I always enjoy it when experiences of women are put in the spotlight in discussions. I think if we keep our ears open and listen empathically we can learn how to do better and the knee-jerk reaction of: „But men also suffer!“ Always feels so weird because I think why isn’t our reaction: „God this really is happening to all of us, let’s finally combat it!“
Thanks for bringing the topic up and I hope future discussions will not be met with such a barrage of trolling and opposition. Thanks for the moderation as well.
I think I also wanna highlight that WHEN we listen we also hear that the demands and wishes being proposed by women especially in a health setting are not only totally achievable and doable but would also improve service for EVERYONE. So there is also a lot of good stuff to gain from listening and acting on it.
Thanks valentinesmith we really appreciate your support! I've been blown away by how supportive kind men like you have been. Just fyi it's a women's only community so please don't comment again (although I know you were only commenting to have our backs)
Along these lines, I find it so frustrating when people go "but men also suffer", because so often, they're people who care more about being anti-women/anti-feminist than actually discussing and advocating for men's issues. For context, I'm a woman who considers men's issues to be a super important component of my anti-patriarchy stance, but naturally, I have far less understanding and perspective on those issues than I do on women's issues; when discourse is dominated by bad faith opposition by men, it makes it harder for people to learn about perspectives outside of their direct, lived experiences. It makes me so angry because these people are also the ones who like to go "feminists don't care about men!"