[ 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.
There exists a persistent stubborn refusal to allow women to discuss the way that discrimination against us is gendered in society. It's part of the control politics of patriarchy and neoliberal meritocracy. They will deny deny deny as much and as frequently as possible that women are a separate class from them in society. Instead, they will insist that women deserve or have earned the treatment we receive. Society has to be meritocratic in their view, so if women get prescribed pain medication provably less often, then it's because something about women means we deserve/require it less than men do. This is the same with wages. The same is true with household labor, with child rearing, with sexual violence, etc. "Women are paid less because they take more time off and are less career oriented, they prefer doing household labor more than men do, they have a motherly instinct that drives them to care for children more than men do, and men are predisposed in some biological way to commit more acts of sexual violence than women are."
It is a fundamental refusal to acknowledge the existence of gender class. A persistent denial that men and women have fundamentally different experiences in every area of society. It has to be something about the actions of women or something innate about women themselves. It absolutely can not be a product of how women are classed in society. This thinking is poisonous and not restricted to one group, it is pervasive and exists everywhere. Much like with racism, being actively anti racist means engaging with your own internalized racial biases. Being feminist isn't one single thought or belief. It is a pattern of continual appraisal of the systems of gender hierarchy. Many men who believe themselves to be feminists misunderstand this and think simply saying they believe men and women ought to be treated as equals is enough to qualify them as pro womens liberation. Men and women are distinct social classes, and so ought to be analyzed and treated in the same manner as other social classes (like race, wealth, religion, etc)
So the logical thing for men to do, not believing that men and women are entirely distinct social classes who have entirely separate experiences in society, is to bring up their own experiences. If we say that the way we suffer is gendered and unique, they have to experience the same thing or worse. One of the easiest ways for them to do this is to insist that men and women receive equal barriers within society. "It can't be gendered violence against women because men are assaulted by other men very often too." Just deny as much and as often as possible that a difference exists at all.
I also share your frustration with this platform and its stubborn and persistent misogyny. I have spent as much time on here arguing with fascists and misogynists. Lemmy has a large population of male tech workers. They brought a lot of their misogyny with them from other platforms.
This is an excellent comment that I wish I had time and brain to reply more substantially to. In lieu of that, please accept this comment saying that I appreciate you