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this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
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Men's Liberation
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Recommended Reading
- The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, And Love by bell hooks
- Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements by Michael Messner
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This was originally a reply to a comment but I thought it’s important enough to reply to the post too:
The issue isn’t masculinity or how it can be toxic (to even suggest it is insulting imo).
The issue is:
Society does not value men!!!
That’s it, it’s not complicated at all. It’s not this weird problem with masculinity.
Society does not value men inherently like women (as in for just existing), it values the benefit they can provide.
This has been the case in all of human history. The difference now is that we no longer prepare most/all men to be able to provide the most value they can.
I always thought the solution was to value men inherently too. But that means saying a “you go bro” to incels and other “low value” men.
The best way I've heard it put is that society values women for what they are, and values men for what they do. This is bad for everyone, of course, but it's how things have worked.
That’s a good way to put it.
It’s also what I meant by women being valued inherently.
It’s like conditional love vs unconditional love, they are VERY different.
I’m not sure I agree with that. Society values women for all the wrong reasons (sexual objects, something to be controlled, etc). Men are valued for the wrong reasons too (physical prowess, etc).
Well I’m not claiming that women are or are not valued for the wrong reasons, just that they are not mainly valued for the benefits they provide but men are.
I’m saying men being valued for the benefit they provide without support is why there is a lot of mental health issues today. And that what people call “toxic masculinity” is basically caused by this expectation that society puts on men.
Society doesn't value people. This applies close to equally for all cis people at least. If you look at the statistics of who makes money (which is normally attributed to value), it values men a little more. (Modern capitalist) society stomps over all individuals though. The individual does not matter except for the wealth that can be extracted from them.
This makes me think you're not talking about society valuing women, and instead the value women put on their friends (in movies and other media, which isn't always how it works). If your friends put you down instead of lifting you up, that's an issue with your friends, not society. I know my (male) friends (mostly male) generally lift me up. This is an issue you can solve. Either dump your bad friends or encourage the behavior you want to see out of them be doing it yourself.
Since when have we inherently valued women? Since they received the right to vote, maybe when they were allowed to have credit cards without a man's permission?
How exactly are we defining value here? I just don't see any appreciation of value being shown that isn't directly related to maintaining a hierarchy of relations based on what's between your legs and what you do with it.
If society inherently valued women I would think they would have more to show for it.
Value women as in having more women’s shelters, having more support systems for women. Or even things like more scholarships for women.
Usually men have to provide value to get support.
But those are direct reactions to women lacking opportunities in those specific fields.