In response to Skyla's post "Feminism vs. Masculinism" (12/2/2012):
I think that both feminism and masculinism (or masculism) are unfortunately biased. Feminism, as determined by its linguistic roots and the actions and views of the majority of feminists, focuses on fixing social issues by granting women more rights, so that they will not have less rights than men in any area. However, feminism neglects areas in which men are less privileged than women, such as in cases of criminal law, child custody, and sexual assault prevention. Masculism (contrary to what Skyla says in her article; she may have unknowingly gone to a radical site and obtained misleading information) focuses on remedying the ways in which men have less rights than women - including, but not limited to, the areas I mentioned above. However, it does nothing about areas in which women are less privileged than men.
Thus, I believe that both views are severely lacking. Both labels, in addition, are tainted by their linkage to significant numbers of radicals - radical feminists who believe that men have no problems (or deserve the ones which they do have), are evil and inferior to women, and as such must be reduced to a lesser state in society, and radical masculists who believe that women are taking over the world, or that the misogynistic culture of the American past was the ideal society. Some people attempt to compensate for the lacking areas in both feminism and masculism by identifying with both labels, but this ignores the existence of people outside the gender binary, such as agendered, androgynous, or genderqueer individuals. These obvious deficiencies in feminism and masculism are why I choose to identify as a gender egalitarian.
Contrary to your comment about my research abilities or lack thereof, I located the definition of masculinism and feminism from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which I believe to be credible.
ReplyDeleteDefinition of MASCULINIST:
: an advocate of male superiority or dominance.
First Known Use of MASCULINIST: 1918
Definition of FEMINISM
: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.
First Known Use of FEMINISM: 1895.
I am sorry if you feel like I am impugning your research abilities, but I feel it would be unethical of me to leave misinformation uncorrected online, and the definition which you found is not the one in common use today. As you noted, the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary definition is from 1918. In modern times, a 'masculinist' (as defined by the Oxford Online dictionary) is 'an advocate of the needs or rights of men.' Many contemporary feminists also identify as masculinists. While the Merriam-Webster is certainly a credible source, the Oxford is at least equally credible, and its definition is both more recent and much closer to the contemporary usage of the term in question in online forums and offline political discussions. It is true that in the past, masculinism did refer to a sort of anti-feminism, but that is no longer the case. Again, I mean no insult to your research abilities, but one source, no matter how credible, seems to me less reliable than multiple sources, at least some of which are no less reliable than the one you cited - and I do not think that correcting an incorrect use of a term was at all wrong of me.
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DeleteMasculinism and feminism suffer from the same problem it seems. The definition of words can often say largely different things than the reality of a group practices. The reality is that feminism and masculinism means different things to different people. Avery has been pointing that out in his posts - he notes that some people call themselves feminists and fight for true equal rights. He also notes that some feminists advocate only for women's rights and could care less about men's rights. He also noted that there are radical masculinists.
DeleteI think Avery was in his place to comment and suggest another definition that people have been using as of late. He's providing a holistic approach noting that both groups have goods and bads, radicals and non-radicals. Regardless of your intent, understanding, and subjective opinion, you definitely painted with a broad brush, for the entire internet to see, when you said "while both groups understand that gender inequalities exist, feminism focuses on equating women to men and masculinism seeks to keep men as the dominate group in society." This statement is largely biased in that it ignores radical feminists who don't focus on equating women and men, and it ignores masculinists who believe the best way to achieve gender equality is to equally focus on both rather than trying only to move men up. It's promoting feminism and degrading masculinism in a way that is unjustified and not consistently true. Both groups include people who are genuinely for equality and people who genuinely believe that one sex is better. Gender equality should be less about names of groups and more about the ideas. Generalizing one group as entirely bad is no way to achieve true equality.
Views and experiences may be subjective, and a blog is a place to state those things, but knowledge is not subjective, and experiences help to build knowledge. People can think whatever they want about anybody, but as soon as those thoughts translate to action, such as giving a biased view on a subject matter, their thoughts are no longer protected by subjectivity. People have every right to argue with someone if they spread biased information about feminism, saying that it is only bad. However, they have the same right in regards to everything else.
Wikipedia, which is not always the most accurate site (but is not always as awful as people make it out to be), gives Warren Farrell's (Ph. D in Political Science, and B.A. in Social Science) definition of masculinism, which is largely positive and also focuses on women's rights.
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ReplyDeleteI don't think it's entirely inappropriate to suggest that you may have gotten information from a (or many) radical masculinist site(s)/biased feminist sites because your statement lead to the impression that you had not found a single good masculinist. No matter how many hundred of thousands of sources one uses, if one finds one person, professional or otherwise, who serves contrary to all other sources, it is no longer appropriate to make a sweeping generalization for the entirety of a group.
DeleteLeaving alone sweeping generalizations that are objectively/empirically false, I think, is not a good thing. Imagine seeing someone post on the internet, for everyone to see, "I've not met a feminist who supports men's and non-binary people's rights, therefore all feminists only support women's rights" or "I have not met, talked to, or read about a homosexual woman, therefore there are no homosexual women." I think that you would be in the right to suggest that their experiences were inadequate to leave them with a realistic impression - some women are homosexual, and others are not; some feminists support equal rights across all genders, and others do not. Their views, regardless of how many sources they have used or how many years they have had those view, do not reflect the reality, and as soon they meet a homosexual women or a feminist who actually supports equal rights they cannot say that homosexual women, and equal rights supporting feminists do not exist, unless they pretend that the homosexual woman's and the feminist's experiences are invalid.
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