How does Feminism Intersect with Men’s Rights?
Do feminists want to suppress men?
You’re a feminist? Don’t you care about men’s rights?
You’re a man, and a feminist? Only women can be feminists.
How can you expect to be a feminist when you can’t understand what women go through?
Please note that in this article, I make several generalizations and comments about what “feminists,” “non-feminists,” women, and men believe. Obviously, I do not speak for everyone’s experiences, so know that what I say may not be true to what everyone in these groups believes.
Feminism Exists for Women AND Men
It’s true. While most of the popular media surrounding feminism mainly focuses on women’s experiences and how to reduce women’s inequities in society, there are many ways that feminists work to make life better for men as well.
- Toxic masculinity affects women as well as men. As a gay man, there are many times that I’ve had to face stereotypes like “men shouldn’t be feminine,” “men can’t wear makeup,” “men can’t cry.” While it may seem that feminists only care about women, in reality they spend lots of time working to make men’s lives better too.
- Body positivity has popularized the dad bod. On social media it is more common to hear about how feminists want to make it more acceptable to have bodies of all types for women, but they’ve done the same for men. Are you telling me you’ve never heard how popular the “dad bod” is these days?
- Feminism works to improve education for all. You hear that feminists want to improve sex-education in schools, or make stem courses more welcoming to girls, but these things help boys as well. Preparing boys to practice safe and enjoyable sex is obviously beneficial to them, and opening stem to women provides men with more perspectives, giving them a more rounded education.
- Men need birth control too. By helping spread access to birth control — for men as well as women — it helps men too. If they don’t want to have children at that point in their lives, birth control or abstinence is essential.
- Judges now give fairer consideration in divorces and child custody hearings. It was common for men to get the short end of the stick in these cases, having to give large sums of alimony and child support when it wasn’t always necessary. Not only that, men are getting more consideration while obtaining full custody of their children, rather than judges always siding with the mother.
- Feminists want to abolish the wage gap. Whether or not you “believe” that it exists — it does — I will not go into that in this article. By giving women fair wages compared to men who do the same jobs, women will have higher morale, productivity, and overall happiness in life. If I have to explain how this helps men, I worry about the future of humanity.
- They’ve taught consent for people of all genders. Men don’t want sex all the time, and they don’t want it with anyone either. Feminists have increased the discussion surrounding consent and how to obtain it for all parties present.
- And more. It is clear that non-feminists’ worries that “feminists will take away men’s rights” are unfounded.
Dismantling the Patriarchy
The world was built for men. And although not as many people actively work to suppress women now as in the past, those inequalities still shine through today. For society to have any progress, it is vital that we take action to reduce the gap between the genders, socially, economically, and politically.
So-Called “Feminists” who Hate Men
We don’t claim them. They aren’t really feminists. They’re misandrists. They’re a loud, small population of people that only call themselves feminists, while they actually go against the very definition of feminism — equality between all genders. Click the above link for more information about how Merriam-Webster defines feminism.
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