Isn't that what MRA is for?Originally Posted by xerxe
Roughly speaking, men are more competitive, and women are more cooperative. Men think hierarchically and women think horizontally. The "positive vision" for men offered by feminism is the idea that men can "step down" from the traditional masculine gender role and the "patriarchal" culture and society. They can be for example more egalitarian and cooperative in relationships and friendships, they can have a more balanced work-life-family balance, they can try to be more empathetic, pro-social, less violent and overly competitive, and so on.
Of course you could disagree that that is a "positive vision" for men, because you think that men should be more masculine and not less. For me, I find the fear of "declining masculinity" to be somewhat overblown and nonsensical. More cooperation and pro-social behavior can only be a good thing, not bad. I mean there are some positive aspects of masculinity, such as being more independent, and there are some negative aspects of femininity.
I think that the most disturbing trend is that they've somehow shifted the tide of the argument, and now believe that men are the "victims" or being "left out". I think that this is a knee-jerk reaction to the fear of being "replaced" or "erased", that women will somehow "take over" them, in the same way that supremacists fear that they'll be "replaced" by other races and immigrants.
If women are doing somewhat better than men in this modern society, because it favors social intelligence and not brute strength, and women are performing better than men on education on average, then honestly I don't know what to say. What is the positive vision for men, especially those that are struggling to "keep up" with women? Should they try to learn to be more like women, or should they keep on insisting their "masculinity"? I find it to be a hopeless case to lose.
The "traditional" masculine viewpoint is that men are the breadwinners, women stay at home, the "strict father figure" teach their children to be independent and how to survive in this world, while he expends most of his energy into work. The "feminine" viewpoint is more balanced, where both genders do their fair share of both domestic and regular work, while they expend all their energy equally into all aspects of work, life, family and relationships.
The gender stereotype of how men think is that they think things linearly, and women think laterally, and that seems to be expressed in how they tend to organize their lives. And since the current society do not streamline how women tend to manage their lives, many women in modern society seem to struggle to juggle career, family, relationships, life, all at once. While men are confused and disorientated, because they're used to only doing one thing at a time.
Reply With Quote