A UK Member of Parliament recently suggested that there should be a Government minister for men which would presumably do similar things to the existsing minister for Women.
This has thrown up a series of heated discussions on social media about whether this is part of the ‘backlash’ against feminsm, or whether there is a legitimate need for wider support of men’s issues.
As a man who believes that there are legitimate issues disproportionately affecting men which should be addressed, what I really want help in understanding is the opinion that men don’t need any targetted support.
I don’t want to start a big argument, but I do want to understand this perspective, because I have struggled to understand it before and I don’t like feeling like I’m missing something.
Right wing politician claiming to care about men’s rights and sexism? Sure. This is just another attempt to distract people from the real problems within the government. There should be a single social equalities minister, which is what the role already is, really. It just so happens that misogyny is literally everywhere in the world and that men (as a man myself) are advantaged in numerous ways. Imagine being a woman in Pakistan.
There are some social stigmas and problems from cultural beliefs, such as the idea ‘men don’t feel’ and other bs, but in truth anyone with a brain realises how invalid these arguments are. What we actually need is better education and access to information, so people don’t fall into this shit in the first place and can see through the flaws of people around them and not follow into conformism blindly. If anything, the idea of having a male counterpart is just serving to further the divide by continuing to separate people based on superficial qualities. If you really want to end sexism, you need to treat people as equals regardless of sex, and to get others to do the same. It will require lots of activism to do so because far too many people hold discriminatory beliefs towards both sexes that they are taught from a young age and hold emotionally rather than logically.
From what I have observed, so many people claiming to care or talking about ‘men’s rights’ really just have a victim-complex and are very emotionally immature. It’s all too often the same people who cry about women being bitches or being shameless onlyfans models. For all the problems women face, it’s barely even comparable. That isn’t to invalidate sexism against men, but just to mean that they are not even nearly close in terms of discrimination experienced.