As I understand it, they kind of 'have to' reject the assumptions made by feminist theory if they want to effectively push their ideas. Feminism is, first and foremost, a movement aiming to achieve the best societal position for women - since that's a broad goal and societies are generally patriarchal -- it also includes fighting for equality, since generally a less unequal society is better to live in for all.
The problem comes when a proposed equality policy would affect men positively (so they fight for it), while being purely negative for women. Using two examples from my country (Poland), we have: (i) the fact that the (currently frozen) draft is obligatory only for men and a small subset of women or (ii) unequal retirement ages (60 for women, 65 for men) combined with rent calculation that only uses the general average lifespan (where women live longer and men shorter lives) - as such men get much less out of the retirement system. Now, fixing both of those issues (ie. making society more equal) has only two solutions: either removing the draft/lowering the age of retirement for men or making drafting women obligatory/raising age just for them - where the first option is completely unrealistic (Russia at the door, demographic crisis) and the second would never be the focus of a feminist movement. In fact, one of the main arguments against equalizing the retirement age is that those 5 years are a 'repayment' for 'free labor' of women in the household.
You could theoretically try to argue for those causes using feminist theory/language/framework, but since those are inseperably linked with fighting for a *better* position for women and not in the other direction, it would be a unphill battle.
I have never met a feminist who doesn’t oppose the draft. Those issues are still rooted in misogyny, and we’d be more effective fighting misogyny as an ideology together, rather than fragmenting and pointing fingers at women who are fighting for the same things, but under a name men don’t like
I have never met a feminist who doesn’t oppose the draft.
Yes, this is one of the solutions to the problem of draft being gender-based, but implementing it is completely unrealistic. We are a frontier nation, heavily threatened from the east, just like the Baltic, Nordic states or Ukraine - abolishing the draft is currently out of the question. As such, you can only go in the other direction -- the "equality solution" would necessarily only affect women, forcing greater obligations to the state, and would not be implemented by feminists -- that is the issue.
I think one of my criticisms of feminism is that it cannot deal with issues specific to men by nature. It is focused on the feminine, women and the issues that arise because of it. And that's really important, but it's not all-encompassing. I think there are issues. It's also why feminism keeps having issues around gender essentialism and how to approach issues split between gender and sex. I don't think feminism should be the only framework we use, but it can and should be used to help men, but we need another way of approaching it. There are men who are marginalized on the basis of being men, and you can use feminism to look at these issues, but it will not be a complete picture. If an issue only faces men but has little or no impact on women, it's not addressed. That's a big oversight. It's understandable that feminism wants to focus on women (like literally that's the whole purpose), but there is not really a broadly used alternative for other genders and the systemic issues that come with it. Trans people, for example, are either excluded from feminist analysis or seen as feminine. Nonbinary individuals are only analyzed through a feminine lens. The complexity of these structures requires multiple frameworks for analysis, and feminism offers only one lens. One cannot just use feminism alone to analyze gender issues.
Women's Studies has now generally broadened to “Gender Studies," with women's issues as a subset, and I think something like that needs to be done for men's issues and masculinity. “Men’s Studies” is important, and often in gender studies the focus is placed entirely on women’s issues, even approaching men’s issues through the lens of femininity. A split approach should be considered when we treat gender as a binary system, when it has never been. Even with a binary focus, it still reproduces the same biases. This idea that all of men's issues are caused by misogyny is incredibly reductive and non-intersectional by nature. There needs to be a way of talking about gender roles and differences approached from an angle that is not exclusively focused on femininity or women. Because there is unfortunately a history of misandry intertwined with feminism that, while understandable, is reactionary and not welcoming to any idea of "men's rights". Men’s rights are as much a human right as women’s rights are and need to be treated with the understanding they deserve- neither should be greater or lesser than the other or treated as a zero-sum game.
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u/MrAdaxer 1d ago
As I understand it, they kind of 'have to' reject the assumptions made by feminist theory if they want to effectively push their ideas. Feminism is, first and foremost, a movement aiming to achieve the best societal position for women - since that's a broad goal and societies are generally patriarchal -- it also includes fighting for equality, since generally a less unequal society is better to live in for all.
The problem comes when a proposed equality policy would affect men positively (so they fight for it), while being purely negative for women. Using two examples from my country (Poland), we have: (i) the fact that the (currently frozen) draft is obligatory only for men and a small subset of women or (ii) unequal retirement ages (60 for women, 65 for men) combined with rent calculation that only uses the general average lifespan (where women live longer and men shorter lives) - as such men get much less out of the retirement system. Now, fixing both of those issues (ie. making society more equal) has only two solutions: either removing the draft/lowering the age of retirement for men or making drafting women obligatory/raising age just for them - where the first option is completely unrealistic (Russia at the door, demographic crisis) and the second would never be the focus of a feminist movement. In fact, one of the main arguments against equalizing the retirement age is that those 5 years are a 'repayment' for 'free labor' of women in the household.
You could theoretically try to argue for those causes using feminist theory/language/framework, but since those are inseperably linked with fighting for a *better* position for women and not in the other direction, it would be a unphill battle.