literally just title. If a society exists where there is a huge disparity in terms of social status and distribution of power, regardless of what gender has greater control, we should be opposed to that power dynamic. Like just swapping genders would literally just place men in exactly the same position that women are in now.
Hotter take: using the word "feminism" as a catch-all for gender equality issues is dumb as fuck since it's an explicitly gendered word.
Not that much of a hot take. Gender egalitarianism or something similar would be so much better from a "marketing" point of view towards men. Conversely, having some self-described feminists doing some misandry always sticks out quite badly; not that it is common, but holy shit there are some very fucking weird people claiming that label, and these people are very vocal about their beliefs, thus giving a very bad name to feminism. Like as an example, there was a march against sexual violence, and literally cis hetero white men were forbidden to attend. I fail to see how the fuck do you advocate for political change in a country, and alienate like 40% of the population outright. Another time was a feminist I met on Tinder, literally said outright all men were trash, like yea, I don't enjoy getting insulted for things outside of my control. Feminism has to go through a rebranding of some kind, cos some optics are absolutely horrible with these people stealing an otherwise noble label.
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Dudes rock
I get how you feel. I think it's worth noting though that if the march on sexual violence was targeted towards women who suffered from it, that might be a good reason to ban men.
That said, I am not discounting the completely valid fact that many many men also go through sexual violence. At that point, any march that bans men like that should specify that it's trying to create a safe space for women who are traumatized or are uncomfortable around men. Perhaps name it as such, and a march with as general purpose as you described could represent all across the gender spectrum
I found it again. Or I think so, because that shit has happened several times apparently, and I don't remember which one hit r/france. The article says the march was anti-austerity, so yes, I think I am justified in saying barring men from participating is not only a bad look, but also pretty fucking stupid from a tactical point of view.
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/montreal/201504/07/01-4859001-une-manifestation-feministe-anti-austerite-interdite-aux-hommes.php
I just hope one day these will stop, but liberalism sips into everything, so I won't get my hopes up. :/
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That's two levels of bad reasons though, with serious consequences. First it's applying a gender to sexual violence, either pretending that men being violated doesn't happen or worse, just doesn't matter because men don't have, like, bodily sanctity or something, or that women are only worth protecting because of reproductive capacity (which is the even more regressive definition of rape, which is sex without consent of the woman's father or community, regardless of her consent). We can say this is false all we want, but it's strongly reinforced with actions like physical and organizational exclusion. That can't be counteracted rhetorically.
The other issue is that the perpetrator-victim relationship is being applied to completely other people, including other victims. That's so fucking cruel, like, maybe some white person was victimized, and now they're legitimately traumatized by being around minorities or whatever, but taking that out on other victims just can't be part of it. The aspect of the trauma where they are taking that out on other suffering people is not something to be reinforced. Like you have men and women who are all survivors of sexual violence, they can have solidarity with each other, against abusers, not against each other. It's fine if someone is literally in a crisis situation, people should do anything necessary to look after that person's well being, but an activist march or therapy group or political action is not that situation.
The shit people have to deal with as victims of sexual violence is just fucked, and it's wild how it can be compounded by the actual structures that are supposed to be addressing it
And that's all before you get to the above poster's points about marketability, basically this stuff makes it really easy for conservatives to paint feminism not as a liberatory force for all, which it is, but as a rolling counterattack revenge project or whatever. The people who aren't strongly ideologically aligned are going to listen to feedback like "no, fuck off you can't join us"