The NS Mens Rights Thread

[Ostroeuropa]

Clearly. Single-men who like children are probably sexual predators, if you listen to the feminist narrative.

But I love children. D: What should I expect to encounter regarding the perceived perverseness/pedophilia of males when I become an elementary school teacher?

You should expect suspicion, i'm sorry to say. There are measures you can take to protect yourself, go ask the MRM for advice on reddit.
In addition, you will want to associate with other male teachers and form a group if you can to protect yourselves against these things and advocate for equal treatment.

This should not deter you from pursuing your dream.

[Royal Hindustan]

Yes, this is one of the issues the MRM is concerned with, though admittedly it doesn't get much focus on this specifically. Rather, the focus is more around combating the negative stereotypes which cause this problem.

This would be something I would consider an inequity, a disadvantage men have. Which should be eliminated, like all other gender inequities.

What I don't like of the Men's Rights Movement, is the dismissal of disadvantages women have (which I've seen on this thread) which comes across as sexist.

The main media doesn't give any attention to male issues, and now what few space we have for such issues, people call us sexist for not talking about them. When was the last time we saw feminist reddits tackling misandry? It's a double obligation.

[Bearon]

But I love children. D: What should I expect to encounter regarding the perceived perverseness/pedophilia of males when I become an elementary school teacher?

Well, when I drove a bus and did substitute teaching, the school recommended a male bus driver or teacher never touch a student. If a student came up to hug you, you could passively accept it (IE, not move) but you cannot hug them back.

In high school and junior high, you can shake hands, but that's it, but at the elementary level, you are always under scrutiny.

This is a damper. I'm a very touchy feely person.

[Ostroeuropa]

Yes, this is one of the issues the MRM is concerned with, though admittedly it doesn't get much focus on this specifically. Rather, the focus is more around combating the negative stereotypes which cause this problem.

This would be something I would consider an inequity, a disadvantage men have. Which should be eliminated, like all other gender inequities.

What I don't like of the Men's Rights Movement, is the dismissal of disadvantages women have (which I've seen on this thread) which comes across as sexist.

What dismissals. Got any examples?

You also spent your time dismissing mens disadvantage in eduation, dismissing that men have less social mobility than women, etc.

[Bearon]

But I love children. D: What should I expect to encounter regarding the perceived perverseness/pedophilia of males when I become an elementary school teacher?

You should expect suspicion, i'm sorry to say. There are measures you can take to protect yourself, go ask the MRM for advice on reddit.
In addition, you will want to associate with other male teachers and form a group if you can to protect yourselves against these things and advocate for equal treatment.

This should not deter you from pursuing your dream.

Are you forced to reveal your sexuality when attempting to gain a teaching position or adopting a child?

[Ostroeuropa]

You should expect suspicion, i'm sorry to say. There are measures you can take to protect yourself, go ask the MRM for advice on reddit.
In addition, you will want to associate with other male teachers and form a group if you can to protect yourselves against these things and advocate for equal treatment.

This should not deter you from pursuing your dream.

Are you forced to reveal your sexuality when attempting to gain a teaching position or adopting a child?

It depends on the country. A few do demand it.

[Ardoki]

This would be something I would consider an inequity, a disadvantage men have. Which should be eliminated, like all other gender inequities.

What I don't like of the Men's Rights Movement, is the dismissal of disadvantages women have (which I've seen on this thread) which comes across as sexist.

The main media doesn't give any attention to male issues, and now what few space we have for such issues, people call us sexist for not talking about them. When was the last time we saw feminist reddits tackling misandry? It's a double obligation.

A lot of feminists also fight for equality of both men and women. Though unfortunately the radical, female supremacists often get the most attention.

[Bearon]

Are you forced to reveal your sexuality when attempting to gain a teaching position or adopting a child?

It depends on the country. A few do demand it.

California, USA?

[Alyakia]

You should expect suspicion, i'm sorry to say. There are measures you can take to protect yourself, go ask the MRM for advice on reddit.
In addition, you will want to associate with other male teachers and form a group if you can to protect yourselves against these things and advocate for equal treatment.

This should not deter you from pursuing your dream.

Are you forced to reveal your sexuality when attempting to gain a teaching position or adopting a child?

please don't tell me you're gay because if so you're like so super fucked it's not even funny

[Cenetra]

MRA I've spoken with, wanted to exterminate women. Eliot Rodger, also hated women and wanted to kill him.
Due to my experioenced of the MRA movement, I naturally assumed he was part of it.

Just because you are not as radical as some MRAs, doesn't mean they don't exist.

Even making the very generous assumption that you've actually spoken to a single MRA who wanted to exterminate women (so far it doesn't sound like you've spoken to MRAs at all, or at least have never listened to any), I doubt they were anything but a couple of asshats on blogs or forums.

On the other hand, there are multiple prominent feminists who have called for the extermination of either the male sex/gender or the vast majority of it, and #KillAllMen is a popular hashtag on Twitter. Hell, there have been articles published crowing about how the development of artificial sperm or whatever will mean that men are irrelevant and can finally be gotten rid of.

[Bearon]

Are you forced to reveal your sexuality when attempting to gain a teaching position or adopting a child?

please don't tell me you're gay because if so you're like so super fucked it's not even funny

...

[Ostroeuropa]

It depends on the country. A few do demand it.

California, USA?

I'm almost certain you won't have to.

Are you forced to reveal your sexuality when attempting to gain a teaching position or adopting a child?

please don't tell me you're gay because if so you're like so super fucked it's not even funny

This.

[Galloism]

It depends on the country. A few do demand it.

California, USA?

California has really liberal employment laws. I would suspect that would be illegal, but I couldn't say for absolutely certain.

[Bearon]

California, USA?

California has really liberal employment laws. I would suspect that would be illegal, but I couldn't say for absolutely certain.

I'll ask my dad. He's a teacher.

[Tahar Joblis]

Elliot Rodger.

He was one, even if you claim he was "no true MRA".

well, more like he never claimed to be one, wasn't known as one, didn't espouse the views of one, and, as far as we know, never even knew one, we can probably say he wasn't an MRA.

In the same sense that Stalin wasn't a feminist.

No, not in that sense. Stalin did say some things on the subject of women. Marxists have traditionally been of a bent that would be read as feminist, and were quite happy to implement measures that Western feminists had been agitating for in their own countries. It is not out of place to say that the Bolsheviks were feminist, and not at all to draw up a network of movements connected to feminism that included communism, abolitionism, and prohibitionism.

There is a real association, in other words; and for those who wish to push the claim that feminism is about giving women the rights held by men, Stalin was a fairly feminist head of state. There are claimed definitions of feminism by which Stalin is feminist, and he could be described as an ally to feminism without that much of a stretch.

Elliot Rodgers' association with the MRM is more along the lines of the connection you might make between Hitler and feminism. Hitler was involved in rolling back laws guaranteeing women's rights, and was part of a movement opposed to the left wing of politics, from communists to feminists. He was completely unconcerned with advancing a feminist agenda and not particularly involved with any movement that was closely allied to the feminist movement.

[Ostroeuropa]

please don't tell me you're gay because if so you're like so super fucked it's not even funny

...

You should engage at least covertly with a local LGBT group about these concerns, especially if there is an LGBT teachers group.
You should also see if there is a local Mens Rights chapter and maintain correspondence with them.

In the event something goes wrong, these organizations will come to your aid. They will also provide advice on protecting yourself.

[Royal Hindustan]

The main media doesn't give any attention to male issues, and now what few space we have for such issues, people call us sexist for not talking about them. When was the last time we saw feminist reddits tackling misandry? It's a double obligation.

A lot of feminists also fight for equality of both men and women. Though unfortunately the radical, female supremacists often get the most attention.

So do I. I call my friends out many times on their sexism, but in essence I am an MRA. I was a humanist for a long time, but I realized, that we do not have enough people to work on tackling the problems of both genders. Feminism does. Heck, the Prime Minister of Canada is a feminist. Whether we like it or not, feminists have more power as of now. We do whatever we can, but our impact wouldn't be nearly as big as the feminists.

[Bearon]

...

You should engage at least covertly with a local LGBT group about these concerns, especially if there is an LGBT teachers group.
You should also see if there is a local Mens Rights chapter and maintain correspondence with them.

In the event something goes wrong, these organizations will come to your aid. They will also provide advice on protecting yourself.

Shouldn't I just follow the don't ask don't tell policy?

[Royal Hindustan]

You should engage at least covertly with a local LGBT group about these concerns, especially if there is an LGBT teachers group.
You should also see if there is a local Mens Rights chapter and maintain correspondence with them.

In the event something goes wrong, these organizations will come to your aid. They will also provide advice on protecting yourself.

Shouldn't I just follow the don't ask don't tell policy?

You know, a year ago I would have screamed "no", but now, I say it's none of their business. You will probably never get asked about it. Just ignore it.

[Forsher]

Let's simplify this by saying the MRM is not dominated by Ostro's views. Meanwhile, feminism is dominated by radical feminist views. Men's rights issues existed before the MRM did.

Not the point.

That men's right issues existed before the MRM, to elaborate on what I wrote to the functionally identical Ostro post, doesn't actually mean what you think it does. What it means is that there is an independent existence of the two and that they are, in fact, distinct. In other words, what happens in the real world? Well, it is disingenuous to read the MRM into them.

It's not internet feminists. It's feminist activities beyond the realm of the internet.

Yeah, you can carry on having your conversation, I don't care, don't pretend it's the same one though because it's just not.

It's feminists doing radical feminist ideological moves like getting Canada to change its prostitution laws to the radical feminist model, making public transportation sex-segregated in various countries, passing Violence Against Women Legislation and asking the UN to censor cyberviolence against women.

From the actions of the feminist movement we can conclude it is a radical feminist movement. The online aspect is much less relevant.

See, you seem to understand what I am relying on... that the online and real world things are different... but you seem to not care at all about the point that I was making... that the MRM is an online phenomenon and that feminism is not, and this affects how Shaggtopia should approach this topic.

Situations for men and women are different all over the world, in hundreds of different ways, so it makes no sense to talk about them as a uniform group unless they are all similar regarding the topic at hand.

All women in the world, are women. All men in the world, are men.

They are similar.

That's inane. Apartheid ended in the last few decades. Was the experience of all black Africans the same worldwide?

Don't. This is classic Oppression Olympics. It's not useful.

Okay.

You know what. You're absolutely right.

You've convinced me that it's not at all fair to say men's rights are worse than women's rights in a lot of areas such as rape, domestic violence, paternity leave, conscription, genital mutilation, divorce, custody, homelessness, extremely disproportionate sentencing in the justice system, etc etc.

You're right. Let's not say men's rights are behind women's rights. Clearly that's not the case despite all evidence to the contrary.

I am right, you just haven't grasped what I am saying.

It doesn't matter that men are more or less oppressed than women. That's irrelevant. What matters is that they are. Do you see? Not the same idea.

When you want to engage with this topic and your first port of call is, "Men have it so much worse then women, here are x, y and z examples" do you know what happens? Well, firstly, no-one starts talking about solutions. What everyone is interested in is dealing the claim. Now, you'll get lots of people who agree and disagree and they'll all come crawling out of the woodwork (we're assuming, for completeness, that our medium of conversation is online). And tempers will flare because you're often challenging pretty fundamental narratives that people care more about than establishing the correctness of. No-one trying to discuss the solutions, they're just trying to make their point of view known in a race to the bottom. It's like The Four Yorkshiremen sketch but horribly depressing.

So that's problem number one. Problem number two is that it's conceptually wrong. Imagine, for instance, that we're some group and we can spend $100 and we can solve one issue and one issue only. Not realistic but it's an example to help everyone understand. Okay, so... we know that men have it worse. Oh, crap. That didn't help us choose how to allocate our resources. We spent all that effort to get to this place where we can do something and now we've got to spend some time working out what exactly we should try and fix. That is, what does matter is that not being able to vote is a bigger inequality than being called, say, bossy. As you can tell this gets a bit problematic when the issues are not so clear cut, which generally means more complexity.

On the other hand, there's nothing new under the sun.

Then what is the difference?

A pick up artist is not a philosophical ideology - it's a forum where people discuss how to "pick up women" and what techniques work and so forth. I say it's largely bullshit, but it is a real thing people talk about. it's not in any way associated with MRAs.

Anti-PUA is exactly what the name implies. They hate pick-up artists. They're also not associated with MRAs. He was a member of an anti-pua forum and a bodybuilding forum.

MRAs are a philosophical approach that sexism hurts men, and that we should take steps to correct the way sexism hurts men.

I wrote this but I thought I'd better check to see if I was remembering the consensus properly.

Then what is the difference?

PUAs are basically like "Ten Tips To Make a Boy Like You" in some teen girl magazine. It's not a philosophy. It's tactical.

That is, I am satisfied that I correctly recalled the cosensus.

You're again being too absolutist and imposing a dimension on my post that didn't exist to boot. Well, it's probably because of the latter that you missed the point I was making but still.

Boys are receiving lower grades than girls, on assessments meant to test their subject knowledge, for things unrelated to their subject knowledge. If you're not able to stay on topic, that's not my problem.

As we see, people talk at cross purposes all the time. In this case I am not. I was trying to point out that not all assessment shouldn't consider behaviour. You said the opposite. That's a flaw in your worldview. It means that your conclusion was more absolute than it should've been. It's on topic, you just didn't read it any other way than what it wasn't saying.

[Ostroeuropa]

You should engage at least covertly with a local LGBT group about these concerns, especially if there is an LGBT teachers group.
You should also see if there is a local Mens Rights chapter and maintain correspondence with them.

In the event something goes wrong, these organizations will come to your aid. They will also provide advice on protecting yourself.

Shouldn't I just follow the don't ask don't tell policy?

You can if you want to.
But I would maintain secret correspondence with these groups anyway. Anonymously if you prefer.

It is a shame, and you shouldn't have to. But you are entitled to your privacy.
I would ask you to consider whether you are prepared to be an activist and be an openly gay male teacher in order to help fight the stereotypes, even if it will make your life harder and potentially more dangerous, or if you believe you can do more good in the world by focusing on just being a teacher.
There is no right answer. It comes down to your priorities.

[Bearon]

Shouldn't I just follow the don't ask don't tell policy?

You can if you want to.
But I would maintain secret correspondence with these groups anyway. Anonymously if you prefer.

It is a shame, and you shouldn't have to. But you are entitled to your privacy.
I would ask you to consider whether you are prepared to be an activist and be an openly gay male teacher in order to help fight the stereotypes, even if it will make your life harder and potentially more dangerous, or if you believe you can do more good in the world by focusing on just being a teacher.
There is no right answer. It comes down to your priorities.

Thanks for the advice.

To be honest I'm a pretty selfish person. I wouldn't put my life on the line simply to change a stereotype.

[Ostroeuropa]

You can if you want to.
But I would maintain secret correspondence with these groups anyway. Anonymously if you prefer.

It is a shame, and you shouldn't have to. But you are entitled to your privacy.
I would ask you to consider whether you are prepared to be an activist and be an openly gay male teacher in order to help fight the stereotypes, even if it will make your life harder and potentially more dangerous, or if you believe you can do more good in the world by focusing on just being a teacher.
There is no right answer. It comes down to your priorities.

Thanks for the advice.

To be honest I'm a pretty selfish person. I wouldn't put my life on the line simply to change a stereotype.

That's acceptable. Good luck

[Valystria]

Let's simplify this by saying the MRM is not dominated by Ostro's views. Meanwhile, feminism is dominated by radical feminist views. Men's rights issues existed before the MRM did.

Not the point.

That men's right issues existed before the MRM, to elaborate on what I wrote to the functionally identical Ostro post, doesn't actually mean what you think it does. What it means is that there is an independent existence of the two and that they are, in fact, distinct. In other words, what happens in the real world? Well, it is disingenuous to read the MRM into them.

Then don't brush off the MRM as a strictly online movement while you have a different standard for feminism.

Okay.

You know what. You're absolutely right.

You've convinced me that it's not at all fair to say men's rights are worse than women's rights in a lot of areas such as rape, domestic violence, paternity leave, conscription, genital mutilation, divorce, custody, homelessness, extremely disproportionate sentencing in the justice system, etc etc.

You're right. Let's not say men's rights are behind women's rights. Clearly that's not the case despite all evidence to the contrary.

I am right, you just haven't grasped what I am saying.

It doesn't matter that men are more or less oppressed than women. That's irrelevant. What matters is that they are. Do you see? Not the same idea.

When you want to engage with this topic and your first port of call is, "Men have it so much worse then women, here are x, y and z examples" do you know what happens? Well, firstly, no-one starts talking about solutions. What everyone is interested in is dealing the claim. Now, you'll get lots of people who agree and disagree and they'll all come crawling out of the woodwork (we're assuming, for completeness, that our medium of conversation is online). And tempers will flare because you're often challenging pretty fundamental narratives that people care more about than establishing the correctness of. No-one trying to discuss the solutions, they're just trying to make their point of view known in a race to the bottom. It's like The Four Yorkshiremen sketch but horribly depressing.

So that's problem number one. Problem number two is that it's conceptually wrong. Imagine, for instance, that we're some group and we can spend $100 and we can solve one issue and one issue only. Not realistic but it's an example to help everyone understand. Okay, so... we know that men have it worse. Oh, crap. That didn't help us choose how to allocate our resources. We spent all that effort to get to this place where we can do something and now we've got to spend some time working out what exactly we should try and fix. That is, what does matter is that not being able to vote is a bigger inequality than being called, say, bossy. As you can tell this gets a bit problematic when the issues are not so clear cut, which generally means more complexity.

On the other hand, there's nothing new under the sun.

Men have it worse in some ways. It may well be in more ways than women.
It's not oppression olympics to say it. It's a way of saying that the woman-centric narrative is wrong.

What matters is focusing on issues in a non-gendered way. I don't care for who has it worse. I care that the problems are being unequally addressed to the point that men do have it worse for the most part.

[Bearon]

Thanks for the advice.

To be honest I'm a pretty selfish person. I wouldn't put my life on the line simply to change a stereotype.

That's acceptable. Good luck

So what about adoption? I wouldn't have to reveal my sexuality for that either correct?