Last Fall Hugo Schwyzer, quoting himself from years ago, raised a critical problem with the standard “but what about the menz” defense
The problem with the men’s rights movement is that they confuse men’s unhappiness with oppression. They assume that if men were in control, they would be happy, because patriarchal oppressors ought to be happy. Therefore, if a man isn’t happy, he isn’t oppressing. Newsflash, folks: Just because you don’t know you’re privileged doesn’t mean you’re not. Just because there are aspects of your power and privilege that you find alienating and burdensome doesn’t mean that you are any less a beneficiary of an oppressive system! Both men and women do need liberation from rigid, traditional, gender roles. The difference is that collectively, men are the architects of the system while women are merely forced to live within it.
Scroll past a bunch of other good stuff to the end to find the quote.
My big concern is (and, I realize, always has been) that people, especially men, tend to reach “but patriarchy hurts men too”... and stop there.
But here’s what’s missing when you fail to go further: the “privilege” we’re talking about boils down to men’s privilege to have our shit sandwich served on the good china, and to get salt in our sewer soup.
Sure, the system is even worse for women but at least they have an excuse: the system isn’t supposed to benefit them. It is, however, nominally supposed to benefit us, and all effort to maintain the system is undertaken on our behalf.
But here’s the deal: with other systems nobody would have to eat shit at all. So what benefit, exactly, reasons could we possibly have for maintaining the current system besides extreme narrow focus, short attention spans, and mindless inertia?
Since I’m pretty sure there’s no possible credible answer it seems like a great question to start asking.
Post new comment