Political Memes

I agree with you fully. I am a feminist, and I absolutely agree that certain portions of our community has been co-opted by toxicity.

Yes, it sucks to be a woman, especially if you live in a region where you've lost access to your bodily autonomy, because that is the barest of basics for rights. It sucks getting paid less. It sucks having to maintain a job, maintain the household, be the responsible parent for getting kids to/from school/practice/clubs, etc. It sucks being the spouse that's EXPECTED to stay home and forgo their career/dreams if a dual income household doesn't make sense (childcare costs eat up a spousal income). It sucks being the sex that is more likely to end up abused/murdered/raped.

I hear all that. But I do believe that mainstream feminism has DEFINITELY crossed the lines in certain aspects.

I don't think it's necessary to jump all over a man's comment when he says "I've never beat a spouse/I help out around the house" and reply with silly things like "nOt AlL mEn" and shit like that. It makes people feel unheard and undervalued. And if people feel unheard/undervalued, they are going to gravitate to where they do feel valued and heard.

That's how we end up with manosphere bullshit saying things like "A woman's pleasure isn't necessary, but a man can't think straight without it. It's her role to keep you satisfied and fuck anyone else who says otherwise."

"Looksmaxxing" is something that I'm also REALLY fearful of our younger male generations getting into, because it stems from "You wanna get laid? You gotta be hot or a woman will NEVER choose you. This is how you get hot." And then it leads young men to picking themselves (and each other) apart physically to a really harmful level.

Ughhhh, I know I'm saying a lot here, but it's because I do believe that certain traits of current day radical feminism are driving more and more youth to the Andrew Tates of the world, and that makes me terrified for our younger girls growing up alongside them, and how they're going to be treated.

Women couldn't get their own bank accounts in the US until 1970, radical feminism was necessary. But today, we have to make sure men feel comfortable talking to us/being supported by us/delving into their hopes and dreams without being like "Okay but it's worse to be a lady".

We have to support each other.

who does Dad have to turn to when he has problems?

A big part of the slow burning men's mental health crisis is societal expectations of men.

Boys are conditioned at a young age to start cutting off outward expressions of most emotions (big exception for anger though), stifling them and striving towards some kind of emotionless state. So they learn not to seek emotional support when they need it. And to make matters worse, this also sets these boys to grow up to be less dependable as providers of emotional support.

So men start to rely on the women in their life for emotional support, which creates unhealthy dynamics for many men who don't have reliable women in their life, or forces them to depend exclusively on a wife for emotional support. Only having that one person, or zero people, in their lives that can provide emotional support is highly limiting, and can go wrong in all sorts of different ways.

Deep bonds in male friendship are important, but we're raised without the guidance and skills to build and foster those bonds. And those friendships can inform how to have healthy platonic friendships with women, and how to have healthy romantic and sexual relationships with women, too.

That's what toxic masculinity means to me: a societal expectation that men behave a particular way, and the negative consequences directly for those men and indirectly for the other people in their own lives, whether parents, siblings, spouses, friends, or children. We owe the younger men in our lives the opportunity to break that cycle and model what healthy behavior and emotions look like, so that they're not carrying their own baggage into adulthood, middle age, and beyond.

court systems

The maternal advantage in family court is misunderstood. The vast majority of custody agreements are negotiated between the parents. So while there is a societal pressure to favor mothers, this is mostly a phenomena of parents hewing to that norm and not the government imposing it from above.

It may be true that a divorced mother or a lady felon enjoy some benefit from patriarchal ideals and norms. This is far outweighed by the harm patriarchy does to women (and men).

If you look at the "nurturing mother" norm in our legal system holistically, I think you'll find that it burdens mothers with extra duties and responsibilities while stripping them of rights.