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Teachers describe a deterioration in behaviour and attitudes that has proved to be fertile terrain for misogynistic influencers
“As soon as I mention feminism, you can feel the shift in the room; they’re shuffling in their seats.” Mike Nicholson holds workshops with teenage boys about the challenges of impending manhood. Standing up for the sisterhood, it seems, is the last thing on their minds.
When Nicholson says he is a feminist himself, “I can see them look at me, like, ‘I used to like you.’”
Once Nicholson, whose programme is called Progressive Masculinity, unpacks the fact that feminism means equal rights and opportunities for women, many of the boys with whom he works are won over.
“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,” he says.
But he is battling against what he calls a “dominance-based model” of masculinity. “These old-fashioned, regressive ideas are having a renaissance, through your masculinity influencers – your grifters, like Andrew Tate.”
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This shit stain can be both.
Came to say the same thing. A symptom can also be a cause. Trump is also both a symptom and a cause of ‘anti-feminist attitudes’.
Though, I prefer the term misogynist attitudes myself.
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Underrated comment.
It’s got 105 upvotes, how is it underrated?
It did not have 105 when I made that comment. lol
Understood 👍
Lack of actually good and well-known male role models leads to scum filling the vacuum. Disproportional push in favor of girls and to the detriment of boys is also to blame. Doesn’t look like it’s gonna fix itself anytime soon though.
Is it really that hard not to be a fucking cunt?
“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,”
The same could be said about “communism” and “socialism”. The words have been turned dirty, such that people shy away from what is objectively a good thing when done honestly and to the letter of the principle.
To be fair, the term “feminist” was highjacked by the radical feminist movement. They very much do not believe in equality, their motto is “kill all men”
I think it’s easy to see why that would turn people away. Hence why I describe myself as an equalizer, not a feminist.
Edit: my statement was very reasonable and I’m willing to engage in discussion about what I have witnessed. If you think I’m pushing an agenda or trying to convince others of anything, feel free to check my post history. However, if you accuse me of pushing an agenda or lying or anything else, you are engaging in false faith and will be blocked. I have a long history of supporting women’s rights, as evidenced by several posts I have made. But I will not stand for being accused of being a right winger.
do you think it makes sense to distinguish between the kind of radical feminism you’re talking about, and the dry academic stuff that’s also called radical feminism by the people who are engaged in it at least?
it’s tricky, i can’t deny there aren’t spaces which are predominantly women where a bunch of unfair or negative stuff about men is said.
thing is, radical, which in math is another term for getting the ‘root’ of something, like a square root, and also means like ‘fundamental’ does have more than one meaning. when you use it, that’s one use of the word which makes sense, another which is the one i first learned and the places i go to use to describe themselves is rather dry academic, philosophical, and artsy (artsy in the way which is confusing as heck to me) and they are also radical.
so often i am confused because it’s not as though when you use the word you’re making anything up. other commenters will likely treat you like you invented that use of the word, people always police language. it’d be way nicer if we could understand each other better i really think you and i and the commenters which probably gave you a downvote all have way more in common than not.
TBH I’ve never heard of any other type of radical feminism, I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying radical feminists were the original feminists?
no i don’t think they were “the original”, where i see it now, they are in academic institutions (like the philosophy dept at my school, a few in women’s studies) and publications (here’s one from radical philosophy, she wrote for the london review of books which i really like and i thought the title was interesting, i thought it was a good piece that i’ll have to revisit at some point.
you’ll note there isn’t really any provocative language. you mentioned female dating strategy, that’s not a pleasant place to be. i browsed it a bit then noped out when all the acronyms started to come out, i checked the sidebar and thought yeah this is not a place which wants me…
Radical feminism is 4th or 5th wave feminism.
comments like this are what’s hijacking it.
Fuckin lmao, you are so full of shit. You know damn well you’ve seen so many Tumblr posts, tshirts, and other bullshit that says the same things. “Kill all men” “All men are evil” “Low value men”
I guarantee you’ve seen all of that, it’s not at all uncommon. You choose to ignore it because you don’t like it. But that’s not how the world works. Other people, surprise surprise, don’t want to be associated with a movement calling for their death.
Enjoy your narrative, but welcome to the real world
I haven’t. And now I believe you even less and think you are intentionally spreading rumors or lies because you have an agenda.
i did see the low value men used; tbh i see men are trash more but that might be because of the places i stick around online
I think again that was one that was actually hijacked by the right wing. There is far more fearmongering about hardcore feminists than there are hardcore feminists.
While your second statement is true, there are still far too many extremists. I find it very difficult to believe that all the hatred I viewed from feminists on Tumblr and r/FemaleDatingStrategy and many other sources(like my ex who fell into that stuff) were right wingers. Just like one incel is too many(and you don’t hear people claiming incels don’t exist), one person calling for the death or enslavement of half the planet is too many.
Somebody’s mad they can’t get laid whenever they want.
Fwiw, I haven’t met a single real person who espouses the viewpoint you described. I’m not saying they don’t exist. I’m saying that until evidence is presented otherwise I doubt there are as many as you think there are.
Assuming you are male, it makes sense that you wouldn’t have met many, as they presumably take steps to avoid interacting with men. The only person like that I’ve talked to IRL would be one of my exes, and her friend group. She went off the rails after we broke up.
This is most likely an effect of recency bias for you which is unfortunate.
So much misinformation.
Granted, Lemmy is a relatively safe place to do it, but bold move, walking out into public and describing Communism as “objectively good”.
I would say lemmygrad is the only safe place to do this
It is a wonderfully good idea. Except for one tiny, insignificant variable. Humans. Humans ruin it every time.
Communism is a very decent idea. It’s the transition to it that always tends to be spoiled by incumbant powers. Writers of Communist theory recognised this somewhat, and their solution was to have a violent revolution that would hopefully come end with the new system they devised. Now, however, the word is basically lost - there are/have been too many “Communist” countries that don’t really operate in that manner, with too many people that have suffered under that name.
Socialism doesn’t have quite the same level of stigma, but still a good deal. However, when you think about it, a significant portion of any government is “Socialist” - we pay taxes, our taxes fund roads, schools and various other social services. Socialism, or more specifically socialist policy, is that which benefits society as a whole rather than any specific group. When you see it like that, it’s hard to paint it as a bad thing, not without being completely selfish that you or your group aren’t getting an exclusive benefit.
People refuse to look at things with their core and correct definitions. They always bring their baggage along. Or, they twist it into their own framing for their own point of view.
It’s such a bummer.
Kind of like Critical Race Theory. If properly understood and applied, people would benefit from the knowledge and empathy.
I know very little about CRT beyond some very general idea so idk if there’s a point to call it that specifically, but the naming choice is so bad that the first time I read it I assumed it’s some nazi thing and had 0 doubt about it.
I bought the actual book because it was on sale and because I thought it would be hilarious to put out on my coffee table for when my conservative dad came to visit my house. I also figured I’d try to read it, because I should be informed about what it is so that I can argue for it, right?
Holy shit, it’s a lot of dense legal theory. I knew it was graduate material, but the book is a collection some of the most complex ideas, studies, and legal theory that I’ve ever read. I’m not going to lie that I won’t even make it a third of the way through it.
Anyone who argues that CRT is being taught in elementary schools and is being used to brainwash children hasn’t seen how high-level the material actually is and has no idea what they’re talking about.
In reality, the material is not that controversial. What I have read of it has been quite unbiased.
We need to stop teaching the children nuclear physics.
Pretty much exactly the same, except CRT got knocked down before it even had established itself as a positive thing.
It was already established. It’s just a theoretical framework in various social studies. It was deliberately bastardized by the right as they were seeking something to hate. It wasn’t even in the public consciousness, just something academics used and that get taught in some higher ed classes. It’s a very useful framework but it’s not something that you’d actually teach a kid.
It was an academic term for a relatively short period, it was never established in common language - not in the same way that socialism and communism were.
Yes, unsurprisingly, a term that’s been around for 20 or 30 years is less pervasive than a couple that have been around for over 100.
My remedy to the poisoning of those words is to refer to then as “economic democracy,” and just state communist/socialist policy without the buzz words.
Depends, I was chatting with someone without using any charged terminology, then he blurted out “but that’s socialism!!”
Those who aren’t ignorant about actual socialist policies that can feasibly and easily be implemented in a modern society and yet still loathe them truly bewilder me. And I’m not talking about rich folks or power brokers, just normal, working class people. The indoctrination over the last century has been quite effective.
Yeah I was a little bit speechless with that, it was one of those situations where all the right things to say came much later.
give it 50 years and the arms race of language will have its own sub arms race
you’ll coin a politically charged term, someone will coin an antonym, the original will shift to change the subject, the antonym will change to match the new, someone will point out the process and both sides will deny its happening
Double plus ungood.
So much strife comes from bickering over the definitions of words.
It would be helpful if people knew the definitions and context of words. Maybe some type of education could help.
Every one of these words was boogeymanned as a deliberate political move
Funnily, Capitalism could work too but I don’t expect billionaires to be honest or have any principles apart from hoarding for themselves.
I mean you could also say that Capitalism is a dirty word in some circles. And yet, it addresses many of the aspects of trade, which are needed through all societal systems.
Trade existed before capitalism.
You’re proposing Mercantilism or Feudalism as alternatives?
Whatever works best for the degrowth with need because of climate change. A circular or planned economy.
Communism kind-of smeared itself. Everywhere where communism has been tried on a national scale, it has become authoritarianism.
Maybe it would be a good thing if done to the letter of the principle, but just like Libertarianism or Anarchism, it seems to be incompatible with human nature, at least so far.
But, socialism isn’t even a foreign idea. A lot of US institutions are socialist. The mail delivery is done by an arm of the government. Streets are paved by the government. Firefighters are government employees. The water delivered to your house is almost certainly by a government-run entity. People retiring without having saved enough are taken care of by the government. There’s medicare and medicaid.
A full capitalist system would have nothing done by the government that could be done by a business. No FDA, Pinkertons instead of Police, most army functions handed over to private contractors, every road privately owned and maintained, etc.
I agree with just about everything you’ve said. Communism has had too many failures that have affected too many people, the word is tainted.
To grossly oversimplify it, capitalism is the way of business and trade, while socialism is the way of society and governance. The two things are separate, but the issue we have is that businesses are dictating policy to governments in their exclusive interest, rather than the other way around with governments focusing on the overall good of society.
Any teachers here that want to share their stories - like does this sound exaggerated or more realistic do you think?
How about 5th graders that are hard at work using YouTube pickup artist techniques to start ‘dating’ girls. It is the bane of the playground and the source of many tears. Their parents didn’t seem to care.
The parents probably were the ones watching it to begin with.:-P
All I see is a whole lot of pandering toward people who don’t like feminism because they don’t want to admit men are largely responsible for a lot of problems in the world.
And I’m sure some of you dumbasses will prove my point by trying to argue with me about it in the comments. I’m not gonna capitulate to the same people who largely ruined life for everyone for the existence of our species just so women can get the rights they were entitled to in the first place, nor will I give you the fight that you want.
Yes, you probably did find the feminazi they’re denigrating. I don’t care. Those feminazis are right.
Woah there megalia 🤏, calm down.
Dumbass #1 proving me right ☝️
See how he only responds with an insult hoping to goad me into a shit fight? This is what men do when anyone tells them the truth about how they really are. Because men are the problem and they know it.
Watch him continue down here 👇
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I notice I was downvoted but you were not for saying literally exactly what I said. 🤔
Sexism is very, very real.
EDIT: And your post was censored! Well, that’s BLATANT sexism right there, folks.
People hyperfocus on the 1% of crazy feminists instead of the other 99% who are actually normal and reasonable. Sadly that 1% are doing more harm to the public image of feminism than good.
We live in an age of twitter screenshot outrage and that pathetically emboldens some peoples beliefs so the root cause really is social media. Nothing more nothing less.
The only time I ever hear about that 1% is from the conservative propaganda machine, or MSM rebuttal. They hold zero power outside of the conservative cinematic universe.
At this point I consider it nothing more than manufactured outrage.
i do read that stuff, well, i don’t consider it as such but it’s been told to me to be as such. i still don’t know why as i never got a chance to ask for an explanation
Their enemies are shadows on the wall, shadows of their own minds.
I mean there’s TERFs, they speak for feminism, no?
People keep forgetting that until recently, TERF used to be the default position of feminism
When recently? Because if you mean 30 years ago, yeah. But by the 00s it wasn’t anymore. And before the 80s it wasn’t yet. It was a powerful force in the second wave.
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every time I open xitter
Well there’s your problem right there
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I would not define misogyny as a minority opinion. I also do not think youre talking about the same thing. Misogynists don’t just say they hate women. Misogynists want traditional wives. They want to get away with sexual assault and domestic violence. They want women to be subservient, submissive, and have less access to society than men do. Misogynists believe women are weak (physically, emotionally, and mentally), they control women’s sexuality by policing it through the use of language like “prude” or “wh*re”. Misogynists don’t want women to have equality of pay, they don’t believe women should have equal representation in the government and many of them don’t believe that women should vote. Misogynists believe that they are owed sex from women. They believe that women who deny them are evil. Misogyny is not a dislike of women, it’s a hatred for the autonomy of women. A hatred for feminism and the progress it’s achieved.
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I really dislike the way you’re portraying feminism as a brand and trying to assign responsibility onto individuals for the public perception of that brand. It’s not the responsibility of any woman to convince men that they deserve rights, that they deserve fair political power and representation. If someone is dissuaded from supporting women’s rights because someone said something they didn’t like or agree with, that person is a misogynist and unlikely to have ever actually supported women’s rights in any meaningful capacity.
The caricature of the “crazy feminist” is also in and of itself misogynistic, and is used to silence feminist activism all the time. Not that there aren’t legitimate extremist parts to the movement, particularly in the 60s 70s and 80s when feminism had yet to make many major strides towards female liberation. Just that the label is often used to dismiss things like the pink tax, the wage gap, and discussions of rape culture and intersectionality.
I really dislike the way you’re portraying feminism as a brand and trying to assign responsibility onto individuals for the public perception of that brand
Feminism is a brand in the same way civil rights are. There’s a reason why MLK succeeded where Malcolm X failed, Gandhi successfully took back India, Obama won the 2008 election, etc. This all has to do with how they’re perceived to people not part of their movement. Without a good brand none of these movements would have ever succeeded. And yes it is up to the leaders and each individual member of these movements to uphold a generally good perception. Thinking otherwise is ridiculous. You have to win over the population, always.
It’s not the responsibility of any woman to convince men that they deserve rights, that they deserve fair political power and representation. If someone is dissuaded from supporting women’s rights because someone said something they didn’t like or agree with, that person is a misogynist and unlikely to have ever actually supported women’s rights in any meaningful capacity.
In an ideal world no, but we are not in an ideal world. If someone is a mysgonist what is so wrong with sitting down with them and discussing topics like normal human beings and showing them why that’s wrong? Just completely shutting them out like how you’re describing is exactly how you embolden an opposition group. Imagine someone on twitter was actually just simple minded and based their opinions on one tweet and didn’t actually hear the other side properly? A lot of people like that exist. And if your attitude is “oh they’re misogynistic and never cared so I shouldn’t even bother” then you’re just digging your own hole.
The caricature of the “crazy feminist” is also in and of itself misogynistic, and is used to silence feminist activism all the time. Not that there aren’t legitimate extremist parts to the movement, particularly in the 60s 70s and 80s when feminism had yet to make many major strides towards female liberation. Just that the label is often used to dismiss things like the pink tax, the wage gap, and discussions of rape culture and intersectionality.
See what I, and I’m sure many others dislike is the way you derive misogyny from a simple example. A lot of people simply don’t see anything wrong with calling out the “crazies” of a group. Am I islamaphobic for calling out terrorists? No. Am I anti-christian for calling out the Westboro Baptist church? No. Am I misogynistic for making fun of clearly unhinged people on twitter? No. Extreme examples of course, but you get the picture. The instant jump to misogyny when genuinely crazy, unhinged, insane feminists get made fun of is ridiculous. Like I said, >99% of feminists are completely normal and sane. There is nothing wrong or hateful for calling out the crazy people in any group.
Studies have shown for 50 years now that trying to convince a bigot to stop being a bigot is literally not possible. You cannot force someone to stop being bigoted. You can’t convince them women should be able to divorce their husbands if they already believe that women shouldn’t be able to.
We gain nothing by even speaking with them, literally nothing. MLK didn’t just by himself win the civil rights movement, first of all. Nor did he come after Malcolm X or something. They were both a part of the same movement at the same time. The most effective tactics he employed had nothing to do with appealing to the humanity of white supremacist segregationists. The most effective tactics employed were the ones that broadcast injustice to the entire black community, promoting solidarity and resulting in widespread demonstrations, protests, and both passive and active civil unrest. MLK did not call for white saviors to come save them. He fought actively against the system that upheld white supremacy. He appealed to those who already believed that black people should have rights by broadcasting injustice that was self-evidently wrong.
Gays didn’t get rights by begging at the feet of homophobes. We got rights by throwing bricks at them. We got rights by rioting, causing unrest and disrupting the homophobic as much as possible. We wouldn’t be here if black drag queens in the 60s hadn’t punched back.
The other poster beat me to it but I was going to also cite Daryl Davis as an example. If a black person is able to get Ku Klux Klan members to change their ways then anything is possible. You having a defeatist attitude is what keeps this status quo going.
Studies have shown for 50 years now that trying to convince a bigot to stop being a bigot is literally not possible. You cannot force someone to stop being bigoted.
Daryl Davis would disagree with you.
i think the notion of ‘convincing’ is the issue. it really needs to be done by men, it’s not as though what women are saying is factually incorrect or the content is off, it’s often the opposite i find. when i say what women or feminists i respect say i always seem to get a better response than if a woman said it or the original author said it.
it’s such a shame, there’s already a ton of work done by a sizeable proportion of the population and it’s ignored or misconstrued :/
i think the cool stuff the suffragettes did would be labeled way more negatively now. the civil disobedience was rad.
Feminist and women are not synonyms. Feminism is a political movement. Every political movement needs to advocate for itself. That is the way politics works.
Feminism is a political movement in the same way the civil rights movement was/is a political movement or that the gay rights movement is a political movement. It’s a rights movement. It’s a resistance movement, resisting patriarchy and misogyny.
It is self evidently true that women deserve rights. It is not the job of women to convince you they deserve rights. Feminism organizes women against the systems that oppress them. It does not appeal to the humanity of misogynists.
I agree it is self evidently true that women deserve as many rights as men. I’'m 100% in favour of this. But words ae important and “feminism” is not called “woman rights”. Feminism is often framed as being against patriarchism, which is implied to be a male-generated problem. In reality patriarchism is enabled and often enforced by both men and women, when they pass down to their kids a particular set of toxic and limiting cultural values. I was grown up with the idea that I have some specific duties towards my family such as providing for them. My wife has a job that could never provide for all of us, but somehow that’s ok, while I have to strive to get a high paying job or feel like I’m a failure.
Ok this is going to be longer than I expected but I have things to say. I have been on both sides of interview panels. As an interviewer I always used methods as purely objective as possible to evaluate candidates, but i still ended up knterviewing 48 men and 2 women in one of the rounds. Why? Because I didn’t receive any CV from women. I mentiond this to my boss (a woman) and within three months all the management layer above me was populated with women. I can’t say I liked the solution, especially as the actual teams were still 95% male.
In personal life, maybe this is just anecdotal but my parents never taught me any housekeeping skill and they actively tried to dissuade me when I tried, whether I was trying to iron a shirt or wash some dishes. This is systemic, as the girlfried of my flatmate saw me passing the hover once and said that she would leave her boyfriend if she saw him do that.
So my position on this is actualy whataboutist and the point here is that maybe it’s not you but a considerable chunck of women is actively participating in patriarchism while others react to it in a sort of class warfare which puts men, especially ones that are younger and less experienced at navigating life, in a very difficult spot where they are shamed by both sides and end up feeling like failures. Of course they will follow whoever tells them they deserve better.
Soooo maybe I’m full of shit, I actually don’t know. I grew up in the 90s, which was a different planet, and I’m just trying to be reasonable.
I see this on my school campus quite a lot. When the male teachers direct students from using an exterior door, they usually just say ok and then around. When the female teachers are on duty and day the same things, they get verbally abused. If I’m out there with the female teachers, there aren’t any issues.
Sadly, this is even an issue at university. As a lecture assistant I will just get ignored or not taken seriously by some groups of young male students. They will talk loudly, ignore my request to not talk during lecture or exercise. My male colleagues don’t have such issues and it angers me more each year…
Do you have the authority to do anything more about the talking or is a verbal warning it?
In theory I can always do a short verbal test. But apart from the shock effect that doesn’t have any consequences…
That seems like it’d be a factor in people not taking you seriously; if you don’t have any authority to do anything about misbehaviour.
My male colleagues are in the same situation but they don’t have this issue. It’s also not all or the majority of students, but each semester there will be a group of young man behaving this way.
what a pain, sucks to hear that. do you think it is more common in like your field of study or is there not too much difference? i took cs classes and found a lot of the younger guys louder and obnoxious compared to those in my chem or bio classes (bio was majority women, chem was sorta equally spilt, obviously excluding other genders, it was not something i was really knowledgeable about the time and ignored)
Every single day I see a new reason why I am glad I pulled my daughter out of the hell that is public middle school and put her into online school.
She told me yesterday that boys got into fights in the hallways almost every week. There were definitely fights between kids my middle school, but usually not on school grounds, almost never during the school day, and not constantly for sure. This isn’t some low income, underfunded urban school, we’re in a small city in Indiana.
On top of that, the couple of friends my daughter had in that school vaped and smoked weed. They’re between 12 and 13. Sure, I tried a cigarette at 13, but one cigarette. I didn’t smoke weed until I was a junior in high school.
What the fuck is happening in our schools?
I just wish more parents, especially of girls, had the option to do what we did. We’re lucky that we can survive (just barely) on a single income.
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We had a bridge not too far away for our “real” fights. Strangely, the formality kept things more civil.
Though there was one time a kid got literally thrown over the side of it. Water underneath so he was fine, but still was kinda crazy.
If you have a designated fighting bridge, someone will get thrown off. It’s one of those universal rules of fighting bridges.
Damn, only a fight every week? They’re daily at my kids’ middle school. And not just the boys.
Just be careful that you don’t “over protect” your daughter, and she ends up going off to college, and now with vastly more freedom and a spectrum of influence needs to “keep it on the rails”. I have seen home school kids lose their shit when that time comes, as they never had to negotiate the gradual increase in both that level of freedom and influences on the way. I think of it much like the Amish Rumspringa (“rite of passage”), in that they go from a sheltered version of the world, to a much wider open one.
She has always been given a large amount of freedom and we have accepted her for whatever she wants as long as she is happy and healthy while she is in our care. We have never forced her to do anything she didn’t want to do unless it was necessary (getting a vaccine for example). The only restrictions we have on her is that she has to get up for school on time, she has to finish all of her school work, and she has to do at least one extracurricular activity of her choice. Initially that was girl scouts, then she chose drum lessons, and now, after a couple of years, she just started drawing lessons.
And in terms of social things, we have also been very open with her. When she was younger, we made sure she knew about birth control and STDs pretty much as soon as she asked where babies came from. It turned out to be less of an issue since she’s only interested in girls, but we want her to know she can choose to have sex if she does it safely. We’ve also been extremely honest with her about drugs, about how there are addictive kinds like heroin and non-addictive kinds like weed and that the drug war is bullshit and that she is hearing a lot of propaganda. In fact, now that I can oversee her health classes (and social studies classes) I can directly say, “this is not true. They are lying to you.” That’s also a great asset when it comes to social studies. She’s covering modern conflict in the middle east right now and I have been able to talk about things like American imperialism and Israeli apartheid (and now genocide) when the texts have been lacking- although they have been surprisingly good overall, if a little dated. And I doubt she would have even been covering that topic at all in her public middle school.
Sounds like you are doing a great job! Sorry my post was rather, judgy? I have just seen a good number of home school kids that either learn next to nothing useful, or worse, religious indoctrination with a splash of useless whitewashing of the world. It sounds like your daughter should turn out just fine, and I wish more people used home school as you have, to teach real topics in a way public school cannot without the Karen’s ruining everything.
No no, it didn’t seem judgy at all. I just wanted to clarify.
Trust me, compared to the guy who is claiming it’s my daughter’s fault for being bullied because “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” you’re calling her a straight A student and the most popular kid in school.
Being a parent is hardest when you’re doing it right. Keep it up!
Thank you!
You had less drastic options than to pull your kid out of school, such as girls only school. I think you jumped the gun on this one.
First of all, there is no girls-only school in this town. The only private school is a Catholic school. My daughter is an atheist with Jewish heritage.
Secondly, my daughter was so severely bullied that she actually had developed anxiety to the point that she had trouble going to a lunch party at the house of an old high school friend of mine with about 20 people in it. She was starting to get suicidal. She broke down one day and told us she literally could not go to school one more day because she was so bullied that even the bullied kids bullied her.
Thirdly, you have no fucking idea what we have gone through to try to help our daughter make it through school and not end up severely scarred without the school doing a thing.
Fourthly, I sincerely hope you never are in the position we’ve been in with a suicidal 13-year-old.
But sure, judge me for doing what’s best for my daughter, especially since she’s so mentally healthy now that she was able to tell some girls from her old school that were harassing her at the roller skating rink to fuck off. She has never had that much self-esteem. She’s also never had as many friends as she has now.
She’s in a state-funded program with really good teachers and she’s getting a great education. I must be the most abusive parent ever.
Had a friend with a kid getting bullied badly before the start of covid. They said going online was the best thing for him, emotionally and grade-wise. Gave him a chance to break the anxiety cycle and room to breathe. I hope yours has found their way to thrive!
Hey downvoters, the world doesn’t always allow for convient or conventional solutions. Anything is better than a kid that calls it a day. Anything. Anything. Say it with me. Anything. I know of families that tried to pretend their kid’s mental health was a phase to buckle down and push through. Want to guess the end to that story?
Thank you, she is definitely thriving now.
I think part of the issue here is something I just clarified to someone else- homeschooling and online schooling are not the same. Homeschooling is where the parent acts as teacher. Online schooling is where the child works with real licensed teachers and has real graded assignments by those teachers using the same textbooks public schools use and live videoconference lessons every day.
I’m glad your friend got their kid out too. I just wish more parents could, but it usually requires some parental supervision to keep the kid on track (unless you want your kid to fail), which means one parent has to stay home and that’s not realistic for probably the vast majority of people in the U.S. My wife has a pretty good job and the cost of living here is low, so we’re able to manage it as long as we generally do without luxuries.
Oh with added context your decisions make sense. I feel like you shouldn’t be angry that some online stranger has no idea.
I didn’t consider that your situation involved dealing with someone suicidal. I hope it’s not hyperbole on your part.
My own position was the kid would lose out on valuable years of social development and engaging with other kids of her own age. I thought it was bullying but something that the kid was kind of dealing with in their own way but able to manage.
Since you have said that your kid has got back her courage to flip the bird on her bullies and also gotten a lot of friend, Congratulations on the win! Don’t let me or anybody tell you otherwise.
Forgive me for saying “you jumped the gun” as it was judgemental. I only said it because i did not have the info you just posted.
“homeschooling” triggered concern from my end because of some horror stories i hear about kids who are at college graduation age but stunted because of a common denominator that they were homeschooled.
I appreciate it and I apologize for snapping at you. Like two days ago someone called me abusive for the “crime” of letting my daughter be a girl scout and I’m still a little touchy.
Also, to clarify, homeschooling and online schooling are very different. Homeschooling is where the parent is the teacher. I help her learn, mostly by keeping her focused and explaining things to her when she has trouble understanding, but I am not her teacher. She has live video classes with licensed teachers every day and her assignments are graded by those same teachers who also make themselves available to kids when class is not in session. And because it’s a state school (although contracted out to a private company), it has to adhere to state education standards and there is no religious bullshit.
She does have friends who are homeschooled because she is part of a social group for kids who are not being traditionally schooled, but I think that’s usually a terrible idea. Unless you have a teaching degree, you really don’t know anything about pedagogy. It’s too early to tell how those children will do once they’re adults, but considering I have heard the same stories, I have the same concerns.
What’s really bad here in Indiana is that you don’t have to tell the state you’re taking your kid out of school or prove that your kid is getting legitimately schooled. My daughter had a friend (he recently moved away) whose parents just left him at the library all day to fend for himself and had him use Khan Academy and called it his school. I felt so sorry for that kid. At least everyone who worked at the library knew him and looked out for him.
Every person I know who was home schooled is socially incompatible and I hope you reconsider your decision for your daughter’s sake. Public school is hell but so is the rest of life after it, you can’t shelter her forever.
And boys fight, it’s part of growing up. I don’t know how you went to a public school and fighting wasn’t common.
Again, online schooling is not the same as homeschooling and she has more friends now than when she was in public school.
Why the fuck would I reconsider my decision to help stop her from being suicidal?
Well that context is kind of important
The context of her mental health may be important, but people not knowing the difference between homeschooling and online schooling is not my fault. Homeschooling is where the parent is the teacher. Online schooling is taught by real licensed teachers. She has classes every day via live video meetings. She has the same textbooks kids in public schools have because they all have Pierson textbooks due to Pierson’s monopoly. It is a state school, not a private school so there is no tuition and it has to adhere to state education standards.
None of that is true about homeschooling.
And I’m sorry, but I am not going to admit culpability for people not knowing the difference between the two and just assuming they’re the same.
Still not developing real social skills in online classes. Social skills is by far the most important thing kids learn during their time in school, the curriculum being good is a bonus.
I know what online school is and you’re still at home. Homeschooling.
As I have already said at least twice now, she has more friends now than she did when she was in public school. She has more self-esteem now that she is no longer in public school. She is asking to go to things like events at the teen room at the library and make friends when she wasn’t even willing to join afterschool clubs about things that interested her.
Maybe read some of my other comments? I go into great detail about this.
You do not know my daughter. You do not know her situation. You do not know what you are talking about. I can see you’re trying to castigate me for being an abusive parent, so just come out and say it.
You’re very dramatic.
Is feminism so fundamental that it’s news when a bunch of incels turn against it?
Or, why I can’t get laid.
If men and boys are finding current models of masculinity to be difficult - which is what Tate et al prey on - perhaps they have more in common with feminists. The patriarchy harms everyone.
I think the difficulty stems from the growing disparity in wealth. As it continues to grow, fewer women are available for most men. They just gravitate towards the top.
It’s why we have people like Andrew Tate having sex with literally thousands of women while regular men kill themselves.
It’s actually not all that difficult to respect women. Which will work well in 99% of scenarios.
The other 1% are interactions on the internet which has a tendency to magnify the weirdos. The “you gotta do this and this and this to even go on a date with me” types are internet weirdos. Most women aren’t actually like that. But it’s the internet, so a woman saying “just respect me as a person, and we’re cool” isn’t going to gain traction in the algorithms.
So guys like Andrew Tate are weirdos that gain traction as a reaction to the the other weirdos.
Go outside, touch grass, respect women as people, and everything will be alright.
It’s not difficult for sane people to respect women.
These aren’t sane people.
These are people who long for the days when women were property.
Some are, but I would bet a large amount of people who believe/follow that similar ideology could be able to see how destructive it is.
Avoid tribalism
The people who most need to hear your message are the ones least likely to see it as an advantage. Tribalism is a core tenet of conservatism, where the majority of misogyny comes from.
You’re right, I just see a lot of liberal/left leaning people who fall into the same trap and demonize everyone of the “other team”, I have talked several people out of their preconceived religious/conservative notions by specifically not demonizing them for their views, but instead trying to understand the underlying reasons for their belief and then showing data/evidence to the contrary and producing alternative viewpoints.
For example, HRC’s “Deplorables” comment, yeah there are a lot of shitty people that voted for Trump, but there’s also a lot of people who were duped into believing or did it on a whim just as “something different”.
There was another thread recently about my fellow idiots in Texas calling to succeed, and a lot of people in the thread basically saying things like, “Good, fuck em” all the way to “Yeah let’s go in with the military and take them out” like jfc, the people calling for that are a vocal minority. I am actively working to get out of this state because of the fucked up legislature, but I know so many good people who live here and are just trying to make it through the day like the rest of us.
Sorry, anyone who voted trump twice deserves to lose their citizenship rights. Period.
Don’t even, it will not work on me because I lived in a deep red state most of my life and can speak of the personal opinions of well over a thousand conservative sons of the soil and I GUARAN-FUCKING-TEE that I can count on the hands of a clumsy shop teacher how many of them are legit oldschool conservatives.
Now tell me if the same can be said of blue states and hard lefties? No? Why not?
Because there ARE NO hard left politicians in any position of meaningful power in the united states.
Don’t even come at me with a shadow of a ‘both sides’ argument because I will froth at the mouth for hours with sincere joy to explain to you why the republican party is a legit threat to the stability of our nation and HAS BEEN for more than 4 decades.
Not even a SHADOW
The republican party is definitely a threat, but that doesn’t mean every republican citizen is also a threat for the same reason, they’re basically brainwashed, some of them can be talked out of their incorrect beliefs.
I agree though as well that there are basically no hard left govt officials in any meaningful sense.
There’s sill a ton of ‘rugged individualism’ propaganda to dismantle before they are comfortable enough with their masculinity to admit that everyone is at least a little bit gay. I mean I personally know of at least two redneck ‘good ol boys’ that ended their own life than face the fact that sometimes boys can be cute too.
And that’s not even mentioning the fact that some states still accept the ‘gay panic’ defense.
Hypermasculinity has never been a natural aspect of human nature but to the patriarchy it is the ideal man. To become that you must mutilate yourself in a way that erodes empathy and trust in others.
And many, many men have actively taken that psychic self-mutilation. So many to the point that they are proud of their bleeding wounds.
Yeah
The patriarchy harms everyone.
A patriarchy has been around for as long as civilization has, and its most harmful effects have clearly diminished over the past 100 years. This does not explain the issues that young people deal with that their parents and grandparents didn’t.
What does this have to do with anything?
Dang bro almost got it
You did?
In that respect (“this is a problem”) yes, we have commonality with feminists.
But then, feminists will say “you men need to sort your own shit out”, which is not at all helpful. We need help. And if you’re refusing to help us, while also ridiculing us for needing help, well is it any wonder men don’t identify as feminists?
Instead of emancipating from dehumanising and rigid gender norms for men, it seems like these Tate fans and red pillers and sigma, alpha men are trying to turn back the clock.
You want to tell them: “Stop, you are running into the wrong direction!”
It’s the same misunderstanding about ‘alpha wolves’, they believe that a powerful self-actualized person is one who acts like wolves driven to mental illness by captivity.
So much of our media glorifies the ‘hypercompetent power broker’ image, the ‘great man’ concept of Napoleon’s image that in many circles if you do NOT idolize that radioactive image as a goal for self-transformation, you are considered irrelevant and weak.
It’s all regressive, it’s all a response to stress and shrinking opportunity.
Humankind only got to where we are now by cooperation, almost zero humans today are truly self-sufficient, yet these chucklefucks think the only worthy person is one who takes advantage of everyone around them to their own self-benefit.
It is literally the polar opposite of what has lifted man out of naked apes in the savanna.
‘return to monke’ is a really terrifying meme if you understood the emotion it harnessed and the direction it flings it.
I agree with most of what you’re saying but would mention return to monke also refers to the system of capitalism most live under being a crushing weight that we wish we didn’t have to deal with anymore, it is somewhat alluring to return to a time where you just have to survive, rather then waves hands around whatever it is we do now.
I don’t particularly agree with the sentiment, as I understand how much better off we are, even if capitalism is a soul crushing machine.
you may not accept it but ‘return to monke’ was stared by the Boogaloo Boys and if you know who they are you know why this is a problem.
Do you have any source for that? It sounds just like people who think pepe is a hate symbol…
When in reality, it was just co-opted by the racists and the MSM decided it was then only a hate symbol.
That depends how comfortable you are with searching the darkweb. Some of their forums are still up.
shitler co-opted a certain now worldwide hated symbol too, the hard right loves taking innocent things and staining them with blood.
OK, so some “dark web” source that you insist is definitely proof that they created return to monke, as opposed to the alternative on know your meme cataloging the first example?
contemporary feminism (and the wave immediately before) have done a lot more for me than how men have told me I ‘ought’ to act. fine, I’m not as manly or a man as far as some are concerned. what is really annoying is the apathy and close-mindedness of most of these men who interacted with me negatively.
asking a few questions is enough to make them emotional (which is fine when they do it and not ok when others do it in a way unlike their own) and more intensely emotional than nearly all women i’ve interacted with. that too is fine, it becomes a pain when i’m taken to be some kind of enemy or other by standards it seems like they cannot apply to themselves.
i want to say they are gaslighting, only, i really don’t think it’s intentional. there’s a genuine misunderstanding and that’s annoying as heck.
Andrew Tate himself is absolutely a problem, that doesn’t preclude there from also being other, related, broader, problems. Usually, when you see an argument in the form of “X thing (small, defined, addressable) isn’t the problem, Y thing (large, nebulous, intractable) is the problem!” Then what is happening is someone is re-framing the debate from a cognizable issue to an unsolvable issue, to defuse any actual action. It’s a great tactic!
I think slacktivist corporate feminism is an easy punching bag which makes it an easy case to dismiss the message.
That and with internet allowing every village idiot a voice, it is very easy for someone to say something incredibly batshit insane which becomes a punching bag for the rest of the people.
