Feminism -- A continuing discussion

[Theda Baratheon]

4 minutes ago, Mosi Mynn said:

More incel terminology (but this is a funny non-incel Twitter thread that mocks it). 

Also, I'm assuming you intelligent and well-read folk have heard of We Hunted The Mammoth who do sterling work in researching incels, MRAs and their ilk so others don't have to sully their internet history.

LMAO in what world !!!! Audrey Hepburn!!!

[Mosi Mynn]

The whole Twitter thread is very funny

[Theda Baratheon]

Oh sorry the image itself took a while to show for me. Now it' even funnier. Personally both stacey and becky are just living their best lives lol. 

That's what's so weird as well even the guys that are just lonely make and consume these memes and call girls thots lol. I don' get it 

[Mosi Mynn]

Both Stacey and Becky look great - though Stacey's shoes must take some getting used to.

The Stacey-to-Becky image I found weird:

Someone on We Hunted The Mammoth pointed out that Becky looked a lot like Rey from Star Wars!

What's got scary is how the incel language is latterly sounding more and ore extreme as they advocate actual terrorism.

[mankytoes]

18 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

Well, women are doing that labor now. Our job is to show people that these incel communities exist and are supremely toxic. But it will be men talking to other men that will actually address the root problem(s)and get those currently in the incel community rehabilitated to a point where a plurality of interaction will be welcome on both sides. I mean, seriously. Do you really think the men in the links above are going to listen to women at this juncture? Of course not. But they *might* listen to other men. 

I'm happy to jump in at this, but I've tried before and got no results, do you have any advice? If you were a guy, what would you say? If you point out examples that defy their viewpoint, they just say you're lying or being tricked. 

I do think you could talk to them, but it would have to be in person, not on the internet. And I don't think many of them have much of a life outside the internet. And if they do, I doubt they are "out" as incel. 

[Guy Kilmore]

I work with at risk youth who have various mental health disorders, which leads to them struggling in many different facets of their lives.  This stuff scares the crap out of me, a lot of the boys/young men I work with turn to the internet for social and leisure activities and adults from these groups just drag them in.  They confirm all their nagging fears and frustrations, they haven't learned to regulate their emotions well (something that even "adjusted" men struggle with) and get pulled in.

And we don't know it, I try to share this with my peers and they look confused.  So, yes, I spend a ton of time delving into their thought processes and getting these topics brought up in therapy to start pulling it away.  I think, well, hope, for about a 50% success rate.

I imagine the kids who are in the same boat and AREN'T having to struggle with a mental health disorder, but haven't really developed emotional regulation (see above) and how vulnerable they are to this because it speaks to their "feelings."

I guess, this was a long rambling way, in my thought, that if you want to stop this, focus on the next generation, start talking to boys and young men, teach them how to feel and how to regulate those feelings.

[brook]

2 hours ago, Guy Kilmore said:

I work with at risk youth who have various mental health disorders, which leads to them struggling in many different facets of their lives.  This stuff scares the crap out of me, a lot of the boys/young men I work with turn to the internet for social and leisure activities and adults from these groups just drag them in.  They confirm all their nagging fears and frustrations, they haven't learned to regulate their emotions well (something that even "adjusted" men struggle with) and get pulled in.

And we don't know it, I try to share this with my peers and they look confused.  So, yes, I spend a ton of time delving into their thought processes and getting these topics brought up in therapy to start pulling it away.  I think, well, hope, for about a 50% success rate.

I imagine the kids who are in the same boat and AREN'T having to struggle with a mental health disorder, but haven't really developed emotional regulation (see above) and how vulnerable they are to this because it speaks to their "feelings."

I guess, this was a long rambling way, in my thought, that if you want to stop this, focus on the next generation, start talking to boys and young men, teach them how to feel and how to regulate those feelings.

This is exactly where I’m at. The thing that worries me most about all of this is what you said - that there are adults out there actively targeting and recruiting vulnerable kids into this worldview. I really haven’t seen that brought up in any of the media discussion and it needs to be. 

As a parent of three teen/soon to be teen boys this is absolutely terrifying to me. I know the language and red flags to look out for and I hope that would be enough, but so many parents don’t even know this world exists. If I could make one change to try and fight this and stop it spreading it would be widespread education of parents, teachers, anyone who had close contact with teen boys that explains what to look out for and why it matters.

Every parent I know is super clued in to the possibility of peadophiles grooming their kids online, but incels (and nazis and an assortment of really nasty hate groups) are doing exactly that. I don’t think we can fight it until there is widespread recognition of that fact.

[Darth Richard II]

Random aside I saw in the news, apparently the Golden State Killer started killing because a girl turned him down. Proto Incel? I don't even know anymore.

 

She's gone into hiding.

 

Also pretty much everything @Theda Baratheonhas said x100.

[Darth Richard II]

2 minutes ago, brook said:

This is exactly where I’m at. The thing that worries me most about all of this is what you said - that there are adults out there actively targeting and recruiting vulnerable kids into this worldview. I really haven’t seen that brought up in any of the media discussion and it needs to be. 

As a parent of three teen/soon to be teen boys this is absolutely terrifying to me. I know the language and red flags to look out for and I hope that would be enough, but so many parents don’t even know this world exists. If I could make one change to try and fight this and stop it spreading it would be widespread education of parents, teachers, anyone who had close contact with teen boys that explains what to look out for and why it matters.

Every parent I know is super clued in to the possibility of peadophiles grooming their kids online, but incels (and nazis and an assortment of really nasty hate groups) are doing exactly that. I don’t think we can fight it until there is widespread recognition of that fact.

Yes. This. It's is absolutely mind blowing to me that the attack in Toronto has been almost completely forgotten by the media already.

[mankytoes]

13 minutes ago, brook said:

This is exactly where I’m at. The thing that worries me most about all of this is what you said - that there are adults out there actively targeting and recruiting vulnerable kids into this worldview. I really haven’t seen that brought up in any of the media discussion and it needs to be. 

As a parent of three teen/soon to be teen boys this is absolutely terrifying to me. I know the language and red flags to look out for and I hope that would be enough, but so many parents don’t even know this world exists. If I could make one change to try and fight this and stop it spreading it would be widespread education of parents, teachers, anyone who had close contact with teen boys that explains what to look out for and why it matters.

Every parent I know is super clued in to the possibility of peadophiles grooming their kids online, but incels (and nazis and an assortment of really nasty hate groups) are doing exactly that. I don’t think we can fight it until there is widespread recognition of that fact.

That's a whole other level of fucked up, where have you seen this? 

[Yukle]

13 hours ago, mormont said:

I have to say, this was my preference but finding any non-gendered clothing for kids at all was extremely difficult. The default in any clothing store was that there was a girls' section and a boys' section and nothing else: and nothing that was in one section could be found in the other.

Now you mention it, I define "gender neutral" as "boys clothes without any pictures on them." It helps that my kids aren't quite old enough to understand (or care) about "boy" or "girl" things.

Well, that's not true. My son knows that tutus are girls' clothes, but he likes to wear them when he's pretending to be a fairy. It doesn't bother him at this age, and I hope it stays that way, but it will likely change as he interacts with other kids more. At this point, he is still in parallel playing, not playing with other kids.

13 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

When I was a kid I distinctly remember having to wear a couple of truly hideous dresses on a few special occasions but for the most part I lived in jeans/trousers and t shirts - likely a lot of them were from charity shops but no judgement here because I still like charity shops now and I had some super cute hilarious t shirts. I remember one just said SPICE in capital letters but I don’t think it had anything wrong to do with spice girls and the pictures on the tee didn’t match it at all lol. Adorable.

but I definitely didn’t wear a lot of traditionally feminine girls clothes because I ran EVERYWHERE, climbed trees, cycled a lot (hell I was an active kid... what happened LOL) so it wouldn’t have been practical hence the shirts and trousers. I don’t think I started caring in earnest until I was like 13/14 and suddenly wanted to look 77’ punk rock LOL 

 

What sort of shoes did you have? My kids both wear runners (if they're wearing shoes at all). Girls' shoes are another travesty of design, and difficult to wear while riding bikes or climbing anything.

It's a tangent, but here's a terrific story of why clothing matters to parents, that just happened to me:

Last night my kids came inside, both beaming, covered in mud. It wasn't raining.

"How did you get mud on you?" I asked my daughter.

"We put mud on," she replied. Okay, good point, that was a stupid question.

"Where did you find mud?" I wondered.

"Under the tap," she pointed.

"Was the tap on?" I asked.

"Yes. He turned it on," she gestured to her brother, to emphasise the point.

"How much help did you give him turning the tap on?" I asked, using a leading question on purpose.

"A little bit," she promised. At this point, they were both beginning to drip. I was at least content that they were both in easily washable clothes (boys' clothes, in other words) and from what I could tell, the mud in their hair wasn't yet dry, so should be easy enough to wash out.

"Can I have a banana?" asked my daughter. I passed her one. She peeled it, took a bite and put the rest in her pocket, which I noticed at that point was also filled with mud.

Sometimes being a parent makes me want to give up.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 5/1/2018 at 4:31 PM, Xray the Enforcer said:

Well, women are doing that labor now. Our job is to show people that these incel communities exist and are supremely toxic. But it will be men talking to other men that will actually address the root problem(s)and get those currently in the incel community rehabilitated to a point where a plurality of interaction will be welcome on both sides. I mean, seriously. Do you really think the men in the links above are going to listen to women at this juncture? Of course not. But they *might* listen to other men. 

I think this is true. Even in day to day interactions, when I talk to other men, I'm shocked at my alarms going off when guys start talking certain ways about certain things. In terms of gender, it may start as simple "joking" about "women, am I right, guys?" But soon enough, I find myself hoping that these conversations don't escalate. The jokes I simply don't laugh at. The dark, dark stuff I hope stays unspoken. This is the problem, right? In our hearts, we think we won't change attitudes and behavior, and we hope it just goes away (to the internet? I don't know). But not enough men who align with feminism, I think, don't go around engaging a lot of family or acquaintances when shit starts going down the rabbit hole. I think we try to just get away, as if ignoring it helps somehow.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

10 hours ago, Darzin said:

Well reddit shut down the more toxic incel forums but when r/incels was in existence the front page was horrible and they were hopeless. I as a guy who had his first kiss at 24 tried to relate to them many of whom are younger than that, and they just whined how I must be a covert chad, or a beta boy who found some stones they don't want help, even from men, they are a bunch of crabs pulling each other into the cookpot. It's sort of like addiction you need to be ready to get help. I post in and read r/thebluepill sometimes which is a place to mock the redpill and other associated misogynistic subreddits and occasionally incels pop up asking how they can change but I think trying to help them is a fruitless venture until they seek help. 

  Usually they turn in MRAs, Incels, and redpill, all function in the same weird internet ecosystem and share most of the same assumptions about women and society they just relate to it differently. I do think that classic PUA is different from these, it was sleasy but less openly misogynistic, it's just the guys it attracted tended to be of a certain type and now we have this whole new internet misogyny.   

I think this is true, too. I suffered from nice guy syndrome for a long time, and it took some good therapy for me to step aside and see how manipulative and objectifying my worldview was. Now that I know about incel, I see them as just a step farther down the nice guy syndrome path. I'm not sure how to approach people like this. They need significant intervention. They're dangerous. Linking to my last post though, I think we (men) should be willing to outwardly express how unacceptable this behavior is. It seems just a dark corner of the internet right now, but I didn't think we'd have white supremacists marching in the streets during my lifetime (at least, not so many). 

[Yukle]

3 hours ago, brook said:

As a parent of three teen/soon to be teen boys this is absolutely terrifying to me. I know the language and red flags to look out for and I hope that would be enough, but so many parents don’t even know this world exists. If I could make one change to try and fight this and stop it spreading it would be widespread education of parents, teachers, anyone who had close contact with teen boys that explains what to look out for and why it matters.

Similarly, things need not be so extreme to be damaging.

I don't like the term "friendzone." It's a less extreme but nonetheless still damaging view of girls are "meant" to act. As a concept, the idea of the "friendzone" is obviously less perverse than the other examples of views of women shown in this thread.

However, it's still a damaging view, even if it's more subtle. Girls aren't like the Sims, where you speak to them enough time, activate a few conversation threads and you then unlock the romantic options. Romance is not a reward.

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I think this is true. Even in day to day interactions, when I talk to other men, I'm shocked at my alarms going off when guys start talking certain ways about certain things. In terms of gender, it may start as simple "joking" about "women, am I right, guys?" But soon enough, I find myself hoping that these conversations don't escalate. The jokes I simply don't laugh at. The dark, dark stuff I hope stays unspoken. This is the problem, right? In our hearts, we think we won't change attitudes and behavior, and we hope it just goes away (to the internet? I don't know). But not enough men who align with feminism, I think, don't go around engaging a lot of family or acquaintances when shit starts going down the rabbit hole. I think we try to just get away, as if ignoring it helps somehow.

I think disagreeing instead of staying quiet and hoping it doesn't escalate is where it happens.  That's the most common place you have to try to change anything.  

[karaddin]

4 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I think this is true. Even in day to day interactions, when I talk to other men, I'm shocked at my alarms going off when guys start talking certain ways about certain things. In terms of gender, it may start as simple "joking" about "women, am I right, guys?" But soon enough, I find myself hoping that these conversations don't escalate. The jokes I simply don't laugh at. The dark, dark stuff I hope stays unspoken. This is the problem, right? In our hearts, we think we won't change attitudes and behavior, and we hope it just goes away (to the internet? I don't know). But not enough men who align with feminism, I think, don't go around engaging a lot of family or acquaintances when shit starts going down the rabbit hole. I think we try to just get away, as if ignoring it helps somehow.

 

13 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I think disagreeing instead of staying quiet and hoping it doesn't escalate is where it happens.  That's the most common place you have to try to change anything.  

Yup. Its really hard to stand up and do this, it feels like such a confrontation and (as someone who is generally very conflict averse IRL) I'm really bad at living up to my ideals on this front. And unsurprisingly, the part I'm the worst at is doing this when it comes to racism. Blatant racism is actually easier to call out in this regard than more low key stuff, since most other people will at least see it when you call it out, but when its more subtle and insidious that's less the case. And the kind of nagging doubts that get used to rationalise inaction is that I'll essentially use up my social capital on pursuing everything rather than calling out the ones that hit home, and there is a level of truth to it. But the solution is to improve how I call it out rather than avoiding doing so. I aspire to be as good an ally to others as I want people to be to me, and I fall short of that.

Admitting the difficulty and the failure is the first step to doing better though. Recognising the importance of shutting down discourse like this is necessary to actually change it.

[lessthanluke]

4 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

I think disagreeing instead of staying quiet and hoping it doesn't escalate is where it happens.  That's the most common place you have to try to change anything.  

Yeah. It can be very hard at times to do though. I used to work in Construction and calling out the behaviour of all other 20 guys on site with you at once is a bit daunting. I try as much as possible though.

[Theda Baratheon]

11 hours ago, Yukle said:

Now you mention it, I define "gender neutral" as "boys clothes without any pictures on them." It helps that my kids aren't quite old enough to understand (or care) about "boy" or "girl" things.

Well, that's not true. My son knows that tutus are girls' clothes, but he likes to wear them when he's pretending to be a fairy. It doesn't bother him at this age, and I hope it stays that way, but it will likely change as he interacts with other kids more. At this point, he is still in parallel playing, not playing with other kids.

What sort of shoes did you have? My kids both wear runners (if they're wearing shoes at all). Girls' shoes are another travesty of design, and difficult to wear while riding bikes or climbing anything.

It's a tangent, but here's a terrific story of why clothing matters to parents, that just happened to me:

Last night my kids came inside, both beaming, covered in mud. It wasn't raining.

"How did you get mud on you?" I asked my daughter.

"We put mud on," she replied. Okay, good point, that was a stupid question.

"Where did you find mud?" I wondered.

"Under the tap," she pointed.

"Was the tap on?" I asked.

"Yes. He turned it on," she gestured to her brother, to emphasise the point.

"How much help did you give him turning the tap on?" I asked, using a leading question on purpose.

"A little bit," she promised. At this point, they were both beginning to drip. I was at least content that they were both in easily washable clothes (boys' clothes, in other words) and from what I could tell, the mud in their hair wasn't yet dry, so should be easy enough to wash out.

"Can I have a banana?" asked my daughter. I passed her one. She peeled it, took a bite and put the rest in her pocket, which I noticed at that point was also filled with mud.

Sometimes being a parent makes me want to give up.

Trainers/sneakers - pretty much always. I ran everywhere. Couldn’t do that in little pumps. When I was old enough to work my first job (16) I bought doc martens and never looked back  but as a kid, always trainers 

[Larry of the Lawn]

8 hours ago, lessthanluke said:

Yeah. It can be very hard at times to do though. I used to work in Construction and calling out the behaviour of all other 20 guys on site with you at once is a bit daunting. I try as much as possible though.

I hear you.  

12 hours ago, karaddin said:

 

Yup. Its really hard to stand up and do this, it feels like such a confrontation and (as someone who is generally very conflict averse IRL) I'm really bad at living up to my ideals on this front. And unsurprisingly, the part I'm the worst at is doing this when it comes to racism. Blatant racism is actually easier to call out in this regard than more low key stuff, since most other people will at least see it when you call it out, but when its more subtle and insidious that's less the case. And the kind of nagging doubts that get used to rationalise inaction is that I'll essentially use up my social capital on pursuing everything rather than calling out the ones that hit home, and there is a level of truth to it. But the solution is to improve how I call it out rather than avoiding doing so. I aspire to be as good an ally to others as I want people to be to me, and I fall short of that.

Admitting the difficulty and the failure is the first step to doing better though. Recognising the importance of shutting down discourse like this is necessary to actually change it.

Totally.  I work with a bunch of men and last year's group was really terrible - racism was pretty easy to call out but calling out sexism or misogyny definitely mostly ended in me getting ridiculed.  I could have done a lot better.  So much harder to call out in real life than online for me and it shouldn't be as intimidating as it is.

ETA: I'm not complaining about this, just observing that relative privilege makes just being a decent person feel awkward sometimes (how fucked up is that?); the people who suffer the racism, sexism, misogyny directly  are the people actually facing difficulty.

  Writing and reading what i just wrote makes commenting on the 'burdens' of speaking up feel to me like I'm whining.  Just because something is uncomfortable at first doesn't mean I shouldn't do it.  Defintely trying to be a better ally and erring on the side of being strident as opposed to silent.  Confronting the 'isms' should really just be viewed as basic decency and social duty.  

[lessthanluke]

Just now, larrytheimp said:

So much harder to call out in real life than online for me and it shouldn't be as intimidating as it is.

Truth and if I struggle as a 250lb strongman to do it because of intimidation I can imagine it's even harder for others.