[dragonwriter]

> “Men’s liberation” embracing feminism is a contradiction in terms.

It may or may not be an accurate description of this group (I haven't heard of “men’s liberation”, or if I did I’ve forgotten, and it would be atypical of what generally falls under the “men’s rights” banner), but the described position (accepting the feminist critique of patriarchy but focussing within that on how patriarchy hurts and limits men and addressing those issues) is a perfectly coherent position; while feminism doesn't view the impact of patriarchy as symmetric on sex/gender, it certainly does identify it as harmful and limiting to men as well as women.

[makomk]

Having spent a few years following feminist discourse a while back, this doesn't work because the idea that patriarchy hurts men too is only permissible as a way of demanding that everyone treat existing, women-centric feminism as already solving men's problems without having to think about them or, indeed, really treat men as people. Actually, more than that: it's used to argue that anyone who really cared about the issues facing men would stop discussing or thinking about them and fall in line behind feminism and women's issues instead because that is the real movement addressing them, and therefore anyone who doesn't is just a misogynist in disguise. Or was a few years ago at any rate.

Also, what makes this interesting is that there is almost no such thing as a problem with existing gender roles that solely affects men. For example, the obstacles blocking men from parenting children within society are inextricably intertwined with the feminist, women-centric idea that parenting should not fall entirely on women, but it is basically impossible to address the former without outright rejecting feminism even though they are a direct obstacle to those feminists' goals. Usually it just ends up in blaming the men for failing to overcome obstacles that the people involved can't even realise exist and are probably quietly perpetuating in their own lives.

[orwin]

I'm sorry, i'm not that good at english and this is quite confusing. Can you re-word it?

Are you saying that there is fact multiple kind of feminism, or multiple ways to defend feminism, and one of them block -or rather challenge - the other? If this is the case, i agree.

I'll go with my experience. My father demanded shared right every year for seven years. He had to go to a tribunal where my mother lived, probably de most conservative county in France (only royalist one at least). For seven year, he was told "no", and was even told to stop taking the judge's time. The eighth year, the law changed and the case was instructed at his place of living, a very liberal county (liberal as the americans understand the term). He got the shared rights.

Now, its only one case, outside the US so probably the culture is different. But i think there is a reason why the mens liberation movement exist, and i do think it is necessary to have different point of view on feminism, inside the feminist movement. Internal iscourse is necessary for a movement to grow with the rest of society.

[zozbot234]

Interesting case. Would he then get shared rights in the U.S., given a similar background to the case? Keep in mind that shared visitation rights are not only exceedingly rare, but opposed by many U.S. feminist movements. Trying to work on this stuff "inside the feminist movement" is something many people will see as a non-starter.

[tablespoon]

> ...a way of demanding that everyone treat existing, women-centric feminism as already solving men's problems without having to think about them or, indeed, really treat men as people.

A few years back, I was friends with several very feminist people [1] who expressed exactly that thought in about as many words. In other cases, they were very much of the belief that group-members should be followed as advocates for their own group. The big glaring exception was men, and they didn't grasp the contradiction or their blind spot.

[1] It was a mixed group who's strongest ideological commitment was to feminism and related ideologies. The men definitely put the women's perspectives above their own.

[dragonwriter]

> Having spent a few years following feminist discourse a while back, this doesn't work because the idea that patriarchy hurts men too is only permissible as a way of demanding that everyone treat existing, women-centric feminism as already solving men's problems without having to think about them or, indeed, really treat men as people.

This is complete bullshit.

Not to say that you can’t find this way of thinking; it certainly exists and gets disproportionate play from anti-feminists to whom it is convenient, but it hardly exhausts, or even typifies, feminist thought.

[zozbot234]

Unfortunately, "the feminist critique of patriarchy" is itself incoherent, so that doesn't really help "men's liberation movement" proponents. Coming up with a scary, thought-terminating cliche ("patriarchy") that itself conflates a huge variety of institutional/social arrangements, a vast amount of which are supported and maintained by women far more than men, is junk social science, and is hardly a satisfactory foundation for any social movement.