men are rewarded for conforming to patriarchal demands made upon them, any benefit women might get in comparison is potentially getting less harassment (i.e tangible oppression)
the policing of mens behavior doesn't derive solely from feminism, yes some of the lexicon comes from terms liberal feminism has popularised, which comes from an oppressed group of people who are economically disempowered and consistently undermined in work places etc - but the policng of men isn't the result of the gains of womens rights, its the internal workings of patriarchal societies exclusivity, where ones maleness is under constant questioning as a function of the way patriarchy maintains the gender norms of male hegemony.
when products are marketed to people, its because we are in a society that is organised around a dictatorship of capital,it is a generalised issue that affects everyone, yes, but on the gendered axis, it is not because they are men that they are targeted, it is because they are proletarians (or a demograph the market seeks to extract capital directly from) under a system controlled by the bourgeoisie and despite it being overwhelmingly patriarchal, it does not undermine that on the gendered axis men are the ones with privilege and potentila access to significantly more privilege so long as they tow the line.
there is something to be said about the way sociological concepts and phenomenon are reduced to individual pathology/psychology, which is also a primary problem with the concept of "toxic masculinity" a term coined by old timey mens rights organising that lack luster branches of feminism latched onto and popularised - despite it being hyper individualistic and overly moralised (I personally think its a useless term) since its only being used by liberal feminism which is just garbage cooption of decent longer standing feminist thought.
when someone is constantly bogged down by social norms that dehumanise them and materially disempower them where only by the good graces of the men in power around them might they get to avoid being harmed or have their gender put to the side so they might get a promotion, it is no wonder that people sometimes fly off the rails and vent in uncharitable and seemingly personalised ways - this is normal and makes sense - what is bad however, si when the contents of venting become a political lines uncritically, which is a problem, again, with liberal feminism, as it is rather conservative with the way it opportunistically uses stand point epistemology to garner authority in inappropriate ways (it can be appropriate but it needs to be principled in more than reformist/liberal schools of thought).
as far as consumerism is concerned, its a non issue and only reflects a very shallow "feminism" this is a non issue unless someone hasn't engage with feminism beyond its most opportunistic and shallow presentations in society, which is plainly a skill issue.
the bathroom stuff in this example is more to do with the way schoolings themselves are authoritarian hell holes that are about teaching discipline to children to obey authority and to act in accordance with their expected gender - when boys deviate from that they are policed, often violently, this is not new, but again, this policing is about directing them towards where they will be most privileged, so the bathroom school incident is largely a moot point other than it being a useful discussion on the way gendered ontologies are see within patriarchal society - which, just because there have been aesthetic incorporations of liberal feminism (a cooption of feminism as a radical social movement, the same as any social movement that capitalism assimilates in order to defang in) does not change the fact that this is patriarchy self policing the people it wants to head it in the future - its ageism and it reinforced the patriarchal notion that men are biologically predisposed to violence and that that inevitability is on the shoulders of women to manage - but in this case it was simply the violence of schooling enaged in gender discipline.
4th graders are not exempt from experiencing rape culture and there is something to be said, again, about gendered ontologies around who is and isn't ontologically capable of meaningfully causing sexual hurt etc - again, patriarchal self policing to weed out men who are seen as less because they are being made less by being affected by the lesser gender, managing membership to the society of men that's membership comes with benefits exclusive to men.
the rec class example, and I have a lot of sympathy here, again is that same policing of the mens club stuff - the very nature of male privilege is that it maintains itself through the constant denial of access to it to other boys/men though the violent policing of what it expects4 - the way you internalised that sounds eerily like potential dysphoria as I personally never felt like the ways I was expected to be and the ways I was assumed to be, automatically, did not fit me (mainly hit hard in highschool) and I was very distressed about this until I ditched the idea that I was more than just a man, that I was also genderqueer and so I found it easier to parry these things because I knew me better than other peoples vapid reductive assumptions - it has been a long journey however since then to unpack a lot of this stuff.
with the term incel, it is, once again, just simply gender policing and reinforcing what is expected of them to be successful or what benefits they receive if they align themselves with the demands of masculinity within a patriarchal society, everyone experiences gender policing, its just the difference is is that there are far more benefits to falling in line for men than for women, though women who fall in line often benefit from that but only at the expense of other women or otherwise marginalised people/men on another axis of oppression other than gender
so while there is truth the the way people who have been victimised by opportunistic power moves that have the aesthetics/lingo of feminism, the power at play is patriarchy's self policing of men as the nature of male privilege is its conditionality.
this isn't to deny that some people have a pathological fear of men (androphobia) but rather that if we be sociologists about this and not give in to the very logics of capitalism, we can see that patriarchy is at play here and that its not solely on the shoulders of women or even feminism itself to fix this, its on everyone to do something, with the one condition that spaces that seek to address these issues do not disregard the role of patriarchy here and do not create a meat grinder for women etc in these spaces when we come together to combat terrible analysis and opportunistic pop feminism.
my main point is, however, is that there are multiple institutions and structures in society that commit violence against people and exploit people, that this is wide spread but does not necessarily constitute a gendered equal to misogyny or transmisogyny, and that through understanding not just generic feminist analysis but also things like class analysis, bio power, etc, we can come to understand this violence and therefore come together in solidarity to give equaity/equality a better shit. thank you for your time reading this
stormborns
prguitarman
jacobvanloon
jbbartram-illu
kianamaiart
kaledo-art
