Hierarchies and the Oppression of Everyone
There tend to be two reasons why generally speaking most movements fighting for the equality of a marginalized group tend to not be understood. Well, three. But the third reason has more to do with bad actors on the opposing side, who do not want to understand anything. Mainly because those bad actors are actually understanding how they themselves are profitting from the system.
Still, the other two reasons are two reasons that tend to be less understood - which makes this entire thing so darn frustrating:
There are multiple axes of marginalization - and a lot of people are not privileged on every axis.
Even those most privileged will still be in some ways oppressed by the system, and might indeed be suffering for it.
Given that I spent this week on the topic of feminism, I will use feminism as an example.
If you go into the #feminism tag here on tumblr, you will see at least two posts every day raging about the idea of feminism being for equality, feminism including men, and so on, and so forth. My personal reaction to this is between being annoyed, and getting angry at the amount of sheer ignorance. Because, let's face a simple fact: most of the women posting this tend to be white, fairly privileged cis women, who have not done a whole lot of research into the entire concept of patriarchy.
And it turns out: if you want to dismantle something, it becomes kinda hard if you do not understand it. You know, Luke would not have been able to blow up the Death Star if it was not for the plan showing the unprotected air vents.
This is why I get annoyed even with the most trans- and sex-work-inclusive RadFems. Because RadFems love to talk about destroying the patriarchy, and yet most of the time just totally focus of the patriarchy as "men vs women", instead of looking at the bigger picture and trying to understand what patriarchy is, how it came to be, and why it effects everyone.
Here is the thing: RadFem is something like a self-fulfilling prophecy. "We wanna destroy the patriarchy. But without men. Men suck. Men never listen." Which, in turn, will indeed lead to men not listening, and going into: "Ha, I knew y'all were men-hating radicals!" mode.
But here is the thing: the patriarchy harms everyone under it. Including men. And of all systems of oppression (outside of capitalism) it might even be the one that shows this most clearly - as a lot of people have figured out.
RadFems love to hate on Men's Rights Acitivists - but ironically speaking, there is barely a group of men easier convinced that "the patriarchy is bad actually" than MRAs. And I know, because I tried. 8 years ago, I was active in a campaign that pushed for a change in the law in Germany, to give fathers more a chance to obtain primary custody in case of a divorce. Right now, the custody will basically default to the mother, even in cases where there is a lot of reason for that not to happen. (Spoken as someone, who as a toddler got put with the mother, who had been diagnosed with severe mental illness, was known to refuse treatment for this, while both older siblings - who were old enough to be asked about it - said very clearly, that this was a bad idea. But an infant/toddler according to a lot of people should alwaysw go with the mother - hence my mother got sole custody.)
As you might imagine: within that push there were a lot of MRAs. And obviously, a lot of them were like: "Bah, women bad! This is all because women!"
But it turns out, especially in this scenario it is not very hard to show the error of that logic: "Who makes a majority of the legislation? Who is doing a majority of the decisions in terms of custody?" Among politicians and judges men are far more likely to be the ones in charge.
And then it is often quite easy to push on: "Do you think women profit from a system that forces them to be mothers? Do you not understand that this system is patriarchy? Don't you think we would all be better off, if that system would be gone?"
Mind you, all of this tends to work a whole lot better when you do it in person, rather than the comment section of some social network. But at least in person a lot of MRAs can be so easily made to pause.
"If women are so suppressed, why do men die way more often of suicide?" - "Because men tend to have access to more deadly means of suicide, like guns, but also because today's patriarchal society has trained men to not accept professional help when they are struggling mentally."
"If women are so suppressed, why is it men who get send to war, when there is a draft?" - "Because patriarchy as a system has decided that men have to be strong, while also considering them as more replaceable - especially those men not in positions of power."
"Why is it often men doing the most dangerous jobs?" - "Same reason. Men are considered as more replaceable."
"If women are so suppressed, why is it that women can wear trousers and all and cut their hair short, but if I wanna wear a skirt, I will get ridiculed for it?" - "You guessed it: the patriarchy. The patriarchy is working by narrowing down gender roles and by devaluing femininity. A woman being masculine takes up more valuable attributes, a men being feminine in this system devalues himself."
Heck, when I enter hardcore mode, I can even deal with the: "If women are so suppressed, why can they keep me from having sex Q-Q" assholes like that: "Because the patriarchy has given women only one power to hold: deciding who gets access to their sexuality and mating capability. This forces them to be very picky about their potential partners, and it seems you do not tend to make the cut. You will find out, that men in matriarchal or egalitarian societies actually have a lot more sex than man under the patriarchy."
Because here is the simple fact of it all: Almost every concern those MRAs have is a real concern - and if you think about it hard enough often even a concern that relates to a feminist concern as well.
Will some of them absolutely just deny the patriarchy is real? Yeah, absolutely. But especially in regards to those "father rights movements" a lot of guys actually are surprisingly willing to listen if you talk with them this way.
"But why would we care about that?" the RadFems scream. "Stupid phallocentric society! Everything has to be about men!"
Well, there are several reasons to care about this. For one: Because if you would accept the actual research on this, the patriarchy is the problem you suffer with, not men. Yes, men will often appear as the arbiters of the patriarchy, but so will women a surprisingly often amount of times.
Even if you hate men, you basically have two options here: Continue hating men and just acting as if the men themselves were a problem, so you can keep yourself in eternal victimhood, without ever moving much forward in terms of your main concern (the end of patriarchy), or actually convince the men that the patriarchy is the problem, by making it clear to them how it affects them as much negatively as it does you.
And the thing is, that this tends to hold true for almost all systems of oppression: they tend to be shitty for the people who are supposedly the "oppressing" class as well. I will say it once more: while there is not a whole lot of research on this, due to so few millionaires and billionaires being willing to actually sign up for it, we do have a ton of evidence that actually those riches and power are making them horribly sick.
Do I absolutely loathe billionaires? Yes. But if nothing else I am well aware, that when I talk with someone not part of the communist or socialist movement, who will then go: "You are just jealous of them!" it is an amazing counter to go: "Oh, no, I am actually quite worried for them. See, there is this research that says that this amount of money is making them sick. Besides, we also know that most of them do not actually have real money, but hold onto assets, that easily could be turned aganst them, making them live in constant fear of this."
And let's face it: There is also this whole issue, where a lot of white feminists, especially RadFems, will refuse to engage with other minorities battles. Obviously, many of them will outright take a part in suppressing intersex people, trans people, and sex workers (many of whom are queer, disabled, and/or PoC), but even those who don't do not understand why they would need to partake also in the fight against racism, ableism, queerphobia, and especially capitalism. They do not want to see how all those problems intersect with one another.
And yes, while normally I just do five essays on one topic, I will tomorrow add a sixth one here, because fuck it. I am going to try explain intersectional feminism.
