What is Reddit's opinion of The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help (How to End Domestic Violence, Mental and Emotional Abuse, and Sexual Harassment)?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Be the first to tell your Dad, but first apologise to her. He sounds a pretty cool dude so he'll understand. If he doesn't then at least you've been a man about it.
But yep, you're growing and getting used to your own strength. So, never push anyone, it's actually quite a dangerous move.
Never touch a woman without her consent.
Read: "The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help (How to End Domestic Violence, Mental and Emotional Abuse, and Sexual Harassment)
https://www.amazon.com/Macho-Paradox-Some-Hurt-Women/dp/1402204019

The focus on socializing causing masculine toxicity is an important one. It's the essential way we need to shift our societies and cultures to correct the gross mishandling of human rights and civil liberties which have caused immeasurable suffering for not only women, but men and everything between as well.

Yes, technically there are physiological differences between the biology of male and female brains (though they are more similar than different, and it makes no impact on ability/intelligence), and pretending that isn't true won't help us fix anything. But (obviously, I hope) biology isn't the only determinant of behavior, and really only makes socializing that much more critical: if biology actually plays a role in male behavioral tendencies (which is never an excuse for unacceptable behavior), then conscientious, meaningful attention to the socialization of biologically male people is more critical than it would be if that weren't true.

One small way socializing happens is language, of course. That's why we've given so much attention to pronouns and thoughtless turns of phrase. "Boys will be boys" is a phrase used to excuse male misbehavior for generations, and it's important to object when it is uttered, maybe even explain how such messaging equates to approval of inappropriate actions by males, so it ought never be used again.

There are many ways that male socialization needs to be addressed, but I still very much liked the messaging from Jackson Katz, whose book The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help (Sourcebooks, 2006, 2019: Amazon, Barnes & Noble) focuses on bringing men to an understanding of how sexism and toxic masculinity are not only deeply harmful for all women (including the ones they care about), but to men's health and wellness, too.

Getting men to acknowledge how masculine socializing has constrained and limited them, has kept them trapped in a role harmful even to themselves, is a vital way to bring them into the realm of being allies. Once they can see themselves as instrumental in the rise or fall of masculine harm, more can be asked, such as not just letting themselves be a bystander in moments when toxic masculinity is in play. Identifying that "bystander moment", when they can step up and be a voice that counters the trend of gender violence.

>Doesn´t it make you feel happier when someone is there to enjoy it with you?

For the people into it, no, I don't think it does. I've seen a serious increase in sleep-sex/sleep-rape porn on major porn sites recently and it's deeply disturbing. I think the closest correlation is probably necrophilia, which a few therapists I've known agree is typically linked to the perpetrator's intense fear or dislike of being judged: if someone is dead (or unconscious) it's impossible for them to judge the perpetrator.

So, as masculinity in Western culture becomes more and more distorted and toxic, more and more males are becoming anxious and fearful of judgement, particularly by women, leading them to prefer sexual fantasies that degrade or ignore the women, having no concern for their pleasure or even consent. How fukt up is this?

In The Macho Paradox by Jackson Katz, there's a citation from a major player in the online porn industry (PornHub? I could be misremembering here) about how the "facial cumshot" was the "most degrading thing we could think of" (I'm certain this is not an entirely accurate quote, but I'm not wrong about the gist)]. Basically, porn was being deliberately pushed toward the abuse and degradation of women because it was what they believed men wanted and felt, playing on their insecurity and misogyny to get more views. Clearly things have only escalated since then.

Also this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1402204019

I was relieved to find that that wasn't like some overtly "menz rights" page or something. This seems almost in line with Jackson Katz's "The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and and How All Men Can Help" in their goals to teach people how to prevent and intervene in sexual violence, but lines like "to legitimize men’s health needs and increase awareness of men’s issues" sound really suspicious, and they never clearly define what these "men's health needs" or "men's issues" are, so it sounds like they're explicitly leaving the door open for menzrights interpretations.

So I'd say maybe a step in the right PHMT direction, but lacking the courage to take a really feminist stand. Also because this link also exists in MensRights with the same misspelled title, you FaustWolf have basically revealed yourself to be AKA DougDante, which again makes me again wonder whether this link (and maybe the UOregon group too?) has a hidden identity/agenda trolling/derailing as well...

You forgot the “typically against women” part of that dictionary definition.

Feminism is a sociological field of study that aims to explain and observe humans experience in society based on their gender.

This term has been used to now describe a social justice movement for women’s rights because the view points are based on the very educated and researched findings of feminist scholars.

So when bringing up sexism, you have brought up feminism. Since sexism refers to the oppression based on gender, which is what feminism studies and what the movement is based on.

Sexism is so much more complex than a simple dictionary definition. Sexism, racism, ableism, etc all have to do with power and privilege. No one likes those terms because they don’t understand them. Privilege doesn’t mean your life is perfect. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a very difficult life. But what it does mean is that your life isn’t difficult because of certain things like race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and class. Oppression is complicated because you never have one single identity, you may be a white man, but if you are gay then that adds a layer of oppression even though you have privilege in the other categories. If you are in poverty that’s another layer. A very useful tool is the matrix of oppression, which is just a matrix that shows the grade of privilege and oppression each category has. here is an in depth explanation of the matrix of oppression as well as excellent information about the different types of oppression. here is an image of the matrix

Because men are the privileged group, they can’t experience sexism. They can experience prejudice, sure. But not sexism. In sociology (which is the actual educated study of these things) it’s explained that the privileged group doesn’t experience the oppression. The privileged group hasn’t had to fight for their right to live, vote, be a human, etc. (if you want to discuss white Jews and the experience of Irish Americans that is another complex topic knows as “othering”, that’s a whole other bag).

So no, men don’t get to decide what is sexist or not because they have never faced oppression, genuine oppression, because of their gender. They don’t experience gender based violence.

If you actually care to educate yourself You should start with this Ted talk by Jackson Katz and he also wrote this book about it and another great resource that talks about what toxic masculinity is and how it harms men is a documentary called Tough Guise 2