What is Reddit's opinion of The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

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>why aren’t they reaching out to each other

'cause that's gay sis and the privileges given to you by being a man can be revoked at a moment's notice, leaving you in a state of total social isolation and ridicule targeted at the very terms by which one has identified themselves. boys exist in this weird state where we're all holding a gun to each other's head waiting for a boy to blink and admit to having feelings, at which point everybody pulls the trigger. the reality that i have observed (please take what i say as anecdote, i am too inebriated to be up in my science tonight sis) is that boys actually then begin sharing and become healthier for it, but the real fear of being a man is that you're going to be excommunicated from the mancave collective for showing unmanly behaviour.

i often think that i lucked out in being queer myself because it sort of forcibly ejects most of us from the man matrix, so you can see this performance bullshit for what it is. even then, you got gay boys desperately clinging to toxic masculinity, insisting "i'm gay but i'm not a f*ggot," "lisping queers hold us all back," whatever other dumbass dave ruben bullshit these bottoms do be on, but that's a loud minority and tbh they just seem kinda sad. like -- you want to slide in and be like, hey man, it's ok, you can cry, you can admit you're scared, you can experience the whole spectrum of the human condition; your dad's gonna disown you anyway so you might as well take some good with the bad, y'know?

this is what my babe bell hooks (love her) was on about in the will to change, a banger i 100% recommend to anybody and everybody.

> Would be good to start with reading the full sentence in context

I did. my comments stand. Even in the context of the suggestion, all one has to do is google "Bell Hooks Patriarchy book" and the first result will get an excellent introductory book about how patriarchy is perpetuated and what men can do to forestall that perpetuation. You dismissed the suggestion based on the original suggester's comments prior to the suggestion. You dismissed the suggestion not based on Hook's arguments, which you are ignorant of, but based on the commentor's own theories, which are unrelated to Hook's.

I just have a personal bugaboo about people offering opinions on works that they have never consumed. if you have read Hooks, and disagree with their views, then that's great. But, you have "not read neither Hooks nor Butler" and you say you will never do so. So, basically, your opinion on them is worthless.

Actually, feminists do address them. Acclaimed feminist Bell Hooks has an entire book on how misogyny and violence against women impacts men, their perception of themselves and their relationships.

The male victims of abuse you talk about are collateral victims of a system designed to oppress women. If you really cared about them you would be seeking to tear down said system instead of using their suffering and trauma as a gotcha in a Reddit comment section. If you are one of them and you genuinely believe that the indifference society has towards male victims of violence has nothing to do with the fact this same society specifically designed victimhood as a natural experience of womanhood then my advice is the same: the book I linked does a nice job explaining all of this, how it works and most importantly, how to stop it.

I’m exhausted. I don’t think men should feel guilty. They have been harmed extensively for eons by a model of masculinity that asks them to deny critical parts of human experience. It’s not our fault as men, but it is our work to learn and be creative and embrace our full humanity. It will be hard, the world is not nice to people who do things differently but I think it can be done. And I beg of you read bell hooks’ The Will to Change

I highly highly highly recommend reading a book by bell hooks called “The Will to Change” which more or less explores this topic from a feminist perspective. It also critiques a lot of radical feminist ideology and the way traditional feminists have responded to men and their emotions. It’s a good read but it’s incredibly hard to get thought the beginning as she talks about her brother whom she remembers being taught by their abusive father to not show emotions, seeing him enter teenage years convinced he shouldn’t show them whatsoever.

I read this book before my son was born and it was exactly what I needed: The Will to Change - by bell hooks

Full disclosure, this book uses the word “patriarchy” every other sentence. If that’s not your vibe, then that’s cool.

Learned a lot about how we raise boys and why. I suggest to anyone.

While not quite a book, the /r/MensLib subreddit is very wholesome and I support it. It's *chef's kiss".

Also it occurred to me you may be interested in this book - The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by Bell Hooks.

bell hooks wrote this(among other amazing works) incredible book that I have seen referenced in here often, "The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love" link here: https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+will+to+change+bell+hooks&qid=1639589658&sr=8-1 I'm really hit hard by this. I read so much bell hooks in undergrad. This is quite the loss.

Remember the book I suggested for you? There is the link again...

That some/a lot/any women follow this content is a weak defense of the content. I'd argue many of the others referenced are different points on the same slope for their perpetuation of views.

Try to go deeper in understanding this stuff if you want to get out of your cycles. Don't let what's popular by any third party -- including any of us -- dictate your own assessments. But actually make your own assessments. Don't play ostrich and be passive. You can't.

It is 100% okay to enjoy lower brow, high brow, black, blue -- pretty much any -- humor.

Where lines gets drawn, however, is if something passes your own personal inbounds/out-of-bounds limits. Where are your thresholds? Did you set them yourself? Or were they assigned to you and you went along with it? How aware of them are you?

You gotta not be passive in your life if you want to grow.

That's what UnPleasantStuff is asking is:

> "Steven...are you saying this [A New Untold Story] quote is inbounds for you? And if inbounds, why do you think it is healthy for you or not?"

That's the question on the table: What's your take on A New Untold Story's editorial policies? And how do you think those policies support or hinder you?

I started it last night.

https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

She addresses the most common concerns of men, such as fear of intimacy and loss of their patriarchal place in society, in new and challenging ways. She believes men can find the way to spiritual unity by getting back in touch with the emotionally open part of themselves—and lay claim to the rich and rewarding inner lives that have historically been the exclusive province of women. A brave and astonishing work, The Will to Change is designed to help men reclaim the best part of themselves.

Cis-fragility is thing, not nearly spoken of enough.

Good luck with your mother.

For what it is worth, someone told me accurately to remember, "They're not responding to you."

There are decades of foundational inertia for parents to overcome, that their models of describing and navigating the world...they're just dated. What is intrinsically known to you, our parents have things which are intrinsically "known" to them too...but it is the production of education and exposure.

The worldview of decades doesn't go away overnight. It doesn't excuse the behavior, but it does contextualize it. My grandmother is the most open, accepting person...she sometimes slips into articulations which, now, would be considered racist. Not often, but when you're >90, and the first 45y of your life established patterns of "this is how the world is", it can take a long, long time to unwind.

We have a lot, lot more information now about the nature of sex and gender than when even I was in school. The world was presented as a pure-binary. I had no reason to disbelieve my teachers, or my parents...

And then, years later, I admitted how flawed that model was, how limiting, and how it effectively only severed a hierarchal patriarchy which used science as a fig leaf, cherry picking that which reinforced that model.

Every time I've encountered a parent with "terfy tendencies", it usually can be explained through this lens. Because for them to admit the validity of being transgender, to not easily dismiss it as "they're cross dressing", that requires them to revaluate their entire personal history of gender dynamics. Any beliefs they subscribed to about "Because X was a boy; because Y was a girl."...those must be reevaluated.

The result is often "Wow...how flawed were my reasons for doing things long before my kid ever came along."

No one likes to be a sucker, but to admit you got caught up as a pawn in someone else's patriarchal game...there will be internal resistance. And that's what it usually is. It actually has nothing to do with sex nor gender, but a lot more to do with ones unexamined participation in hierarchal patriarchal structures.

So...they're not responding to you, but you probably are shining a light on the fragility of their own world view.

If helps, this is the book which made a huge difference for me. It was the first which managed to describe behavior without invalidating how we got here. The connection to being transgender is not explicit, but it is an easy connection to make.

My source is that I made it the f*ck up!

And for real, it's my reflection on "Will to change: On men, masculinity and love" by bell hooks.

haven't read them yet so I don't know if they're good and if they are exactly what you're looking for but I have these on my list

The Will To Change

The Man They Wanted Me To Be

Manhood in the Making

Also I recommend r/MensLib. A community talking about the issues of men in a patriarchal system.

I am not a big fan of Peterson so these books won't really be like his stuff. In his earliest work he had some points but he gradually lost grasp of reality and logic through the years. I feel like many psychologists specifying on the problems of one gender only will be very biased.

tbh, the "go to therapy" refrain is some extremely white middle-class people shit. I'm saying this as a therapist, I am begging uninformed people to stop using "go to therapy" as some kind of thought terminating cliche mantra to call each other out, minimalize one another's issues, or in any way present an adversarial dynamic toward therapy itself.

"Go to therapy" is applied like essential oils to the skin of an autistic kid. The way it's used ignores the vast and complex systemic issues that - ironically enough - contemporary feminism identifies as barriers to positive mental health for both men and women. Repeating it ad infinitum betrays an absolute lack of awareness of how underfunded, understaffed and potentially ineffective it is, or the dangers it can pose for some men.

To illustrate, black men, especially black men who communicate using AAVE, have natural hair, etc., are far more likely to be misdiagnosed with a cluster B personality disorder due to white therapists misreading their mannerisms as being "overly emotional." This can lead to unnecessarily institutionalisation, which risks trauma, building an adverse relationship to future effective therapy, loss of employment, etc.

Another pertinent example, plenty of the dudes here are on the autism spectrum, and finding therapists who actually do know how to treat clients with ASD is extremely difficult, as most simply advertise they know what they're doing without any actual exposure or proficiency. People with ASD are at risk of harm due to inappropriate therapies.

This is not to say that these men should not be pursuing psychological treatment, but rather that presenting "go to therapy" as some kind of obvious monosolution to extremely complex, nuanced issues isn't feminism, feminism involves reading and understanding shit, like bell hooks' The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity & Love. Berating men with some kind of easy one-size-fits-all live laugh love solution is just girlboss vogue magazine shit. Intersectionality requires an understanding of every possible facet of an issue before providing individualised, equitable solutions that are effective, realistic, and not liable to harm the person you're offering solutions to.

In short, "go to therapy" just radiates the kind of easy, casual privilege you expect of someone who's never struggled to get to therapy, as it implies the barriers there are a choice.

https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084/ref=nodl_?dplnkId=50336767-0c97-4281-be17-0399db6d6af2

No actually, I do have a problem with saying “any group” is better at x, y, and z. Unless it’s a specialized thing, like “doctors are better at surgery”.

Nobody should be judged in things they cannot control. Physical features, race, gender, etc. To say one of these categories effects your cognitive abilities is idiotic.

That being said, it’s also idiotic not to realize systemic and societal sexism exists.

Some reading, if you are up for it. You could also find PDFs online.

Invisible Women by Carolina Criado Perez

And

The Will To Change by Bell Hooks

Bell Hooks in particular is a tougher read but more thorough. She mentions how the patriarchal oppression heavily effects men as well and how they perceive their own roles/individualism in society.

It’s not a choice to be born male in a misogynistic society, just like it’s not a choice to be born female. But you do have a choice when it comes to how you act, how you educate yourself to womens issues, how much empathy you have, etc.

If everyone worked even a little bit to help bring equality to the world, within generations it could be done. I don’t expect men to go out playing white knight or cater to women in the least. But I expect the willingness to learn how one may be perpetuating misogyny, even subconsciously.

If you are open to it, I recommend Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez or The Will To Change by Bell Hooks.

Hooks is a heavy author but she’s wonderful. She also speaks deeply upon the issues that men face in a patriarchy and the unfair circumstances in which both genders are put in because of it.

If you're open to doing therapy, I feel nearly anyone can benefit from it, and it can help you understand your emotions better, which is critical because toxic masculinity teaches men to suppress a lot of emotion (everything except anger) and rely on the women in their lives to do a lot emotional labor. Therapy may give you the tools to be able to do more of that labor yourself instead of having to rely on the women around you to do it for you, or at least have more awareness of when you are relying on others to do emotional work on your behalf.

I recommend this book as a sort of guide to an alternative masculinity that doesn't support patriarchy and misogynist tendencies.
https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

Another resource you might find useful in regards to attitudes towards women and how to be an ally to them: https://pamelaclark.tumblr.com/post/87113711124/35-practical-tools-for-men-to-further-feminist

check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

I think you'd find it very beneficial and maybe life changing. I recommend this book to many young and middle aged men.

bell hooks on patriarchy:

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/patriarchy-primer-men/

bell hooks also wrote a book called The Will to Change, which I highly recommend.

It's a general concept that describes societal and cultural structures designed by men and for men which have he goal of reducing women to property.

If you looked at the news recently you probably would have seen plenty of examples.

For instance, women in many places around the world are not the legal owners of their own bodies. Their bodily autonomy is controlled by men (in a societal legal sense). They are not allowed to control their own reproductive organs. Their skin is not allowed to be displayed, they are not allowed to have the same economic opportunities as men, so they can be at the mercy of men. They are sometimes mutilated in order to deny them their own sexuality. They are denied the opportunity to be informed and educated, out of fear that they might actually think for themselves.

This is the more extreme side of it, there is also a more casual form. Even in western societies there are still remnants of these "women as property" ideas. Common example is men being offended when a woman isn't trying to be sexy. Or the good old sl*t shaming. Or being expected to do all of the chores despite also having a full time job. Or being expected to love a man that does not make any effort to be attractive. Or being labeled a bitch if daring to command respect. I can go on, but it's just depressing.

This has mostly benefits for men but also some downsides. For one it prevents men from developing emotionally or socially. It prevents them from learning valuable life skills. It also puts them in a position where their whole identity can be defined by their ability to "provide". It essentially reduces men to merly heartless cogs whose whole worth can be defined by the number on their paycheck. It also prevents men from dealing with their emotional and mental issues because "feeling" are so heavily codes as feminine.

TL:DR: Women have the deck stacked against them in almost every way. It's like that because it benefits the power structure, men get hurt by it too but not as much.
There's a pretty good book on the subject written by a woman for men called "The Will to Change". I highly recommend it.

PS: Replies trying to disprove my arguments using anecdotes will be ignored, go cry somewhere else I don't give a shit.

>This is just an assumption on your part. In-fact, RAINN has been critical of feminist concepts in the past:

That doesn't say anything about the people who donate to rainn. Given that self-identified feminists are the main people discussing sexual assault and rape those seem like by far the most plausible donors.

>Why? The methodology of the CDC study you shared has been criticized: https://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/ > >I would imagine that RAINN would want to be careful about where they get their statistics from.

That article is largely saying exactly the same stuff I am, just pointing at that study instead of RAINN's statistics which are also from the CDC. That CDC study might be flawed, but at least it counts the number of 'made to penetrate' victims instead of ignoring them completely.

Plus, RAINN gets their numbers from the National Institute of Justice & Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey - literally a survey intended to measure violence specifically again women. I don't see why that would even be considered a valid source for stats on men.

>I feel like you’re going out of you way to find problems. Why was it feminists wanting to expand the definition to include men? Where were the male rights activists? They could have just left men out of it entirely. You keep claiming that it’s all about “optics” and “PR.”

The male rights activists have often spoken about exactly this issue, but people generally don't care about men being harmed (see any news article listing casualties, media regularly killing men and sparing women, and so on) so any group that specifically focuses on men's issues is likely to be ignored. It certainly doesn't help that the majority of the time that men try to bring attention to their issues, many people calling themselves feminists derail the conversation and force it to be about women's issues instead.

Research demonstrating that harming men is considered more acceptable than harming women: https://archive.is/t4tjP

That research also showed that women were even less likely to shock other women than men were, indicating that this effect is especially strong when the person doing the harming is a woman.

>You’re going to have to show how these men are treated as a “trivial concern” by feminists. The mainstream media has made jokes out of male sexual assault, but it's not feminists who are doing that. Here’s some reading for you: > >https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/facts-male-rape-survivors/https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/09/stop-joking-about-men-raped-by-women/ > >https://feminisminindia.com/2020/09/16/media-trivialise-male-rape/

This is inherent in that many feminists use the same rape statistics that I have already demonstrated exclude most male victims. People can say they care all they want, but by explicitly excluding most male victims from being counted they demonstrate that that is simply lip service rather than actual commitment. Those articles are good, but a couple of people pointing out the issue does not equate to the movement at large holding the same view. In nearly every article I've seen discussing rape statistics, male victims are either not mentioned or the 2.78 million statistic is used.

>Do you know who Bell Hooks was? She recently passed, another poster mentioned her. She was a black queer feminist (one of the most influential feminists to ever live) who was very empathetic toward men and how the patriarchy hurts them. You should check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

Bell Hooks is good, but she is the exception that proves the rule. Because you have to specifically choose her as an example of empathy towards men, that demonstrates that the community at large tends to lack that empathy.

> I’m speaking in-regards to “made to penetrate” and the limited definition of “rape.” And we’re not just talking about gay people, but trans people as well. Many trans women have penises, but they are still women. A very high number of trans women have experienced sexual assault. The stakes are the same.In-fact, actually, there are quite a few people exploring the effects of sexual assault on men alongside lgbt+ people (and as separate categories from cishet women):https://www.theleaflet.in/transgenders-and-rape-law-is-equal-protection-of-law-still-a-pipe-dream/https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/07/29/they-treated-us-monstrous-ways/sexual-violence-against-men-boys-and-transgenderhttps://conflictandhealth.biomed...

I'm not sure how trans women having penises is relevant here except in the context that if a trans woman forcibly penetrates someone with her penis then that is counted as rape but not if she is forced to penetrate another person. That is true, but I've never seen any statement from a trans woman indicating that this is a concern at all. The main focus tends to be on the high rates of violence that trans people face in general and on men assaulting trans women, neither of which is relevant to this discussion.

I'm not sure why you're citing articles about rape law in other countries when I have been primarily discussing the problems that exist in the US. Also, in those cases, the trans women who were assaulted were penetrated by men and would therefore be counted under the existing penetration-based definition.

The issue isn't as much about the identity of the victims, it's the identity of the assaulters. In all of these examples, women are excluded as possible rapists just as I've shown happens in the statistics from the US.

>What are the statistics on straight men being raped? The study you shared just classified men, but with no sexual orientation breakdown.Anyway, if we go off of the CDC study you shared, male victims of rape and “made to penetrate” sexual assault combined comes to about 10,715,000. The LGBT+ population in America is 20 million: https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/585711-us-lgbtq-population-hits-20-million

Ah I had only seen the previous estimates placing LGBT people as ~4% of the population which would make them ~12 million people, comparable to the number of listed male victims.

>Well first, I’m a lesbian who has always been very involved within the lesbian community, and the majority of us are not “man haters”, we’re just not attracted to guys is all. You make great friends though. Anyways, that’s an annoying stereotype rooted in ignorance that i’m always disappointed to hear. My point is, is that the limited definition of rape has negative impact on both men and the lgbt+ community for the reasons I mentioned above.

The majority might not be, but those who are are rarely called out, indicating at least acceptance of those who do openly express hatred. Unless lesbian feminists explicitly contradict those who simultaneously claim to be feminist and openly hate men, it is inherently implied that that is a viewpoint that is acceptable within that group. This is exactly the same argument that every group uses to avoid being associated with their worst members. Most republicans aren't white supremacists, but it's still telling that they refuse to disavow those groups. You can't use the same arguments that you hate in others and expect to convince anyone.

>Show me the evidence, not just your anecdotes. You and I have had obviously different experiences. Here, let me start, this is a study that found that most women were attracted to moderate masculinity, but not super masculinity. The rest either preferred more feminine or more masculine. The results were varied depending of the individual characteristics of the woman: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/attraction-evolved/201712/why-certain-women-prefer-man-whos-more-feminine

Clearly you haven't even read what I said because this is entirely irrelevant. The problem isn't women finding masculine men more attractive, it's that women behave in a way that ensures that the vast majority of opportunities where someone finding you attractive results in a date go to traditionally masculine men.

As I have already said, the emotional cost of asking someone out is very rarely taken up by women, so in the vast majority of cases men have to ask women out to find dates. This inherently biases dating towards:

1. Men who are outgoing and thus meet a lot of women who could potentially be interested in them

2. Men who are assertive enough to ask out a woman they are interested in

3. Men who are stoic enough to weather repeated rejections

All of which are traditionally masculine traits. None of this has anything to do with who women find attractive.

One article discussing this issue: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/if-you-want-marriage-equals-then-date-equals/606568/

Most women do not ask men out on dates: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-differences/201104/why-dont-women-ask-men-out-first-dates

Most women consider themselves feminists: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/07/61-of-u-s-women-say-feminist-describes-them-well-many-see-feminism-as-empowering-polarizing/

>But you’ve offered no sources for the majority of your claims (aside from that CDC study), and I’ve requested evidence from you beyond personal anecdotes or assumptions more than once, but you have yet to provide any. My assumption was that you are not too concerned with evidence, but are guarding a preexisting narrative you’ve already established in your head

The problem is that the issue is primarily one of rhetoric, so performing it would require a reasonably advanced natural language analysis of social media data and the people with the technical skill to do that are unlikely to want to do so out of fear that criticizing the feminist echo chamber could end their careers. I'd do it myself, but I'm not going to spend months on a reddit argument

And why do those companies support them? Corporations do not spend money for no reason so the most likely reason is as a PR move so they can claim to support feminist causes. As for evidence, simply look at the entire discourse around rape and sexual assault - it is pretty much exclusively conducted by feminists and so nearly all people who are directed at RAINN without themselves being victims are likely to be either feminists or at least consistently swayed by feminist rhetoric.
This is just an assumption on your part. In-fact, RAINN has been critical of feminist concepts in the past: https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/03/rainn-attacks-the-phrase-rape-culture-in-its-recommendations-to-the-white-house-task-force-on-campus-sexual-assault.html
I also can’t find anything on the founder, Scott Berkowitz, self-proclaiming to be a feminist.
And that is invalid reasoning.
Why? The methodology of the CDC study you shared has been criticized: https://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/
I would imagine that RAINN would want to be careful about where they get their statistics from.
They changed it to not explicitly exclude men, but that just made the exclusion more subtle. It is an improvement, but it's more of a change in optics than in actual function. It was changed so that men are technically included while excluding the vast majority of actual male victims and excluding women from being rapists, preserving the narrative that rape is entirely perpetrated by men and almost exclusively harms women.
I feel like you’re going out of you way to find problems. Why was it feminists wanting to expand the definition to include men? Where were the male rights activists? They could have just left men out of it entirely. You keep claiming that it’s all about “optics” and “PR.”
And that's exactly what I said should be the case, but I have yet to see any major organization even mention the problems and even the people who claim to support the definition based purely on consent still use RAINN's statistics to treat rape as purely a problem of men raping women and never the other way around.
Maybe you and I should start our own organization.
And those men are generally treated as a trivial concern not worth putting any effort into actually discussing or supporting. I'm pretty sure millions of rape victims being ignored is as big an issue as most of the stuff that feminists treat as front-line problems but apparently it isn't worth more than occasional lip service to claim support without having to actually do anything.
You’re going to have to show how these men are treated as a “trivial concern” by feminists. The mainstream media has made jokes out of male sexual assault, but it's not feminists who are doing that. Here’s some reading for you:

https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/facts-male-rape-survivors/
https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/09/stop-joking-about-men-raped-by-women/

https://feminisminindia.com/2020/09/16/media-trivialise-male-rape/
Do you know who Bell Hooks was? She recently passed, another poster mentioned her. She was a black queer feminist (one of the most influential feminists to ever live) who was very empathetic toward men and how the patriarchy hurts them. You should check out this book: https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084
And the LGBT community does not have the same stakes - for gay men and women most forms of rape are likely to include some form of penetration and thus they would be included under the existing definition. 
I’m speaking in-regards to “made to penetrate” and the limited definition of “rape.” And we’re not just talking about gay people, but trans people as well. Many trans women have penises, but they are still women. A very high number of trans women have experienced sexual assault. The stakes are the same.
In-fact, actually, there are quite a few people exploring the effects of sexual assault on men alongside lgbt+ people (and as separate categories from cishet women):
https://www.theleaflet.in/transgenders-and-rape-law-is-equal-protection-of-law-still-a-pipe-dream/
https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/07/29/they-treated-us-monstrous-ways/sexual-violence-against-men-boys-and-transgender
https://conflictandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13031-020-0254-5
 Plus, the number of straight men who have been raped and are not being considered victims is literally on par with the total population of gay people. I don't think this is actually likely to change anytime soon given the "feminist" community's general propensity to treat men's emotions and trauma as fundamentally unworthy of attention.
What are the statistics on straight men being raped? The study you shared just classified men, but with no sexual orientation breakdown.
Anyway, if we go off of the CDC study you shared, male victims of rape and “made to penetrate” sexual assault combined comes to about 10,715,000. The LGBT+ population in America is 20 million: https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/585711-us-lgbtq-population-hits-20-million
And I don't trust your statement that "queer feminists are working on this" given the frequency with which lesbian "feminists" tend to demonstrate an actual hatred of men and that gay people in general are a small population with limited political power so they are unlikely to be working on any non-LGBT issues. Those are big enough to take up that community's entire activist efforts, so it is unlikely that they will put any meaningful effort towards addressing a problem that rarely affects them and is mainly an issue for a group that ~ half of them openly despise.
Well first, I’m a lesbian who has always been very involved within the lesbian community, and the majority of us are not “man haters”, we’re just not attracted to guys is all. You make great friends though. Anyways, that’s an annoying stereotype rooted in ignorance that i’m always disappointed to hear. My point is, is that the limited definition of rape has negative impact on both men and the lgbt+ community for the reasons I mentioned above.
As I said, it isn't even relevant what women find desirable if their behavior directly incentivizes traditional gender roles. The entire structure of dating forces men into that box even before what women find desirable becomes a factor, but because changing that requires shouldering the emotional cost of asking people out and risking rejection it is exceedingly rare for "feminists" to do so.
Show me the evidence, not just your anecdotes. You and I have had obviously different experiences. Here, let me start, this is a study that found that most women were attracted to moderate masculinity, but not super masculinity. The rest either preferred more feminine or more masculine. The results were varied depending of the individual characteristics of the woman: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/attraction-evolved/201712/why-certain-women-prefer-man-whos-more-feminine
And that's the entire problem. Political ideology sould be based on looking at the evidence and promoting the policies that will maximize the wellbeing of the population both by improving the lower bound on quality of life and by improving the average experience. Seems to me like you're just looking for a way to use emotional manipulation to persuade me since you don't have any actual arguments.
I’m actually enjoying this conversation. You’ve made me look at some of these issues with a bit more detail. Thank you for that.
But you’ve offered no sources for the majority of your claims (aside from that CDC study), and I’ve requested evidence from you beyond personal anecdotes or assumptions more than once, but you have yet to provide any. My assumption was that you are not too concerned with evidence, but are guarding a preexisting narrative you’ve already established in your head.

Glad some of these resonated with you! I highly recommend her writings but I will warn you she is a feminist and will often use phrases such as "patriarchy" through her work. Hopefully that isn't too much of an issue because her words are very moving for me.

The book all these quotes are from is The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

Thank you for the response! :D

Greetings - Just going to say if we go down this too much further, I'm going to need to lock the thread.

Indulgence of self-loathing doesn't help you, nor help the others on the other end. But I hear you, and you do get credit for not going after anyone here. Thank you for that.

A word about youthful appearances and beards:

You don't see it now, but appearing youthful is one of your greater assets.

You don't look like you're 12. That's your perception. You look like you're "a youthful-faced mid-20 something." But you can't see that because you are that.

The older you get, the more perspective you'll gain. When you're in your 30s or 40s, and still pass for 28y, trust all of us older than you -- it's an ace. Watch out for drinking too much, or spending too much time in the sun, and at 55y you'll pass for 40y. Play the long game here and accept the short-term perceived disadvantage. It's a good thing.

. . . . .

About beards and such...some people can grow them, others can't. That's just genetics. Yet what you're actually touching on here are deeply internal questions of "What does it mean to be masculine?" and "What are the implications of masculinity?"

That often get collapsed into the same questions of "What does it mean to 'be a man'?"

That's a dreadfully unscalable, unsustainable way to approach it all.

This is deep, hard stuff to ask. And, Benner, you've been conditioned, like many men of your age and background, to never even consider asking these questions. So much of your identity has been imposed upon you, rather than something you freely chose that I doubt you even see the distinction.

It's been imposed by your family, your friends, your media diet, and general society. It's the reason I've proposed this book to you before, to help you see how much has been imposed upon you.

I assure you the distinctions are there. It's plain as day to me. I only talk this way because it was something I had to overcome myself.

Ask your therapist about it. This is some of the core, real work of the therapy.

For anyone scrolling, a terrific read which articulates the ins-and-outs of this idea, and how certain groups are incentivized to behave (or not behave) a particular way:

https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

An example of how feminists actually view men's problems and a feminist solution: <em>The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love</em> by bell hooks

It's been a while since I took the test, but I think I was more left-libertarian than Gandhi! I should take it again - they may have updated the questions anyway.

There is a general reading list for each of the compass quadrants: https://www.politicalcompass.org/reading.

For my own Left Libertarian quadrant, for general political learning, I would recommend:

• Naomi Klein books (Canadian socialist, environmental activist, and critic of globalisation)
• Noam Chomsky videos e.g. on YouTube (anarchist, MIT linguist, critic of US foreign policy and capitalism). He has a bunch of books as well, but they can be a bit academic
• David Edwards & David Cromwell (independent critics of the mainstream media, e.g. Guardians of Power is good)
• If you are interested in gender issues, especially about masculinity in a feminist context, this list of feminists helping on men's issues is very good: https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/3tn9kc/a_list_of_feminist_resources_tackling_mens_issues/
• bell hooks, a black feminist writer, on masculinity: https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084#reader_0743456084 (there's a preview). I've not read this yet, but I mean to.
• Understanding the context of gender and the new American culture wars can be helpful as well, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy is a big lodestone for alt-righters.

By the way, regarding people who are caught up in Red Pill and MRA, there are some different thoughts on how to deal with this as a political phenomenon, especially if it is true that the wider anti-PC movement helped Trump to the Presidency. Some folks say that attachment to hardline/hate ideologies can be an addiction (like people fascinated with fascism) and thus we should treat those folks kindly. Other people say that at least some people in the hate echo chamber know what they are doing, and they deserve as much criticism as can be thrown at them. I think it depends on a lot of things, but it's interesting to think about.

Hope that helps, let me know how you get on!

Yo dudes learn to free yourselves: https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

Relevant: https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

Well, she's 63 and it was written in 2004. I haven't seen a retraction.

yeah. i think the increase is everywhere though. many men are losing their damn minds and don't know how to handle it like a grown up. i'm not blaming them, it's tragic really, the deaths of despair, the rage issues, the confusion. i do blame them for their reaction though. they should figure out why they feel like that. this helps, i think: https://www.amazon.com/Will-Change-Men-Masculinity-Love/dp/0743456084

I'm in the middle of reading Bell Hooks' The Will to Change. It's great, and deals with a lot of the things you have questions about. You could propose this as a book to your reading group, or if you are interested, I would love to have a discussion about the book over google hangout or something.

If anyone is interested in reading this book (or others like it), and meeting via hangout to discuss it, PM me. If the book is cost prohibitive also PM me as I'm sure we can figure something out.

> So I ask again, why do heterosexual men mistake feminism as the project to sort out their sex lives?

Because:

1) "The personal is political", this is what it looks like when people actually take that dictum seriously, and-

2) Historically feminism has been seen and used as a comprehensive framework for sorting out all kinds of moral, social, and philosophical questions, with implications reaching far beyond the practical project of empowering women. Most people in our culture first engage with feminism as a moral ideology, and so it makes sense to them to ask the question of how to live a properly "feminist" life.

You can't tell people to read, say, bell hooks as an introduction to "what feminism is about" on one hand, and then act as if feminism is merely a Machiavellian project to seize power from the patriarchy on the other.

>when I've heard ranting about toxic masculinity I've not seen anything positive about masculinity from the speaker.

Maybe because the author of the article employed the very tactic she criticized - she created a straw man. Not every feminist regards all masculinity as toxic, despite her attempt to make this characterization. Some feminists do discuss masculinity in a positive light, and of course they don't call it toxic masculinity when they do so. They just call it masculinity. Here are some examples of masculinity viewed in a positive light:

1

2

3