No Stupid Questions

To your point, I think that there is a fundamental issue with how we talk about success and failure. We effectively target white straight cis men setting them up so that they can never really succeed. As the majority, at least in terms of social and political power, we recognize that they have significant privilege in our culture. We weaponize that privilege such that all successes are external (the system is pushing them up) and all failures are internal (must be something wrong with them if they can fail despite having all of those advantages). Everyone else, to varying degrees depending on how much social and political power we perceive them to have, has the opposite logic applied to them. We say that their success is personal and special because they do it in spite of the system working against them and we blame their failures on the system.

There is of course legitimacy to that reasoning. There are many roadblocks that, especially visible, minorities face that white straight cis men do not. That doesn't make this mindset not problematic though. The biggest issue with it is that we apply the general to the individual. Does a rural white kid whose parents both work retail have more privilege than Jaden Smith just because of his skin color? That's of course an extreme example but the point is that the totality of a person's circumstances is more than just how their biology is perceived by the culture. Privilege does make success easier as compared to people in otherwise similar circumstances but it certainly doesn't guarantee success or mean that successes don't have to be worked for.

I was at a college graduation last month, and at least 90% of the awards announced from the podium (significant accomplishments for a graduating class of hundreds) were given to women. The graduating class itself is probably 55% women or so. Women of course still face many barriers, but men are falling behind at some levels.

I am going to be honest, I think women need to be a a part of this. We are used to being right in regards to gender conflict because usually we are but one thing I agree with men on is that every woman says they want men to share their feelings more but many women lose respect for a man they see as weak.

Bell Hooks talks a lot about this so you can go read her.

Where did it call them "the enemy"?

It didn't, it's asking how we can reach them and help support them, no?

Some things of the comments literally boil down to "just let the patriarchy continue and let the men keep pushing women out of certain fields"

I don't see how that is actually progressive. It has similar vibes to when after the election a whole bunch of people started saying to just throw trans people under the bus and basically run a republican for the next one.

when we say that Lemmy has a misogyny problem.

Yeah, it's really disheartening that young men have decided to blame women for all their woes. I'm in my late thirties and it really seems like a reversal to me, instead of blaming late stage capitalism for disenfranchising their demographic they are somehow are blaming women.

Even if we hypothetically accept that "there is an attack on masculinity" who's doing it? The vast majority of politicians are men, the vast majority of CEO are men, the vast majority of judges, lawyers, prosecutors...... The list goes on and on. In nearly any hierarchical system of power in the world, men are in charge. So from whom is our masculinity really being attacked?

Gonna catch the down votes for this, but imo because our economic system has already exploited all other demographics, young white men are being systemically disenfranchised for the first time and are not dealing with it very well. Welcome to the club fellas, POC and especially women have been here the whole time!

You got to beat it into people