>Feminism isn’t about putting women ahead of men though. It’s about creating equity.
This is demonstrably incorrect. In our society, men are underrepresented in all kinds of quality of life metrics. They die younger. They comprise the vast majority of the homeless. The vast majority of workplace death and injury. They work much longer hours. They commit suicide at much higher rates. They have much higher rates of unemployment. They're failing, relatively, at every level of the educational system. They're far overrepresented in endemic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes; as well as mental health problems like depression and addiction. I could go on for a long time.
This isn't to say women don't have their own unique issues - like sexual assault. Feminism advocates for only issues in which women experience issues, and none of the issues I listed above. The net effect is observable today: areas in which women underperformed are now normalising at that "equity" level. But all of the many ways in which men are underperforming are getting worse. Any movement which purports to aim for equity cannot only focus on one side of the equation. Feminism doesn't aim for equity or equality. It is an advocacy movement for women. And that's okay. Just don't lie and say it has anything to do with equity or equality. Don't try to prevent men from having their own movement to try to improve some of the horrific ways in which men are suffering today in Western nations.
I'm having trouble understanding if you are arguing in good faith here. Surely you are not suggesting that men die younger than women because women have worked to create a society with greater gender equity? Of the list of factors for why men die earlier than women in this article [1], not a single one can reasonably be attributed to that.
> The vast majority of workplace death and injury.
Where do you see gender inequity in this? The top 10 professions dominated by women are occupations like preschool and kindergarten teachers, dental hygienists, childcare workers and hairdressers. [2] We can agree that these occupations are less likely to kill or injure you than construction, aviation and firefighting. But it's certainly not the case that feminism has worked to keep men out of the safer jobs dominated by women. If you want to start a meninism movement that works toward creating more male preschool teachers or personal care workers, good luck to you.
> They commit suicide at much higher rates.
Women are much more likely to attempt suicide than men. But men are "better" at getting the job done. This seems to reflect what we tend to see, which is that men are more likely to be violent and to kill things than women. Again, is this because of gender inequity? And are you not concerned that so many more women want to kill themselves?
> They have much higher rates of unemployment.
This is just flat-out not true. In the US, right now, the unemployment rate for men is 4.10%, for women it is 3.90%. In December, it was 3.90% for both sexes. [3]
> They're far overrepresented in endemic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes; as well as mental health problems like depression and addiction.
True for heart disease and diabetes, not true for depression. Women experience depression at twice the rate of men! [4]
The broader point I would make here is that equity != equality. Equity is about creating equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. The measure of gender equity isn't that we have the same number of female fighter jet pilots as male. It's whether a woman faces structural difficulties that prevent her from becoming a fighter pilot if she wishes to pursue that career.
That is still not the case in today's society. You wrote, 'areas in which women underperformed are now normalising at that "equity" level'. In the US, women earn about 20% less than men do. [5] How is that "normalised"? Think about how much money that is across the entire workforce! It's a damn shame that men are dying of addiction and heart disease, but show me how that is the result of gender inequity. I think it has far more to do with class and race.
You're performing a sleight of hand with your point about so-called "equity": effectively, you define worse outcomes that happen to women as the results of a lack of equity, and thus worthy political consideration, but worse outcomes that happen to men are just the natural state of the world and thus treating them as political is inappropriate or even misogynistic.
Holding a bunch of other factors constant, men would live the same length of time as women do: monks have comparable lifespans to nuns. Men die earlier because we work longer hours at shittier jobs and are socially punished for asking for help from others and aren't given the space for self care.
As far as men dying earlier on the job because they're choosing to be firefighters instead of kindergarten teachers, you simply ignore the discrimination male teachers face. In your "equity" framework, you'd demand men to just buck up and accept it and even deny it's social as opposed to a series of coincidental discriminations by individuals. The fact that you can't even see how your categories don't map to reality is a key tell for being captured by an ideology, in the social/Gramscian sense.
Lastly, you repeat the "wage gap" myth: women earn less than men because men work more hours than women. The rallying cry used to be "equal pay for equal work," but it seems to now have shifted to "equal pay for less work." (Despite that same excess work being what's killing men and destroying their bodies.)
The other user accused you of a sleight of hand, but I'm going to accuse you of outright duplicity. You argue that men's issues are just the way of the world, while women's issues are the fault of men or society. If you'd like to engage in an honest discussion you have to apply the same logical framework to both sides of this problem. If you will not, what is the point of even attempting such a discussion? Everyone in attendance will understand you to be facetious.
This is demonstrably incorrect. In our society, men are underrepresented in all kinds of quality of life metrics. They die younger. They comprise the vast majority of the homeless. The vast majority of workplace death and injury. They work much longer hours. They commit suicide at much higher rates. They have much higher rates of unemployment. They're failing, relatively, at every level of the educational system. They're far overrepresented in endemic illnesses like heart disease and diabetes; as well as mental health problems like depression and addiction. I could go on for a long time.
This isn't to say women don't have their own unique issues - like sexual assault. Feminism advocates for only issues in which women experience issues, and none of the issues I listed above. The net effect is observable today: areas in which women underperformed are now normalising at that "equity" level. But all of the many ways in which men are underperforming are getting worse. Any movement which purports to aim for equity cannot only focus on one side of the equation. Feminism doesn't aim for equity or equality. It is an advocacy movement for women. And that's okay. Just don't lie and say it has anything to do with equity or equality. Don't try to prevent men from having their own movement to try to improve some of the horrific ways in which men are suffering today in Western nations.