Male Feminist

Exploring human equality and vitality in a gendered, hetero-normative world — as a man. "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people." — Rebecca West var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-37222192-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[malefeminist]

Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds

"Nerdy guys aren’t guaranteed to get laid by the hot chick as long as we work hard. There isn’t a team of writers or a studio audience pulling for us to triumph by getting the girl."

"But the overall problem is one of a culture where instead of seeing women as, you know, people, protagonists of their own stories just like we are of ours, men are taught that women are things to “earn,” to “win.” That if we try hard enough and persist long enough, we’ll get the girl in the end. Like life is a video game and women, like money and status, are just part of the reward we get for doing well.

So what happens to nerdy guys who keep finding out that the princess they were promised is always in another castle? When they “do everything right,” they get good grades, they get a decent job, and that wife they were promised in the package deal doesn’t arrive? When the persistent passive-aggressive Nice Guy act fails, do they step it up to elaborate Steve-Urkel-esque stalking and stunts? Do they try elaborate Revenge of the Nerds-style ruses? Do they tap into their inner John Galt and try blatant, violent rape?" (full article)

[malefeminist]

"To Armstrong, the shooting highlighted that “slut” is simply a misogynistic catch-all, a verbal utility knife that young people use to control women and create hierarchies. There may be no real sluts, in other words, but there are real and devastating consequences to slut-shaming."

[malefeminist]

Why Men Don't See the Harassment Women Experience. Yes, All Women.

"Men were surprised by #YesAllWomen because men don’t see what women experience."

[malefeminist]

"The Oppressed Majority" - 11 minutes

"A tragicomic day in the life of a man who struggles for equality in a mirror-image society dominated by women." (Brain Pickings)

[malefeminist]

"The real question about female nudity isn’t why anyone would want to show or see women’s breasts if they’re not titillating. The real question is about who has the right to say what they’re for, where and when they can be seen and by whom. That’s about power."

[malefeminist]

I've Been Called the "Erin Brockovich" of Revenge Porn, and For the First Time Ever, Here is My Entire Uncensored Story of Death Threats, Anonymous and the FBI

An epic read on the takedown of an epic asshole misogynist who's ruined countless women's lives.

By this time, I’d perused Moore’s online TV and newspaper interviews. He called himself a "professional life ruiner" and described his website as “pure evil.” He threw legal letters in the trash, addressed his followers as “my children,” taking a page from the Charles Manson handbook; and regularly taunted victims, encouraging them to commit suicide. People claimed to be afraid of him. He had no fear of lawsuits; he knew a victim would be unlikely to sue because a civil suit would cost $60,000 (according to attorney Marc Randazza), and forever link a woman’s name with the image she hoped to hide.

Moore maintained that his victims were sluts, asked to be abused and deserved to lose their jobs, embarrass their families and find themselves forever ruined. Below photos on the site, his followers posted crude and mysogynistic remarks. Victims were taunted as “fat cows,” “creatures with nasty teeth,” “ugly whores,” “white trash sluts” and “whales.” One commenter said, “Jesus, someone call Greenpeace and get her back in the water.” The website was not about pornography; it was about ridiculing and hurting others.

[malefeminist]

"Honor Diaries" (2013) — a new film about honor violence, a new movement around women's rights in the middle east.

Honor Diaries features nine courageous women’s rights advocates with connections to Muslim-majority societies. These women, who have witnessed firsthand the hardships women endure, are profiled in their efforts to affect change, both in their communities and beyond.

The film gives a platform to exclusively female voices and seeks to expose the paralyzing political correctness that prevents many from identifying, understanding and addressing this international human rights disaster.  Freedom of movement, the right to education, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation are some of the systematic abuses explored in depth.

Spurred by the Arab Spring, women who were once silent are starting to speak out about gender inequality and are bringing visibility to a long history of oppression. This project draws together leading women’s rights activists and provides a platform where their voices can be heard and serve as inspiration to motivate others to speak out.

More than a movie, Honor Diaries is a movement meant to inspire viewers to learn more about issues facing women in Muslim-majority societies, and to act for change.

[cleispress]

If you wouldn’t do it to a man, then stop it. It doesn’t matter what your motivations are. Stop it. Figure out why you expect women to perform unpaid emotional labor for you. Figure out what’s prompting you to try to control women’s emotions and behaviors and faces. Figure out why you think that’s ok. And then do what you need to do to change that about yourself so that you can be a better man. Do what you need to do to make the world a safer place. Because if you’re not making yourself part of the solution, you’re part of the problem and we don’t need that. Stop it.

—Dr. Charlie Glickman, on men telling women to smile. (via cleispress)

[malefeminist]

Great story of how a well-known and controversial pick-up artist came to hate how Denmark's effective social democracy didn't nurture the kind of environment of young, insecure lady-prey that can be found in America:

"As Roosh himself admits in Don’t Bang Denmark, Nordic social democracy doesn’t support his kind. His guidebook concludes with a resigned “bottom line” acknowledgment that his time in Denmark “liberalized me when it came to a government taking care of its citizens….Denmark sucks balls for women, but it kills the United States when it comes to having a higher standard of living.” Still, he won’t be going back anytime soon."

[malefeminist]

"If the marriage advocates calling for a "new conversation" actually want progress, let's do what works. Strengthen the social safety net so that a layoff or a pay cut doesn't push any family over the cliff. Require equal pay for equal work, so that women can give as much as they've earned to their household. Reform traditional gender roles so that a man's value isn't just his paycheck, and a woman's value isn't trapped in the house. And support birth control and abortion access, so that women can prevent the unwanted pregnancies that so often upset financial and relationship stability."

[the-escapist-artist-deactivated]

Pussy Power! Jolie Nunez Noggle

[malefeminist]

We Are What We Love: How Polyamory Can Change the World for the Better.

"When we look at love “as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth,” we begin to see how to better make love happen."

Love is not necessarily a feeling, but an action. Actions have reactions, consequences, the potential for transformation. If we can shift from this romanticized concept of “falling” in love we can move away from the idea that we don’t have any responsibility in the matter, when in truth we’re entirely responsible. We own it. And yes, we can control who we love. We can decide who we want to put our energies into, who we want to express care, affection, respect and trust with."

[malefeminist]

FYI: An Open Letter to Teenage Girls Who Don't Always Wear a Bra

"Girls, adults are afraid of your sexuality. The moms who are teaching their boys that you’re nothing but a seductress if you dare go braless or post a selfie where your [gasp] shoulders are exposed are terrified. I’m not sure what makes them afraid. It’s possible that they think their sons will burn in eternal hell, that they’re worried you’ll knock on their door pregnant one day soon or something that’s less easy to identify. Just know that adult women who are concerned about teenage girls not wearing bras are fearful women. Know that women (and men) who are operating out of fear have no advice to give that’s of any value...

"I don’t care if you’re 5 or 95 if your skirt’s too short and your bikini is too small, if you’ve kissed too many boys or girls. I don’t care if you glam it up for a photo, stick out your tongue or twerk on national TV. I don’t care if you wear a bra or makeup. How you present yourself is up to you, there will be consequences but they won’t be coming from me. You have value and your value doesn’t come from covering your nipples and your knees. Your value comes from giving a little more than you take and exploring the world you are poised to inherit."

[malefeminist]

The Science of Stress, Orgasm and Creativity: How the Brain and the Vagina Conspire in Consciousness

"Female sexual pleasure, rightly understood, is not just about sexuality, or just about pleasure. It serves, also, as a medium of female self-knowledge and hopefulness; female creativity and courage; female focus and initiative; female bliss and transcendence; and as medium of a sensibility that feels very much like freedom. To understand the vagina properly is to realize that it is not only coextensive with the female brain, but is also, essentially, part of the female soul...

Once one understands what scientists at the most advanced laboratories and clinics around the world are confirming — that the vagina and the brain are essentially one network, or “one whole system,” as they tend to put it, and that the vagina mediates female confidence, creativity, and sense of transcendence — the answers to many of these seeming mysteries fall into place...

Understood in this way, and with this significant evidence, rape and sexual assault, with their attendant trauma, should be understood not just as a form of forced sex; they should also be understood as a form of injury to the brain and body, and even as a variant of castration."

[malefeminist]

There are so many types of relationships and attractions.

[malefeminist]

The Slane Girl Twitter scandal proves that women can't make mistakes

Another horrible case of slut-shaming

This is what happened: two Saturdays ago, during an Eminem gig at Slane Castle 40 miles outside Dublin, a 17-year-old girl gave a guy a blow job. Someone took a picture. There's a white sky. A topless boy stands against a wall of corrugated metal, and he's wearing a green rimmed hat and raising his arms up in the air in a double thumbs up, and a girl kneels in front of him. Off to his right a man is watching with a plastic cup of beer and a face of complicated disgust. By Sunday afternoon, the picture had gone viral, because of course it had. The hashtag #slanegirl was trending globally on Twitter by Monday morning; a Slane Girl Facebook page received 8,000 likes before being shut down. By this time, a number of sites had tracked the girl down, publishing her full name and age. When it was revealed she was under 18, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram quickly began to delete the original image from their sites (a cropped version is still illustrating most news articles), banning accounts that had posted it. Not before, though, a flood of responses were published, calling her a "vile slut", a "whore", "rotten". The boy has not been named, apart from being called "hero". Soon after it was trending, the girl was reported to be in hospital, sedated.

And the difficult thing for me is that I can't even muster any anger. Of course someone took photos, of course they put them online, of course the girl is blamed, of course her life will now forever be altered, a sad coffee stain on the map of her future. A thousand "of courses", trailing into the distance like traffic after six. The damage didn't happen at Slane Castle; it happened later, on the internet. In 2013 women aren't allowed to make mistakes.

[malefeminist]

Amazing HuffingtonPost piece on artist Sophia Wallace's work on "Cliteracy"

"It's appalling and shocking to think that scientifically, the clitoris was only discovered in 1998," Wallace told The Huffington Post from her Brooklyn studio last week. "But really, it may as well have never been discovered at all because there's still such ignorance when it comes to the female body."

You can follow her on Tumblr. Here are a few more great images.