Wednesday, January 16, 2008

An interesting discussion in comments

As I think I stated before, part of why I started this blog was to have somewhere to write my thoughts that wasn't just scattered out in the comment sections of other blogs.

Well, I still end up doing a lot of commenting elsewhere, and so now I try to make an effort to bring some of that back here, or at least highlight an interesting discussion.

With that in mind, there is this thread at belledame222's place. Specifically, a discussion there about a suggested movement or discussion group of men to talk about men's issues and focus on them rather than talking about women (and thus avoiding the whole 'us versus them' problem and also providing a true mirror to what is best in feminism - like where feminism focuses just on women as opposed to blaming or demonizing men).

I don't know that I'm the person to start such a thing, but it is at least worth talking about. I'll leave it at that for now and let the discussion at belle's speak for itself.

3 comments:

Larry Hamelin said...

I don't know... I'm a man (last time I checked) but I really don't see that I have any specifically "men's" issues. It's not like men are systematically discriminated against in Western society. Men do face case-by-case bullshit; but everyone faces that.

Even the very worst excesses of the most extremist fringe of the most radical, dogmatic self-described "feminists" have very little practical impact on my life, presently and in the foreseeable future. I really don't see opposing such nonsense to be an important priority.

DBB said...

I don't know if the point is about discrimination as much as it is about the male gender role.

I think it bears some examination and men need help breaking out of it. And it would perhaps be helpful to talk about such things outside of a man vs woman context.

But you are right, there isn't much impact either way from either extreme. Which is why my general inclination would not be to do something like a discussion mentioned there myself - though I'd be curious to see what someone else could do with it.

DBB said...

Sometimes I wonder if I spend too much time thinking about such things - I guess it just is a matter that I read about things in that area, then they bug me, and I just have an itch to post or say something about it.

Every time I am about to make a post on feminism or some issue related to it, I stop and wonder if I should even bother, but then end up posting it anyway because hey, the thought came up, so might as well put it down and make me feel better for having gotten it out of my head. I also wonder if I haven't posted too much about this sort of thing, but I just can't help myself. Oh well. It's better than being addicted to crack, I suppose.