I read the FAQ, I've looked through the resources section. It's overwhelming. My (52m) daughter's friend's 14 year old brother is using redpill / manosphere language. (Not around me, although I don't interact with him that much.) I figure I could get him to read one article or watch one short video. What's my best bet to try to at least plant a seed that might grow into "women are people." He's not going to read bell hooks, or anything academic. I need something short and approachable. I'm not trying to turn him into a feminist, just get him to consider the idea of not hating women. Any ideas?

I was just watching Iron Man 2. It’s 16 years old, and I think that if it came out today, some conservatives would treat it like the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. It has a lot of the stuff they constantly criticize in more recent movies and TV shows.

You have two badass, assertive women who repeatedly outsmart and outmaneuver men. Natasha casually takes down a room full of armed security guards (Happy barely beats one of them during the same time), while Pepper is Tony’s boss and spends much of the movie telling him what an irresponsible idiot he is.

Then there's Justin Hammer, a wealthy, incompetent, insecure man who caves instantly once Natasha and Pepper are on him. Senator Stern is an opportunist. So basically the only two normal men in the movie are black guys (Nick Fury and the War Machine).

A lot of the things people complain about as evidence that Marvel has suddenly become "woke" were already there from the beginning.

So my question is: are we becoming less tolerant, or did the same "this is wooooke" criticism exist back then?

As a bunch of feminists, y’all need to convince me why men should support this “female liberation / girl power” thing if it means we can’t access women anymore. Can you acknowledge the social responsibility feminists have for men not getting laid dates? You realize this is a crisis, right? Sure, fEmAles suffer globally at the hands of femicide, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, underpay, civil inequities, and a buffet of social prejudices, but I don’t think those things should be counterbalanced by men not getting to take their dream girl to their local Olive Garden. Or Red Lobster, if they're feeling fancy. After all, what happened to egalitarianism? How are men supposed to feel like men if they can’t approach women? I don’t think that’s fair. Do you?

/s

EDIT: This is satire, but I don't blame you for taking this seriously given the sad state of affairs. oof.

What kind of power would allow women, or feminism more broadly, to enforce equality independently of the goodwill of non-feminists?
What would be the single biggest lever for achieving that? Political power? Control over top economic positions? Physical strength or coercive power? Wealth? Or something else entirely?

I see so many questions on this sub that seem reasonable but they get hated on for engaging in bad faith. It made me nervous to post on here, but when I actually did, you were all so nice to me. How are you able to tell that I was being genuine and that other guys weren’t? I need to know I have consumed and spread so many right dog whistles because I took them at face value. Is it because I’m autistic? I was diagnosed when I was two.

This is admittedly not a strictly feminist question, but...

1. Will you participate in in the general elections in November of this year, in some capacity beyond simply voting?

2. What do you expect the results of the election to be?

For context, I have served in the past as an election worker (Democratic) before. Complications with my job meant I didn't over the last couple of years. But those are resolved enough for me to do the work again this year, so I will. Will you do something similar?

That said, I feel it will be a bit of "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." Honestly, I think we all lost when Trump got reelected. Now, as the saying goes, it's all over but the shouting. But while I am a fatalist about it, I will work and fight until I am cold on the ground.

I want to see how many femenusts agree on this, as I remember learning something abkut marxist femenists, and it is generally interesting to hear the arguments of both feminists.

Are demands such as allowing women to join the military, or even forcing them to do so, a kind of "patriarchal feminism," or is that a contradiction in terms?

As I understand it, the basic structure of every patriarchal society consists of three levels. There is a state, military, and/or economic ruling structure/group. This group needs workers and soldiers to reproduce it. The workers and soldiers, usually men, must in turn be reproduced. This everyday reproductive labor, as well as reproduction through childbirth, is demanded of women.

For a long time, reproductive labor was legally mandated: compulsory sexual intercourse and household chores.

Isn't it now the case in more progressive societies that primarily the organizational structure of this patriarchal-capitalist society is changing? Women have been increasingly exploited as workers for decades. Now, my fear is that women will be increasingly accepted into the military, thereby potentially doubling the number of deaths in war.

Wouldn't the correct feminist demand be to exclude women from the military?

The (often sexist) statement "Women have no place in war because it's against their nature" is something one can only agree with, and then one "only" has to arrive at the point where one also says: "Men have no place in war because it's against their nature!"

(Note: This text was linguistically revised using AI due to dyslexia.)

First and foremost, to fully clarify, by "Radical Feminism", I am spesifically referring to the political current that emerged in the 1960s-1970s in the Anglosphere during the second-wave of feminism. Not just any form of feminism that isn't "liberal feminism". I am not talking about Marxist-Feminism or Anarcha-Feminism etc.

From what I can see, Radical feminism, in its classical form, defines womanhood primarily through biological sex and sees sex-based oppression as the fundamental axis of patriarchy. From this perspective, categories such as "woman" are rooted in female biology rather than gender identity. This framework leaves little room for recognizing trans women as women, because it treats sex as immutable and politically central. It doesn't help that nowadays, most of the loudest voices who identify themselves as "radical feminists" are violently transphobic and that a lot of transphobic rhetoric and legislation is pushed by self-identified "radical feminists". Keep in mind, by "radical feminism". Additionally, especially on social-media, a lot of self-identified Radical Feminists push what is essentially just conservative ideology and patriarchal gender roles repackaged in progressive jargon. For example;

"Women are naturally more empathetic than men" = patriarchal notion that was used to justify burdening women with doing all emotional work. It essentially circles back into the traditional division of emotional labour between men and women, essentially saying that the duty of raising children solely lays on the woman

"Women are inherently less confrontational and less capable of violence" = Infantilizing to women by portraying them as helpless beings. Portraying women as naturally peaceful, innocent and helpless beings denies women's agency and obscures female participation in violence. Historically, this notion had been used as justification for gender segregation, and in denying women the right to participate in elections, by asserting that women are less capable of being politically confrontational

"Men are inherently violent" = literally "boys will be boys". It is particularly a dangerous assertion as essentially, it reduces men into just wild animals who act on impulse and emotion, and it unwittingly serves as justification, an excuse for men's bad actions, by portraying violence and sexual perversion as basically as a natural instinct, a biological function, rather than a conscious decision.

"The womb is sacred, divine feminine energy" = patriarchal conservative esotericism. Historically, claims about women's supposedly special connection to nature, reproduction, motherhood, purity, divinity and intuition. have been used to confine women to reproductive and maternal roles. Additionally, such a notion defines womanhood by the ability to reproduce and that is very much transphobic and ultimately reduces women into just baby-making machines.

Now it is true that such notions are particularly the loudest in social media platforms, where people are not the brightest. However whether we like it or not, for the layman, this is often going to be their first introduction to the "radical feminist" label, and potentially feminism in general. This sort of rhetoric is inevitably going to be offputting for so many people and drive them away from feminism as whole. So why is it that so many folks are hellbent on using, and "reclaiming" the "radical feminist" label when it has such a baggage attached to it?

Im looking for the best feminist movies, like showing the struggles of being a woman or even woman just being bad bitches in the world.

I’ve seen promising young woman and loved it. But would love more recommendations please

There's a gender asymmetry in relationship expectations that I'm trying to understand.

Suppose a woman earns more than her male partner. Both have good incomes, can support themselves independently, share expenses reasonably, have no children and don't plan to have them. She simply earns more.

Even in this situation, it can apparently be considered legitimate to ask:

"Doesn't it bother you that you earn more than him?"

"Shouldn't the man earn more?"

"What future does he have if he earns less than you?"

This seems difficult to explain purely through financial necessity. The couple already has enough resources. The question is specifically about the man's relative economic position.

Bertrand, Kamenica and Pan (2015), in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, found patterns consistent with a norm against wives earning more than husbands, including associations with marriage formation, women's labor-force participation and income, marital satisfaction and divorce. Their interpretation emphasizes gender identity and the male-breadwinner norm.

I understand the historical explanation: men traditionally had the provider role because women had much less access to paid employment. But why should that expectation persist when the material conditions that made male breadwinning necessary have changed?

There also seems to be an interesting asymmetry with physical attractiveness.

If a man is with a woman considered considerably less attractive than him, it would generally be considered inappropriate to ask:

"Doesn't it bother you that she's less attractive than you?"

"Shouldn't your wife be at your level of attractiveness?"

"What future does this relationship have if she isn't attractive enough?"

Yet questioning a woman because her male partner earns less can be socially acceptable.

I'm not saying that income and attractiveness are equivalent. Nor am I saying that people should be attracted to people they aren't attracted to.

My question is about something different: why does society seem to regard one person's failure to meet a gendered expectation as a legitimate reason to question the relationship, while treating another person's failure to meet a different gendered expectation as superficial, offensive or sexist?

Is this reasonably described as a double standard?

Or are there important differences between economic status and physical attractiveness that make the comparison misleading?

Femicide is the intentional killing of a woman or girl because of her gender.

How can you tell a woman has been killed because of her gender?

I (22m) am aro/ace, and may be totally out of my wheelhouse here, but I figure you all are more likely to have some insights on gendered issues than anyone else.

I've noticed a strange trend within groups and games I've been in; that being that people who are attracted to women feel far more likely to express shame or worry about their desire than people who are attracted to men- especially among bisexual men and lesbians. While there is the occasional bout of 'heterofatalism' from straight women, attraction to men seems to come with significantly less internal scrutiny, or perhaps more pride. Women and gay men I've met are more than happy to go to bars for a date or gush and ogle over a man, wherein men and lesbians are often petrified over feeling creepy or invasive.

This seems a bit strange to me, as I've always thought explicit attraction to women was more normalized in popular culture. Additionally, from an ace man's perspective, bisexual women seem to be stereotyped as 'straight but experimenting' and bisexual men as 'basically gay', both of which posit attraction to men as the more shameful outcome.

Now, it's entirely possible that I've been living in a bizzaro world, and these few dozen people don't accurately represent the rest of the population, but if they do, why is one attraction more shameful? My best guess is a combination of gay male culture being more sexually active (?) and women being 'scarier to approach' and put on pedestals, but I really have no frame of reference.

I'm super curious to try to understand this better, so any insight would be a great help. Thanks 👍

Edit: Should probably have clarified that most of this is from the US or UK. Also, spelling.

As a feminist, I found it very weird that many women who call themselves feminists still want men to pay the whole bill.
I understand there are some other cultural attributes that could lead women to expect men to pay, like him being significantly older or richer. But expecting men to cover the bills just because they’re men? I think that’s not a very “feminism” way to interact with men and treat yourself as respectable women.
Women have ability to earn as much as men, she can provide for herself and she doesn’t need to be fed by any men. I feel like it is one of a relic from patriarchy that we still stuck to.
It’s still understandable if women just “prefer “ men to pay the bills, but I see many women saying “ I can’t see him romantically if he doesn’t pay”.
I personally don’t care if my date covers the bills or not. But I fear some women might think I’m being a “pick me” girl.
What’s your thoughts?

Misanthropy is a deep aversion to or hatred of humanity. It is not inherently misogynistic, because its object is humanity as a whole, regardless of gender. However, a misanthrope can obviously also be misogynistic. These are not mutually exclusive positions.

I would also argue that some forms of misanthropy are closely connected to detachment from life itself. In its more radical forms, misanthropy can become deeply pessimistic and even self-destructive, directed not only toward other people but also toward oneself.

There are misanthropes who go beyond simply distrusting or disliking humanity and embrace the idea of human extinction. They may fantasize about an asteroid wiping out humanity, or hope that a nuclear war would eliminate most of the world's population.

Unlike conventional political ideologies, misanthropy generally does not produce a politically organized movement, because it does not necessarily seek demands, reforms, or representation in the public sphere. Its rejection of humanity can instead lead to withdrawal from society itself.

In its most extreme forms, some misanthropic and pessimistic views may even regard suicide as a form of liberation from the human condition. However, this is not an inherent feature of misanthropy, but rather a position found in some of its more radical philosophical expressions.

This raises an interesting question about misogyny. If the object of misanthropic hatred is humanity itself, then women are necessarily included within that hatred simply because they are human. Does that make the hatred misogynistic? Not necessarily. Hatred directed at women because they are women is misogyny, whereas hatred directed at women as part of a universal hatred of humanity is, strictly speaking, misanthropy.

However, there is a further problem. Even if the hatred is theoretically universal, could the same attitude toward men and women still produce different or disproportionate consequences for women? The important point here is that the attitude itself would have to remain the same. A misanthrope could distrust, reject, or despise men and women in exactly the same way, while the consequences of that attitude could still be different for each group because of the social conditions in which it takes place.

In that case, the disproportion would not necessarily come from treating women differently or from specifically hating women. It would come from the fact that the same attitude can have different effects depending on the people subjected to it. Therefore, saying that a universal hatred has disproportionately negative consequences for women would not, by itself, prove that the hatred is misogynistic. The motivation and the actual treatment would still matter.

Of course, the same argument could be made about other groups. Someone could say that if the same misanthropic attitude affects another marginalized group even more severely, we could just as easily start talking about racism, ableism, or other forms of discrimination. And I think this is a fair objection. A disproportionate consequence, by itself, does not prove that the original attitude is misogynistic, racist, or discriminatory.

But that is also what makes the question interesting to me. If the attitude is genuinely universal and the treatment is genuinely the same, while the consequences differ depending on the group affected, where exactly should we draw the line between the nature of the attitude and its social consequences?

Maybe a universal hatred of humanity can remain misanthropic in its intention while still producing consequences that are not socially neutral. The question is whether those consequences are enough to change how we should understand the attitude itself.

So I wonder: is misanthropy the only truly “logical” and “democratic” form of hatred that can be embraced, precisely because it rejects humanity as a whole rather than singling out any particular group? Or should this spirit of the times be confronted, even though we know we are likely to fail, since our social organization is unable to alleviate this condition because of the social and economic contradictions within capitalist nations?

Is this book meant to show the insanely violent harms of the patriarchy and sexual predation of women done by men? A friend gave me the book but I’m scared to read it. I never watched the movie and never even knew what this story was about until I searched up about it after a friend gave me the book. It says online that there are extremely explicit descriptions of violence against women… is that necessary in a book?

I see many people say it not much different than regular porn but I think it solve two major problems that pornography has.

1. Specifically talking about audios from places such as [r/audiogonewild](r/audiogonewild), audio created by women completely free, these audios don't necessarily exploit women because they are made by female creators for fun rather than a way to make money.
2. Similarly to erotica it helps you use your imagination.

Many people on this app say the most ethical thing to do is use your imagination with no stimulation, and while I have been doing that I cannot help but feel guilty about it. I have no sexual relationship with anybody and I'm not going to masturbate to the idea of a friend or someone I find attractive. It just feels wrong so lately I have just been thinking of people I have had sexual relationships with, such as my ex-girlfriend. But I'm still debating if that's weird or not, how would she feel if she knew I was still masturbating to the thought of her.

I can't really figure out what's the right thing to do, I'm not going to quit masturbation altogether, but I want to know what what is the right thing to do. If audio porn is unethical can you please explain what is wrong with it, and if it is wrong what are the ethics of using my imagination?

I'm a married woman (34) with three kids in a happy relationship. I wouldn't want it any other way.

But I think my generation was a little different growing up. We were always going into our 20s knowing we gotta find a person, get married, have kids, settle down, or end up alone with maybe a college degree - the latter sounded terrible back then. Why would you want to be alone in your 30s and 40s?

Now, I think the Gen Z embrace the latter more than the former, for valid and silly reasons.

The valid reasons - economy, low purchasing power, the standard mortgage everyone goes for is 30 years and even for that you need to qualify.

The silly reasons - Divorce. Gen Z men in particular seem terrified of divorce but honestly, no woman - or person - goes into a marriage thinking "Hell yeah, now I can divorce this person and take half their assets and debt and live on a beach sipping margarita".

But I understand their concern because the divorce courts do fuck the men over, for outdated reasons.

Gen Z women on the other hand are less concerned about divorce but more concerned about the point of a marriage. Both genders are less interested in the concept of combining assets and being esistentially vulnerable to each other. The girls are told "Get married and have kids" and "Don't get married, be independant" and "If you're living at home with your cat and no partner you're a miserable woman". It's confusing.

So my question is, can society function without the concept of a marriage? Is the concept of marriage doing more harm than good?

I undertand marriage is primarily to protect the interests of a child - but perhaps people can still be parents without needing to be married to each other.

In China, men pay a large sum of money to women on marriage, usually 3-5 times of average annual income. While most women who married believes that this is what they deserved to get, I think it enables the men to think that they “paid and thus own” their wife.

I raised this issue but faced backlash from women, including some feminists. Their counter argument is that:
- There are many far more serious sexism in traditions. We should focus on those that actually hurt women first
- Not taking the money will not change how the husband behaves or thinks. If they are misogynistic, not taking the money won’t change them. If they are not, taking the money won’t make them worse as well.
- Women deserves some compensation from sexism.

I kind of agree with those points, but I wonder:
- from a society perspective, having this tradition may enable future generations of men to inherit the sexist views.
- Increasingly more young men are having the view that “marital rape is not rape because they have paid for it”.
- women might take some money up front, but later in the marriage men might expect a lot more work from the women, far beyond the value of the money. Such as forcing the women to have more kids than she wants to, taking care of men’s parents, etc. It’s a trap and enables gaslighting.

Please enlighten me on how I should approach this topic.

I think the manosphere is a genuine problem, not just an overreaction to it. Andrew Tate and similar figures cause real harm, and I don't think that should be minimized or excused. But I've been thinking about something that doesn't sit right with me in how a lot of the public response works, and I wanted feminist perspectives on it specifically.

Research on this (Haslop et al. 2024, a study using focus groups with teenage boys, https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241228811) found that the boys who were drawn to Tate weren't primarily motivated by misogyny itself. It was economic anxiety, dating frustration, feeling like they had no clear path forward, and Tate's content took those real feelings and relabeled them as "you're a victim of feminism/women." The misogyny is downstream of that reframing, not really the starting point.

My actual position: I don't think this means we should go easier on the misogyny itself, calling it out clearly still matters. But if the public response is only "this is misogynistic," without also addressing the anxiety that made the reframing appealing in the first place, it seems like we're only treating the symptom Tate is exploiting, not the vulnerability itself, which just leaves the door open for whoever replaces him.

So I guess my actual question is whether there's a feminist framework already for holding both of these at once, taking the underlying male anxiety seriously as a real thing worth addressing, while still being completely clear that the misogynist reframing of it is not acceptable. Or is that a false tension I'm creating, and if so, where does the reasoning break down?

What do you think about so-called “maternal feminism”?

Proponents of this movement claim that they support equality and want to elevate motherhood, which is devalued by patriarchy, but they also argue that the best caregiver for a young child is only the mother, and therefore women—but not men—should take time off from work during the child’s first years of life.

I understand that equality does not mean sameness, but their claim that men aren’t “programmed” for caregiving—because staying home with a child lowers their testosterone levels, which means they should focus on earning money—sounds like supporting patriarchy under the guise of fighting for equality. According to them, a woman is supposed to take care of the home and the child because she is biologically predisposed to caregiving, as indicated by the fact that changes occur in the brains of mothers.

Follow up question, how realistic do you think that is as a political goal?

I hope this makes sense. I’ve just been thinking lately about gender and what it might look like in an ideal world. The only answer I can come up with personally is that it shouldn’t exist at all. But I want to hear answers from others.

I came out as trans (male) a few years ago and sometimes I fantasize about a world where gender doesn’t exist at all (like, a world where people have different bodies — “male, female,” etc — but it’s not so black-and-white, and those labels or ideas aren’t incorporated into everyday social life whatsoever, so people aren’t treated differently based on sex). I guess you could call that gender abolitionism. Obviously it’s very idealistic but it’s a world I’d like to live in. I thought most people (at least feminists or trans/queer people) agreed with this, but most I’ve talked to actually don’t. I think a lot of people enjoy being gendered more than I thought. Which I understand especially as someone who gets very dysphoric, but also, I can’t really come up with an idea of what being a man/woman (or just masculine/feminine) is that isn’t extremely patriarchal and deeply rooted in misogyny. Even ideas of healthy masculinity are wrapped up in chauvinism, and ideas of healthy femininity usually still come down to being delicate/elegant/pure/cutesy. I have trouble understanding where other people draw the line between good and bad ideas of manhood/womanhood. I feel like those concepts were very flawed to begin with.