• int_not_found@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    There is a fine line between valid criticism of gender roles & sexism.

    An example of the former would be, “Men are dangerous for women”. Of course not all men are dangerous, but it describes the experience of many women & how they have to navigate the world, to not be assaulted.

    This one describes the dynamic of a relationship between individuals & assigns a thought pattern to one of those individuals, based on their gender.

    Maybe I missed some nuances here & I would be glad to be enlightened, but this looks like plain sexism.

    • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      There’s a long, documented, researched, history of men being raised to expect things from women. It’s not just housework but all kinds of things are taken much more seriously when a woman does something “wrong” than when a man does. It takes a lot of serious introspection and effort to break out of that programming so it’s not a surprise that the majority of men don’t, or only do so partially. The default state is that this stuff is sort of “invisible” because it seems so normal to how things are. So no, this is a factual description of a “standard” behaviour for men that only some are able to avoid.

      If you at all accept that there are harmful but culturally ingrained gender roles then this is a natural consequence of that for anyone who hasn’t deeply and actively questioned them. Then as those roles are indeed slowly being broken down it stands to reason that each successive generation is less willing to put up with them - but if you still see them as normal it will come as a surprise.

          • atro_city@fedia.io
            0·
            11 months ago

            Women expect things from men: “women power!”

            Men expect things from women: MISOGYNY !

            • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.mlEnglish
              0·
              11 months ago

              Expectations of women of men: basic human decency, don’t rape

              Expectations of men of women: be completely subservient in every way

              atro_city: “these are the same picture”

              • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.socialEnglish
                0·
                11 months ago

                Hmmm.

                I’d phrase it differently. Unrealistic expectations of the opposite sex [^1] exist by both sexes, but that there outcomes for women when the stereotypes of men hold true are often more dangerous. One is saying it isn’t sexist; the other is saying that there’s a vast difference in risk. This becomes one of those tautological arguments where women can’t be sexist because sexism is redefined to mean “it can only be sexist if it’s men doing it.”

                The “Would you rather a bear or…” question could be reused in a very uncomfortable way. You could swap men with a group of yoing, black, inner city men and rural white men for women. But instead of demonstrating that men are the issue and women the victims, suddenly it’d be black men who are the victims and rural white men the problem. And, yet, the fear and the risk of confirmation of stereotypes is the same - only in this case, believing those stereotypes makes people racist.

                These sorts of tautologies - only whites can be racist, only men can be sexist - is sloppy, lazy, and dangerous, because it prevents introspection and always externalizes blame. I’m not saying that you are arguing a tautology, but that’s the essence of this thread: minimizing sexism against men in the basis that it can’t be sexism if rape isn’t involved. Which is exactly how this thread went, isn’t it?

                I want to reiterate that I agree that there’s a false equivalency; consequences for women can be higher. My argument is that it doesn’t make it not sexism to broadly brush all men with a demeaning funny little tweet.

                Also: there should be a Godwin’s Law for rape. The conversation was about household stereotypes. That was a bit of a leap.