Intersectionality, Checking Privilege, Policing Language, Equity, Lived Experiences, Critical Theory.
These are all concepts and ideas that upon first examination make excellent tools for advancing ideals of egalitarian principles.
Human beings as individuals tend to be quite self serving. And in a group can often be even worse.
But as a society things run more smoothly when egalitarian principles hold the steering wheel.
Because of this, we need tools to help us maintain these principles despite conscious and subconscious (or even unconscious) efforts to infringe upon them.
I'd like to add a caveat here, that I may speak nearly authoritatively and I may have thoughtful ideas. But I'm not an expert. These are just my thoughts.
When trying to address men's issues from an egalitarian perspective. It seems that many want to vilify the tools that misandrists have been using to vilify men during the last few decades.
But some of these tools are the way that they are because feminism has coopted the egalitarian civil rights movement and misandrists have co-opted egalitarian tools vulnerable to misuse for misandrist purposes.
So, I'll go over the concepts I've listed and explain
- My understanding of how they were originally intended as egalitarian tools
- Why I believe they are flawed.
- How they are now exploited for misandrist ends.
- How we may still try to use them, but in a more responsible manner.
I can place the concepts in three groups:
The first group is "Checking Privilege, Policing Language, and Critical Theory"
What their egalitarian purpose is:
These are concepts that mostly started surfacing in the post-Marxist era. The general idea is that the privileged group has such control over communications that they can shape people's ideology.
As in, if you ask for 15 minutes breaks every 2 hours, it's because you're lazy. And lazy people get fired. But it takes some time talking with like minded people to recognize that without that 15 minutes break, you have much greater chance of injury and death, so it's a completely reasonable request.
But if the boss or a friend of the boss is there every time workers congregate, then there's no room for new ideas to form.
Basically, the privileged end up with a stranglehold control through ideology.
Policing Language: The oppressor's ideology has infiltrated common language parlance. Language has to be reverted back to eliminate that influence.
Checking Privilege: Those part of privileged groups and who are therefore prone to unwittingly promote oppressor ideology should self-limit their behavior and influence.
Critical Theory: This one is quite the thing. It's like for those who do debate competition, you're given a topic and told what position to take. It doesn't matter if you disagree with the position, you will debate to defend that position. But you crank it up to 1000%. You spend an enormous amount of effort and research to vilify the ones you've identified as the oppressor and present the ones you've identified as the oppressed as constant innocent victims in all circumstances. This is where the concept of "Everything is misogynist" comes from.
Basically, using this tools you can stop the ideology of the oppressors dead in its tracks.
Why they are flawed:
Simply put, these are not egalitarian tools. Then are inherently tools of oppression. If used by they "oppressed" with success then the "oppressed" group become the oppressors and are no longer oppressed.
How they are now exploited for misandrist ends:
Policing Language: This is everywhere, in addition to changing all high status job position to be gender neutral without also doing the same for low status job positions. Language like "toxic masculinity", "fragile male ego", "manspreading", "manterruption", etc... have been popularized. All of it ends up demonizing men and masculinity.
Checking Privilege: This also takes the form of "do better", call your bros out for bad behavior and also "Toxic Masculinity" again. It's all about make sure that men never speak up for themselves.
Critical Theory: This is how feminism has been turned into such a powerhouse of misandry. Critical Gender Theory is the foundation of misandrist feminist ideology, it is also the foundation of much of sociology, some of psychology and some of institutional policy. I believe that it is the root source of misandrist laws and policies such as the VAWA act (which erases male victims of domestic violence and the prevalence of male victims of stranger violence) and the Duluth model (which effectively puts the presumption of guilt on men during domestic violence incidents even when the woman is the offender).
How we may still try to use them more responsibly
Policing Language: I think we need to erase some of the unnecessarily gendered, reductionist and vilifying terms such as: "Toxic Masculinity", "Patriarchy", "manspreading", etc.. etc.. But we should not be trying to introduce "reverse" gendered terms that vilify women.
Checking Privilege: I see no need for this in terms of popular or political advocacy. Maybe in the context of interpersonal relationships a privileged person may want to "check their privilege" in order to not appear like a douche and be tactful towards those who lack these privileges. But that's not really the topic here.
Critical Theory: NEVER EVER. Kill it with fire, then nuke it from orbit.
Now for the second group: "Intersectionality and Equity"
What their egalitarian purpose is:
In terms of egalitarian purpose they are somewhat different but complimentary. Intersectionality is a great tool to identify and recognize areas where discrimination may happen.
If you look at men vs women for a particular statistic maybe you won't see a difference. But if you look at poor men vs poor women, maybe you'll see a difference. Or maybe a small difference that's not a big deal turns into a huge difference that's critical to look into.
Once you've identified a difference, then you're faced with understanding the cause and whether action needs to be taken.
This is where equity comes in. Equity claims that the outcome is what count. IMO, this is quite a radical claim. But at the same time, equal opportunity is not sufficient. I'll put it this way: being more irresponsible than most while a teenager should not doom you to a lifetime of near slave wages. Which, I suspect is almost the case in France where you must remain on track all the way through from highschool to your career or you're f*cked.
Why they are flawed:
Intersectionality: Intersectionality based on identity groups (gender, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic background etc...) and then assesses how discriminated against that intersectional group is within society.
It is flawed in soooo many ways:
-
There are too many groups and intersectional groups to account for. And even then, an individual is not the sum of their intersectional groups. You're just not getting the whole story and you're going to leave people out of your analysis.
-
It leads to the formation of political interest groups: Men's rights advocates, feminists, BLM, etc... The ultimate effect of such an approach is that if you belong to a group that is well represented in the political space, then your interests are well protected. If you do not, then your interests will lack representation. This is not how egalitarianism works.
-
By far, the greatest source of inequality is economic equality. All of this intersectionality tends to be a distraction away from class inequality.
Basically, I think intersectionality is find to try and recognize that a problem exist, but it's not a tool for diagnosing a problem and it is most certainly not a tool for fixing a problem. You do not treat discrimination with more discrimination.
Equity:
Setting aside the inherently radical nature of the concept for the moment. Equity is inherently problematic. A little bit like intersectionality, you can evaluate equity along any number of metrics: Sexual success, life satisfaction, number of children, etc...
But people are different and have different goals and desires and values. This makes total Equity literally impossible. There's just no such thing as "Equity" there's only "Equity" along a certain axis. And the same as with intersectionality, interest groups will start to do some tug of war to decide which metrics to use.
As I've explained before, equality of opportunity is not enough. But true Equity doesn't actually exist. Still we need to consider equality of outcome to get closer to egalitarian ideals. Just, let's do it in moderation.
How they are now exploited for misandrist ends:
It's pretty simple really. During intersectional analysis, the male identity (and also the white identity, and also frequently the poor identity) is ignored.
During Equity analysis, only metrics whose outcomes suggests that more resource and attention need to be given to women are evaluated. Those metrics that suggests that resources and attention need to be given to men are ignored, hidden or downplayed.
How we may still try to use them more responsibly
Just keep advocating for men (and white people, and poor people) to be more prominently included in intersectional analysis.
Do the same for Equity metrics (suicide victims, victims of violent crimes, victims of emotional domestic violence leading to suicide, homelessness, life expectancy, etc...)
In terms of how to do so responsibly. I think it's more of a systemic problem. In this one you play the game with the rules it has even if you don't like the rules. And if the rules are bad you also advocate to change the rules, but don't act like the rules aren't the way that they are, because then you're just going to lose.
In short, in terms of male advocacy, we advocate for men's interests in using these tools.
In terms of egalitarian advocacy we advocate to treat the issue, not the identity. In practice, this should usually mean more resources and assistance for poor people.
Last, and maybe least? Lived Experiences
This is the one that I know the least about. But I think it is crucial. When trying to find balance during the creation of institutional policy or the creation of an ideology it can be very difficult to accommodate the perspectives of 8 billion people all of which having their own unique brand of irrationality.
But, learning from and respecting the "Lived Experienced" of individuals as it is understood by these individuals is crucial for achieving egalitarian outcomes.
Some people may believe that more children is better, others maybe can't stand children. Each individual's perspective should, in principle, be considered.
Patronizing a group of people and giving them something they don't want and saying that it's for their own good, they just don't know any better is wrong headed. I might lose many people here, but I think this counts just as much for "These men don't understand that accepting that 'toxic masculinity' is the source of their problems so we're going to have to brainwash them harder" as well as "These anti-vaxxers just don't understand that getting vaccinated is going to save their lives, so we're going to make it so inconvenient for them not to get vaccinated, they'll effectively have no choice". Mind you the anti-vaxxers example isn't perfect because the true motivation isn't to help them, those who can't take the vaccine and those for whom the vaccine doesn't work well. But the point is, you can't claim to be doing it for their own good: you have to respect their lived experience which says they don't want it.
How it is exploited for misandrist ends:
"Women are scarred to be alone with men", "Something, something poisoned M&Ms therefore all men are evil".
The lived experience of women is reinterpreted as universal fact and the men's lived experience is erased or minimized.
How we may still try to use them responsibly
Talk about men's lived experiences and make sure that society is just as responsible to accommodate men's lived experiences as it is to accommodate men's lived experiences.
However, and I get so much pushback on this one. The ONLY way to do this in an egalitarian way is to give all interested parties a voice (whether directly or indirectly by repeating their talking points) whenever the issue is discussed.
For example if you're talking about Title IX witch hunts, you need to acknowledge and address the issue of rapes being so incredibly difficult to prove which is a situation that may lead a rape victim to be forced to go to classes everyday in the same room as with the person that raped them. But also acknowledge, that you just can't let unscrupulous people weaponize institutions against innocent victims through false accusations.
In conclusion. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot. Let's not look like fools by advocating against egalitarian principles just because they happen to be successfully misused by bigots today.
Edit: I removed some most likely incorrect assumptions about Marxism.
