I’m so sick of unequal comparisons between women and men on reddit

submitted by Confuzzled from self.GenderCritical

I was browsing the popular page on reddit earlier and came across a very popular post on unpopularopinions (though it was clearly a popular opinion after reading the comments) saying that telling men to “man up” is just as bad as telling a women to “go back to the kitchen”. I just sighed and felt so fucking depressed. These are NOT the same at all. And I can’t believe there are men out there saying “oh poor me, my life is just as bad as other oppressed people. We’re all oppressed!”

Men. Let me spell out the difference. Women have been treated as second class citizens purely existing to serve men both sexually and through the household for basically all of humanity. Thousands upon thousands of years. You cannot erase that history. We grow up being treated like shit, every day of our lives we experience an unbalanced world in some form. Whether it be being cat called, or seeing a hyper sexual billboard of a naked woman advertising a freaking car, or being belittled by male coworkers because you’re obviously not as smart and rational as them, duh. Being told “go back to the kitchen” is just another way of saying, sit down, know your place, get back to serving us, who do you think you are? You’re just a little girl. And every time, it feels like they’re stabbing an open wound.

I’m not a man. I don’t know what it feels like to be told “man up”. But being told to be more brave or confident sure as hell is not the same thing as being told to be a servant. Men tell men to man up. Men tell women to go to the kitchen. Men are the ones saying all these things. Why do women have to get dragged into this conversation as an antagonist? Of course the comments are all saying “OP I agree! No one should say any of this stuff, men/women it’s all equally bad! Btw do you know how men have a much higher suicide rate??? Yes this is relevant to the conversation!” (I am not trying to downplay suicide here, I think it’s a very serious topic. But irrelevant to OPs post)

Sometimes I really wish I was born as a man so I wouldn’t give a damn about these things.

EDIT: I replied to the Reddit post saying it wasn’t equally bad and was downvoted. Lol

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[–]RevengeOfTheCis 79 insightful - 4 fun79 insightful - 3 fun80 insightful - 4 fun -  (3 children)

YES, this fucking shit right here!

The oh so mean and horrible things said to men pressure them to... what? Earn more money? Be more independent? Stand up for themselves?

So if men do what they're told, they end up... successful? And if they don't, they end up what? Less successful?

Women are told to HOLD THEMSELVES BACK, men are told to SUCCEED. Are we really going to pretend those messages have an equal effect on people? Jesus.

[–]Confuzzled[S] 50 insightful - 3 fun50 insightful - 2 fun51 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

I see it ALL the time online. Every time anyone brings up women’s struggles, it instantly becomes “oh but men have these struggles too, look at me I’m a man”. And everytime FGM gets brought up, some man HAS to bring up circumcision as if it’s the same at all, disregarding the whole misogynistic and deadly culture of it. I’m just so fucking sick of it.

I am so glad this community of women exists so I can let my thoughts out, because I fear that if I wrote this on a mainstream feminist subreddit, there would be people going nOT ALL MEN!

[–]ekitten 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Urgh, the bit about FGM reminded me that there was an advert on TV in the UK for a charity that helps protect girls from FGM and child marriage. When my dad saw it, he immediately went "and what about all of the boys dying from starvation!?". It's maddening.

[–]spinningIntelligence 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Girls are immune to starvation, after all. That's why girls are often given less food than their brothers.

[–]Sun_bear 53 insightful - 3 fun53 insightful - 2 fun54 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

As you've pointed out it's men who tell women to go back to the kitchen and men who tell other men to man up. Maybe men should just be nice?

[–]Spikygrasspod 45 insightful - 2 fun45 insightful - 1 fun46 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

I think normative masculinity can be brutal and crushing. The difference is that when you cave in to the gender policing and perform masculinity correctly, you get significant benefits despite the strain of conformity and the fear of policing. With femininity, the strain and the policing are still there, but the reward you get for compliance is lower status and the rather dubious 'power' of being attractive and wanted. To say it's 'just as bad' is to really look at those two things out of context. Society never stops finding ways to make women's disadvantage invisible again.

[–]RevengeOfTheCis 28 insightful - 1 fun28 insightful - 0 fun29 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Exactly. The pressure to do something that improves your life if you succeed is not the same as the pressure to do something that greatly harms your life whether you succeed or fail.

I honestly can't think of a single pressure of femininity that improves one's life except maybe the pressure to eat healthier? (As long as it doesn't result in an eating disorder?)

[–]moody_ape 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

however you can eat healthy all you want. it won't matter if you don't look skinny enough.

[–]missdaisycan 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Superficial beauty is constrained by time and resources $$$$

[–]Lilith_Fair 30 insightful - 1 fun30 insightful - 0 fun31 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Reddit today have mainly incels and males who are socially awkward. I'M not doing NAMALT here. What I'm trying to say s that Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, etc., have really become spaces for certain specific types of people, and stuff on there are not reflective of the normies and regular peope. Reading what these incelly types post on Reddit will only going to give you brain damage and lot of frustrations, and is not good for our mental health.

It's really a shame because I remember what Reddit once used to be. It wasn't like this when Reddit started. People there used to be normal. Now it's just mostly shitty men, Wokebros, and "cool girls".

[–]Confuzzled[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah, I think for now I’ll just browse the subreddits I’m subscribed to and not the popular page. There’s just too many posts posing as an opinion piece when it’s just tired sexist rhetoric. Thank god I’m from a country that’s relatively equal for both women and men, I couldn’t handle it otherwise.

[–]jkfinn 29 insightful - 2 fun29 insightful - 1 fun30 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

The "man up" thing exists almost exclusively within the male club... when a woman says it, it's a kind of last daring & risky resort to try to bend a man to get some immediate task or action done and/or to take some responsibility--alas. While “back to the kitchen” is the evolved male’s command to the half evolved female to know her place in the nature of things.

[–]RedditHatesLesbians 27 insightful - 1 fun27 insightful - 0 fun28 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Women attempt suicide more than men, men are just better at it because they pick more violent methods. Guns are more effective than sleeping pills. Oddly enough this speaks to our socialisation so much.

[–]Confuzzled[S] 18 insightful - 1 fun18 insightful - 0 fun19 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Precisely. And you never see women go “but our suicide rates!” when men start talking about stories of suicide. Funny how it always happens the other way around though

[–]msteacherlady 20 insightful - 4 fun20 insightful - 3 fun21 insightful - 4 fun -  (1 child)

Real unpopular opinion? They actually do need to man up. I mean that in the non-gendered sense for the most part, but it seems to me "peter-pan" and "man up" have a gendered slant because men will, if given the opportunity, fail to grow up. This is where people will talk about sheltered women kept by their wealthy spouses as a counter example, but immature men who refuse to take responsibility exist at every class.

My cousin who comes home after a long hard day of working (add two hours for drinking with the boys) thinks he deserves peace while he does a raid in Starcraft for the rest of the evening, meanwhile his mentally disabled wife takes care of their seven children and the household. He needs to man up.

My colleague, affable guy that he is, is barely making ends meet, but clutters his desk with funko pops and other nerd shit. He's present for his children, but mostly the fun stuff. He also plays too many video games. It all works out for him because his stay-at-home wife takes care of the household, makes him his meals, grades his papers, and when he's "overwhelmed" she subs his classes too. He needs to man up.

These guys don't even come equipped with the stereotypical gendered skills that would make them worth having as a partner.

[–]missdaisycan 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I couldn't say whether it's an unpopular position, but it's one I, and many women I know, support. :)

[–]cybitch 18 insightful - 1 fun18 insightful - 0 fun19 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

How did I know what subreddit this topic was going to be about before I even opened it? Yeah that sub has been getting on my nerves for a while now, I'm the type that wants to chime in, but there is no room on reddit for differing opinions and actual discussions. It's all about the satisfaction of downvoting dissenters over there, by commenting on this sort of crap you're only giving them what they want.

I'm convinced that the BS on that sub is a deliberate attempt to provoke and taunt the women on that site. It was a misogynist website from the beginning, with subs like "jailbait", the only reason it seems more normie now is because they want advertiser money. If they gave a fuck about "hate" like they claim to, the red pill sub would've long since been banned. Instead they went after female-only spaces. I wish the alternatives had more activity so I could abandon that place for good. They don't deserve to have this public image of a space that's welcoming to everyone while demonstrating their hatred of women with every move they make.

[–]Confuzzled[S] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yep, so often I want to speak up when I see misogynistic posts yet I hold myself back each time for fear of being attacked. I don’t know why, but this time I had enough, and I left an emotional and bitter comment explaining to the OP why his comparison was frankly, completely wrong. But I started getting downvoted and men argumentatively replying to me, I felt stressed and ended up deleting my comment entirely.

[–]MezozoicGay 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

“man up” is just as bad as telling a women to “go back to the kitchen”

From my personal experience, those "man up" are always very sexist towards women. And very often it has meaning or wording "do not be a woman" or "don't act like little girl" or "why you so weak, are you a woman?". And if people know that I am gay, then gayness is always compared to "being a woman", or asking questions like "if you are gay, why no make-up?".

So those things are not comparable at all. It is almost like if everyone is speaking loud, but you are speaking quietly, and then people saying to you "hey, speak louder, don't be like people without tongue", and then you saying to them "don't opress me". While people without tongue can't even speak back and their opinion is never asked. It is just different levels. (With this example I am not saying here that women are disabled or worse in compare to men, just comparing ability to voice opinions in society, less weak voice is still privilege over no voice at all)

And same thing is happening with domestic abuse problems, and it is used by TRA very often. "Women sometimes domestic abusing their husbands", forgetting that it is happening once per every 10 thousand times the opposite is happening.

[–]nikon 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There is nothing that the men on reddit love more than portraying themselves as oppressed.

[–]Amareldys 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

I always thought "Man up" referred to acting like a Man rather than a Boy... ie, grow up.

[–]MezozoicGay 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

In general it is pretty sexist towards women and means "be more masculine", "be more successful", "don't act like woman gender stereotype".

[–]OrneryStruggle 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think it is/can be both but I see the "grow up" meaning more in my personal life than the "don't be so feminine" meaning. There is even a phrase a lot of people use (mostly women), "woman up," which also means "grow up" rather than "don't be masculine."

[–]MezozoicGay 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Depends on country, I guess.

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Well said!

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Reddit is a cesspool and is not safe for women and girls.

[–]Hollywood 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Men love to act like they're oppressed and it's so annoying

[–]spinningIntelligence 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"Man up" is a command to get men to take some responsibility, and implies that strength is a fundementally male trait.

"Get back in the kitchen" means "woman, you are not a person; you exist to fulfill my desires".

[–]OrneryStruggle 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah, the key difference is that telling someone to "man up" is telling them to do (male stereotypical thing with positive connotations) thus further associating maleness/manliness with good things. Telling women to get back in the kitchen is the opposite - it is telling them to stop doing positive things with positive associations and know their place.

I don't know why men are so prone to whining that they are inherently associated with good things and told to do those good things or display those good traits. Obviously I don't agree that these stereotypes are good ones, but being on the positive stereotype side is generally positive for the people who are on the right side of it. Men complaining about being told to man up are essentially complaining about being called woman-like, which they interpret as inherently bad. It's still an insult against women (or boys - I think a common interpretation of the phrase 'man up' is similar to 'grow up' where the implication is that someone is acting immature/childlike and should act more adult).