https://web.archive.org/web/20230720051219/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/20/abused-partners-who-kill-lighter-sentences-new-sallys-law/

Sally's law is being introduced in the UK, which would make it so that people who murder their alleged abuser may be given lighter sentencing.

Sally's Law is named after Sally Challen who admitted to killing her husband. She was tracking his movements, checking his phone, believing he was cheating on her and later said: "If I can't have him, no-one can." Challen was initially ordered to serve a minimum term of 22 years in jail. Jurors were told she attacked the retired businessman in August 2010, as he ate lunch at the kitchen table of their former marital home, using a hammer she had brought in her handbag. Keep in mind that she was not trapped in a relationship with this man and they had separated in 2009 and she begged to reconcile with him in 2010.

Her legal team succesfully appealed her sentence in 2019 on the basis of diminished responsibility. She received 14 years for manslaughter but walked free due to time served.

My gut tells me that murderers like Sally who admitted to killing her husband due to her insecurities will take advantage of this law, and that this won't be applied to male victims of abuse.

In short:

Don't say "Toxic Masculinity", it hurts men's feelings. Say "Harmful Gender Expectations"
Don't say "Patriarchy", it hurts men's feelings. Say "Systemic Gender Expectations"
Don't say "Feminism", it (sorta) hurts men's feelings. Say "Gender Equality or Egalitarianism"

Edit: due to some justified criticism I want to clarify a few things here.

1. "It hurts men's feeling" is not the only reason why these things are bad.

2. I shouldn't have said "It hurts men's feelings" because I don't know all men. It probably only hurts the feelings of a small minority of men. I still maintain that this is justification enough to stop using these phrases.

3. I get the sense, and I could be wrong, that people kinda don't respect how damned important it is to not hurt men's feelings. I presented my post in the way that I did to put empathy for men front and center. But to be fair, I'm not the best at the empathy thing. Still I'm a little disappointed by the response. Maybe a bit more emphasis on how justified the hurt feelings are would have helped?

4. I changed the title from "Stop saying "Toxic Masculinity", "Patriarchy", and yes, even "Feminism"" to "People in the mainstream should stop saying "Toxic Masculinity", "Patriarchy", and yes, even "Feminism"". I wasn't trying to tell the people of the magazine what they should be allowed to say or not say. I was trying to suggest that we change what is considered acceptable in polite discourse (aka the overtone window). Kinda like how it's not so acceptable to say fireman anymore, you say firefighter instead. It shouldn't be acceptable to say "feminism" when talking referring to a gender equality movement.

But let's get into the details, starting with the easiest.

Toxic Masculinity

It doesn't take a genius to recognize that saying that phrase seems to imply that masculinity is toxic. I understand that the true intent here is to talk about harmful gender expectations placed on men and the impact it has on the people who try to live up to these expectations.

Which is why it so ironic that men's reaction to such loaded and negative terminology seems to be: "Hrmph, I'm a MAN and I won't let people show that I'm bothered by something so trivial as terminology."

Don't say "Toxic Masculinity", it hurts men's feelings and that's reason enough. Say "Harmful Gender Expectations", that IS what you meant when you used the phrase right?

Patriarchy

The patriarchy is a complex system of, often oppressive, gender expectations. AKA systemic gender expectations.

The ones we tend to see most places is one that seems to have more men than women in positions of high authority.

Those well versed in gender theory understand that this is just one of many interconnected symptoms and is in no way the "root cause" of the situation. There is no root cause, it is a complex systemic problem.

But when you call it Patriarchy, that's not how it's perceived. It's perceived as something that's caused by men to benefit men and place them in power.

But it's a systemic issue that harms both men and women in certain ways and benefits both men and women in other ways and often, it's not the same people receiving the benefits as those who are harmed by it.

But the use of the gendered term Patriarchy naturally leads to gendered terminology for these otherwise symmetric phenomenon:

• For things that harm women it's "Misogyny".
• For things that harm men it's "The patriarchy backfires on men"
• For things that benefit men it's "Misogyny, male privilege or oppression"
• For things that benefit women "Benevolent Sexism"

Exposure to this kind of language, especially for men prone to anxiety can lead to undue internalized guilt.

Which again, because of harmful gender expectation, men by and large fail to complain about this problem and it goes unaddressed.

So here again, please stop saying "Patriarchy", it hurts men's feelings.

Feminism

That's right. Even this one is problematic. Now I understand that feminism has great many different factions and that there isn't one definition to rule it all.

There is some self-identified feminists who unapologetically advocate for female supremacy, openly hate men and wish to see them be oppressed. And if these people want to have the term "Feminism", I say let them have it.

But for those who truly want to fight for gender equality, you can't have it. It just doesn't make any sense. It's in the word Feminism. It's a movement dedicated to women, not men. You cannot run an effective truly egalitarian movement under that banner.

At this point I can only speak for myself, because I'm shocked by how few men are bothered by this. But I cannot accept or identify with a purported gender egalitarian movement that failed before it said anything because it could not find a way to give itself a gender neutral name.

But here's the thing. It's literally taken me decades to understand this problem, as obvious as it may seem. But also sometimes I can be quite clueless too.

But all this to bring it back to this post's mantra: while younger men may not be explicitly complaining about this particular issue with feminism. I'm sure they understand that something feels off.

So yes, please stop saying "Feminism": it hurts men's feelings.

Or more accurately it makes men feel uncomfortable enough to refuse to join your cause.

And NO, it's not too much a bother. Men's feelings are important too. As a society we've updated a ton of terminology to make sure that women feel welcome in all aspects of society. This is NOT too much to ask to help men feel welcome in the discussion for gender equality.

The term “marriage strike” has gained some currency in recent years. Any good strike needs a specific set of demands. After some consideration I’ve come up with the below list of demands. I’d appreciate any suggestions for improvements. I know some points could be a little more specific, like #7. Maybe this can serve as a basis for an actual marriage strike movement. Although naturally every jurisdiction and individual will have their differences, I’ve tried to make this fairly inclusive while not drifting too much into other men’s rights issues that aren’t directly related to marriage.

1. Abolition of common law marriage or any other quasi-marriage arrangements which are entered into automatically or involuntarily.
2. Equal access to marriage for all regardless of sex or gender.
3. Retention or instatement of adultery as a ground for divorce.
4. Abolition of all laws, regulations, and policies relating to abuse which discriminate on the basis of gender or sex.
5. Felony charges for demonstrably false accusations of abuse.
6. Organizations which openly espouse or advocate gender- or sex-biased views or policies barred from government funding.
7. Remove incentives for judges and attorneys to draw out divorce proceedings.
8. Auditing of judges for gender- or sex-based discrimination in rulings with consequences up to disbarment.
9. Abolition of the “duress” exemption for prenuptial agreements.
10. Abolition of alimony (maintenance).
11. Presumed 50/50 custody unless one divorcing partner can be verified as abusive or incompetent.
12. Property gained by divorcing partners prior to marriage, or its equivalent, devolves to original owner. Presumed 50/50 split of property gained after marriage.
13. Right to abortion on demand up to the 20th week of pregnancy.
14. Right to relinquish all parental rights and responsibilities up to the signing of birth certificate.
15. Right to a paternity test on demand at any point prior to the signing of birth certificate.
16. Prohibition of adding a parent’s name to a birth certificate without informed consent, except in cases of mental incompetence.
17. Right to be informed of the birth of biological children.
18. Felony charges for paternity fraud.
19. Recognition of parental alienation as a form of child abuse.

But my main objection is that Barbie is not really a film about Barbie at all. It’s one hour and 54 minutes of extended misandry, dressed up with a few fun dance routines and one or two (granted fairly decent) jokes.

It’s a deeply anti-man movie, an extension of all that TikTok feminism that paints any form of masculinity — other than the most anodyne — as toxic and predatory, and frames women’s liberation not as a movement based on achieving equality between the sexes but as a cultural revenge vehicle designed to write men out of the story altogether.

Every male character is either an idiot, a bigot or a sad, rather pathetic loser. If the roles were reversed, and a male director made a film about how all women were hysterical, neurotic, gold-digging witches, it would be denounced — quite rightly — as deeply offensive and sexist.

It is this kind of popular media that is infecting the minds of the young. On the surface it celebrates women, but it does so in a very shallow and toxic way. And it reinforces the misandry that has been spreading through Western society for the past 50 years.

Original by u/Oncefa2 on Reddit. Still very relevant today:

This is something I noticed in a thread where men were asked what it meant to them to be a man.

There was only one response, which could probably be summed up as, "meh".

And I honestly think this is how a lot of men feel.

You are yourself first, but also you're a man, if you'll even admit to it.

Women on the other hand seem to be proud of their gender and actively celebrate their womanhood. You see this in popular media and on places liked Twitter. And it even shows up in psychological association tests. Women are associated with traits like "good" and "valuable" whereas men are associated with traits like "bad" and "worthless".

Men are never told that they can be proud of who they are. And many are made to apologize just for being alive. Instead of celebrating men, we attack and demonize them on a daily basis. And I think this difference in treatment and identity has an overall negative effect on their mental health.

Society thinks we are useless, and it is time for a change!

It seems that the community once concentrated at LWMA is now fractured. Some are here, some stayed and I suspect that some will follow thetinmen in his boycott.

I am not much of an activist myself. Growing up, I was quite lonely and occassionally bullied for not fitting in with the main group, and so I have operated under the assumption that I don't want that to happen again. Thus, I have largely kept thoughts of advocating for mens rights or not being a feminist to myself.

So this community has been a breath of fresh air to me, seeing that I am not alone in my thoughts and seeing people argue for helping men without devolving into conservative talking points.

So how do we assure this community is not lost and broken?

Are there official organizations fighting for men's rights?
Debates on Internet are useful but I'd like to do something that has a real impact.

#men

As I psychologist, I’m concerned about mental health, especially the mental health of men and boys because it’s been overlooked for so long. Because there was so little interest in how much the negative discourse around masculinity impacts boys, my colleagues and I ran a survey. We found that around 85% of respondents thought the term ‘toxic masculinity’ is insulting, and probably harmful to boys.

My latest research has just been published. It assessed the views of over 4000 men in the UK and Germany, and found that thinking masculinity is bad for your behaviour is linked to having worse mental wellbeing. [... And] positive views of masculinity are linked to better mental wellbeing.

This is why we oppose the usage of the term toxic masculinity and any negative generalizations of men as a gender.

This article is inspired by a Youtuber Caitlyn V who is a sex coach. I've watched some of her videos and I find them to be very informative, especially about sex. I'll link it here below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agscWsru7Gk&ab_channel=CaitlinV

She actually goes onto explain how not having sex for a long time can contribute to problems on mental health, emotional health, etc.

The second half of her video has the solutions to these problems and the last point is one I want to expand on. The first 2 solutions was to 1. Create feel good chemicals by exercising, eating healthy, leaning on trusted friends, etc and the 2. one is fuck yourself (not regular masturbation where you race to ejaculation, but slowly taking your time with it.). The third suggestion is where I take issue with and it's getting a sex worker.

Note I have nothing against sex work. I believe sex work is work and there's nothing wrong with getting it. My issue with this point is the way I believe society is set up to profit off of lonely and sexually frustrated men.

Paying for sex work is very expensive, like you have to be making the kind of money where the cost to even get these services are casual at best. Even if there are cheap option, I don't believe many men out there feel they should have to pay for experiences just to feel wanted.

Think about it this way. When you go outside to try to make friends, or to try and talk to a woman you find attractive, you notice how cold and distant people treat you in social places. In the first initial meeting, you're treated as a potential predator that has to prove himself to be a good person first, and even after you passed the test, you need to be mindful of not making her feel uncomfortable, and make having sex with them feel completely natural. It's also on you to make the sure interactions you lead the interactions in a way to keep her around, and basically really sell yourself. Couple that with the expectation society has for the man to be the pursuer, all of these things make a very daunting experience for men.

Men don't have a lot of options when it comes to dating and when they to have the opportunity, are expected to make sure it goes well. This setup creates a very convincing need for sex work, with a high demand of it coming from men because their basic needs aren't being met consistently.

I believe there needs to be a better solution rather than spending money on experiencing intimacy via sexual services. The most obvious way would be to stop demonizing men at a very ridiculous level, especially at the first meet, but most people on the left space don't like that idea cuz 'safety' and 'patriarchy' so obviously getting to a point where we don't do that is gonna take a long time, we need better short term solutions that doesn't cost money for that. Sexual services are fine when you get them here and there, not when it becomes a potentially long-term thing (I've known men who consistently get sex through prostitutes)

One of the solutions offered by Aba and Preach would be a solution I would offer in helping with this situation as well, mostly short-term.

https://youtu.be/P22ZpncT8B4?t=738

Now they're saying not to approach women and I don't think most women put men that approach them on blast that regular, but that's perfectly valid given the society we're living in. Me personally, I've done a lot of approaching and have been very experienced in it and I haven't been blasted on media, but this is because I gauge most situations I have going in. The process of learning it today is fucking hard so one slip up in an unlucky situation can turn your life upside down if you get blasted on social media.

Other solutions?

Read books and websites on people skills so you can work on talking to people. Don't get me wrong, we've all had natural experiences with talking to people, so I'm not implying you're all very socially inept that can't hold a conversation. I think a lot of the guys here actually have no problem with conversation, especially when talking to women. But maybe you don't have the kind of friends you do like having around, or maybe you don't have any afab friends or maybe you do, but again not the ideal person you want in your life. I'm mostly recommending this because if you want to have control over your own life and build better relationships, people skills are crucial. So the next time you're in a situation where you want to make friends with certain people or talk to a woman you find attractive, you know have the experience backed up to do it

Read books on dating material so you can make up for a lack of experience. However, this bit is very tricky as there's a lot of toxic dating advice out there. I got proper sources of healthy dating advice if you want my suggestion message me.

Next step is practicality. For social skills, go to a hobby-based group or club and put what you learned to the test. Preferably a new one, as if you're in an old group, they probably have a set image of you and depending on that, maybe harder to break out of. Finding a new social setting will give you a fresh start if this is the case. For practicing dating skills, I would highly recommend speed dating. Now don't expect to actually get dates from speed dating. In fact, as a man if you wanna find a date via speed dating, you're gonna be spending money for a long time. Instead, use them to practice your skills. Each date you have last up to 5 minutes so you have a very short timeframe to work with, but this is perfect as you get to work on initiating conversations and internalizing body language signals being sent out, and you'll be 'dating' multiple people in one setting so you have a lot of volume to work with for one night. This is to help improve your skills quickly, arming you with enough knowledge and experience to navigate life with a prepared lens.

Now the article is written from the perspective of someone that hasn't gone to any sexual services and don't really plan to. Has anyone gone to get sexual services? What was it like going there? Do you agree it to be a solution for guys problem with a lack of sex?

I currently use fetlife as a way to connect with likeminded individuals. Sometimes they would make post about gender issues (usually female centered, and when it's male-centered it's usually about toxic male behaviour or how our problems are created by the 'patriarchy'.)

To the premise of the post is that the original poster thinks that men get angry at women because they're allowed to be sexy and feel desirable in ways that men aren't. Considering fetlife is a kink community, I didn't see any of that as I've seen men in dresses in that community. Though outside of it, I would think it's more of a case.

However, during that discussion, it seems the term "desirability" is discussed in a way that they mean compliment. When women interact with each other, they compliment each other such as "Omg you're soo sexy" "slay queen, you are gorgeous" "you have a nice fat ass" or anything of that variant, however most women understood these are just compliments and a way to make other women feel good, not always as an indicator that they wanna fuck. They don't accept this from men as they see it as an invitation to fuck (and I wouldn't blame the women here, our society has still conditioned men to their gender role and expectations of men to be the pursuer are still there.)

In terms of the term desirability being treated as a compliment, it's true men don't get that often as women do. As a man, I don't get compliments on how sexy or handsome I am. But I can count the rare times I do get them and even then, I personally saw it as nothing more than a compliment. I know that if I wanted to date a person, I would put in the effort to build that relationship and my potential partner would also put in that effort too if they want the same thing.

But there's a different kind of desirability I want to talk about. It's about the feeling of being wanted especially by women. We're taught that women send signals to show if she desires or wants someone or not, but many of these signals are very subtle. This is because men aren't brought up in that way and women expect us to just know these signals. Because of this, men sometimes do not feel desirable. What I mean here is men are expected to go up to the person, almost always be the first ones to express desire in a person and wanting to go out. I've very rarely had any woman seduce me, had any woman ask for my number, wanting to take me out. This is the desirability that men very much lack, and was a conversation not covered by that post.

Now women don't show these desires because of their safety. No, I'm not saying women don't express interest cuz of fear of being raped and murdered, that's ridiculous. What I am saying is that because society expects a lot from men and the abundance of PUA/TRP material out there, men are training themselves to pounce on every opportunity they get to experience intimacy but can come off as trying to getting some action and aggressive, leading to women closing themselves off and not wanting to 'tempt' a man into thinking she wants sex, so this understandably creates a double bind for both parties involved. So if she does express interest in him, there's a likelihood he'll latch onto that (tho you can tell me from your experience if this is true as that's just a theory in my head. I don't get approached by women like this a lot but maybe there's a guy out there that does.)

Because most women don't usually court guys and expect to be courted, guys feel like they have to give their efforts to make them feel good, but they themselves don't receive that same effort or even appreciation for trying. Anyways, lemme know what you guys think.

I just stepped down as moderator from all five of the subreddits I used to moderate over on Reddit. I just can't ethically justify continued activity on Reddit, and especially free volunteer labour for an openly greedy company that is engaged in scummy behaviour, forcing mods to open protesting communities or be demoted.

So my online activism for boys and men is now focused here and on Mastodon. And I am welcoming everyone coming over from Reddit, especially from LeftWingMaleAdvocates, the sub I put in the majority of my time and effort as a mod.

Let's build something good here, as we did previously on Reddit. It appears we have a wider reach here, so let's debate in good faith and with civil manners.

Here, in this magazine (i.e. community or subreddit in Kbin-speak) we wish to discuss and spread awareness of various issues that disproportionately affect males.

We believe men are not being well-served by either side of the mainstream political spectrum. We oppose the right wing's exploitation of men's issues as a wedge to recruit men to inegalitarian traditional values. But we also oppose feminist attempts to deny male issues, or shoehorn them into a biased ideology that blames "male privilege" and guilt-trips men.

We have no objection to the genuinely egalitarian aspects of feminism, but we will criticize feminist ideology wherever it is inegalitarian and/or untruthful, especially now that it holds institutional power. Too often feminism has promoted a one-sided "equality", dismantling male advantages while exploiting, reinforcing, preserving, and downplaying female advantages - particularly in cases involving alleged abuse.

In practice this means that most of us are politically homeless. The natural home for male advocacy should be the left wing, which professes to be explicitly egalitarian. But in modern practice, men's issues are habitually ignored, denied, or even opposed.

We seek to address male issues without falling into the traps of an impossible return to the past or a disastrous sexism. Men and women have equal value, and we need to work together for a better future.