Essay

So You Think You’re a “Meninist” – Alex Esterline

Before you read this article, if you have a problem with feminism (equality of the sexes), then you should probably just leave.

If you keep up with the feminist movement on any forms of social media, you’ve probably heard of the men who denounce the activism in the community by redirecting the issue on the challenges men face in society. Now, I’d like to make clear that their issues do exist. As a feminist, I clearly don’t hate men- as I identify as one- and I benefit from feminism as well. (All genders do). However, anti-feminist movements usually spend so much more time telling us why feminism is the root of all evil than they do helping the men that are discriminated against in society.

The movement I’m referring to is, of course, “Meninism”.

Meninism started as a patriarchal joke on twitter that was backed by a few problematic white boys. They eventually started growing a fanbase and shortly afterwards and turned into a serious movement.

When looking into the foreign world of meninism, it seems their main goal is to completely disregard the patriarchy while perpetuating inequality of the sexes. They also like to complain about issues that may or may not effect them- without actually doing anything about it. Meninists have attempted to re-invent the wheel as they ignore the positive effects feminism has on all genders. This metaphorical wheel, of course, is extremely bumpy.

Meninism’s main issues seem to be body-positivity in men and the unjust expectations of “masculinity”. Both of which are extremely valid points. However, meninism segregates those who could be fighting patriarchal notions (those of which are the source of sexism) alongside each other. Feminism aims to promote equality of the sexes, which is why it benefits other genders as well as women- the oppressed gender.

When meninists come along and turn the issue on themselves (which they will inevitably do), they are removing the focus from the issues that matter increasingly to oppressed women. Meninism would be a wonderful movement if they actually worked towards equality for all genders- the main point they attempt to make, since they immediately equate feminism with misandry.

Meninism as a movement should be rejected on its face because of its misogynistic roots and innate dismissal of structural violence towards women. Remember that feminism is a movement for equality, and distracting from that hurts yourself and others. Misandristic feminism is not feminism, and

Advertisement
Standard

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s