Sorry Ho Hum this maculinity thing isn't a western construct. Just look at those wonderful Rouseau noble saveges in the New Guinea Highlands and see how they treat each other....

Dkit

I can't see that calling it a conspiracy makes some of the false assumptions about male power and privilege (or oppression of women)any more valid. Perhaps a greater recognition that the imbalances which have existed (for both men and women) are generally constructs which have been created and championed by both men and women. A recogition that both genders have suffered loss as well as had advantage in different areas.

While the terms masculinity and patriarchy continue to be the focus of the debate many will be rightly bothered at seeing men blamed so many of societies ill's.

Perhaps we could refer to an 'Alpha' conspiracy where power and privilege are held up as goals worthy of devotion.

R0bert

http://www.redbubble.com/people/bronek/art/393697-6-dinner-time

'how this marginalises women (and atypical men).'

What a joke. The 'atypical men' are actually the small percentage of alpha males. The typical men are marginalised just as much as the typical women. The 'atypical women' isn't used by people as a definition of femininity, so why is the 'atypical men' always used to define masculinity.

'This isn't a cynical attempt to lure innocent men's rights advocates into a feminist trap,'
Haha. It looks like a duck. Sounds like a duck.

BTW: That trap being the all pervasive attempts by feminists to label all men by their narrow definition of masculinity which is based on a few powerful men, and use it to beat the rest of the men over the head with it.

'it is the choice of the individual whether or not to be misinformed. Either be spoon-fed the lies, or not.'
This individual does not accept the feminist propaganda about masculinity.

I'm happy in the masculinity I see all around me, in myself and my peers and the men I see all around me. It bares no relation to what feminist propagandists paint as 'masculinity', that's in 'crisis'.

I think really most of the bad rap men have been given is more to do with power than gender or sex.

It just happens that power corrupts and power is addictive. Replace the genders or sex of the men in power with women and I say the same result. It's the same problem of mixing race and socio-economic classes and thinking there is a problem with black-ulinity or something.

Men and women are more the same than people want to believe. It's easy to poor sh1t on men for making mistakes in positions of power and blame their male-ness for the mistake. Just because women haven't traditionally been in a position to make such mistakes doesn't mean they're all made of sugar and spice that's for sure.

Well, that and the fact that we're all evil scum of the earth that should be castrated at birth.

Houellebecq,
One can only agree. Males are the scum of the earth.

Men developed language (as well as writing and books and even computer screens).

But none of the languages men have developed have been good enough to describe how wretched and evil and scummy men actually are.

So men didn’t do a good enough job as per usual.