I don't know what being a man means, unless it's being true to your own convictions, setting an example others can look up to; and rather than oppressing the weak stand up for them!

It means having a moral compass that still works and at the end of the day being able to look at the man in the mirror, arguably the only one you can't con or fool, and be able to say on balance, you're not perfect, nobody is, but you're okay, you'll do!

It means holding fast to your dreams and just not quitting on them even when the going seems too tough! Who knows when the universe will decide you need some help? Who knows what the tide will bring? Asking for some help never hurt anyone.
Dreams are rarely revolve around money ,but rather passing that exam, gaining that position or succeeding at your sporting endeavours!?

It means understanding that what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger! It means overlooking the flaws in others; given in their shoes, you may well have exercised the same options? It means never turning your back on someone who genuinely needs help; always providing you have the means to actually help!? You need to be a friend to have a friend!
Rhrosty.

Daffy Duck, what exactly do you mean by saying there are no strong male role models in the media? Are men supposed to look up to journalists, weathermen or newsreaders as role models? Shouldn't they be looking up to other men who have made more positive contributions to society?

Pericles "Whining article such as this do nothing to further the cause of "men", mostly because the type of male used as illustration is clutching at straws in blaming women for any and every misfortune that has befallen them."
I totally agree, but I doubt many others on this forum, who regularly fall into the " let's blame all our problems on feminists' pit, will agree : )

Runner, that's great you have a fulfilling marriage, just as long as she stands and leads beside you, and not behind you....

RHosty, I totally agree with your post, and I am sure you are a fine man!

One of the interesting things about feminism is that they were ever able to get anyone to buy into the line that feminism is about gender equality, equal opportunity, equal rights, or other such blandishments to equality.

These statements are completely unhistorical. Feminism has always been about benefits, favours, and legal privileges for women on a double standard. The name says it all.

For example, universal adult female suffrage came in when universal adult male suffrage was itself fairly recent. One of the main arguments advanced for the latter was that men put their lives on the line on the battlefield and were liable to conscription for among other things, protecting the women and children of the community. The same generation of women that were sending white feathers to men to humiliate them for cowardice were the ones shrieking how bitterly unfair it was that they didn’t equally have a right to vote.

It is also surprising that feminism was able to get anyone to buy into the line that the sexes are equal, or ought to be treated as equal, when we consider that the sexes are not factually equal, cannot be factually equal, and cannot be valued as equals without nullifying the value of human life at some stage.

As soon as this is pointed out “Ah yes but” comes the invariable feminist reply: “Equal doesn’t mean the same”.

But equal does mean the same. When we say two plus two equal four, we mean that two plus two are the same as four.

If the feminists are right in saying that equal doesn’t mean the same, then obviously there is no justification for equal pay legislation. A man could earn $20 an hour, while a woman earns $10 an hour for the same work and, according to feminist logic, we could still say that their pay is equal because “equal doesn’t mean the same”. It’s nonsense. Not even the feminists believe it, for the obvious reason that it’s not true.

“But” comes the standard rejoinder “People should still be valued equally as human beings, equal in dignity, equal in the respect we give them” and so on.

That’s all very well if we think of male and female as monolithic lumps, generalities in the abstract. But the problem is that *in reality* people are individuals and have differences, which other people value differently. And there’s no reason why they shouldn’t value them differently. There is no reason why a man should be valued equally, or given equal consideration, on account of his giving birth to babies, for obvious reasons.

By the same token, to the extent that women’s having babies has logical or probable consequences, including cost or risk consequences in the real world, there is not the slightest reason why people should not cognize this, value them differently, and treat them differently. There's nothing wrong with it. Discrimination is just preference by another name. There's no "right" not to be the subject of others' preferences.

In any event, feminists don’t object to it when it adversely affects men. When did you ever hear a feminist worrying about the much higher rate of male deaths at work or other unequal indicia of male disadvantage?

Another example of the feminist double standard is characteristic feminist support of a traditional legal obligation on men to pay money to women on account of children - compulsory so-called “child support”. In this they are affirming as against men an obligation that is the moral keystone of patriarchy. So much for feminist concern about freedom from non-consensual sex-specific patriarchal gender stereotypes.

When this is challenged, the answer is invariably that men have a “responsibility” to benefit and favour women in this way. But hang on.
These are the same people who have been insisting for the last 40 years that unwanted sex-specific obligations without the consent of the individual, are just “social constructs” that are “gender stereotypes” and that it is a “human right” for people to be free of such oppression.

All of a sudden they think nature-given sex-specific socially-constructed non-consensual gender stereotypes are fine after all – so long as it’s men being forced to benefit women.

If A and B do the same work, but the costs and risks of costs of employing B are greater, then it is not “equality” or a "human right” for them to be paid the same. It is a privilege for B.

Compulsory equal pay for male and female for equal work would only be ethically just if their costs, or risks of costs, were in fact equal. But we have seen this premise is factually false. That being so, equal pay legislation should be called "financial violence and enforced legal privileges for women", not equal rights at all.

What the feminist movement has always and consistently argued for, is the benefits of both patriarchy and the feminist dispensation for women, with men to have the costs, obligations and risks of both. It is simply factually untrue that feminism is, or has ever been, about gender equality, or equal opportunity.

It is notorious that the equalitarian ideologies have historically been responsible for killing human beings on a massive scale, and feminism is no exception. Socialism killed its tens of millions, but feminism has killed its hundreds of millions and like other state-worshipping fascist ideologies, has a ready-made ideology to dehumanize its victims, to portray them as less than human.

But when a woman – even a feminist – who has wanted to fall pregnant, succeeds and informs her girlfriends, they don’t refer to the human being in question as “the foetus” or “the clump of cells”, do they”?

No. What do they call it?

The fact that the sexes are not factually equal, because women have babies and men don’t, goes on to infect, and invalidate, all the logical and ethical conclusions of all feminist ideology built on that factually false premise. So far as I can tell, this is all of it - except libertarian feminism.

Pericles
Your paternalistic sexist bigotry would have been less offensive if at the same time you had not been hypocritically pretending to be concerned about paternalistic sexist bigotry.

But a good example of stock standard feminist modus operandi, thanks.