Because the system works for them, as-is.
Control. They dont want women to have power to say no.
I think they don’t think it affects their social freedom in ways too, or they subconsiously notice that they benefit from privilege, or some podcaster tells them feminism has gone too far because equality can feel like oppression. Some probably made the faustian bargain of being toxicaly masculine just for the power and that stops working if patriarchy crumbles. Honestly I think anyone of any gender can just get lost in the sauce of what everyone is taught, everyone’s role and what we’re all supposed to do.
(The following is an analogy, not a value comparison <3)
For the same reason meat eaters don’t care about the rights on non-human animals. They profit from their ignorance.
That’s certainly an analogy alright…
Let me explain why this analogy is utter shit.
First off like Wren made clear, some people have dietary restrictions that make consuming meat an essential part of them living a healthy life.
But there is far more to it than just that. There are religious, ethical consumption, and animal welfare components that should be examined before making an uninformed statement like that.
So let’s look at the animal welfare side of things. All ecosystems are made up of a variety of different species, everything from bacteria, fungi, plants, animals, and more make up pieces of an ecosystem. Looking more specifically at the animal kingdom there are herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. Within this world there are predators and apex predators, who hunt and consume other animals to fulfill their own dietary needs. Sadly within some of these ecosystems predators and apex predators have been killed off by humans for one reason or another. Thus leading to ecosystem collapse as the species that were feed on over consume resources and overpopulated.
One way of curbing this issue is to reintroduce predators or for humans to fill that role. In plenty of areas humans keep an invaluable check on the wildlife populations by hunting and eating the animals. Because if the animal has to be killed to maintain a stable population, then why let good meat that can go to feeding other animals or people be let go to waste? But under what you have said you would argue that this is unethical and immoral.
Then there is livestock who are raised in a spacious farm, given a healthy diet and killed in as ethical a manner as possible. This meat is not produced on a factory farm but with real care given to the animals involved.
Lastly, we should look at the spiritual side of things. Where we shouldn’t be forgetting how in some cultures hunting and the consumption of meat plays a large role. Specifically in Native American (I know this term in loaded in its own right but there is no agreed upon term for the indigenous peoples) cultures hunting deer is a critical aspect of how men are supposed to be. And meat plays a part in their traditional food. So to blindly label meat and the consumption of it as bad, takes on a very racist undertone. It also ropes in the euro-centric thinking that led in large part to the destruction of these cultures in the first place.
And let me cut you off right there, no. There was no carve outs for any of these reasons in the original post. Not a single one, it was intentionally made to make anyone who eats meat under any circumstances feel bad. As well as highjack the conversation on feminism and feminist thinking, and to convert into a way to bash other people who are different.
Yeah, not all meat eaters! All diets matter!
edit to explain: The unfathomable and pointless violence that the meat industry engages in is normalized, just like the violence of patriarchy and white supremacy. Centering the small number of edge cases where these relations do not hold in a conversation about the mass violence of the dominant system is an attempt to rob the powerless of a voice.
You are right that the intersection of carnitarian minority cultures and the suffering of the animals they consume in the process is vulnerable, like an “all lives matter” protester is right that a white person’s life matters too. If your only concern is cultural preservation then you’re using culture as an excuse for violence against non-humans.
I’ve got another analogy: “for the same reason 99% of cis people are lukewarm allies of trans people on their best days - because it doesn’t affect them directly and radical empathy is hard/exhausting.”
Society grinds us all down and we barely have energy to fight our own battles. Add the fact that privileged groups benefit from the status quo and, well, it’s easy to see how ignorance/cognitive dissonance is bliss for a lot of people. It’s just so much easier than doing the work required to be a good ally.
I think that many people (not only men) believed that having women’s rights legally enshrined would be all that was required. You have the same rights now, so surely any failures must be because you’re doing something wrong (like the whole bs lean-in idea).
The reality has proven to be far more difficult. True equality requires a fundamental shift in how society thinks about women, which requires effort from each individual.
Discovering and changing your internalised biases is hard work, the kind people often need therapy for. Having to do that when it means recognising and acknowledging your personal privilege is even harder. Add in pressure to fit in with your peers and it can quickly become something you’d rather just avoid. That’s a very normal human reaction. In order to overcome this, women have had to basically scream each message from the rooftops until it finally sank in, and the internal changes started.
However, screaming things from rooftops means some people will feel bombarded, while others are likely exhausted, feeling like “I changed thinking x and y, what more do you want from me? I’m doing my best, why isn’t it enough?”, and, again, respond by avoiding the topic.
Tldr, it’s hard work for no immediate benefit to the person doing the work, possibly even negative consequences socially. Who wouldn’t want to avoid that? Also some people are exhausted from the work they’ve already done.
Women’s rights are not even legally enshrined everywhere, including in the U.S.
This is indeed another problem. Successful change tends to be incremental, but when dealing with social issues going “incrementally” basically leaves people in the dust.
There was a lot of bad blood over gay marriages, for example, in some gay/lesbian quarters when that hard-won right was finally achieved (though there’s loads of signs of this backsliding now because … well … gestures vaguely in the direction of the world). After a major social bloodbath they’d finally accomplished a major goal only to get “sandbagged” (as they called it: their words not mine!) by the trans community basically saying, again from their perspective, “how dare you celebrate your victory when we’re still in chains?”
And that’s the problem right there. From a strictly analytical point of view, gay marriage was a HUGE victory for the progressive movement and an incremental change in the right direction … but trans people were also right. Because people aren’t statistics, and if the statistics show that things are “better” in some ways, the people who aren’t in that “better” crowd are still suffering. And are rightly upset that, again from their perspective, it seems that their allies are ending the battle because they got what they wanted. The numerically smaller group is being asked, in essence, to act as triage. To act as cannon fodder and to be patient as they waited for their turn. This is profoundly unfair; it may also be profoundly necessary. (After all women started to get rights while queer society had to wait, right? Women got the vote before gay marriage was a thing.)
Fortunately that brief period of bad blood ended and we’ve kept up the pressure, but it highlights another serious problem: that exhaustion you mentioned. The battle is wearying and seems never-ending. Every time a gain is made here, there’s either a falling back there, or a new battle to be fought in another place. People have limited energy (and that energy evaporates as they get older on top of that!) and at some point the question starts entering our minds: “What’s the point?”
Now add in the fact that men aren’t even really in the fight for women’s rights. (SOME men are, but men as a whole are not.) They’re viewing it as them giving things up. Many of them do it willingly. At first. But then, from their perspective, each time they do so, a new demand for them to give something up rises and … well … they get weary too. And unlike women, or LGBTQ+, racial groups, or … they don’t have a vested interest in effecting the change. (They view it as giving things up, remember! It’s always been a struggle to present a positive face from progressive change to the dominant sector of society, even without the bad-faith blowback from those opposed to us.)
And I wish I knew how to solve that running out of steam and resentment at the never-ending struggle thing equitably. (I say this who’s in the running out of steam stage herself.) I mean, using myself as an example, I could just stop and hand the reins off to the younger generation. But then I’m sitting here and seeing the younger generation make photocopies of every mistake my generation made (who ourselves made Gestetner copies of every mistake social activists made before us, who transcribed in monastic cells every mistake social activists made before them, presumably). This seems counter-productive. But I’m increasingly out of the energy needed to keep going on.¹ Maybe I should just step back and hope the generation after this one uses better quality paper and high quality laser printers to make their mistakes.
¹ Before anybody asks in private, no I’m not in a great place right now. And no I won’t be sharing why.
Just dropping a comment to say I really enjoy reading what you write, ZDL. You have a way with words and your writing is clear and effective. I like getting a glimpse into your thoughts. Thanks for being a part of this space.
There are a lot of good answers here that expand on broader social problems, so I’ll focus on reasons given by men in my life.
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Equality is legally enshrined, therefore any women still complaining are just experiencing the same things as men and calling it misogyny
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A litany of reasons men are unfairly treated as well, all real, but taken out of the broader context of how much worse it is for women.
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Misogyny isn’t real, people are just assholes.
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There are a codified differences between sexes and therefore different roles we need to fill, stepping outside those roles brings depression and misery.
Equality is not legally enshrined everywhere.
Adding one I’ve heard: women are capable of granting the gift of life, which is the greatest ability and brings the greatest sense of fulfillment. So it all balances out.
They honestly thought this was a good argument.
What the actual fuck. No the fuck it does not
So we can do this amazing thing… and that makes it okay to treat us worse?
Dafuc?
lol I read this to my hubby and he said ‘that’s like one guy saying ‘horses shouldn’t be made into glue!’ And another guy going ‘but they can run really fast so it’s okay!’
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Same reason so many white people aren’t interested in minority rights, or rich people aren’t interested in poor people’s rights: it doesn’t directly benefit them and at some level they understand many of their privileges require an underclass to support them. Giving women the tools, voices, and rights to contribute equally takes away men’s control of women and access to free labour.
