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[Virex]

Only my side needs evidence, since it's common knowledge that only women can suffer from the way our society works.

See, who's said that only women have problems?

I feel like backing him up here, not because I necessarily agree with him, but because I feel he needs sticking up for.  Who said?  Virex, mostly, in a tone I have a real problem with.

Why is it that whenever a woman brings up a problem, a lot of men always chime in with completely irrelevant or negligible grievances to prove that they too have it bad?

You're insisting that women need your superior, masculine compassion and understanding to be allowed to feel that way. You're insisting that women need to be able to connect with male feelings instead of allowing them to have their own feelings independent of yours. I would've hoped you could see the problem with that.

It's occasional inconvenience in a social situation that predominantly expects you to be independent and act on that (meaning that people generally expect you to not adhere to social norms anyway) versus a social expectation of submissiveness and perpetual stigmatization regardless of your behavior. If you're going to argue that you come anywhere near the issues woman are faced with you're going to have to provide some evidence.

Look, he even asked for evidence.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And before you say that the same kind of evidence hasn't been provided for the opposite side, I invite you to a stroll through this thread.

[Gunner-Chan]

I mean, this thread is filled to the brim with news articles and personal stories.  What, now we just say that untextured "you're wrong" statements are the king of chess?

This, every time Vector posted something that was evidence for female gender role opression there was a little influx of people doing just what she said saying men have it harder. With no links or evidence. Just big ol "Nuh uh" posts.

What's the saying I'm thinking of? Put up or shut up? Back it up or don't bother is the rule Vector want's I think.

[Bauglir]

Y'know, you're right. Virex did do those things I didn't think anybody had done. In my defense, or rather the opposite of that, I was skipping over those posts when reading the thread. >_______> Yeah, I need to work on reading comprehension. The rest of my argument should be modified accordingly to "You're extrapolating from Virex's position to the belief that anybody who doesn't agree with you must therefore agree with him".

At any rate, basically everything Vector and Janet just said, also. Mentioning how rough it can be to be a woman != mentioning how easy men have got things, and there's no need to respond as if it were something that needed correcting to "every gender has its own stereotypes that suck". It'd be like if somebody said "Tables are often square" and somebody said, "Yeah, but chairs also are often square", only with personal significance to each of those statements so that it's not a completely mundane example useful for illustrating my point.

[Pnx]

What I was trying to say was, "I get shit over this stuff too I hear you broette."
... But maybe I'm not very good at conveying these things.

*sigh*
I got the gender role blues.

[Nadaka]

Eh? I don't really see what mindmaker is getting so worked up about.

Mens issues don't get talked about that much partially because talking about mens issues is a mens issue (I hope that made sense).

But I'll go ahead and bring up a big "man issue" that rarely gets talked about.

As a man, you are worth nothing if you can not provide a comfortable lifestyle for a large family.
How many men commit suicide because they fail this?
How many men fall into alcohol or drug addiction because they fail this?
How many men are abused by their spouse or family with this excuse?
How many men lose their families for no other reason than failing this?
How many men work themselves to death to live up to this one goal?
How many men suffer anxiety, depression or sacrifice every other aspect of their lives in pursuit of this one goal?

I don't have any direct links to evidence in this case, but I am fairly sure that it is both pervasive and severe. I've experienced some of it myself, and seen if affect most of the men in my life.

Edit: I always use the wrong spelling of lose by default.

[Aqizzar]

That is the heart of the problem here, and big part of why I usually can't stomach coming in here, as much as I want to.  Whenever there's a legit story or account of women being treated badly, there will be a man who speaks up on his own account.  I've yet to see anybody try to seriously say "men have it worse", but I don't doubt somebody did, because I don't keep up.  Then, there's some back and forth like this.

When there's a story of "women have it bad", there's a natural reaction for somebody to want to say "y'know, it ain't all roses being a man".  When hearing somebody say that, there's a natural reaction to assume they're saying "men have it worse", or "women don't have it that bad".  There's this power element of competition going back and forth, and people assuming anyone saying there's problems being of one gender is denying those of the other.  Of all things to be territorial over, suffering is a weirdly powerful one, but this cyclone of recriminations doesn't get any less ridiculous every time it happens.  I'm not going to speak to anyone in particular, but this of all places should be where someone can have a grievance without someone else thinking it's an attack.

[Nadaka]

I've seen the occasional "that is not so bad", "men have it worse" or more often "men have it bad too" post here after a feminist issue, but 9 times out of 10, that does not happen (here at least). Not sure about other areas. It does come up occasionally simply due to the very large number of feminist issues brought up here. This isn't just a feminist thread though.

[Willfor]

Nobody has it worse than the demographics that I am a part of, and I will take any complaints about problems you are facing as part of another demographic as a mortal insult.

[Virex]

Nobody has it worse than the demographics that I am a part of, and I will take any complaints about problems you are facing as part of another demographic as a mortal insult.

Hum, never knew I was a woman?

[Pnx]

Nobody has it worse than the demographics that I am a part of, and I will take any complaints about problems you are facing as part of another demographic as a mortal insult.

Hum, never knew I was a woman?

Heh, I'm always forgetting people's genders on here. It's especially bad when I can't check their profile for which pronouns I'm supposed to be using.
When I use "them" or "they" it sounds like I'm talking about a mysterious third party rather than someone who's actively in the conversation.

[Vector]

Yup.  That also falls into issues with ableism, Nadaka, which makes me wonder if that's why they usually make such a big deal of incidence rates of disabilities in men.  It isn't just because men are inherently valued more (in certain ways--don't get me started on the draft, or "women and children first"), but because ability--especially ability to work, to provide, etc.--are more salient to a male gender role.

Actually, a lot of the problems we have in general with gender roles and gender issues are tied into this ability problem, which says more than I thought it did about our society.  Hurm.

I remember that I was thinking about what it would be like to write a book about women from earlier eras, and going "But... what did women do back then, anyway?  What would there be to write a book about?  Hell, I'd rather write about a dude."

It's a bit of a mess, to say the least.

I've seen the occasional "that is not so bad", "men have it worse" or more often "men have it bad too" post here after a feminist issue, but 9 times out of 10, that does not happen (here at least). Not sure about other areas. It does come up occasionally simply due to the very large number of feminist issues brought up here. This isn't just a feminist thread though.

I feel like it's mostly been okay on that front, as well.

This was the largest blowup--indeed, the only real blowup we've had of the issue, other than minor arguments (like the mansplaining one, which is why I now add content warnings for that sort of thing so that people don't think I'm all for it or something).  When I started letting people know I was linking to feminist polemics, people stopped writing knee-jerk defenses of themselves... so yeah, I think that although there were some little bumps in the beginning of the thread due to this stuff, it's gotten a lot smoother through time.

[Virex]

Nobody has it worse than the demographics that I am a part of, and I will take any complaints about problems you are facing as part of another demographic as a mortal insult.

Hum, never knew I was a woman?

Heh, I'm always forgetting people's genders on here. It's especially bad when I can't check their profile for which pronouns I'm supposed to be using.
When I use "them" or "they" it sounds like I'm talking about a mysterious third party rather than someone who's actively in the conversation.

I'm as surprised as you are at my apparent gender change over the course of a day.

[kaijyuu]

The reason I think people often reply with "well men have this problem too!" is because the articles on display usually paint it only from the female perspective (and sometimes say the problems are female only!). People rush in and fill the hole.

I seriously doubt anyone's trying to marginalize anyone else's issues, but rather just give their own perspective on the issue at hand. I'll certainly join you in raising an eyebrow to anyone who does say these issues aren't important/are less important because "someone else has it too/worse," but beyond that...

[Vector]

Hmm, have they been saying issues are female only?

Even periods and pregnancy aren't women-only issues!  I feel ruddy sorry for the trans people who have to deal with that mess.

But yeah, I'll work to pay more attention to the articles I put up here.  The ones that say "only" should be flagged :I

[Virex]

Hmm, have they been saying issues are female only?

Even periods and pregnancy aren't women-only issues!  I feel ruddy sorry for the trans people who have to deal with that mess.

But yeah, I'll work to pay more attention to the articles I put up here.  The ones that say "only" should be flagged :I

I don't know if it's a good idea to value figures of speech over content...