Why is it up to men to push back against other mens toxic attitudes and not society dealing with the problem as a whole?

Because it's men who want the change most. You have to fight for what you want.

You are upset that a particular group is resistant to demonizing an entire gender?

Because nobody worth listening to is doing that.

Domestic violence is pretty evenly split down the middle between men and women. The data gets skewed because there are more male homicides due to gang violence. But if you look at homicides of men from a intimate partner or close family member, there are a lot more men than women that wind up dead.

The data does not back up that assertion.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(13)61030-2/fulltext

Because these aren't solutions. They're bandaids that don't address the deeper issues of why these problems exist in the first place.

My better suggestion is that men engage with topics like emotional literacy and identity. Learn about yourself, learn about your emotions, learn why you do the things you do and think the way you think. That kind of learning allows for so much richer communication and understanding between people.

Except that sort of tit-for-tat approach doesn't solve anything.

These sorts of disparities crop up for a reason and those reasons are often social in nature. If you don't address the root cause of the disparities, they'll keep coming up elsewhere in your society.

As of this writing, no. The Toolkit is meant to distill a lot of different resources down to a more accessible form for people in communities or practitioners who don't have resources to sign up for expensive trainings.

My interpretation of the Duluth model was women are the primary victims of DV, if mutual DV included (not sure how mutual DV vs self defense is determined), are the most likely to suffer worse outcomes, and are much more likely to seek help.

Broadly, yes. That's the TL;DR of the Duluth model.

Given that I was assuming police and rehabilitation/mental health might be better suited for using Duluth model and if not the question would be why not use a different model?

I'm not an expert nor am I a clinician (yet) but to my understanding the Duluth model is falling out of favor and being replaced by trauma informed care. TIC is more broadly useful and it's designed with a lot less blame forward language and perspectives that the Duluth model tends to use.

TIP 57 is the iteration of the TIC protocols that are kind of the standard at this point.

The thing is, it's that bad because we make it that bad. It doesn't have to be that bad.

With some pretty basic introspection and getting away from this "just stop being a pussy" mindset, you can help a lot of people.

Do you have statistics to back that up?

I am saying that there is no ideological underpinning for the MRA movement other than reactionary negation.

And we can acknowledge there is a problem with the gas tanks overall but in the case of the Toyotas the problem is more widespread and more urgent because it's more likely to happen.

Why is the burden on men to "not be part of the cycle"? I just find it quite problematic that as soon as men start to push back on the excesses of feminism it's suddenly time to "break cycles" and all that. All I see here is coded language telling men to just shut up and take it and that's not acceptable to me.

Because it is on any person that is part of any negative cycle to own their part in that cycle. That's all you can reasonably do.

Yet it's patterned pretty much exactly on the feminist model - a model that worked. So we know the model works which means that this can't be the reason to not use it.

Except it wasn't. That's part of the problem. The MRA doesn't have an ideological framework that isn't just reactionary negation. It's just saying "no." You can do that but it doesn't have much explanatory power.

Right now both. Women no longer need the boosts and men have fallen far enough behind that they do. This is what happens when the boosts women got were allowed to keep going long after they were needed. It's also the inherent problem with trying to use current discrimination to solve past discrimination. It will always overcorrect and thus require continuing the cycle.

So in the same paragraph you argue that men should get extra boosts but also that extra boosts always lead to over-correction thus requiring continuing the cycle. I'm genuinely unclear as to where you're actually at on this because you seem to be two places at once.

On this we can agree. Unfortunately that also is extremely problematic because that means we have an unresolvable divide and thus conflict and that's a really bad thing for societal stability.

Not necessarily. It's possible to have a fundamental conflict of values and still respect basic decency towards each other.

So? It's now, not then. Don't hold the son responsible for the sins of the father and all that. Especially when the son isn't benefiting from them.

And that is where we differ because the son is absolutely benefiting from them. We have a society that is less formally patriarchal than it used to be but is still fairly patriarchal. There's absolutely areas where men have disadvantages but that doesn't negate that, on the whole and statistically speaking, men are in a socially dominant position in our society.

No it's not. It's about dealing with the root problem, not just whining about how it makes you feel. Because once the problem is solved the associated emotions go away.

And what do you do when the emotions are the problem?

As far as why men don't show emotion - by which you mean negative emotion

No I mean any emotion. Stoicism is a lauded trait among men in Western society and large displays of any emotion, be it positive or negative, are frowned upon when it's men doing it.

it's because of how women react to men doing it. Nothing makes a women look down on a man more than him showing her vulnerability or anger. Vulnerability makes him seem weak and anger makes him seem dangerous. Both of those cause women to pull away. This is a near-universal experience for men as can be found in any discussion on the topic, including quite regularly on this site.

Anger representing danger is an uncomfortable fact - men are traditionally not taught how to express or process anger in healthy ways and often do so with violence or they attempt to suppress it until they can't anymore and lash out aggressively. There's a reason why the statistics on intimate partner violence show that women are far more likely to be the targets of violence from an intimate partner.

As far as vulnerability, you're missing some of the nuance of that. Men are allowed and indeed encouraged to show vulnerability. When that becomes a problem is when that vulnerability is coupled (as it often is) with an expectation. If a man is vulnerable there's often an unspoken expectation that someone else (usually a woman) will step in and comfort him or regulate his emotions. That kind of outsourcing of emotional labor is expected work that men get angry if women won't perform.

There's also the aspect of men very much reinforcing the idea that vulnerability is "weakness." It's thankfully changing somewhat now but there's still a pretty pervasive culture of men considering other men who show vulnerability to be weak.

No they're not. Hell it's a common thing among the actual leaders of the movement and of feminist thought and theory.

Such as?

And it has been since at least the third wave with things like the mainstream S.C.U.M Manifesto and other such stuff.

Solanas is absolutely not mainstream feminism. The SCUM Manifesto was written in 1967 and while Solanas is sometimes credited with kickstarting what today we'd call radical feminism, her views are still considered pretty rank misandry by most feminists today.

That's kind of what happens when you have no actual societal power.

I'm sorry but I cannot take the idea that men have no actual social power seriously.

Neither are the 34% or the 6%.

Except that is the primary focus because that's where the problem is identifiable.

If 10% of Fords randomly exploded in flames and killed 100 people but so did 70% of Toyotas and killed 120 people, the takeaway from that situation isn't "Wow cars are dangerous," it's "there's a huge problem with Toyotas."

No one is saying ignore that 10% but we're saying that 70 vs 10 highlights a problem.

Your math is a little off there.

Of the estimated 4,970 female victims of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in 2021, data reported by law enforcement agencies indicate that 34% were killed by an intimate partner (figure 1). By comparison, about 6% of the 17,970 males murdered that year were victims of intimate partner homicide.

34% of 4,970 is 1,690.

6% of 17,970 is 1,079.

So there are still more women who are killed by an intimate partner than men.

The number is important but it's not as important as the rate, which is the real issue.

34% vs 6% is a huge disparity.

Says who?

Idk about you but I tend to think the state of masculinity is pretty unpleasant and I think we deserve better.

Which is why I don't really think the focus on specific programs is particularly helpful because at that point you're basically just playing with a political Rubik's cube.

The issue of specific programs to address specific problems is a valid discussion but I think a deeper issue is the fact that there is no deeper issue for the MRA movement. There's no analytic component and it's purely reactionary.

It's not unwillness, it's the fact that men aren't to blame. This is just victim-blaming, something feminists supposedly claim is utterly abhorrent.

It's not about "blame" at all. That's not a helpful way to think about the issue. It's about recognizing and owning your part of a cycle and doing what you can to not be a part of that. That's not an indictment on men.

And? Why should women be given extra hands up when they're already ahead? Take those away and give them to the actually-underprivileged group. Resources aren't unlimited so your position of "just add more" isn't valid.

I didn't say "just add more."

The topic of individual initiatives to redress specific areas of inequity is a valid conversation but one I'm not particularly equipped nor interested to have as it's beside the point. The issue at hand is if the "MRA" model is a good perspective to address the gender based inequities in our society. I tend to think the answer is no.

Wrong. It's "the privileged group shouldn't be getting extra boosts on top of their privileged position". You know, the exact position feminists had back when it was men in the privileged position.

So are you advocating for men to get "extra boosts" or for women not to get "extra boosts?"

If it's the former, you already said that the "just add more" approach doesn't work and now you're saying you don't want to take things away from people. So...which is it?

And? You don't explain how that's inaccurate, just kind of try to say it's morally wrong. Well your morals aren't everyone's. You need to actually prove the claim wrong.

Sure. To a degree, this is an issue of fundamental values and if we have mutually incompatible fundamental values we're not going to agree.

That said, we can acknowledge that men have traditionally had a position in society, broadly speaking, wherein they are dominant. In recent decades we've begun to drift a bit more towards a semblance of gender equity and that's been interpreted as men "being robbed."

Which, I guess in strict terms is true - men are being robbed of a traditionally dominant position in society. If you believe that men deserve that exalted position, that's a fundamental difference in our values because I don't share that perspective nor do many other people.

Because that's not in any way useful or practical. Not to mention that every time it does get done it just turns into another browbeating session about how men who exhibit any traits that aren't pure submissiveness to women with zero expectations from women are evil and wrong.

So the first part of this is factually incorrect. A large amount of our conception of masculinity in the Western world is based around not dealing with problems, toughing things out, not showing emotion, etc. That can be very destructive to your mental health and I think the fact that the male suicide rate is x4 that of women speaks to that. It feeds a culture of ignoring men's mental health issues.

As for the second part, I don't know what to tell you other than that's not correct and I say that as someone who's been in circles where this is a big topic of discussion for a long time. There are absolutely people who leverage feminist thinking to justify an outright hatred of men but those are pretty rare in general.

I'm open to hearing about any specific theorists or ideas within feminism that you have in mind when talking about this. I'm not an expert but I'm familiar enough with the topic that I'd like to know.

Since that's the much smaller issue than toxic attitudes among women it's at the bottom of the list.

This kind of solidifies my point - the MRA dynamic is "it's someone else's fault, they need to do something, I can't do anything."

It's a worldview built around an external control fallacy. And that makes sense, some people who feel disempowered are going to gravitate towards ideas that reinforce that sense of disempowerment and that's ultimately what the majority of the MRA movement is. It exists to provide a vehicle for blame and that's why it's a poor tool.

Absolutely not true, we don't want less for women, we want to identify to cause of the gap and fix it.

And without wanting to dispute the sentiment, that's not what we see from most MRAs. We see in this very thread this kind of "everyone should be down at my level" thinking from people who are arguing in favor of MRA perspectives.

We have a structural framework to identify the cause of the gap. A more feminist perspective does provide ample explanatory power, the problem is a lot of men don't actually understand that feminism does help men and that we do need to engage in some work if we want to see change.

Again, hard disagree. I see this repeated a lot but it's absolutely not what any MRA space I've ever been want. We don't want less for others, we don't advocate for less than others. Where do you see this?

You can look around this thread and see ample evidence from people who argue from a pro-MRA perspective.

We do this all the time actually, the NCFM has weekly meetups, we have discords with support channels, we reach out and share our problems with each other all the time. And in fact, we do discuss how to find effective therapists.

That's genuinely great. No sarcasm, that's good to hear.

I'm not super enthused about the NCFM in general, from what I've seen they also tend to trade on the aggrievement politics model and I don't see a lot on their page that pushes for a deeper understanding of masculinity.

Sorry but you cannot defend a system that will not only allow but de facto encourage the arrest of a visibly injured person who made the initial 911 call. You're seriously going to defend the idea of treating men as perpetrators by default? Doesn't that directly go against the idea of deconstructing harmful gender stereotypes?

I'm not going to defend the Duluth model as a good idea, it has obvious problems and thankfully is being supplanted by trauma-informed care which is broadly more applicable and lacks a lot of the inherent assumptions present in the Duluth model.

So none of this is even remotely the point.

Again, you're fixating on manifestations instead of root problems.

Because your definition of "fight for me" is "do things for me."

This is a chronic problem with men vis a vis feminism - there's an expectation to receive the kinds of support and understanding that women do with no impetus to do the work necessary to be a part of that process.

Men get angry when we don't get handed community and solidarity and love and understanding on a plate yet many men refuse to do even the most basic amount of work necessary to be a part of creating those things.

I'll say that society is very comfortable with men not complaining about issues that affect them. Men are not encouraged to speak up about their own problems, quite the opposite, and this has an isolating effect on men. The language men are shunted to can be very confining and unhealthy.

I would agree with this, but that's something that is addressed within the framework of feminism.

It has nothing to do with organization, it has everything to do with conceptualization.

Feminism, regardless if you agree with it or not, is a system for viewing and understanding relationships between men and women in a societal context. It gives you tools and a language to understand, talk about, and navigate these relationships in a way that can be rewarding and fulfilling.

What is the MRA answer to that?

The MRA view does not in any substantive way engage with the systemic nature of the problems that men face. Everything is focused on overly-simplistic quickfixes that do nothing to look at the deeper problems.

How does one show the evidence that something does not exist?

I'm open to the idea that there's some ideological system at work within the MRA context but, as yet, I haven't seen it.

Perhaps you could share with us some of the ideological underpinnings of the MRA movement?