jadero

We only alter those halls by gaining access to them

To a first approximation, no person or group who has entered the existing halls of power has done more than cosmetic redecoration.

We need complete renovation or destructive replacement. We do not get that by playing their game by their interpretation of their rules, but by forcing the creation of new interpretations, new rules, and even entire new games.

We do that not by aspiring to join their club, but by exercising the power inherent in mass movements in opposition. We don’t need to change who holds the reins, we need to discard the very harnesses that bind us.

That is just a natural consequence of the length of time spent in the struggle and in the study of the problems faced and the most effective strategies and tactics for addressing those problems.

As men’s movements come to understand their goals and the true causes of their problems, they, too, will develop effective strategies and tactics to achieve those goals.

I only hope that as the variations rights movements mature, they come to realize that the problem is not who limits our opportunities for success on our own terms, but that anyone does. The intersectionalists get closer than “closed” groups, but many still make the mistake of trying to gain access to the halls of power rather than destroying the very halls themselves. The powerful don’t actually care who finds their way into positions of power as long as the power structures themselves remain intact.

Thanks. I don’t understand much of what points they’re trying to make and disagree with some aspects of what I do understand.

They seem to be saying that intersectionality is a dilution of power welcomed and promoted by the powerful. In fact, intersectionality as a philosophy of struggle was invented by the financialists in the 1970s as they struggled for their very existence. They applied a number of different labels over time, the most common of which is “big tent conservatism”. It is how they gathered everyone from Christians to social conservatives into a battle against taxes, publicly funded social programs, publicly owned infrastructure, regulation of corporate activity, and the employee class.

The usual thing is for the right to steal the language and symbols of the left and turn them into insults and symbols of their own power. It happened with the swastika, it’s currently happening with the Canadian flag, and “woke” has been turned into an insult so egregious that the original owners now fear to use it.

Intersectionality is, for a change, the left stealing from the right. Given that the financialists invented this philosophy, it should come as no surprise that they know how to twist it to their own ends. But that doesn’t mean we should let them divide us for conquest.

We used to have a saying regarding the many perceived negatives of Saskatchewan (climate, scenery, whatever). It keeps the riffraff out. Unfortunately, it turned out that the riffraff make up the majority of who stayed!

I stay because of the low population density. It makes it easy to avoid the riffraff 😉

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Saskatchewan, Canada. To the best of my knowledge, all villages and even some hamlets have mayors and councils. Many hamlets, and possibly some villages, choose to operate as “unincorporated”, essentially putting them under the control of the surrounding “rural municipality” (approximately equivalent to a county).

Rural municipalities have their own councils and Reeves (approximate equivalent of mayor).

The province has the authority to impose an adminstration in the event of malfeasance or lack of candidates.

I think that things are similar across Canada, but I don’t know for sure. This may be a historical artifact of pre-Confederation settlement or the exceptionally low population density in Saskatchewan.

There are people who, whatever they might gain, pursue political power to serve the best interests of society. I think of people like Charlie Angus in Canada or the former mayor of the village I once worked for.

I have always been suspicious of any “rights” movement among those with power. Whether it’s “White rights,” the “rights” of corporations, the rights of the property class and wealthy, or Men’s Rights. It is not that such rights do not exist or that there are no grievances deserving of redress, it’s that they too often are self-serving attempts to retain or increase power.

I am of the opinion that the vast majority of legitimate male grievance against society would be better addressed by bringing to heel the corporations, the wealthy, and those who seek political power for personal gain.

I did not. I did only single-tie systems for mathematical purity. (Just kidding. I might have tried it if I had thought to!)

No problem! I was once at a place that imposed a mandatory necktie policy. I hate neckties, so I thought I’d at least have fun with it. I wore ties as silly and varied as I could get away with and tied them different every day. That book was a boon.

It seems to me that if you are going to include 4-in-hand, a traditional necktie knot, then you should include these: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_85_Ways_to_Tie_a_Tie (at a minimum) and possibly reference this: https://phys.org/news/2014-02-mathematicians-ways.html (177,147 ways). 😀

Here’s the way I think about:

The real objective is, or should be, equality in all things that are not explicitly biological in nature and equitable treatment even in those. Thus, none of us should be excluded from the halls of power or anywhere else based on our biology even as things like health care are tailored to our biology.

That would seem to argue against a place called “men’s liberation.” The reality, however, is that we have only nicely begun the journey. Both men and women have much baggage to discard by virtue of both historical and current cultural and legal norms.

Those cultural and legal norms have imposed different behaviours, thought patterns, and roles. Men and women have different sets of baggage to deal with, so it only makes sense to find our allies in our journeys among those who share a common burden.

I am a male. I have rarely been excluded from women’s liberation groups when I try to learn and have occasionally found that my perspective was appreciated. I would hope that the same thing is happening here.

I hope that we are all working toward a more equitable and more egalitarian society, but we won’t get there by ignoring the real differences between men and women that have been imposed by culture and law. We cannot fix what we do not acknowledge.

Canada deals with some of those problems by having a separation of state and medicine similar to our separation of state and church.

For example, I think we are the only country in the world with no abortion law. It’s a medical procedure, so it’s left to the medical community to develop standards of care and standards of practice.

It’s not perfect, but it’s worked out quite well since the 1980s. There were some major cases that led to our abortion laws being struck down by the courts and no government has yet had the courage to introduce new legislation of any kind.

I cannot know your experience and won’t pretend to.

Unless your objective is to be even more disliked and disrespected than you are now, being deliberately annoying will not get you far.

If you just want respect as a thinking, feeling human, you’re going to have to be respectful of other thinking, feeling humans, ignoring and blocking those who are too immature to have respect for others.

There are people out there who think that power is the source of respect. They are, of course, wrong. The only path to respect is through the elimination of power structures, so that respect can be mutually sought through understanding, not obedience.

I don’t like assholes, so I don’t seek them out. I try to give the assholes who engage with me the respectful engagement they crave but don’t deserve, then block the ones who stay assholes. If I feel surrounded by assholes, I disengage completely until I’ve figured out whether I’m actually the asshole or I’ve stumbled into a snakepit. (And everybody is sometimes an asshole. The secret is to not make it part of your identity or to assume that it’s part of theirs.)

Life is so much more pleasant when disagreements are respectful engagements with learning opportunities instead of just screaming matches.

Good luck on your journey.

The only real difference is men’s lib burdens themselves with a feminist perspective, which does not help, and as this post shows, hurts.

At risk of getting out of context, I (cis male) did not become aware of the systems that were damaging me until I started studying feminism. Whatever a “men’s liberation movement” looks like, it is so young and inexperienced that it would be well served to examine and learn from feminist ideologies and perspectives.

Many of the power structures that feminists have identified as being damaging to women in general are also damaging to men in general.

Many of the power structures that favour men in general are damaging to women in general. As we grow and develop, we should be striving to tear down those structures that are harmful to others, rather than further entrench them as if in battle or in a zero sum game.

I’m not aware of any modern feminist ideologies or initiatives that present a danger to men, but if there are any, they should be called out by both feminists and “masculinists” in the same way that both feminists and masculinists should be calling out any masculinist ideologies and initiatives that present a danger to women.

Modern intersectional feminism has grappled with the inclusion of women who have been “othered”. We should be trying to learn from that and avoid making the same mistakes.

In the end, we all have to figure out our place in the world, and that cannot be done without considering our relationships to the power structures and each other. At present, that looks like it’s necessary to have feminism and masculinism as separate movements, not as enemies, but as collaborators and intersectional movements. Biology, including the fact that sex and gender are spectra with bimodal distributions, may always mean that they remain at least somewhat separate even as shared goals are achieved.

This is what I was referring to. There are a number of variations on the theme.

If you are really in a pinch:

1. Feed a length of hose into the source until only a small amount is left clear of the liquid.

2. Put your thumb over the exposed end, or otherwise make the end as close to airtight as possible.

3. Rapidly pull the hose out of the liquid, moving the end down to the destination container. The end must be below the top surface of the source, the further the better.

4. Release your thumb/seal. If you’ve done it all correctly, the hose will be nearly filled with liquid and enough of it will be below the surface of the source to start the siphoning process.

If the source liquid is too far below the opening for this to work with the length of hose you have, you can manually pump it far enough to start a siphon, by rapidly submerging and lifting the hose while alternating the closing of the top. Open top while submerging, closed top while lifting. You have to push down faster than what gravity pulls the liquid back down. Ideally, you’re lifting fast enough to get some help from the liquid’s own inertia when you reverse course.

Ingesting gasoline is deadly in far smaller doses due to something called hydrocarbon pneumonia. My dad very nearly died as a result of having a tiny amount get past his throat while siphoning gas to a small engine’s tank.

If you must siphon gas, go buy a cheap “pump siphon” from Canadian Tire.

Ingesting gasoline is deadly in far smaller doses due to something called hydrocarbon pneumonia. My dad very nearly died as a result of having a tiny amount get past his throat while siphoning gas to a small engine’s tank.

If you must siphon gas, go buy a cheap “pump siphon” from Canadian Tire.

That’s googol.

I feel like the kind of fun you speak to here is increasingly common and may be the only type of fun some people actually have but I feel like the idea of challenge doesn’t capture all possibilities.

Yes, as the conversation continues, I realize that I put too much emphasis on one aspect of what I find fun. Although it’s in the sense of accomplishment that I most often find pleasure, I certainly do have fun doing other things.