Why the world desperately needs a masculinism movement to prevent resetting of progress
In the time period between the world wars, Feminism started as a revolutionary movement alongside many other movements of the time. It stemmed from a need to man (pun intended) the factories while the men fought the wars. Hence women joined the work force. It wanted to give the pauperized soldier the illusion of choice. Hence the landless were allowed to vote.
Almost 100 years after the French revolution, the original premise for a “voter”; i.e. that the person has to be a man, and of landowning class, was challenged. Those who did not own land got the right to vote in the UK as recently as 1918.
Women only got this right in 1928.
Yet, the struggle of the landless men, the ones who became soldiers right after they got the vote, is often overshadowed by the first wave of feminism, which started in the 60s. The churn of European polity was overshadowed, and only the tiny part around women and race were taught in vacuum. People forget the uniting cause of the landless workers. Meanwhile, Communists appropriate their revolution for the promotion of their ideology. Amongst the proletariat, Fascism and Communism were the same force.
Then came the second wave of Feminism. Once again, on the coat-tails of the Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr, the second wave of feminism also focused on civil rights for women, or rather civil protection, from the state against discrimination in one’s life.
While most people , rightly, do not oppose the first two waves, the third wave and its inability to define concrete goals (as well as the self-proclaimed fourth wave, which is an extension of the third wave, only differentiated by its online presence) has made most oppose the third wave rather than support it. Still, it must be highlighted that the concepts of the first two waves were universalized outside of merely Europe and taken to the world stage during this movement. Intersectionality, while not achieved with this wave, was clearly a goal of third wave feminists. Women from multiple countries, multiple communities and various backgrounds would not have been here today were it not for the third wave. The Iranian anti-Hijab protests would not be happening were it not for the third wave’s intersectionality. To say it was an utter failure would be a very western-Centric take. It was definitely a failure for the West. But maybe not for the world at large.
Other welcome changes, like those of paternity leaves for both parents, and gender-neutral harassment prevention laws, amongst others, have been somewhat welcome changes in most parts.
A parallel that can be said to the other two waves is that there already was a push for more inclusivity in media of different races, which also happened as more international markets for films took off.
China’s movie industry under Deng Xiaoping, Bollywood movies of the 90s/2000s, Egyptian Cinema, all had taken off. But the push of LPG (Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization), as well as local geopolitical changes, led to more centralization towards Hollywood and their movies alone. Like Google and Microsoft and Disney, Hollywood too evolved into a global industry for movies and so its products had to cater to the global market.
So what about Feminism?
So where does Feminism come in? Feminism was a product of sociological thought, which itself is fairly recent, Euro-centric and modern. Sociology itself traces itself back to the post-French Revolution, i.e. 1850s. Feminism itself started in the late 19th Century.
According to those times (and rightfully so), it was argued that the post-industrial and many other family structures were arranged in a manner where women were forced to be domesticated, and hence denied opportunities in institutions such as education, economics, politics, religion and family. Their role was restricted to expressive roles such as taking care of children or emotional wellbeing of the husbands. Meanwhile, husbands were given instrumental roles such as earning money, managing finances, or establishing status of the family.
Relative recentness of this subject makes it ignore the equality of the past. This includes instances in Bharat where women would be the sole manager of finances (a practice that continues in many households, especially business households, where the husband earn but the woman solely invests the money in the stock market, manages businesses, etc), or ancient Germanic societies of Europe where Women were solely responsible for religious teachings in Germanic households.
In reality, the role of women has always been in flux, like men, and it has varied according to class. Gender fluid behavior and expression is more expressive in elites than in the proletariat. When women have a struggle, they do so to uplift their own gender. When men do so, they usually uplift the entire society with them (like the communist revolution or the french revolution of our world history).
While there is nothing wrong with this, in recent times this has turned into a power tool by the global elites in many countries. Chinese media apps like Tik-Tok use feminism to spread anti-marriage ideals, USA has long used the CIA for spreading the LGBTQ+ identity crisis on their allies they feel suspicious towards, and so on.
While individual freedoms are good, gender fluidity and fluid expressions of identity only come about when there is prosperity. They only manifest in the common man when the common man is prosperous and has time to question who he truly is.
Digital media warfare has turned such expression into identity; now, one must have the right to express themselves DESPITE the prosperity of their said nation.
While the intention may be nefarious, the old saying goes, “every revolution is foreign funded”. One cannot deny the progress the average person would feel over inclusivity in their own identity, taking the first step in creating a pluralistic identity. So how can we counter the western (as well as eastern, in the case of Chinese, although these ideas entirely stem from the west since the time of sociology) attempt to subvert cultures using the subversive feminist narrative? The answer is simple: “Masculinism”.
Masculinism Today:
Men’s rights has been a long and controversial topic in many places. In the western countries like the USA, most men give up, become #MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), or go the Andrew Tate route of becoming “playboys” and taking advantage of the female sexual liberation coming down to the masses along with economic progress (a must since western religions do not create a sense of belonging to the motherland of the citizens). Many try to find wives in other parts of the world as well.
In Bharat, the men’s rights movement has been small but vocal, and managed to stay away from jingoism that many #MGTOW/Andrew Tate types tend to regress into, including going as far as to say “women shouldn’t vote”. Despite heavy opposition from the courts, organized moves to creating a “Men’s Commission of India” have been pushed. Organizations like VoiceForMen India (founded my Arnaz Hathiram) have helped in vocally mobilizing people both online and offline.
Another unlikely voice for male rights in Bharat has been Assauddin Owaisi. He has brought up rape and sexual assaults against men by other women in Parliament several times.
In the streets of Old Delhi, ask any auto driver you take a ride with. Or ask your Ola driver. Or any shopkeeper. Or petrol boy. Do this in any country. Most people, that too the common people, are having issues with women today thanks to the biases and failures of our justice system. This has been my own personal experience. Many of my closest friends have had mother-like figures do extreme sexual acts of exploitation on them when they were as young as 12. Pushing a young boy sexually till ejaculation when he is too naive to know what is happeeening or consent, is rape of the highest order.
Many more of my friends also got roped into relationships with their female teachers in college. Due to the power imbalance between a teacher and child, such incidents should be considered rape of minors and rape, just like they would be if the roles were reversed. The institutional power dynamic will always be stronger than a gender dynamic. Society must stop glorifying “milfs” too. In simple words: “a 12 year old boy is helpless and vulnerable to predatory women”.
Many prominent social figures like J Sai Deepak have acknowledged this movement.
Even the Supreme Court has recognised the biases in our laws. When someone tells me “women too are oppressed in Bharat and that is a bigger issue” I do not disagree. Still, there is a difference between the legislation and the executive. Women have not recognised their rights as the executive is unable to reach them, i.e. it is a law and order problem. With the disproportionate increase of suicides amongst married men (despite women suicides remaining the same) being one of the MANY problems men are facing today, it is about time we have a serious discussion on this topic.
My personal manifesto:
One of the biggest lies that society tells us when asked about the domestication of men is that “I don’t think men want to be domesticated”. This is blatantly false. In sociology, role conflict is a term that refers to when a person plays multiple roles in their lives. When women began entering the workforce, there was a role conflict between their instrumental and expressive roles, which led to domestic abuse. Why should this not apply to men as well?
The truth is, men do not HAVE to be domesticated, but should definitely have the choice to. The current workforce and family structure do not give men the freedom to choose between domestication and work. There is not enough government infrastructure to specifically look after men who are seeking domestication. Women have the choice to get married off and not work. In other words, women have the choice between domestication and work as per their individual needs. They receive institutional support whether at home or at work.
With men, it is not the same. Men do not get the rightful protection they deserve when they enter a stage of role conflict. While women enter a stage of role conflict when they enter work, men enter a stage of role conflict when they enter domestication. We have seen many instances where men get physically abused, cheated on, divorced or humiliated when they lose their job and have to be domesticated. Families ostracize them and society tells them to simply “man up”. Policymakers should look into giving men protection in domestication if they are to counter the increasing male suicide rates in marriages.
The next step is sexual assaults and workplace harassment. While many companies have specific guidelines about conduct towards women (even the supreme court released a document for words that should not be used to talk about women, but never made a manifesto saying men should not be called “rapists” until proven guilty thanks to all the fake accusations), no such guidelines exist for men. In a workplace, men can have their conversations recorded at work and shared with everyone publicly in a private capacity, they could have false allegations placed on them without the burden of proof.
Meanwhile, none of this even begins to mention the plethora of cases of young men who have been sexually exploited by older women for their own pleasures. This is a number that has only gone up in recent years, and more awareness and educational programs about sexual space and personal space specifically geared towards protecting men from both genders is necessary. We have seen instances in the west of Justin Bieber’s butt being grabbed and him being forcefully kissed by Jenny McGarthy and KatyPerry both, we have seen Madonna forcefully kiss Drake on stage, we can only imagine what happens off camera. Back home, we have seen Sushant Singh Rajput and the mental harassment he experienced at the hands of Rhea Chakraborty and Bollywood at large. We have seen Sherlyn Chopra harass a minor boy for sexual gratification on camera. We can only imagine what happens behind the scenes. Not every sexual assault case comes with a recorded video of the incident, and we should learn to identify such predators immediately. Books like Lolita have shown us that, without such awareness, no woman knows that she is being exploited sexually. This awareness paradox applies to men too; misandrist society cannot write it off as “oh, he enjoyed it, he consented for it, he definitely wanted it”. Such thinking is archaic and very reminiscent of 19th Century Europe.
A men’s commission would go a long way in addressing these issues.
The next aspect of male cultural rights would be their depiction in movies and media. While some movies simply skirt around the issues men face, like the Barbie movie or to a lesser extent even Rocky aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani, the final fault is always given to the Patriarchal structure itself, and never to the women. Jaya Bachan’s charterer was the perfect representation of the capitalist feminist woman. The Barbie world of Barbie was a perfect representation of the capitalist feminist class of society.
I propose a tool, similar to the Bechdel Test, which calculates a ratio. I’m going to call it the Hikovit Ratio. The ratio of sexist stereotypes against men to sexist stereotypes against women is called the Hikovit Ratio. Any scene can be eliminated if it is social commentary (for eg: if the Barbie movie shows the Barbies being subservient to the Kens, but it is shown to say that is wrong, the scene is disqualified. It is like showing slavery in a movie that is against slavery, it should not count). The Barbie movie would alone rank infinity (1:0).
Male characters in movies should not have to conform to any stereotype, even if/when movies are female-centric. This is one thing that alone holds back so many “female lead remakes” that Hollywood is seeing today. It is the sexist misandrist portrayal of men.
Finally, the education system needs to be de-feminised in terms of its norms and activities. The education system, as it rightfully gets formalized, has inherited a certain feminine-normative structure. Rowdy behavior, raising your voice, running about aimlessly, physical activities like play-wrestling, etc are all frowned upon as bad in most schools. This needs to change. More focus on physical exercise and education in schools as a part of personality development for both men and women needs to be there; not to “empower” women alone, but teach young boys and girls both about masculine forms of self-expression. These can go a long way in schools against raising psychopath males of the future generation. This issue is one that Bharatian schools may face lesser than foreign schools, but when it comes to male issues, I, a man, have been proven so wrong so many times, that I would not be surprised if it happened yet again.
Two types of solutions:
There are two ways that our government’s legislation, and world governments both, can go about to resolve this issue. One is a universal method. The other is a productive-conflict method
- Universal Method: This method would require the sanitization and whitewash of all our laws that were made with women in mind to lose their gender identity. This would mean, similar to the changes that were made to the voting laws of India, all mentions of “woman” and “man” should be replaced with “assaulter” and “assaulted”. The law must not mention any gender. Same should apply in schools. This way, the law will not differentiate between any party, and all would be free to access justice wherever they can. Most western Men’s Rights Activists usually seek this solution alone. Countries like Russia and China have also gone for this method mixed with some banning of obscenity to achieve parity.
- Productive-Conflict Method: This is the more progressive and in my opinion the more appropriate solution. This is the solution where a Men’s Commission of India and other countries is set up. This is the solution where new ways of seeing the world, like the “Hikovit Ratio” take mainstream, and new indexes for men’s rights are made on international forums like BRICS, G20 and the UN. I have personally only seen Bharat attempt this (unsuccessfully, so I am not sure about other countries). It would be nice to see anti-western countries adopt this method (as they are definitely more likely to adopt it, against their western counterparts).
While a solution in the truest sense lies somewhere in the middle, it would be better to have more Productive-Conflict, which can evolve and modify laws as per the changing needs of both genders, independently. Instead of having a dispute on a personal 1 on 1 level, the state can assist in helping both parties out by acting as an arbitrator in such situations. As family structures continue to become more and more nuclear (a trend only expected to increase as the developing world industrializes further), this setup can help replace the “joint family” structure of conflict resolution, potentially in a more systemic, less biased and more democratic manner.
Overall, we need to strive to continuously improve our legislature before perfecting our executive. Our executive only executes what the legislation says, at the end of the day. Today, we have a massive gap between execution and legislation when it comes to the agricultural and landless lower class. But from lower middle class to upper class, a major chunk of the population is feeling the biases of the laws negatively impacting their lives at this point; it is not a problem limited to the elites alone. We cannot overcompensate for poor execution with fancy legislation to pat ourselves on our back; we NEED better legislation and a more efficient executive that will reach every person in this country.
Men should voice their opinions:
Men should, on average, mobilize themselves and demand for their emancipation in the legal sphere worldwide. Of course, if Bharat manages to be the first to this race, we could be world leaders in male emancipation. Still, this endeavor should not be limited to online alone, but reach those on the ground level. A bigger conversation around sexual harassment of men by women, and of mental harassment in marriages, is definitely needed to consolidate the problem.
Our Indian supreme court, being old school and regressive in its approach to most things, Whether it be communal issues or gender issues, should develop a progressive open-mind on these issues faced by men in today’s societies. Without the support of this in a top-down manner, we will keep seeing the slogans of “Bahu Dilao, Vote Pao”.
Speaking of “Bahu Dilao, Vote Pao”, there is definitely a huge potential to mobilize men towards genuine men’s rights issues, by having them have the right conversations within their own families, develop a more progressive outlook on life, and educate themselves about seeking not just a marriage, but a quality marriage too. Ascribed identity of their “ghar ka bahu” is not as important as the achieved identity of their “ghar ka bahu”. Her values, morals and personality are all important; and no man will judge a woman on these traits if he has not figured these out for himself. Masculinism can be the vehicle to help these men introspect beyond just “Bahu Dilao, Vote Pao”. Overall, this would also help men play their expressive role in society and help raise more emotionally aware men and women in the future.
After all, who says educating women is the only way to educate a generation? Making men aware of their right to domestication is another way to have them educate those at home.
