Drivebyhaiku

You miss my point. What mens advocacy groups are missing is that they aren't doing the primary work required. They just kind of expect that stating the issues are enough.

Like let's take the mens shelter thing. Cool. I agree... So Where do I donate? Who is doing the admin? What's the aim, the targets. What is the method? Who's talking to the accountants and doing the paperwork and signing the papers. Are you seeking a grant? Who's filing it? Who's name is on the lease for the property? Who do I contact to volunteer my time?

... Wait you want me to be that guy who creates all that framework? You want me to pay for the lawyers and, wrangle the committee and spend my nights arranging experts and to set up the charity? Okay... Why me exactly? I am a transmasc non-binary person fighting for my union to cover trans healthcare and showing up to city halls to stop book bans and bathroom bills. I totally have like 5 hours free on a Tuesday you can have or maybe $50 out of my pocket to an organized cause but that's not exactly gunna help you unless someone does the framework to make that useful...and I am sorry but like hell am not about to throw myself on that particular beaurcratic sword. Doing that for a cause that directly effects my security to exist in public is hard enough.

Saying "we should have men's shelters" is not giving someone a actionable task. People love actionable tasks! They are easy : show up here and protest, go here and donate, go here to run a fundraiser, volunteer here sign this petition etc etc etc... But just plunking "We need mens shelters somewhere is basically low key implying you aren't personally asking the listener to do anything... Or you are asking them to do everything. Like I can totally agree all these things are worthy endeavors... But you aren't giving me a framework here for my endorsement to translate into anything helpful. Okay. Shelters got it I agree. Job done, argument won. Victory. Woo.

Doing the primary work is not fun or intuitive or easy. But what it CAN be is managed by a very small team. The initial investment is always in personal time money and extreme frustration and growing the thing takes patience.

Look to the LGBTQIA model and you will find a myriad of different small independent groups generally focused around singular letters of the acronym who have a diehard core and damn near always the people who founded them were the people who experienced the problem directly or the surviving loved ones of people who died. The circle of secondary supporters are usually more varied but the Leaders basically need to be able to devote at least around 100 man hours apeice per year doing pretty intense work that involves a lot of key decision making. If you really are fired up about making this thing real that's the bit that needs to be done so other people can push it. Or find someone already doing the thing and support them. Amplify their message and organization. Grow them.

Allies are also more likely if you create solidarity. Try partnering with a women's shelter group to learn their process, reach out to the Gay community to tap their activism networks by explaining how your interests intersect, cross promote. Be prepared to reciprocate. Nobody likes selfish people who take up all the oxygen in the room. People will find time to help people who make reasonable direct asks that respect the time and resources needed to attend to their own admin first.

But in general I don't see this engagement style from cis straight men's activism groups. A lot of the time they seem to be fairly unhealthy because they just want to ruminate on how life sucks while practically nobody steps up to the plate to do the critical and nessisary front work. I just hear "women don't care", "nobody cares" "this should happen"... But what I NEVER hear "Okay, here's our plan. Let's meet." "do this." "support this." "here's how to effectively ask for this", "support this court case" "I'm throwing a fundraiser" "let's build our own shelter"... If you aren't asking these things of each other then you have zero business demanding it of anyone else.

And if someone comes at me with "well I DO run or support a thing but nobody seems to care..." there's usually some kind of reason why people aren't latching. Chances are good if you aren't crowing your most modest successes as wins and keeping hope and optimism as your center people are going to doubt your ability to deliver on your intentions. You can't afford to mope, you need to change your approach, experiment and figure out what your winning formula is, replicate it, amplify it CELEBRATE it.

Because if no one actually cares... If you can't advocate, If that actually is the implicit nature of the world there is no sense in complaining. You are fucked. You might as well go down fighting.

I keep wanting to light a fire under your asses. These things are worth fighting for but so often you don't realize what you are doing to yourselves. You keep reinforcing your learned helplessness while looking at stuff that people worked damn hard to make real through individual personal effort and sighing over how that isn't happening for you. That stuff didn't just pop up out of the ground because someone clapped their hands and believed in fairies. Somebody get boots on the fucking ground already!

If you can't find someone doing the admin for the thing that's your ride or die issue then you have to create one and chances are good that person is gunna have to be you. Nobody is generally lining up to take that gig... You can keep trying to convince rando people to try and take on your heaviest burdens but chances are all its going to do is make you angry when they just shoulder their own pack leaving you with nothing but a few kind words of encouragement before moving on down the road. You get a lot more faith in humanity when you hand them an item or two from your pack to carry for you as most people will help you out under that circumstance.

That's not quite what I mean. It's not that they are enemies of each other it is just that reciprocity is a road to success. A lot of the LGBTQIA for instance is solidarity based. Everyone has their main concern that focuses their own needs. Like folks who push for asexual stuff is different than say trans stuff. You wouldn't go to an allosexual trans person to get your marching orders for organizing for Ace things or vice versa. They have independent agendas and groups who do the main work. Successful adgendas put in the primary effort and give lower effort tasks to do to allies.

Like okay, example. There's the regular list of regular concerns from men's advocacy groups. Education accommodations to close gaps for students and resources for domestic abuse shelters for men. Those are two very common issues. On their own however it doesn't matter how often you say it, I could agree with you those would be good thing but that isn't enough...

You need someone dedicated to actually create the initiative. Maybe organize a group of psychology professionals to advocate to a school board for changes or set up a non-profit to get shelters going... Governments generally only adopt things once a model has been tested so just getting shit done to prove your model has to usually be grassroots : That's the stuff that a primary organizer does. It's tough work. It takes a lot of free time and dedication. There's admin aspects where you need to talk to professionals, get a dedicated core of like minded people together and point them in a direction, deal with a lot of very impassioned ideas clashing against each other and hours of effort. It's a frustrating blood, sweat and tears endeavor. Most people have the energy at most to do one of these maybe two during their lifetime. A lot of people can't manage it even once. Chances are nobody is going to sign on to help you with this generally unless they got enough skin in your game.

Look back at the history of the LGBTQIA and you will find hundreds of fairly small groups working this way for very specific initiatives. The main people of those group's cores are usually either people of that specific queer minority who are directly effected or family or friends of a minority member who died.

But what a primary group creates is secondary tasks. Maybe they create the charity that does the main work and other people who want to help but don't have time to volunteer kick money into it. The primary group organizes the protest and post the posters and reach out to allies... and all the allies need to do is show up.

With a lot of men's advocacy groups there's this toothless helplessness where they aren't asking people to join in to do secondary tasks. They just state problems that exist. It kind of comes across to groups that are more used to organizing like they aren't giving trying to give someone a job they are trying to convince you to start their small business for them from scratch.

Depends on the approach. In a lot of queer friendly spaces men's issues are generally accepted as incredibly valid as gay and trans men tend to get pretty hardcore beat down by failing to pass the bar of the expectations of cultural masculinity and on average they require more outside help from services or others because they are less likely to be able to return to their families to escape abusive relationships and face addictional precarity.

But the difference tends to be a general understanding that while women definitely get it and can absolutely sympathize they also aren't in a particularly great position to change things in a general sense because women also have to regularly fight against social power of systems that depower their autonomy that are fronted by men and they generally have to see to their own needs before being able to do the administrative work on men's behalf.

It's emergency airplane crash logic. Put your own supply of air on before you help the person next to you. If your job, legislature, judicial system and potential funding structure is only made up of a minority of women you are asking a lot of people who don't have institutional power to flex even on their own behalf and a lot of women have deep seated anger regarding that disparity so when someone tries to pile more on their plates the gut reaction is to throw it back. Women might be willing to assist, but they aren't going to accept doing the lions share of the required admin for another group when they have other priorities. The same goes for queer groups, racial minority groups, religious minorities, disability affected groups and so on. They might have room on their plate to show up to your protest... But usually that requires you to you show a willingness to reciprocate and show up to theirs.

Kyriarchical oppression.

Kyriarchy refers to the overlap of various inequalities caused by gender, race, sexuallity and disability describing overlaps of cross sectionality. It also refers to the practice of problems created by assumed superiority.

Pretty sure that's a non-binary or non-gender conforming person.

I was a localization playtester at Koei for their release of Gundam Musou and played the game 40 hours a week as a job looking for errors in the Subtitles. We started with the subtitle with Japanese version and so about two weeks in I get a massive anime style fever and end up living stuck in the video game's stupid hackneyed story mode. Everybody in the dream was speaking Japanese way beyond my extraordinarily basic level so I was frustrated that I couldn't understand anything, It was a dull and repetitive hack and slash which I would occasionally revive and wake up from briefly to sigh with relief that it was over at last before passing out and going right back in. I was rescued 16 hours later by my housemates who were worried when I didn't check in.

It was bizarrely hellish.

Same!

I think I am hardly a mover and shaker politically aside from showing up to town councils a few times a year and doing some union safety and advocacy stuff and occasionally hyping Raven Trust. It's a weird place to be because with indigenous issues you want to be kind of tasked with something to do or at least have a signoff that what you are doing is helping but if you don't belong to those groups you really don't want to recommend any courses of action? I mostly do a lot more LGBTQIA+ related stuff because that is my wheelhouse. A couple buddies of mine are way more personally impactful in their work regarding Indigenous advocacy because they operate inside more exclusive power strucrures. I think I am kind of the layabout.

I think one of the most nerve wracking things on the indigenous front I ever did was run a D&D one shot for the former National Chief of Canada. Like I have done a lot of thinking on the implicit colonialist history of the game and the implicit bias wherein that reinforce that mindset through mechanics... But it's one thing to know that intellectually and another one entirely to pick through your homebrew materials with a fine tooth comb looking for fault.

I also feel like there is no silly in acedemia. Stories tell us a lot about a culture and picking things apart can tell us a lot about psychology, culture or philosophy. Like RPGs they have mechanics that inform the tale though everyone interprets those mechanics differently and sometimes they aren't really there to "say" anything. Sometimes there is no moral of the story you're just being invited to have fun. Like Star Wars I think is one of those. Like the Jedi give the veneer of mysticism but I don't think their internal logic is meant to be extrapolated out to be the author's world veiw. I think they are basically just a warrior stoic fantasy... But there are thousands of acedemic papers on Star Wars. Every student who goes through the system is there to demonstrate they can think and dissect thought using the current methodology. It creates a body of convention which then they might use to pointed effect in their own work one day. The process refines and changes the process which in turn alters the process and the cycle goes on. It's fascinating.

If you are into podcasts I might recommend "Revisionist History" "Invisabilia" "Radiolab" and the like for wonky dives into minutia and seeing stories from interesting angles. On YouTube I recommend the trans philosophy suite of Philosophy Tube, Shanspere, Kat Blaque and Alexander Aliva, the history and lit stuff with Crash Course, Extra History, Kaz Rowe, J Draper... I wish I had more indigenous forward stuff to offer but I tend to get a lot of that through books or personal connections willing to talk shop. The book "The Red Deal" was pretty evocative but also at odds with a lot of the things that we tend to have going on with local efforts. The books deal with efforts to make society at large run less on a western colonialist mindset but through a more combative nature. Like you can lock horns with the government as the book more suggests ... Or you can just change the dominant culture at ground level to normalize forms of reconciliation and restorative justice and work inside those systems indiginizing and hybridizing the structures. Like there's surprisingly little stopping my union department meetings or say public library management from adopting a restorative justice circle model for arbitration. Anyhow I hope that list of things has some fun stuff on it for you!

I mean I am having a blast writing a novel here. This has been one of the funnest interactions I have had on one of these platforms in years. I came from a family that couldn't afford to put me through a philosophy or literature based degree and had to be more practical about vocational training for the job that would feel more fulfilling because I didn't want a job in acedemia. I have way too much ADHD for that. Still I imbibe to a god awful number of podcasts and books on the subject and pick the brains of my buddies who did go to school mercilessly. My sibling actually wrote their dissertation for their Masters on dystopias in science fiction and became a librarian and got a lot of benefit telling me about the major points as a way to codify their own understanding. It has been requested that if they ever display a desire to go for their PHD that I should smack them... But I secretly hope they do.

I love Dune particularly as an example because it's got a lot all of these weird neat sticky points that intersect with the field of indigenous philosophy and unpacking colonialism which has become a personal interest. I would shake your hand if I could button masher. This has been a good time!

More like Man, Woman and 60 plus different other categories even good sports in the first two categories don't tend to be bothered to learn about.

It's not that it's secret it's that if you don't ask for specifics we assume you don't care, don't know there are specifics or you really just don't want to know.

Us Enbyfolk respecting that you probably don't need to be burdened with actual specifics or interpreting that knowledge as being additional social pressure is us being polite.

I always think there is a we vs them vibe in the non-binary thing which is kind of toxic

I dunno if there is much "we" inside the non-binary community. Like Non-binary is an umbrella term that encapsulates everything from a both/neither/almost but not quite binary/gender fluid betwixt multiple states/people who identify as trans non-binary, people who identify as non-trans non-binary/ cultural third genders/ political gender activists /DID people with alters that swap... There's a lot of different concepts and sometimes contradictory needs there.

Like people tend to just group non-binary people into a third category and don't really ask questions of individuals what their actual deal is. I blew a friend's mind recently when he introduced his enbyfriend to me and while we were out on a walk I asked "Apart from the umbrella non-binary term how do you conceptualize yourself?" because he had never thought to ask that question of either of us.

Probably because "hermaphrodite" is considered a slur to intersex people.

Also intersex and non-binary are not remotely the same thing. Some Intersex people are non-binary but a lot of them have binary identities. It's a different axis.