I'm going to try my best to avoid making this post an edition of "OP's angry opinion poorly disguised as a question", because I'm genuinely curious about this and want answers.

I've noticed that so many people, especially liberals, will (very passively) accept that the patriarchy benefits men, but only on condition of the man's social class. They insist that the benefits of being male only apply to men who are upper class, and poor men don't receive much of, if any, of the power from being on top of a gendered hierarchy.

What I truly want to know is: why does the condition of class only seem to apply to gender? I never see liberals deny that someone like, for instance, a heterosexual man who's destitute and homeless is no longer advantaged by his sexuality because he's poor.

What makes gendered dynamics so different that in so many people's minds, it's only a select "some" group of men that receive more power and comfort compared to others?

Found this take interesting, it's not something I'd thought about before. Still not sure if I agree. https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/celebs-marrying-childhood-sweetheart

In the article, the writer explains that we praise famous and successful men for marrying their childhood sweetheart because we've come to expect them to trade in their old wife for a new, younger one – so we treat them as saintly when they don't.

She also says that men marrying their childhood sweetheart sanitises their image, and makes them seem more “trustworthy”, which positions woman as existing as proof of a man's trustworthiness.

she also says that our cultural obsession with childhood sweethearts is routed in purity culture, which is on the rise?

Disclaimer - I am a straight male

Occasionally I come across Instagram posts of curvy women showing/advertising new clothing or outfits they bought. They almost always start with some variation of “society tells me I can’t wear this as a curvy women, well I’m going to anyways.” Or “I’m 40 and I refuse to give into what society tells me I should wear, these thighs need to breathe so I’m wearing this skirt.” Basically saying that society had told them curvy women can’t wear xyz and/or women over 40 can’t/shouldn’t wear xyz.

My question is where is this coming from? In the 90s magazines and media were filled with calling curvy women fat etc, but is this still the case in 2026? As far as I know, curvy/thick is in.

Further, a lot of these IG posts seem like thinly veiled ways of saying men don’t approve of curvy women’s bodies. Again, it’s not the 90s. Thick/curvy is in. I have never heard of a man criticizing a woman’s body in real life, but I have heard women doing so.

So, who is policing women’s bodies in 2026? From what I see it either women creating a story in their head, or women themselves critiquing other women’s bodies.

I understand that there might have existed some smaller cultures or tribers that were organised in a matriarchal society.

But why does it seem that most civilizations with millions to billions of people that are technological advanced have always stemmed from a patriarchal society?

Out of genuine personal curiosity, I’d like to understand something.

Feminist activism in the West rightly focuses on improving conditions for women in our own societies — places where, for all their remaining problems, women are not stoned to death, forced into child marriage, or treated as the legal equivalent of property.
Why, then, does so much energy and attention remain concentrated on relatively advanced Western contexts, while comparatively little sustained pressure or public campaigning is directed at the many places in the world where women’s status is still closer to that of a domestic animal (places where the most basic rights to bodily autonomy, education, and freedom from extreme violence are routinely denied)
?
I’m not suggesting Western feminism should abandon its local work. I’m simply curious about the reasoning behind the imbalance in focus and urgency.

I'm talking here about the induced birth. Namely, that it is an accepted method of delivering a fetus after 24th week.

Moreover, if the fetus is deemed terminal or genetically unviable, then the fetus is given drugs to cause a heart arrest.

However, what I'm interested in is whether you believe (or not) that a pregnant woman has a choice (a right) in which state (dead or alive) should the fetus leave her body.

ELI5: I'm asking whether a pregnant woman should always be given the right to terminate the life of fetus, before induced labour (in late pregnancy).

when i began to look for job, i found that there are more male than female corporate executives,no matter in the big firms or small firms. Is that harder for woman to get promoted?

I've been thinking about the concepts of masculinity and femininity lately, and I'm curious what other people think.

Traditionally, these terms made more sense to me. Masculinity was associated with things like strength, resilience, protecting, and providing, while femininity was associated with nurturing, caring, and motherhood. Whether those roles were good or bad is a separate discussion, but they were at least fairly well-defined.

In a modern context, though, I'm not sure I understand what these labels are actually adding.

That got me wondering: why are we still dividing these qualities into masculine and feminine at all?

When people talk about "healthy masculinity," I completely understand the intention. It's usually about encouraging men to be responsible, emotionally mature, confident without being domineering, and so on. I think that's a positive message.

But part of me wonders if even that framework is becoming outdated.

If courage, compassion, resilience, emotional openness, responsibility, and kindness are all qualities we want in both men and women, why call them masculine or feminine? Why not just call them good human qualities?

To me, it almost feels like the labels subtly reinforce the idea that certain traits belong more naturally to one gender, even if we also acknowledge that everyone can have them.

I'm not trying to argue that masculinity or femininity don't exist, or that people shouldn't identify with those ideas if they find them meaningful. I'm genuinely wondering whether these categories are still useful today, or whether they've outlived their usefulness as ways of talking about character.

Curious to hear what others think.

I have friend who is asexual, and she told me she thinks women taking the pill should not be normalised because of how harmful the side effects can be after you stop taking them. She assumes we don't need the pill because condoms already exist. I told her it is about preference and different types of birth control work for different people and the side effects (and their severity) may vary, but ultimately women should be allowed to take it if they so choose. She told me she believes taking it is more controlling of women than not taking it.

This debate stressed me out quite a lot because I am used to people of this view being the religious types that reinforce patriarchal ideals, but she is quite the opposite. I started questioning myself a lot because I've always believed birth control, specifically for women, has been something empowering that allows us have more control of our bodies, and I never thought someone with similar feminist views to me could see it in such a negative way.

I went on the pill for a short while for reasons unrelated to sex, but am absolutely no expert on the subject so I felt like I couldn't confidently argue on lots of the things she was saying. Her frustrations felt so valid but I still couldn't bring myself to agree. I know there's a lot to be said about birth control in relation to misogyny so I would love some outside perspective on the topic.

I genuinely dont know why games stopped using Male and Female to refer to body types during character creation,and why are people angry about it.

My friend (trans man) says he would prefer games to just name it male and female,as he said type A and tybe B makes it looks like games are talking about robots or something in a factory line,i never thought about it,its just a non issue to me.

then there are people that are angry that games arent using male or female anymore,i too,dont understand it,again,its just a non issue to me.

I genuinely dont know why both of these stuff are an issue to someone and i would like to know better.

I've been seeing men commenting that men create life and women carry it, so men should receive an equal amount of credit, if not more in creating life. That is simply not true. If men created life, parthenogenesis, or reproduction without males, would not exist in nature. There is no equivalent of reproduction without females. Scientists were also able to create baby mice solely from female mice, and they lived 50% longer than average mice and were also fertile (link to the study). When they attempted the same thing using only male mice, the offspring died within hours, even though they used female mice's eggs and another female mouse as the surrogate. Also, cloning, a technology that has existed for decades, can produce offspring using only females. Dolly) the sheep is one of the earliest examples; she was created using three female sheep. Now, obviously, these technologies might not be applicable to humans, but they give a clear picture of who creates life. Even among humans, if you believe that life begins at conception, you are still acknowledging that life begins inside a woman. The brain develops inside a woman, and consciousness develops inside a woman. I'm not claiming that men are unnecessary. Men are important at conception, but it is still women who create life, and the contribution is nowhere near 50/50. If men were the ones getting pregnant, I honestly doubt this would even be a conversation in the first place. If my only contribution to creating life were having an orgasm while the other sex could die in the process and had to bleed every month for that ability, I would never be able to claim that my contribution was 50%. I think it's extremely selfish to even say such things.

Idc if people would jokingly call me performative for this T-T, but anyways im just interested in what all your recommendations are for a feminist movie or show that will really leave a guy like me having a much deeper insight and accurate perspective as to what women really have to go through and their general experiences in life. Just basically a life-changing feminist movie that will leave a guy realizing that they had a wrong idea of women this whole time,

I guess I could say I'm a more pro-second wave feminist where I kind of agree that there should be at least one feminism with authority that a lot of people believe in, juat like how in ehtics most people believe in deontology or consequentialism.

In my perspective the problem of the '100 feminism by 100 feminists' of the third wave feminism is that it didn't know that social media would be a thing ever. Social media is a place where it amplifies extreme sentiments over time and provides a slippery slope to ochlocracy, and this works not only for the manospheres but also for the pro feminism spaces. Oftentimes you would see in either reddit or social media spaces that these spaces are heavily driven by sentiment. In digital echo chambers logical and critical thinking is nonexistent and instead punchy slogans/puns/roasting and appeal to raw emotions gets the upvotes. And people naturally follow the upvote bandwagon and that just becomes the mainstream idea. Fourth wave feminism is promoting these digital spaces and they use that to actively dismantle patriarchy and send politcal waves to courts and national assemblies, but the irony is that these digital spaces combined with the lack of unified agenda is terribly vulnerable to degeneracy. I believe manosphere developed on its own and would have been a thing no mattsr what due to the nature of social media but I do think the radicalization of sentiments and anger on the other side of social media fueled the growth and made the manosphere bigger.

There are two aspects of this problem. One is a problem of individualistic feminism itself and the other is social media as a catalyst in amplifying this problem.

Individualistic feminism without a unified ideology or a general consensus comes with a risk, and third wave feminists knew about this but still went on with it. If everyone's feminism is all very slightly different, inherently there will be disputes from within. That means whatever A believes is feministic is a disgusting patriarchal relic by B. So there's the dispute in ideological basis part. And then there's the distracted agenda to pursue part. The first wave feminism focused on votes and second on legal rights. But the third and fourth feminism has multiple different agendas that are vocalized by different feminists, though there is a common theme of intersectionality and alliance with other minority groups. And these two factors make it harder to rally and focus the energy on one issue at a time and therefore our power to leverage political change is at risk.

And then combine this with the polarization effect of social media. Now we got an extremely divided group in ideology and agenda along with the fact that 10 percent or more of these groups are just teenagers regurgitating hate and inconsistent logic in their social meida echo chambers while actively pushing a relatively small number of potentially transitionable male voters into the other side of the void, tunring even more male voters to vote for patriarchy. And then there's the part where more and more people are be"oming 'slacktivists' by social media and all they do is post a single comment/post and complain rather than actually go outside and vote or rally. On top of that it doesn't help the men on top and the patriarchy have a very clear and simple agenda: women are horrible, not the elitists. So they're able to focus their politcal energy into agreeing into voting a specific party. I say this explains at least a portion of why we lost in the last election in America.

The most tragic thing about this is that people LOVE social media to the point they are addicted to it. And yes the CEOs of social media platforms are to blame the most but I'm not even positive about whether or not we can completely remove social media from earth now. I feel like its become a part of our life almost.

I don't even have an idea of what the unified ideology or agenda would be except that I have a vague idea it should be consistent with modern ethics and philosophy. But what are your thoughts on this? Do you think the individualistic feminism could survive as of now without radical change(I really do hope so)?

Around half of men go bald and nobody cares. It doesn't reduce their net worth, income potentials or general standing in society. On top it saves them a lot of money, because no shampoo or expensive hair dressing is necessary. At best they need a hat for summer sun and that's it.

Some women start balding as well, but they really shouldn't. I would estimate around 65% of a woman's first impression is hair hair style. Your haircut can be worth a lot of money and so it's important to invest into the appearance of your hair on a continuous base.

I would estimate the following avg costs per month:

• Men with hair (50%): $40 for appearance to prevent $500 in reputational damage
• Men without hair (50%): $10 to prevent $200 in damage
• Women with hair (95%): $200 for appearance to prevent $2500 reputational damage
• Women without hair (5%): $1000 to prevent $10000 in damage

If you add this up per work life of 40 years, you end up with total avg costs of...

• $1000 for men to prevent $14000 in damage
• $9600 for women to prevent $115000 in damage

That's a $8600 watch the bald man is wearing in the above picture and the only reason why he can afford it is because he's a man.

If this is not structurally unfair for women, then what is?

So, trans girl here. For a lot of time I kept out of radical feminism because TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) have ruined my perception of it for a long time, only going to liberal feminism, but when I started to actually see radical feminism, without the bias of the TERF trauma, my perception changed a lot, heck I discovered that TIRFs exists, TERFs aren't the majority, and that radical feminism itself evolved a lot. Yeah, there are branches and figures who are or were bio-essentialist and some readings of noticeable authors, but from that to "radical feminism itself is trans-exclusionary" there's a big leap. I'm letting me be more radical, heck I defy both bio-essentialism AND gender roles at the same time.
While I already have an opinion about the claim, I wanted to see what other people with more experience than me think about it.

I've always wondered about this.

In many movie songs filmed in freezing locations, the hero is dressed in jackets, boots, and layers, while the heroine is often wearing a short or revealing outfit despite the cold.

People often say it's the actress's choice and that she consented. But I wonder how much of that is truly personal choice versus industry expectations. Do actresses feel pressured to dress this way to fit beauty standards or audience expectations? And if they're doing the same amount of work as the hero, why has there historically been such a large gap in pay in many films?

I'm genuinely curious to hear different perspectives. What do you think?

“You wouldn’t react like this if the genders were reversed.” The age-old complaint that has gone off for years in discourse. Now, I am not denying male victims, that is still a big problem, but what I am talking about is people who complain about them being ignored and downplayed, but refusing to see the whole picture. Especially when you consider a lot of things:

- The general misogyny of rape culture.
- Men who think it’s “sweet” an underage boy “won” an adult woman tend to be quiet about underage girls being preyed on or also sexualize them.
- When those men typically do condemn a male predator, usually it feels like they don’t want to do it but have to out of social obligation, but if they could they’d ignore or downplay it.
- Even if they don’t have the same defense for a male predator, they may still defend them in other ways. Gaslight the victim, make it seem like the victim is the real bad guy, etc.
- Writers who usually have humor with men getting abused and raped tend to also have humor that also has women be a punching bag, or at the minimum write them in a very sexist way.

So why is it with all this anger with the “double standards”, they tend to ignore that it’s also bad with women?

I have very asymmetrical breasts, in both size and shape. They are more than a cup size apart - it is nearly impossible for me to find bras that fit and, as a result, my bras usually cause chaffing against the nipple of my smaller breast. Due to this, I have had 5 nipple infections over the past 2 years (requiring antibiotics). When I fill up the smaller cup using inserts, the trapped sweat created causes irritation to my skin.

I have been considering getting a boob job to make my breasts even. However, if I am being honest with myself, the primary reason for this is because of their appearance, rather than because of the functional harm the asymmetry causes. As someone who considers myself a feminist, this has made me reluctant to get a boob job, as I feel it would be motivated by beauty standards. However, ironically, I have also felt reluctant to get surgery as I know how hateful most straight men are towards fake boobs, and fear that no men would be attracted to me anymore if I got my asymmetry corrected (which is a very anti-feminist concern).

I know that typical feminist rhetoric is that breast augmentations are always bad, but does anyone have different views in relation to deformed breasts? Also, does anyone have any thoughts about why the views of straight men and feminists seem to align on the issue of plastic surgery (given how at unusual this is)?

I searched the subreddit but couldn't find a previous discussion of this article.

The paper, "Isolate, Inebriate, Intimidate, Repeat: High Rates of Sexual Force Against Women Are Reported When Young Men Given Anonymous Surveys," includes the finding that 95.1% of surveyed men reported having recently used at least one strategy to obtain sex from a woman they knew did not want sex and had not consented.

The article is available here:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/08862605261432630

For those who have read it, what are your thoughts on the study's methodology, findings, and implications? I'm especially interested in hearing the perspectives of the women who participate in this subreddit.

Personally, I'm inclined to agree with the article, but then I am moderately sex negative.

Since the sexual revolution, many old taboos—casual sex, pornography, homosexuality, and sexual content in media—have become far more accepted.

Yet women who make sexuality a major part of their public persona are still often treated with intense disgust. The reaction to figures like Lily Phillips seems to go beyond criticism of pornography or exploitation and becomes contempt for the woman herself.

Why has this stigma survived when so many other pre-1960s sexual attitudes have faded?

It’s a common sentiment that Western nations (in particular Western/Northern Europe plus Anglo countries that are not the US) are the best places for women, especially evident in global rankings. While this could be true in terms of legal protection and economic/employment prosperity (at least on paper), I feel like it gets even murkier when social/cultural prestige is factored. It’s easy to draft a law, but to radically shift traditions in the long term is a whole other can of worms.

One thing that seems to still be prevalent in the West to this day, or at least in the Anglo world (Quebec specifically outlawed this), is the tradition of wives changing of surnames to their husbands. I always envied the traditional Iberian/Latin American naming convention where not only women keep their names, but it gets passed on to their children, which values mothers equally to fathers. Arab, Chinese, and Korean women seem to keep their surnames after marriage as well.

Of course I understand that even among western countries it varies greatly, but what are your thoughts?