this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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It's not just men enforcing the social expectation.
Yes it's way more difficult for women since the social fallout is way bigger for them, that's the point of coordinating. Take unions for example, the fallout for an individual worker no longer putting up with bad pay/work environment/etc is they get fired. The fallout from most/all/at least the critical workers no longer putting up with a bad workplace is many of their demands are met and change occurs.
I think there's a similar analogy here, I for one am heavily in favor of women no longer putting up with the bs and I don't pressure people to wear arbitrary stuff. I usually try to encourage the people in my life to do whatever they want as long as they're not hurting anyone. But for an issue like this, what else do you want me to do? Frankly it's not the most pressing problem in the world
I'm not asking you to fix it, I'm saying I personally find your vocally victim blaming rhetoric disgusting.
I'm not blaming the victims, I'm attempting to understand what's going on so that something can actually be done to fix it. Also, don't forget that the oppressed can become oppressors, and repeat the trauma they've experienced onto others. But it's not only victims who are to blame, obviously.
In my mind, there are a few paths forward which are not mutually exclusive. On the one hand, telling people to not enforce the lame social expectation is a good thing to do. But it only goes so far, often the people who are enforcing stupid expectations are stubborn and have other traits that prevent them from doing the right thing even if you point it out to them. So another course of action is for the oppressed to work together (and/or work with less-oppressed folks) to disrupt the oppression, take back their power, and force the oppressors to change their ways, if not their views. Being a victim does not always make you powerless, although it does reduce your power and can make you feel even more disempowered than you are. So the next step is to find strategies that overcome and/or work around those limitations.
edit: to put it a bit more concisely: there are people perpetuating the problem and people affected by the problem. It's not victim blaming to recognize that some of the people affected by a problem are also perpetuating it. Otherwise recognizing toxic masculinity would be victim blaming too, since men are negatively impacted by it and some of those same men perpetuate it