A growing network of online communities known collectively as the “manosphere” is emerging as a serious threat to gender equality, as toxic digital spaces increasingly influence real-world attitudes, behaviours, and policies, the UN agency dedicated to ending gender discrimination has warned.
These exaples are “not my world”, what does that even mean? You live on a different world? Examples have to be specifically from your zip code to be relevant discussion on a global web forum do they? Did you actually argue maybe all women are ok with being oppressed in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan? Because many have famously vociferously opposed it, up to the point of being executed and being shot in the head. One of them works at the UN now, putting together work like whats in this very article. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24379018
The Garrick Club has incredibly powerful members including kings and prime ministers and hundred of members of Parliament. If you cannot see how excluding women from such a club is an issue of patriarchy then you are really not trying very hard to understand anything here.
And of course, everything is a strawman argument nowadays…
A strawman argument is stating a false weaker argument (or premise) of your opponent, to then argue against more easily than their real argument.
Your claim: there is no ‘formal’ system [of patriarchy]
Me: here’s several examples of formal systems of patriarchy.
You: I am being strawmanned!
Or, maybe you can’t accept man-only clubs because you’ve been manipulated into not doing so, but can accept women-only because “omg oppression they need a safe space wah wah”.
I’m banging on about it? You highlighted it from my list and came up with the false narrative that I am somehow OK with womens-only clubs, something I’ve never claimed (that’s a strawman FYI).
You’re not interested to learn, nor to have an honest debate. Good luck with that attitude, you’ll need it.
Women and men-only clubs have a lot of value. We have women only clubs at work because our industry is pretty male-centric, so getting women access to good female mentors is super important because they’re distributed across the company. Men can be good mentors for women too, sure, but anytime there’s a minority, it’s important to connect them to help them recognize and point out implicit biases. We have groups like that for racial minorities as well, and I think it’s great.
Men and women also bond differently, so having a gender-specific club can lower barriers to connecting and finding support. That’s true for other characteristics as well, like sexual and gender identity, race (I’m a huge fan of our black chamber of commerce in our predominantly white area), age, etc.
We should embrace and celebrate our differences, not try to hide them away. Let everyone have their own club, and maintain rules against intolerance as well.