Protection of Men's Rights: They Are No Worse than Women

In the essay “The Boys are Not All Right” Michael Ian Black states “Too many boys are trapped in the same suffocating, outdated model of masculinity, where manhood is measured in strength, where there is no way to be vulnerable without being emasculated, where manliness is about having power over others. They are trapped, and they don’t even have the language to talk about how they feel about being trapped, because the language that exists to discuss the full range of human emotion is still viewed as sensitive and feminine”. I absolutely agree with this statement because in the perception of society, a man always owes something to women. A man must earn money, a man must manage to pay attention to his beloved, he must give gifts, he must keep a grudge in himself, he must not hit a woman, and so I can list for a very long time... And to whom, which, and, most importantly, why, we do not always understand. Particularly stringent requirements are set for boys, future men who grow up with the installation that he owes to his parents, friends and most of all his woman. In fact, these are just the requirements of certain people, all this has nothing to do with debt. A man has every right to refuse a woman material support, because the only people who really need his help are his children, everyone else, especially a woman, can well provide for themselves. A man is not required to share your interests. A man does not have to dive into your problems. According to Black “I would like men to use feminism as an inspiration, in the same way that feminists used the civil rights movement as theirs”. Why don't men really create their own so-called feminist club? This club will be aimed not at aversion to women, but at defining the rights of men in society. Probably you will agree with me but in my opinion, today men and women adhere to the theory of equality.

In her essay “When Misogynists Become Terrorists” Jessica Valenti says “After I started a feminist blog in 2004, I became a target of men’s-rights groups who were angry with women about everything from custody battles to the false notion that most women lie about rape”. Honestly, my opinion, when men openly declare this, is already a degree of despair. The man got lost in the tunnels and cannot find a way out. Despair is like an incurable disease, you no longer fight it, you rot in all this. There is no way back, only humility. Valenti states “The truth is that in addition to not protecting women, we are failing boys: failing to raise them to believe they can be men without inflicting pain on others, failing to teach them that they are not entitled to women’s sexual attention and failing to allow them an outlet for understandable human fear and foibles that will not label them “weak” or unworthy”. I totally disagree with this statement, since this is not an inability to teach them to be men, this is a misunderstanding by parents that a man is the same person as a woman who has his own feelings, desires, and most importantly - his own opinion! A man and a woman should be one, protect each other, give free rein to emotions, raise children and earn money. Parents should grow from a boy not a man, but first of all a man. Masculinity is primarily humanity. You just need to show it to society and the world will become safe.

Let’s see another example, Philip Glass in his essay “When Masculinity Turns Toxic: A Gender Profile of Mass Shootings” says “We know from studies that even feminist mothers will give girls, their daughters, more sympathy when they are hurt than their sons, which encourages boys to hide their pain and to deprioritize their pain, and view it as not being something that they can show the world”. Feminist mothers make of boys those people who are opposed openly. Why? Let the boys know that as a girl they have arms, legs, eyes, ears; they feel pain, they want to cry, they want to share secrets with you. You need to understand that from this, the boys will not become weak. They will be able to protect themselves; they will be able to provide for themselves, and most importantly, they will have self-esteem!

Works Cited

• Black, Michael Ian. “The Boys Are Not All Right.” The New York Times, 22 Feb. 2018.
• Valenti, Jessica. “When Misogynists Become Terrorists”. The New York Times, April 26, 2018.
• Glass, Philip. “When Masculinity Turns Toxic: A Gender Profile of Mass Shootings”. California Healthline, 10 Feb. 2019.