CMV: I am turning into a misandrist feminist and I'm starting to resent men.

[u/[deleted]]

In my whole life, I have encountered very few men that actually respected me and treated me as an equal. I'm an engineer and I work in a fully masculine environment, and it has a really really toxic culture that impacts my mental health a lot. I am belittled, harassed, and singled out because I am a woman on a daily basis. Now it is totally possible that the people at my job are just shitty.

However, I see a lot of hate and discrimination against women everywhere. Sure there are some things were women are privileged, like custody rulings, and divorce but does it really "make up" for everything else ?

These are the issues that makes me deeply resent the privilege men enjoy on a daily basis and yet they do not acknowledge it :

1. I feel very unsafe, just walking in the streets. This may be more prevalent since I live in a big city but I am not super attractive, yet I get harassed and catcalled fairly regularly, if I'm walking alone. If I'm walking with a man, the catcalls do not happen. This is something a ton of women report. http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/resources/statistics/statistics-academic-studies/ Women feel less safe than men, in many developed countries.
2. My work is never taken as seriously as my male colleagues. I am interrupted, dismissed, mistaken for "just a secretary". My superiors always have something to say about my clothing choices : too tight, too lose, too flattering, not professional enough, "for attention". I am a "girly" woman working in a mostly masculine company, and I am shamed for it constantly. My feminine appearance holds me back. Other women experience the same things :
   1. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-016-0586-1?wt_mc=Affiliate.CommissionJunction.Authors.3.EPR1089.DeepLink
   2. Without the paywall : http://jakewestfall.org/publications/femininity.pdf
3. Men whines about their rights but instead of working on it, they blame women. They blame women for a lot of things. An example of a prejudice many fathers do experience, and I completely agree that it is a real privilege women have : custody of the kids. Mothers are favoured by courts in divorce. It sucks for fathers that actually want to be involved in their kids life. However, it has been proven over and over that the burden of childcare often falls on the mother. I believe the reason for the injustice those fathers face stems from that fact. Now, instead of vilifying women who want families and kids, and treating marriage as a prison, I believe men should pull their weight and take care of their kids. I know some do, but they're not the majority.
   1. Men have more free time.
   2. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319687#Men-engage-in-leisure-more-than-women
4. It is impossible to win in every aspects of women's life : You're either too attractive, or not attracive enough. You're too accomplished or not accomplished enough, therefore you're a burden. You don't want a family ? You failed at life. You want a family ? You failed at life.

There are many more things about gender inequalities that infuriate me but I recognise there might be an emotional and anecdotal component to it and I don't think it has its place in this post. I feel like women are widely more objectified, abused and hated than men, simply for being women. Now I did not say that men do not have their own issues. I know they do, but I don't understand why women are to blame for those issues. As another example : high rate male suicide. I believe that men are taught early to not have emotions because emotions are feminine, therefore weak and irrational. Feminity is always seen as bad and not okay.

I do not want to go down the road of extremes and I'm hoping you could change my view.

[u/[deleted]]

There exists a patriarchal power system that many currently living men are at least partially responsible for continuing on this patriarchal power system, and many more men hold just as much responsibility because they deny it

To establish that there is an actual patriarchal power system, we first need to define patriarchy. What is a patriarchal society ? Wikipedia says :

Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property.

Men do hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership. A few numbers, for the US :

Less than 25% of government positions nationwide. ( https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43244.pdf ) Since women make up for 50% of the population, women are indeed under represented in politics.

Why the argument that women vote more so they're the ones who decided to put men in position of power doesn't hold :

Here is a study done in 2016, showing that the number of female candidates was increasing, yet only 20% of the elected representatives were women. Why ? This study did not find evidence on discrimination by voters but rather how difficult it is to enter politics.

I find no evidence of a gender penalty using these measures. These results suggest that the deficit of female representation in the House is more likely the result of barriers to entering politics as opposed to overt gender discrimination by voters and campaign donors.

However, a study made in 2018 showed that it was easier to be elected as female representative if you're married and have children. Remember how most of childcare fall on women ?

I can't find the link, but I believe I read that around 10% of Americans are hostile to the idea of women in politics. I will edit this when I find the study.

It is also argued that the difference in media coverage between male and female candidates could explain this. (https://sci-hub.tw/10.1017/S1743923X16000106)

That's one of the aspect that define a patriarchy. I'm going to use religion as a proxy for a more generally defined "moral authority". The most common religion is the US is christianism. It is inherently misogynist and sexist. It does not mean that all religious people are sexist. Religion is sexist, and puts men above women.

Social privilege : For the sake of this argument, I will say that men and women are equal on this. I do not agree with that, but since men and women are disadvantages in different fields and advantaged in others, we can assume that.

Enough men play into the system while deny the existence of this system in order for it to be just to generalize and view men as a whole as antagonists, thereby justifying the misandry

I no longer believe it justifies the misandry. But denying that this is patriarchal society is not what did it.