John Waters is spot on when he says that men do not collude with one another based on gender. The standardizing of gender roles is simply a tribal survival strategy that takes advantage of sexual dimorphism, not a mean for men to benefit men as a group and establish control over women. It disempowers both genders and often poor men are in the most unfavorable position.

“In the sense that awareness of men’s needs and issues are not generally addressed in the media, and acknowledging that ‘gender studies’ courses in universities do tend to mean ‘women’s studies’, I take his point.”

It goes much further than media coverage and gender studies courses, and in fact affects every societal sphere where gender is an issue. In terms of gender dichotomies, men are under two perceptions: men=perpetrators/women=victims and men=protector/women=in need of protecting. These perceptions prevent men from uniting under the rubric of gender solidarity and in fact make the preliminary response men have toward each other one of contention. This affect how they view issues concerning gendered violence, healthcare, parental rights, and so on. All you have to do is read the comment for any news article reporting another instance of a female school teacher having sex with one of her underage male students. There’s always a good number of men commenting how “the lucky bastard should be grateful.” Rather than empathize with a young boy, they immediately take a stance of jealous reproach.

“As surprising as that may be, given the lack of media attention to these opinions heretofore, men just have to follow the feminists and organize if they want to effect political change, and not complain bitterly about hard-done-by we are by wimmin.”

Feminists may not be the originators of the culture that established the anti-male family court system, but they very often are accomplices and due deserve part of the blame. Brothers should unite, but they can’t count feminists as allies until they widen their myopic view of gender relations.