I am old enough to remember when they came out with a brand of cigarettes just for women. They were called Virginia Slims. It was good marketing. Everything else about it was wrong.
Their slogan was, “You’ve come a long way baby.” Their TV commercials depicted situations where women had been historically told they couldn’t smoke where men could. Virginia Slims wanted women to celebrate their equal opportunity to get lung cancer. Virginia is both typically girl’s name, as well as being the name of a State in the USA known for it’s fine tobacco.
The cigarettes were slim, just right for dainty hands. Nicotine is an appetite depressant and right on target for liberated gals who want to keep their hourglass figures.
They don’t make Virginia Slims any more. They don’t need to. Women have come that far.
It is interesting, that one of the biggest influences on the reduction of tobacco consumption in the USA were law suits filed, by mostly female employees, who worked in places were it was okay to smoke. The claim was that such employees were being unfairly exposed to a toxic work environment. Their claims were heard.
Women have not only won the right to vote in the USA, but also the right to be trained to kill and avoid being killed in military combat. Women today can engage in contact supports and even entertain by beating each others brains out in mixed martial arts matches.
Today in the USA women can play “pay to play” politics with the best men in the business and lie about doing so like nobody’s business.
Women find it easier to get hired for jobs that are very dangerous, and/or dirty and/or disgusting that previously were reserved exclusively for men. Equal pay for equal dangerous, dirty, disgusting work is still a big concern.
Women can make good money in the pornography industry with safer working conditions then ever before.
Women have “come a long way baby,” so much so that they can’t be referred to as being babies in advertising anymore.
Is this all that feminists want though. More of this.
Profeminist minded men hope not.
As a man, I am uncomfortable having opinions as to where women should work or how they should live their lives. I don’t mean to judge female solders, martial artists, politicians, or porn stars. I applaud the hard work of the feminists that make it easier for women to chose these lines of work. I admire the courage of feminist women engaged in the hard work of leveling the playing field until it is level, which it is a long way from being.
I used to be a feminist. It seemed like the correct liberal thing to be. Until some women told me that this wasn’t possible.
They argued that not growing up female, I could not get feminism the way women got it. After some protest, I concluded that they were right. I could sure get equal opportunity for all. I had gotten that for a long time.
It worries me that many people now think we don’t need feminism anymore. I don’t agree that feminism means women should now be more equal then men due to historical disenfranchisement, either.
As a profeminist man, I believe that feminists have championed the cause for values that have been historically viewed as for women only or as for women mostly. Many times these values were considered to be childish, by men thinking that these values were coming from women whose primary value was in pregnancy and childcare and men having some fun in the baby making process.
As a profeminist man, I believe that valorizing many of these values benefit men tremendously. Problem is, many men struggle to feel comfortable with acting on these values due to their historical suppression.
I encourage men to contemplate how women have traditionally been more sexually responsive then men, more empathic, less competitive for the sake of being competitive, more articulate and better able to express emotion as well as able to be guided by their feelings than are men. As these values have been repressed in women, they have been repressed in men. There are many more such traditionally female values that have been traditionally repressed in men as men have oppressed them in women.
It would take me longer to explain how profeminism is about more than just applauding the victories and progress pioneered by feminists. In brief, profeminism seeks to inform women about what feminist thought has done for men, in a way that only men can do.
I will stop here. If you like what I am saying, there is enough here to fuel your further contemplation of profeminism. If you don’t like what I am saying, why give you more to pick at?
Regardless of where you stand, keep checking the goodmenproject.com website to better understand your position.
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As a single progressive dad with two daughters, I WAS a pro-feminist man until I saw what feminism was becoming, and now has become, all too often. I am certainly not the only man – or even the only person – who has had that epiphany. Every year Gallup does an interesting poll on this very subject. A significant crowd of both men and women are polled on two questions: One, do you support equal rights for women – and two, do you support feminism. The results from year to year are startling in their consistency. Among both men and… Read more »
So let me get this straight … you’re a pro-feminist man but you, yourself is not feminist?
Can a man or women promote these values and not be feminist?
originating
Why the censorship to the original post for simply providing an alternative viewpoint that was not offensive, but aimed to educate?
There exists a great deal of hypocrisy within feminism. If both male and female feminists were actually committed to promote and defend the human right of equal opportunity, then why is it that whenever the scale tips in the opposite direction there is deafening silence? Two recent documentaries have been made by film producers both origination from the feminist mould who have completed in-depth research and have had the determination and courage to speak out. Why are such film producers condemned by the feminist lobby? The documentaries that I am referring to are “The Red Pill” by the US director… Read more »
I was thinking about the same as Bill. However USA is still more tolerant than Australia, where ‘the Red Bill’ cannot be even shown in a cinema as the managers are worried about petitions against the movie.