GWS shows oppression of men

It looks like this may be not be the intended purpose of this episode of Girls With Slingshots, but it's a really good point to be made from it anyway.

A brief description of the cartoon strip:

3 men. One of whom is in the early stages of a relationship with a woman (Melody), the other two are his friends (there are more biographical details, but they don't impact on this episode). The dater is called Chris, and his two friends are Zach and Darren

Frame 1: Chris looking nervous.
Zach - "So you guys haven't, uh..?"
Chris - "Not yet."
Darren - "How long has it been since the last time you"
Chris - "3 years"

Frame 2: Chris looking shocked because...
Zach & Darren - "OOOOOOOOO"
Chris - "Wh-- It's not THAT bad!"
Zach & Darren - "Yes it is, honey."

Frame 3: Chris grimacing hard.
Zach - "We're gonna have to start him on Book 1"
Chris - "Guys"
Darren - "You see Chris, when a man loves a woman--"
Chris - "AUGH"

-----

Now, you tell me which gender is oppressing, humiliating and/or enfeebling Chris in this comic? I'll give you a clue: there are no drawings of women in this episode.

And yet, for some reason, so-called Men's Rights Activists would tell you that women are responsible for doing these things. Melody has nothing to do with what's happening here.

This comic strip highlights how male gender oppression starts. All the explanations and expectations of masculinity start and are enforced in exactly this way: men humiliate, enfeeble and belittle those who don't at least pretend to live up to those ideals. This is how men learn to be "men" and masculine, and how in turn women's ideas of what a man "should" be are formed. It's also how men's idea of what a woman "should be" are formed, and that's why men's freedom from oppression actually gains from feminism and from women breaking free from gendered oppression of women.

We have a thing or two to do ourselves, of course - women being freer won't necessarily stop men doing these things to each other. We men need to do that, and thereby help our sisters (the feminists) with their liberation as we work for each other's.

And that's the final key point. Men are not in a position of being fully able to fight for our own liberation. In this we can learn from the hoplites of ancient Greece, each of whose survival in battle depended upon their neighbour's shield and fighting ability. Similarly, each man's liberation from gendered oppression relies on his neighbours being willing to put down the tools of oppression and stop the instinctive mocking of those who don't perform the narrow definition of masculinity properly.

If you want another, more modern (and USAian) metaphor, then think of the offense team in NFL. Nobody can be successful on offense unless someone else does their job well. A receiver needs the quarterback to have time to throw the ball accurately - otherwise he'll never have an opportunity to catch the ball and score. The quarterback needs the linemen to hold back the rush long enough for him to find an open receiver to catch the ball. The running back also needs the linemen to do a job for him, to open gaps between the defending players so that he can run through those gaps and make gains. And each lineman needs to know what his fellow linemen are doing and needs them to hold up on their duties, because otherwise he'll find himself overwhelmed.

In this metaphor, what we men need to do is hold our blocks so that someone else can make a great play - and to know that equally, someone else will hold a block for us when it's our turn to carry the ball.

It starts with NOT being like Zach and Darren in the cartoon. And it's a lot easier if we lose the misogynistic assumptions about women as well. If we stand alone, swinging our swords wildly at anyone who steps out of line (woman or man), then we will be cut down easily by the real enemy. But if we stand together and level our spears at the true target, and cover our brothers and sisters with our shields instead of cutting each other down, then suddenly our differences and our choices are freer even though we march together. If the next person is gay (or a woman, or trans, or Black, or whatever) then it should not matter - his (or her) freedom is my freedom. Freedom means defending everyone else's right to be different from me, while they are defending my right to be different from them.

But we only get to be different from each other if we are willing to pay the price of working together to make it possible.

I seem to have drifted a little bit from my starting point (gendered oppression) and now argued right back to the ethical foundation of communism. All derived from a comic strip about dating.