Note: This is from last year. The numbers are much higher now. Ukraine puts the number of dead Russian soldiers at 376,030. The US says it’s 315,000 personnel.
Either way, if those numbers are anywhere close to the trugh, then Russia has already lost ~50% of the personnel that the entire Soviet Union lost in its 9 year-long invasion of Afghanistan. And the fallout of the war in Afghanistan contributed a lot to the fall of the Soviet Union.
I ddg russian population 2023 and got this from world-o-meter: “9th Russia 144,444,359(estimated population) -0.19%(change) -268,955(net)”
Until they have to mobilize the more dense populated area, it’s just a number game for them I guess.
Oh, and compare to Ukraine, it’s pretty dark.
“41th Ukraine 36,744,634 -7.45 % -2,957,105” in the later column, Migrant listed as 1,784,718 assuming fled the war. so should be part of that -2.9m decline number. I don’t know what happened to the other 1.2m.
I find the numbers in the article odd. 30 000 fled to Finland based on it, and that’s actually the amount of Russian nationals in Finland now. (80 000 Russian speaking). It’s as if there were 0 before the war, which cannot be true.
Zeno Franco, who studies heroism and post-traumatic stress disorder at the Medical College of Wisconsin, thinks that we can turn masculine norms against sexual harassment and assault. “When has it ever been an acceptable norm that men instill fear in women? When has it ever been an acceptable norm that men turn a blind eye when other men harm women?”
absolutely. i always feel leery about making blanket statements about “what it means to be a man”; but without question, for me, it means protecting those who cannot protect themselves, pushing back and speaking out against those who exercise their power on others without regard for their well being. it means interfering in situations where i think someone will be harmed if i don’t, and trusting myself to be able to improve the situation, not just make it worse
sometimes, that means risking my own well being, too. i’m smart about it, not reckless; my own well being matters a lot to me too, especially because there are some people who are just fucked if something happens to me. but there are plenty of times i take that risk too and trust that, if things go wrong, they’ll be alright and they’ll understand
sometimes, there are things i see and need to act on because i couldn’t rightfully call myself a man if i didn’t
i’m trans, though. i don’t really understand the position of (often) cis men who don’t feel like this. maybe they’ve been told their own power is contingent on the system functioning as intended. maybe they’re just afraid, i get that
part of my ability to do this is that i’ve already been through hell. i know that if i mess up and do something to jeopardize my life, i can figure it out and fix it. i’ll survive. and it will have been worth it. maybe they don’t know that, they don’t have that kind of confidence in themselves
i’m also decent in a fight and i’ve spent some time learning communication and de-escalation skills (shoutout nonviolent communication) and i’ve spent over a decade in therapy
but i’ve always thought we should be speaking to men this way - are you really strong if you can’t protect those weaker than you? not to shame them about being weak; sometimes you are and that’s the reality of things. but is it truly strong to hoard power for yourself? how confident can you say you really are, if you’re afraid to use some of it for the benefit of others?
i haven’t lived an easy life, but it’s worth shouldering the burden to help make other people’s lives easier, too. it is what needs to be done, if we want to see a better society than the one we’ve grown up in
(i generalized a lot of this because the abuse of power, while influenced by gender, is not defined by gender)
So I was in a very stereotypically chauvinist situation last week: Two colleagues and I took a customer (all 4 of us men) out for lunch after(/as part of) a sales call. After the waitress left to put in our orders, the customer made a pre-excuse and then joked something like
well that’s definitely putting a rack on a shelf.
I don’t remember how I reacted. I’m also not sure what I wish I had said.
completely understandable, it sounds like it totally came out of the blue. i’ve gotten caught off guard a lot by shit like this too and been unsure of how to react, definitely don’t feel bad about it
if you manage to get your bearings, if something like that happens again, a good way to approach this sort of situation is to ask the person to explain the joke. so, for example:
“well, that’s definitely putting a rack on a shelf”
“haha… yeah uh, what do you mean by that?”
they try to explain it without sounding sexist but sound sexist and feel silly afterwards
honestly though, i would have asked them to explain it anyways. you clearly sensed the intent behind it, so i totally get that it was sexist. but like, wtf does that even mean?? putting a rack on a shelf? huh??? i would have filled in the details more but i genuinely don’t get it 💀💀💀
anyways, i’m sorry you had to hear that kind of shit from a client. it’s tough because i’m sure that’s a situation where you have to be really cognizant of the relationship. fwiw, you don’t need to chase them down or be really mean about the whole thing; usually getting them to realize by themselves that they’re being sexist is enough. you can just be pretty apologetic about not understanding their “joke”
For example discussions on the difference between what women think they want in a man vs what actually turns them on. Conscious vs unconscious desires. This isn’t a women-only phenomena mind you. It takes most people a lot of experience to figure out the difference. This could obviously come off as infantilising or mansplainy.
I think the article brought that up as a good point. It would have to walk a fine line and would work best as advice column to answer specific questions. I think the generalities can cause sexist issues much more than a specific example
But generalities are wrong, period. When the subject is described subjectively, then you’re not crossing any lines. When you question your own perception, there’s no way you could really inadvertently cross any sexist line.
You think? I dunno. It’s 100% about how you actually view women. When you talk about the woman you’re dating in a way that just recognizes them as another person, then there is no problem.
I believe wholeheartedly I could write this column without issue.
I’ve known several incels, and in my experience, their entitlement to sex is really just an extension of wanting to feel loved.
Men grow up in a near drought of love and physical affection. After about 5 years old, we can’t hug our best friends.
Then men are told that they will pick a blushing bride that will be everything to them.
And when that doesn’t work, they become bitter and don’t know what to do with the rejection, because they have shit coping skills and mix up their entitlement for love with an entitlement for sex.
It’s a mess. I’m not absolving the incels of their shitty behaviour, but I’m also not going to say that “they deserve to feel unloved”
But I think the solution starts with recognizing that the incels actually want love. In my experience, women want to feel loved, and THEN trust you physically with sex. This makes sense because the physical danger for women is very real. Men seem to do it backwards. They want to get physical first and then trust you with love, since emotional danger is very real to them.
Anyways I’ll stop rambling, this is a mix of facts and personal experiences, but I really stand by the general point.
Thanks, I go through great pains to try and truly understand issues rather than “grab the pitchforks”
It’s all too easy to see someone as evil, rather than just a person hurting. Once you see the hurt, you have to be careful not to go all “bleeding heart” and excuse their crimes.
INCELS need to realise their problems stem from needing to be loved. It’s not anyone else’s job to understand them and fix their lives FOR them. But we can help them understand insofar as they’re willing to learn.
The second thing they and all of us need to realise is that we can’t get ALL our love from romantic partners. That puts a HUGE burden on the relationship. We need to learn how to share platonic love again. That’s what’s breaking us men. If we can’t learn to love eachother without toxic masculinity telling us it’s “gay” or whatever, then we’re doomed to losing men to loneliness, despair, and inceldom.
This is the men’s revolution that’s needed. The feminist revolution came, and was absolutely necessary, and now we need one for men. We didn’t keep up with the times.
Exactly right. The queer and feminist community made it acceptable to be whoever they want to be. Time for men to join the forces and do what makes them happy and to not what they think they have to. Remember that if someone else likes something different or hates something you love that doesn't diminish your enjoyment
There are reasons to do with the history of this particular literary form, as well. It may be that, for a number of fair reasons, women are allowed to denigrate men in print, but not the other way around. “I think some of the things I get away with saying about men would seem a bit gross from guys, because of the obvious power imbalance,” Annie Lord, British Vogue’s dating columnist, told me. Women can write about dating because on a heterosexual date, society generally accepts that women are the underdogs.
Perhaps the presumption that the same privileges equally translate to different contexts plays a part. I don’t see any “fair reasons” listed here. I see a group that is allowed to say negative things about one, and another that is shut down for the same thing (but that they have fair reasons to be allowed to). Maybe nobody should be denigrating anyone and it is just, in itself, unfair to denigrate others?
On any dating advise site/community I don’t exactly see women as the “underdogs” with regard to support and who is ‘right’ in any given situation. The first examples that come to mind are reddits dating advice and “AITA” subs where I’ve seen more than enough examples of the old “switching genders completely changed people’s opinions” posts to not feel comfortable there.
Maybe nobody should be denigrating anyone and it is just, in itself, unfair to denigrate others?
I think this is a fair point and we should really avoid denigrating everyone. However, ignore any differences between any of the genders and their assumed roles is not helpful. There are differences we just need to recognize that one isn't better or more correct than the other.
P.S. the AITA subs are always kind of a mess. Especially with people justifying their terrible behavior.
AITA is garbage because it isn’t about finding the best course of action but about whether you can pretend that your behaviour is justified, which is not helpful.
However, ignore any differences between any of the genders and their assumed roles is not helpful.
This is part of what I was saying in the first bit. There are absolutely differences in genders that should be recognized and respected. But context is key. Assuming women are the “underdogs in heterosexual dating” that does not translate to talk about dating. In the context of dating advice and online discussions about relationships, I very much disagree that women are underdogs. But the author is using this, presumably, to support the prior sentence’s argument that women can “fairly” denigrate men in print for this reason.
But also, we’re not talking about dating, we’re talking about sex, and women are the definite underdogs when it comes to sex, or at least casual sex. The stats on who gets to orgasm through casual sex are just abysmal for heterosexual women… Maybe we all would benefit from sex columns for men more than we’d like to admit.
The amount of false info around, " it’s just much harder for women to orgasm" and " a lot of women simply cannot orgasm no matter what" is pretty easily disproven by orgasm rates in homosexual female couples, which leads me to believe it’s the men in the equation that lead to women having trouble orgasming, not some inevitability.
And this is all women are clear underdogs in sex before you even touch on the difference in dangers to men v women with sex /sexual violence/ coersion
Are you suggesting that those are valid reasons that “women [should be] allowed to denigrate men in print”? Because that’s the thing I was talking about.
I think this makes some great point but doesn't talk enough about how the cultures makes sex exclusively about the conquest for men as well. There is almost no talk about intimacy or pleasure from the sex but rather if it was gotten at all. The overall goal is have sex. Its isn't pleasure focused for either party with the assumption is that the man ejaculates from PIV. The queer and kink communities have really focused on the entire aspects and emotions that sex can provide. This trickled into most sex positive books and most of the advice was geared to women to allow them to feel any sexual pleasure but is applicable for all genders.
I think most men understand that sex can provide multiple emotions at once but can't articulate what they need and how they get it outside of sex as well. We need to talk about how young men want love and that sex can be part of that. I highly recommend people look into kink and sex positive books to understand relationships and what sex can mean outside the traditional sexist narrative.
Would many straight men even read this fabled column? Again, I asked some friends. “I probably wouldn’t be interested in reading a column by some dude cos I’d just think, well, that’s him I guess. I can’t imagine finding it useful or applying it to me in any way.”
I think this is it for me. Women vary, and what works for some dude’s woman probably won’t work for mine.
I think that is true for most advice columns. I think it would need to a hook (bi, kinky, poly etc.) of some kind as well. It is interesting that it doesn't exist
I think the snag is that “talk to your partner” is a boring, factual, real-world response to most questions – which is very, very good advice… that nobody wants to hear.
That is true. You could spruce it up about specifics about how to talk about it but you are right. Most relationship problems are boring and that is the boring answer. You need some advice about the interesting parts of sex and relationships where there are a focus on the sex especially non PIV sex.
Meh. Both people not understanding what they want or how to solve a problem is entirely possible, but the solution to that is to try a few different things and talk some more. Maybe that could be the hook… Talking to couples instead of just one person. Anyway. As much as I’d love for someone to pay me to talk about sex all day, it’s not happening.
A lot of the time that is the response after someone says that they did try to talk to their partner too. It is both true and a non-helpful answer in a lot of cases because the problems to discuss are caused by underlying communication problems.
Belittle isn’t feminine. It’s gender neutral and not quite the same. The difference between the phrasing is subtle, but there. Belittling is when we try to make someone feel less important or to just disparage them. To emasculate someone is to paint them as less masculine or weak. We do have a reverse of emasculating, though. Which, we dont really have a term I know of to describe the de-feminizing of a woman. Fortunately, society seems to mostly depart from the more toxic views as it pertains to less feminine women now than before, but largely the opposite view is still dominant in most of the world when it comes to men.
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