It always comes from the "nice guys" type. But it is also commonly said on TV that women love douchebags and therefore love being abused. In an episode of Family Guy, Quagmire or Brian tells Stewie that women enjoy being abused, so mistreating them will get them a girlfriend. This idea is obviously wrong and damaging. It perpetuates the idea that women are weak and need to be mistreated in order to be loved, when in reality the opposite is true. Women should be respected and treated with kindness, not abused in any way. This insanity about women should never be tolerated, no matter the context. Not only does this hurt women emotionally, it always leads to physical violence. It contributes to a dangerous cycle of abuse, as women may start to believe that this kind of treatment is normal and acceptable. Abuse of any kind is never okay and it is important to be aware of the damaging effects it can have on people. This shit is exemplified by the case of Brock Turner, who was convicted of sexual assault and served only three months in prison. His lenient sentence was seen by many as evidence that society does not take sexual assault seriously, and that it is somehow acceptable to harm and take advantage of women.
My opinion (I have no doubt I am right about this) is that sexism is the foundation of fascism...
My brother who considers himself a leftist and defines his views as socialist. "Nice guys finish last" and "women love bad boys" are a couple of ridiculous things he often says. Despite the fact that my brother is pretty “popular” with women, he doesn't understand that the women he dates are almost always drug addicts or alcoholics. He dates them through Tinder. It's basically the same thing incels do, judging all women based on this sex app called Tinder.
We should never measure a man's success based on how many women he slept with. It always makes the men treat women like sexual objects or a trophy to put on a display. Fundamentally, they become an instrument to accomplish a goal. (I'm saying we should not "virgin shame" i know it's tempting but try not to do it)
The idea that women only love "alpha males" is complete bullshit and ultimately hurts them. In doing so, it reinforces the dominant-submissive dichotomy. As in, the strong should rule the weak. Observe in the picture I posted that this shitty person compares women to children because of their perceived shared weakness...while asserting that men are stronger than them both...
"""There is nothing worse in my book than a man who betrays the trust of those weaker than himself, be they children or women.""""
Having comedians like Louis C.K doesn't help much either with jokes like "men fuck things up, women are fucked up”. What does that even mean you little shit??? Men are the ones who shoot up schools and throw acid at people when they're rejected. Can't they both fuck things up and also be fucked in the head at the same time? These “jokes” are casually accepted by most people... I am aware that most communists do not think that way, but based on the example of my brother, I am skeptical.
Also, this shithead in the picture says..””many women are understandably attracted to good looks in a man, and willing to overlook some pretty obvious character flaws if the man is, and perceived to be by other women, physically attractive””
It’s like they all think women are 14 year old tweens...They are all naive, according to them.
This is why I am not surprised when a lot of these men end up being child molesters...
I think you're partially right. I think strict inviolable hierarchy is the foundation of fascism. Sexism (the hierarchical ordering of man over woman) is one form, but there are others: white over non-white, straight over non-straight, christian over non-christian, able-bodied over disabled. I admittedly haven't put a whole lot of thought into it specifically, so sexism may be uniquely positioned, but perhaps not.
Another aspect of sexism (and indeed fascism) is lack of (or overriding of) empathy. Empathy is a natural human emotion that (nearly) everyone experiences, and to different degrees. In my opinion, with a healthy amount of empathy, you can't be sexist, because there's no way you can not feel the other sex as equal to yours in every meaningful way. If you have enough empathy, there is no way you can force an artificial hierarchy onto people, or take it further and deprive them of liberties based on artificial distinctions. I think empathy is largely seen as negative or at least not worth much in the culture I see: it's seen as a "weak" emotion that stands in the way of all the Good Things like exploitative profiteering and warmongering. The phrase "be a man" is often synonymous with "ignore your weak emotions"; that is, stop whining about all the innocent people that will die (ignore your empathy) and be a man and drop the bomb. Similarly, stringing women along as sexual partners while giving them the illusion that there may be more, talking shit about them behind their backs and to their faces, and otherwise not treating them as equals can only happen if you're lacking sufficient empathy.
I would actually argue that the foundation of fascism is purely economic -- economic crisis brought on by the problems inherent in the capitalist mode of production (overproduction and the falling rate of profit), one sector of the ruling class seizes power in order to restart the economy, and to gain power builds a mass movement among the workers. But that's in a way neither here nor there, because the things you've described are indeed features of fascism.
I will say, however, that I am somewhat suspicious of the concept of empathy, mainly because the word seems to refer to a specific feeling, and feelings come and go. Some years ago I worked with a guy who was (to put it charitably) a total asshole. We all knew it was because there were deep problems in his life, so we cut him some slack. But there were days when, if I'd suddenly heard he'd been arrested for drug possession and was facing jail time -- in a US prison, no less -- my first reaction would probably have been "motherfucker deserved it, hope he gets roughed up." Naturally, I'd try to suppress that feeling, or at least not express it openly, but I'd be lying if I said mustering empathy for him wasn't extremely difficult sometimes.
More reliable, I think, is to know intellectually and to continually remind oneself that humanity is very precious -- "the most precious thing in the material universe," according to Kim Jong-Il. To hate, really hate, any one of its manifestations is thus a kind of crime, for which one should always accuse onself and do penance. My father, who was a kind of radical Christian, once told me that to rejoice over the death of anybody, even one's worst enemy, is morally equivalent to murder; one could, he thought, be glad that justice was done, and be happy that the dead man would no longer be harming anyone, but one's overriding sense should be one of sorrow that human nature had become in that person so twisted and defiled. As a religious communist myself, I try to carry that mindset into my day-to-day life, and not to go around fist-pumping whenever somebody particularly vile, say an Azov fighter, gets wiped out in a Russian airstrike. "There but for the grace of God go I," and in a different set of circumstances that same person might have been an upstanding communist and servant of his community -- perhaps even a Hero of Labor or a martyr for the People. That to me is the main moral difference between communism and fascism (or various strands of ultra-leftism); we will use violence when we have to, to defend ourselves and those weaker than us, but we don't celebrate or aetheticize it.
Yes, I do agree with that. I guess when I said foundation, that was the wrong word. I think hierarchy is the form it takes on or that protects it, and even if it's essential it's not necessarily foundational.
Yes I also agree here. For me, empathy is an easy shortcut to what I know intellectually. I feel empathy for a fellow human and that shortcuts the need to remind myself intellectually that I should respect their humanity. But you make a good point that even for a person that makes it difficult to have empathy for, or for whom you find yourself struggling to have empathy, being able to resort to the intellectual approach is definitely beneficial. I will say, though, the specific context I mentioned empathy was: with regards to sexism (or racism, for example). I think there, you hopefully won't have to resort to intellecutalizing, because even if there's an individual of the opposite sex you don't feel empathy for, hopefully there are some you do or, short of that, you are able to feel empathy for the abstract notion of a human who is not fundamentally different than you in what matters most: being human.
Thank you for giving me reason to revisit this and give it more thought.