Interesting Links for 28-03-2026

[andrewducker]

1. Putin sends Ukraine's stolen children to military training at special camps associated with their largest oil companies

(tags:oil russia ukraine children OhForFucksSake )

2. Putin's 'shadow fleet' tankers veer away from Channel after UK vows to seize them

(tags:uk russia shipping )

3. American Medical Association reaffirms support for trans health care

(tags:transgender usa healthcare lgbt )

4. What does "the left doesn't provide a space for young boys." mean?

(tags:politics misogyny patriarchy )

Comments

[calimac]

4) Very chewable. I have seen rhetoric defining straight white men as the problem. I can't give examples because it's nuggets over many years. But I never felt personally attacked, partly because I've found feminist women to be friendly towards men who want to engage, and partly because the rhetoric is right, many straight white men are appalling. I guess another factor is that I want what the left is selling regarding personal relationships. I don't want a compliant woman, ugh, I want an equal relationship. And that is what I was taught by growing up in the heyday of second-wave feminism. Why other men of my age didn't pick that up I don't know.

I do believe that hypergamy is real - that is, that there are women out there who treat men like walking wallets. But they are few, and are vastly outnumbered by men who think women are walking vaginas - I recently read of a man saying that openly and literally. I have never read a women openly saying men are walking wallets, outside of fiction.

4.

[channelpenguin]

Especially when young, most of us are at least fairly keen on getting laid. With age and retrospect, it can be a much much bigger subconscious driver than many of us appreciate at the time. But that's no excuse to turn into an asshole or fuck up society. Which seems to me kinda how the whole "manosphere" wants to be/go.

Where money is security, then equality in everything to do with earning and retaining it is to everyone's benefit. Society in most places doesn't fully support this, in all the ways I'm sure everyone here can list out.

I find 4 deeply unconvincing.

[wildeabandon]

I do have to admit that I am slightly biased against Speech Prof because his low-key homophobia* gets on my nerves, but I think that post takes some true things and comes to a wrong conclusion.

His "I'm in these spaces but I'm not seeing people saying that I'm the problem for being a straight white man" has echoes of the 'Cool Girl' archetype saying that because she's treated as one of the boys, misogyny doesn't exist.

Of course there's a bunch of anti-men sentiment in (some) feminist spaces - people who are reacting against a system which oppresses them are not always going to be perfectly fair in their reactions, and sometimes that's going to land on people who don't deserve it. And that's okay - expecting women to be perfect saints as they fight the patriarchy is in itself a sexist standard. But I don't think there's any misogyny in asking the question of how we can create progressive space in which that splash damage is limited so that they're more welcoming to men.

*nothing deliberately vicious, but I've seen more than one comment from him along the lines of "these incels spend an awful lot of time talking about the attractiveness of the men whom women are choosing over them, maybe they're not actually as interested in the women as they claim to be"