Reddit a Guide to the Premier Social News Site.

You probably heard about Reddit or know someone who has gone on about it so much it made you want to shoot yourself or them or possibly both you and them. To avoid those types of situations in the future I'm going to tell you what you need to know and why you should use it. That way next time someone start's explaining the website to you, you can tell them you know what Reddit is and roll your eyes condescendingly but until then lets break down the site.

Reddit is basically a social news site, what that means is that all the stories are submitted by users like me or hopefully you. The stories are then ranked by the users in order of popularity, you can choose to vote an article up or down according to how relevant you feel it is. The site is broken down into what are called subreddits, those are groups where users post links or original content about topics relevant to the subreddit. Do you like cat memes (Fuck yeah you do) there's a subreddit for that. Like news about "50 Shades of Grey?" (Fuck, no you don't) Well you don't have to subscribe to that. See that's how it works, when you find a group you like, you subscribe to it, which is the same as hitting the "Like" button on Facebook. So when you want to find out what's new you can logon and look through your subreddits and check out the areas you enjoy. Be warned there are a lot of subreddits and you will be overwhelmed at first. Also, you need to be careful, there are a lot dark seedy rooms there, with all sorts of naughty stuff you might not want to see. I mean you can do a search for anything and you will find a link about it. That's a good thing and a bad thing.

When you register, it's not Facebook, so don't use your actual name as your login/screen name, pick something original and interesting. Also be warned the whole Reddit scene can be as cliquey as high school once in awhile. Like every social site it has it's drama and the key to that is to just tear into the bastards until they bleed, just kidding, just ignore them. 

There are other social media sites out there as well and you can search them out but honestly, Reddit is the first and biggest around. So now you know what Reddit is so follow the links I've outlined and check it out for yourself. Remember that the best thing about Reddit is that it educates you and provides a forum to discuss the topics you are interested in. Now go out there and have fun.

Men's Right's is Just a Bunch of Whiny Bitchy Men According to Main Stream Media....

Most articles you read in the mainstream media have a very dim view of Men's Rights and there may be something to that. We have a very vocal contingent of people who speak on behalf of Men's Rights who come off as whiny or bitchy. They seem to talk at length about one thing, feminazi's and they tend to lump all feminists into that movement. In doing so they ignore the obvious inequalities that exist for both men and women and fail to see that women and men are not at war. The most influential members of the movement understand this and they see that rather than only pushing for men's rights, we need to be pushing for equal rights for everyone. That means that the laws and societal issues that discriminate against both sexes need to be addressed equally.

The only way to change public opinion is to address issues in how they affect both men and women. I think many writers, especially in mainstream media, tend to take sides and if that makes me seem whiny or bitchy so be it. I just don't see many new's articles that focus on how the courts provide preferential treatment to women. Probably the worst thing about how the Men's Rights movement is viewed is that Men are the worst critics. The whole, suck it up and be a man attitude, is the one the majority of men take. This is because society teaches us that to lose against a woman is emasculating and women and men both believe this and it's utter bullshit. In most cases, especially those involving legal issues, men are (the vast majority of times) treated far harsher than women are. Yet according to our society, which is so wrapped up in it's outdated concept of chivalry, women are weaker and deserve to be given lesser sentences because they are so frail there's no way they can endure like men do. In essence the thing women benefit most from is the mentality that women are weaker than men.

So as a movement we have to challenge these ideals as much as feminists do. We have to tell people women are just as capable as men, they are just as smart and they are just as tough. They have the right to do anything that men do. Obviously men and women are different and there are things that either sex excel at, recognizing that and saying that because one sex is not as good at one thing as the other does not make either sex weaker or inferior. In fact the whole concept of the weaker sex hurts both men and women. The Men's Rights Movement needs to be for equality for both men and women and the only way to do this is to own up and admit where inequality for women still exists, and anyone who say's that women don't face issues in today's society has their heads buried in the sand.

In essence we have to stand up and take ownership of our movement and call out those that use it as a platform to complain about women in general. This approach is not serving anyone, it hurts our cause and it hurts society as a whole. So its time that we call out those who use the movement to push forward their own misogynistic agendas. Until we as men admit that there are men who use the cause to be the male equivalent of "feminazi's," we are not going to be taken seriously. By doing all this, pushing for equality, we will see both men and women listening to a rational voice centered on the truth, that men and women are not treated equal and in some areas men are better off than women and vice-versa. Admitting this will be the first step to our movement being seen in the mainstream as something more than a fringe group for disenfranchised whiny, bitchy men.

Men Are Stupid.

I watch a lot of TV and I have to say that I see a trend that bothers me. It's one where men are constantly portrayed as not necessarily stupid but not quite as intelligent as women. It's prevalent in mostly American shows and I honestly think that in the next 15 years that it may be a fact.

The current education system has failed boy's across the country and even though our political leaders have seen this, there has been nothing done to change it. All we hear from teachers and politicians is more rhetoric. No one cares that our young men are choosing not go to college or that those that do fail to finish. They seem to gloss over the statistics, women are graduating from college at three times the rate that young men are. Even before college boy's are struggling to even graduate from high school.

The problem is simple, we have a system geared towards young women that was developed during a time when changes to the previous education system were necessary because our schools had relegated the majority of women to being stay at home moms and house wives. We now know that the systematic changes did work and they did help women, in fact more women are attending college than ever and even better, more women are graduating from college than ever but the down side is that the opposite is true for men.

This cannot work in our society, we cannot have a system of education that discriminates against one gender, we have already seen what this does to our children. We either need to find a system that works equally well for both genders or we need to develop a separate system to educate boys and girls. Separating boys and girls in the class room has received a lot of negative press but in school systems where they do separate genders, we see smarter children, better prepared for their upper education. Either way if we do not, then we will reap what we sow.

An important step is letting the media know that the stereotyping of men as being less than intelligent needs to stop in it's infancy, before it becomes a problem. This needs to begin with women, because it's most women who seem to be amused at men being the but of jokes. Honestly they can be funny but they can also hurt because when young boy's see this it impacts how they view themselves, especially when those women who are their mentors or parents perpetrate such stereotypes. We have seen how damaging negative stereotypes can have on a gender in the past and how difficult it can be to reverse that mentality.

To make these changes men and women need to work together to ensure that both boy's and girl's have a bright future where they are both on equal footing and that needs to start in our schools and in our homes. The old standards that were used to ensure equal opportunity need to be looked at and addressed now to make sure that the system is truly equal or in 30 years from now we are going to see quite a few angry men who look back at a society that abandoned them.

The First Post About Men's Issues.

I have been writing for awhile mostly with regards to television and entertainment and I did alright in the venue but after a couple years of writing in that format I decided I wanted to post a blog more geared towards men. As my previous blog's have always been focused on entertainment I didn't think I was going to take that much of a divergence from my original concept. Then I thought about writing an article about the things that I think are the most important to men and I found it to be a troubling topic.

First off, the thing I think is the most troubling for men is the conception in society that men are disposable. We are taught from an early age that we have to act a certain way, live a certain way and be a certain person to have any value. Why do these things happen? I think it's mostly because men have for too long allowed women to tell them repeatedly how to be men. We have to be sensitive, we have to be strong, but we can't be too sensitive or too strong, in essence we have to be perfect to have any value.

This mentality is pervasive due to many of the most popular entertainment sites for men being run by women. Askmen.com and goodmenproject.com, two of the most popular men's sites are managed, owned and edited by women. Many of the articles we are reading in magazines from Men's Health to Esquire are by women telling men how we can be better men for women. News paper articles that are addressing men's issues are increasingly being written by women with a specific bent towards how men's behavior affect women. These articles cover a variety of topics but essentially the underlying message is that a man's worth is only in what women see in him.

In our society boys are treated differently than girls all the way from infancy to adulthood in a negative almost abusive manner. They are relegated to an educational system that is geared towards how girls learn rather than boys. The desparity in how we teach our children has led to a unbelievable drop in how many men are going to and completing college compared to women. This goes beyond our schools as well, at home boys are taught at an early age that their masculinity is what is attractive then as they become more masculine and in touch with their sexuality they are told by women that same masculinity is threatening and dangerous.

In relationships they are second class citizens, set up in a dating system built on pursuit and rejection with the man's ego being the only thing at risk. Then in relationships the man is seen as disposable as well, 78% of all relationships are ended by women. When asked why they decided to end their relationship's, most women said men weren't meeting their needs, in the 22% of relationships that were ended by men it was because they felt their partner had grown distant. Ironically in homosexual relationships 100% of all relationships were ended by men.

I may seem to be ranting and I don't want to say that women don't face similar issues, because they do and I can go on about that as well but since this blog is focused on issues that face men I'm not going to at the moment but I will in the future.

So that's my intro blog for my new format. I hope you enjoyed and if you have feedback let me know. I guarantee it wont be so serious all the time! There will be stuff on everything from the best gadgets, to women that tickle our fancy and of course stuff about television. In short it will cover a wide range of topics that impact men.

I also wont exclude women from publishing articles here either, any article can be posted as long as it's relevant to men.