I grok the smart phone usage/co-dependent relationship analogy…very apt IMO…not so clear on the feminist angle though…toxic and abusive relationships are not always male-driven, although they may be the majority. Just ask any psychologist who specializes in couples counselling. There are plenty of domineering, jealous, manipulative boundary-invading women out there in the world. Surely that’s not news. Is the patriarchy somehow also responsible for them? I think it would be more helpful and less divisive to view the problem through a more comprehensive capitalist neocolonial lens, as in we are all being gradually colonized, algorithm-manipulated and data-mined irrespective of age, cultural background, gender or sexual preference.
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I enjoy me some David Foster Wallace, but usually when a guy tells me how great DFW or Infinite Jest are, that’s my cue to smile and walk away. Through no fault of his own, his work seems to attack a certain kind of woe-is-me bro.
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“Bro is me”?
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When they can, will you return to the fold? 
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I would go further and say a very particular sub-set of the aforementioned…not necessarily representative of straight white males as a whole:
https://vimeo.com/198891818
yeah - but my line will always be busy
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Your statement contains a least two logical fallacies:
If that anecdote is indicative of your approach toward a less toxic, more empathetic society, you might want to rethink it…
Or
Then you don’t have to worry about bringing the charger with you.
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You provide a great example of the Argument from Fallacy.
Basically, squawking about fallacies without making compelling arguments of your own, won’t make the point you may think you’re making.
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It is surprising that fashion retailers have avoided routinely accommodating smartphones (for both women and men’s trousers). I am sure there are some provisions but not universal.
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Ignoring the degree to which that neocolonial capitalist system is built by and effectively for the benefit of cis-het males (and in the West, white ones) does not gain those who criticise it natural allies – quite the opposite, as you see here. Starting with the premise that The Patriarchy Hurts Us All, and acknowledging how and why many of the assumptions of capitalism are an avenue for that infliction of harm, is a more effective way of achieving solidarity than the usual “notallwhitemen” dodges or trying to make it all about economics.
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Perhaps you should join a debate club? Might be more satisfying for you than real conversations.
Perhaps you could try seeing a statement some one makes as a creative expression coming from their experiences from life and speaking to their emotional and lived reality? You know, the stuff that actually affects humans day to day. Just a suggestion, please don’t take it too seriously. I mean, there’s no logical reason to try. But it does make it less frustrating when one might be challenged to relate to others’ experiences because they might fly in the face of your own or make you feel emotionally uncomfortable. Going around expecting people to translate everything they think or feel about what happens in their life and in the world around them into formal debate rhetoric will leave you with a very small sample size of people to learn from.
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And that’s a big part of the problem. I didn’t know it was a popularity contest. Well actually I did, but I don’t care.
Meh. Unpopular as my sentiments may be, I think blaming the ‘patriarchy’ for virtually all human pathologies is not only simplistic to the extreme, but absurd, even harmful. Realizing full well it is a sacrosanct narrative in some progressive circles (as you have emphasized).
Respectfully, I couldn’t disagree more. By shifting blame onto one segment of society alone, the all-to-convenient “allwhitemen” crutch often serves to both divide and distract from more sophisticated and compelling diagnoses of current socio-economic maladies.
Push notifications and red dots. Eliminate those entirely. My device shouldn’t shout at me about anything other than what I explicitly instruct it to (weather warnings, important deadlines).
True, there is some ability to shut those features down, and I try to do so at every turn. But the default state on apps is always “hey hey hey hey HEY HEY HEY HEY over here HEY!”
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Again, it’s about solidarity. You need to get people on board.
No-one is doing that. People are pointing out that it’s at the centre of a lot of current societal malaises. And they’re right.
I’m a ridiculously privileged white-presenting cis-het male, and I see no problem making allies by pointing out my demographic’s central role in creating a lot of current messes. Any personal discomfort I might feel when I admit my culpabilities in this regard is more than outweighed by the prospect of living in a society free of toxic masculinty. I understand that for others that’s just too much to bear.
Solidarity is about forming alliances with disparate groups who share recognition of a common problem and work together to solve it.
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Some people need start their own movie theaters, the projection is so strong with them.
Aye; we’re all in this together, like it or not.
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I agree entirely that apps are designed to do precisely this. But there are phone OS’s that explicitly let you control every notification and background prices (and location function) of every app, and ask you before doing so, at the very least. I default to answering no to location access, notifications and the like, and only let apps I care to run in the background.
As the article says, the OS really should do this for me, and it’s doubly unfair that vetting every interaction requires more tech knowledge than it should. I will personally continue to support org’s that try to support those goals. But there is no doubt that process, as it exists today, is infeasible for an average user, and that is unacceptable.
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Well you get to be you.
Telling however that you have to insinuate some sort of personality shortcoming on my part for not signing on to your collective guilt trip. Yuk.
Tell me does my father who left home with nothing but the clothes on his back, after being raised shoeless in the remorseless dust bowl of the Great Depression also need to repent? My good friend who at sixteen fled his drunken abusive parents, and put himself through high school while also working a part-time job? My introverted, sensitive son, just turned 17?
Uncritical ideology and groupthink regardless of where it lies on the political spectrum is part of the problem.
I said “for others”. If you see yourself among them, that’s on you. If you don’t, feel free to explain why.
Also, I don’t feel personally guilty here and have no standing to impose collective guilt. I just understand that a lot of people aren’t willing to acknowledge that white cis-het men as a general class have been and are, by dint of the power they’ve wielded in the West, the source of the patriarchy and its associated ills for centuries.
This isn’t about repentance or punishment (very patriarchal priorities, by the way), but about acknowledgment and remediation.
There’s a lot of fear amongst certain men that if they acknowledge the various privileges they enjoy on the basis of skin colour, gender, sexual orientation, etc., that they’ll immediately get beaten up by those who’ve been excluded from those privileges. In fact, the opposite often happens, and equality doesn’t end up feeling like oppression after all.
It seems to me that opposition to the patriarchy is both very critical and, judging by the debates between second- and third-wave feminists, far from groupthink.
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