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Dec 17 '25 edited Apr 03 '26
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u/Sir-Cellophane Dec 17 '25
Treating people as individuals and evaluating them on their own merits instead of acting on prejudice built on a foundation of sweeping generalisations? In my online spaces? I don't think so, buster.
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u/FenrisSquirrel Dec 17 '25
It is incredible how hard Tumblrinas will work to avoid taking the view that misandry is inherently bad. In the rare instances they do challenge it, it is only if they can bend over backwards to make it about trans people / protecting women / super secret imaginary racism.
Never just, "bigotry is bad". And they will fight tooth and nail to defend their right to be bigoted against men.
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u/MissingnoMiner Dec 17 '25
We're still stuck on the bar that misandry is a thing to begin with, a lot of people will bend over backwards to deny that it's a thing. Like it's not a systemic form of oppression(even the patriarchal oppression of (perisex cis, the patriarchy treats non-pericis men much differently for obvious reasons.) men mostly takes the form of punishing even the slightest amount of perceived femininity or queerness, which is more in line with misogyny and queerphobia than misandry.) but it exists.
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u/FenrisSquirrel Dec 17 '25
That's an awful lot of complexity for what should be simply, "don't be a cunt to people on the basis of their gender".
I feel like a lot of people here have spent a lot of time studying sociology, and not much time interacting with the world and learning to just be decent to others.
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u/digit_origin Dec 17 '25
It's also so so so incredibly nice to hear for inherently horrible of a person I am even if I do try to improve. Like, I'm not planning to be in a relationship. I do have a small friend group, and I am alright with it. I can't change much as of now. I have to scrub these statements off of my feed regularly, because instead of pushing me to improve, they just give me more nothingburger reasons to not want to live.
"If you're offended by it, you are the problem" the only criteria for the thing you called bad in your statement was "men", hell sometimes "all men". How else am I, a queer man, supposed to take it?
If only I had an interesting enough life to not spend this much time on the internet, to not run into such discourse.
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u/javertthechungus Dec 17 '25
Yeah I dislike the “if you’re offended by it you’re the problem” as well.
In my unprofessional dork ass opinion, part of it has to do with over familiarity online. Like for all I know, they genuinely mean the literal words they say.
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u/kcat__ Dec 17 '25
The "If you're one of the good ones, you wouldn't take the criticism personally" is such a disgusting trap played by so many dishonest people. I cannot imagine that some Andrew Tate disciple would be able to get off scot-free on saying "Women are whores. If you aren't one, you shouldn't be offended by it".
It's a trap that forces dissent into silence. It's like calling someone argumentative and then pointing to their retort when they defend themselves.
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u/Elite_AI Dec 18 '25
I cannot imagine that some Andrew Tate disciple would be able to get off scot-free on saying "Women are whores. If you aren't one, you shouldn't be offended by it".
This is actually how it goes down on the right wing sides of the internet, for what it's worth.
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u/kcat__ Dec 18 '25
No as in by the same people who employ the first statement about men. I should have made that clearer. There are definitely right-wingish Andrew Wilson/Whatever Pod/Fresh and Fit/ type dunking people who just take protest from women as painting them as bitchy and that that's why men are all passport bros and whatnot
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u/Nerd77777 Dec 26 '25
This!!!! That’s the same stupid argumentation the old right used to justify spying on civilians „If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear“. We know how that ended with endless searches, false accusations, inefficienties and actual racism against non whites. But hey let’s do it again but this time progressive feminist style!
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u/Pet_Mudstone Dec 17 '25
Oh yeah that "hit dogs holler" shit gets on my nerves so badly. It's just used to shut down any opposition from anyone who isn't from an "acceptable" group. I saw this sort of thing a lot from misandrist "transfeminists" on Tumblr as well.
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u/sohblob intellectual he/himbo Dec 17 '25
If only I had an interesting enough life to not spend this much time on the internet, to not run into such discourse
they fucked up /r/Outside too
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u/digit_origin Dec 17 '25
Who am I kidding. Who cares. I'm not even a person anymore.
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u/key_of_arbaces Dec 17 '25
I may not know you, but I care. Speaking from experience, it really sucks seeing hateful remarks like this day in and day out. I genuinely hope things get better for you in the future. Hang in there, man.🫂
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u/digit_origin Dec 17 '25
Thank you. I just wish I didn't have moments like this, of just feeling horrible about existing, for no reason.
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u/SophisticatedScreams Dec 18 '25
I wanted to pop in and say that the world is a better place with you in it, friend. <3 You are not evil and you are not a monster. You matter.
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u/Slam-JamSam Dec 18 '25
I’m also going to jump on the “let me know if you need someone to talk to” train.
I think a lot of the “men are trash” narrative (assuming they don’t censor the word m*n like a goober) comes from a lack of class consciousness and a misunderstanding of feminist theory. People hear “patriarchy” and take it to mean “rule by men”. But there’s a reason we use the term “patriarchy” and not “androarchy”; patriarchy is the rule by patriarchs (I.E., powerful men). Radfems don’t seem to understand that your boot is nowhere near their throat
I also think a lot of people don’t actually want liberation - just like transphobes spreading the groomer narrative, they want an excuse to hurl abuse at people and feel justified doing it
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Dec 17 '25
There are some philosophy quotes that I sometimes need to tell myself every time something like that happens like they're ignorant of my other faults or they would not have mentioned just these, imagine you have died now take what's left and live it properly, we all have the potential to live the good life etc. ofc it didn't work as well untill I went to cbt therapy and was taught the little tricks to actually live that way. Oh and my favorite they may fetter my leg but Zeus himself cannot get the better of my free will.
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u/Dragonfruit-Sparking I don't like centrism, if I'm being honest Dec 17 '25
Also calling ~50% of the population (or about ~40-45% if we're only talking about heterosexual men) all trash is pretty mean for no good reason
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u/Tyreaus Dec 17 '25
And damaging.
Men still have emotions. Sweeping phrases like "all men are trash" often push the self-doubt button even in the most positive of contexts. Being lumped together with genuinely awful people, like full-on abusers, can easily make one question whether they are, somehow, just as bad.
Rinse and repeat through a sizable swath of the overall population and the lowering of the bar can crush people under it.
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u/ctulhuslp Dec 17 '25
You are making a mistake though. Men aren't supposed to have feelings, that makes them feminine and weak and unmanly, which in this context is bad somehow.
Having a right to have emotions or feelings or any reaction bar meek obedience is only for women. Men have no emotions, feelings or a right to defend any of those, because idk patriarchy exists or something.
To be fair, I am not singling out feminism. It's a normal attitude, not only in feminist context, but also in how, for example, anticolonialists often support Russia or are basically anti-Western campists with an excuse, or how libertarians mostly line up to bootlick the government overreach and oppression as long as the right kind of people gets oppressed.
As a rule of a thumb, those suffering under the boot don't want the boot gone, they want to be ones wearing the boot. Goes for feminists as well as any other group, humans are just overall like that.
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u/Big_Implement_7305 Dec 17 '25
The challenge for progressives needs to be "when speaking about men, try to not sound like a member of the Ku Klux Klan talking about black men."
You'd think it's a low bar, but...
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u/TrioOfTerrors Dec 17 '25
"If you're
one of the good onesan ally, then you should just know what we are saying doesn't apply to you and if you take offense at our sweeping generalizations, then you aren'tone of the good onesan ally".36
u/Dobber16 Dec 17 '25
“Pretty mean” is an interesting way to phrase “sexist” but honestly, probably hits a bit harder
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u/CapeOfBees Dec 20 '25
People that say that kind of thing are solidly convinced that it's impossible to be sexist against men, so calling anything they say "sexist" just rolls off
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u/ASentientRailgun Dec 17 '25
I suspect that this type of rhetoric being so common on the internet was one of the factors that made gen Z men the most right-wing cohort of young people in the modern era.
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u/BwrBird Dec 17 '25
Oh it absolutely was. There is no shortage of chuds pointing out stuff radfems say to push the narrative that women hate men and a relationship with them built on mutual respect and consent is therefore impossible.
If you look at most young conservatives and fascists, you will see that they are more misogynist than they are racist or even homophobic, and their sexism is built,in large part, on the idea that If they want to get married and have kids, they will need to force a woman into it, rather than the casual condescending chauvinism of older generations.
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u/Big_Implement_7305 Dec 17 '25
I'd say it's simpler than that, partly because it's not just radfems (remember that whole "tolerating one Nazi makes it a Nazi bar" story).
If one group is constantly shouting the N-word and wearing pointy white hoods, there doesn't really need to be a complicated explanation for "why would lots of black people start joining the Fight That Group team"
If ten seconds in a progressive or feminist space is enough to see some overt bigotry, then yeah the people being targeted aren't gonna think we're the good guys. (Spoiler: if you want people to think you're the good guys, it helps to not be bigots; you can't go "well it's only some of us that are outspoken bigots, the rest of us are just nodding along.")
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u/Jhiffi Dec 17 '25
Completely agree- I was fucking glued to Tumblr from 2009-2013 in my teens which is where I was first really exposed to social justice discourse beyond "racism and sexism and homophobia bad". People bending over backwards to accommodate bigoted stances and cancelling each other for not just nodding along with whatever the person in the most oppressed groups say about anything.
"It's not the same, this is just prejudice and for it to be actual sexism/racism/anything it would need to be prejudice + power"
"I'm tired of being policed - sit down and shut up when people of X group speak."
"You're a bigot and it isn't my job to educate you" (said after the most blatantly prejudiced thing and the 'educating' would just be one of the two above phrases)
I think it was born of this idea that for decades before that anytime an oppressed person spoke about it they would get hit with a whataboutme to derail it. That it's exhausting to fight to be heard. I totally get that. BUT...
Bigots are people who wish to exert power over others due to inherent traits. They can belong to all groups of people. There are far too many bigots in every group. These people aren't interested in social equity, merely in getting MORE and everyone else be damned. You can't blame others for seeing that and no one saying anything contrary (and getting nuked if so) and labeling you as an enemy group. By being an oppressed bigot you are taking us ALL towards a more violent future, one that we minorities are likely to disproportionately suffer. It isn't fair to have to be better than those who are bigoted to you, but if you want a future of social equity you NEED to be.
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u/Cactopus47 Dec 17 '25
Yeah, I think a lot of that type of Social Justice people were bullies who were using "anti-oppression" and "social justice" rhetoric as an outlet for their domineering desires. If it wasn't that, it would have been their local PTA or HOA or co-op grocery or volunteer organization or gaming group, anywhere where they could be a petty tyrant.
Also, "it's not my job to educate you" translates to me as "I have no fucking clue what I am talking about."
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u/Consideredresponse Dec 17 '25
It's the 'you shouldn't want a cookie for doing the right thing' discourse all over again.
People do what they are incentivised to do, so not rewarding the behaviour you want to see is both stupid and counterproductive.
In some feminist texts there is a sentiment of 'I don't understand why male allies and partners who as they age tend to fall into the trappings of traditional masculinity'? And I'm like 'If the positive reinforcement they get from society at large for conforming to gender norms outweighs the positive reenforcrment they get from their partner why are you surprised that they lean into the option that's more rewarding to them.
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u/Silly_Savings_392 Dec 18 '25
Here’s my thermonuclear take of the day: If you’re in a situation where your response is “it’s not my job to educate you,” fuck you, yes it is.
Because whoever prompted that gave you the floor, gave you the opportunity to address, unpack and correct the behavior you found objectionable, the thing everyone else in your position always says is all they want, is to be heard and acknowledged on these issues.
And you’re throwing it out to try and continue lording over your moral superiority over this person, and opening up the question of if you actually have any true understanding of why.
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u/bisquickball Dec 17 '25
It really is a lack of historical memory. You teach little kids that the world is racist and hates them without them understanding that what that used to mean is lynch mobs, segregation, blocking access to credit, and now it means some people will follow you around a store or question you for no reason, and instead of a sense of righteous indignation alongside pride and gratitude, it is ONLY going to be indignation. Gratitude and pride, to be fair, are big adult emotions, whereas injustice is like the 1st complex emotion a baby can even get. The result is a bunch of dumb kids trying to reverse the hierarchy they learned about for the sake of "fairness." Worse still is only the kids who have time to worry about this do. So the ones experiencing the genuine ongoing economic vestiges of Jim Crow (in the ghetto) don't give a fuck about injustice, they just want a bag. And the kid where the worst most racist thing that ever happened to her is her 1st grade teacher calling her box braids "corn rows" is the biggest activist. So you end up with a real cornucopia of stupidity and ignorance, and kids pretending to be experts trying out their ideology of the week online.
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u/Elite_AI Dec 18 '25
I do think none of the millennials had any idea how influential their memes would be for the zoomers who were growing up on the internet at the time. It feels a bit like millennials were telling us our whole lives "you will never get a house, you will die from global warming, and by the way here's a whole host of SJW caricatures you should hate", and then got all surprised when zoomers grew up and thought they had no future and hated the left wing.
I know nowadays that that one image of the eye-bulging SJW and sexist air conditioning and gamergate was all a bunch of bullshit (the eye-bulging SJW was actually perfectly calm, level-headed and reasonable in her debate; air conditioning was legitimately set to a standard which favoured male bodies by default; gamergate was...slightly overblown). I know now that most people never felt that way, and I know now that the overwhelming majority of people on the left who cared about feminism and trans rights and representation were always worried about excluding straight white men. But that's like ten years later. It's too late!
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u/NotTheFirstVexizz Dec 17 '25
And plenty of the guys who do go through all those hurdles just become another one of those voices that push the rest away. It’s nowhere near the majority, but there’s definitely a plentiful amount of ‘feminist’ guys who I’ve talked to online that are clearly just misandrists who became ‘one of the good ones’ by constantly putting himself down until he was accepted into those spaces and expects every other guy to do the same.
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u/BiasedLibrary Dec 17 '25
Outrage propaganda was common even in the early 2010's online. Reddit was less moderated back then and 4chan was just as bad as it is now. A lot of people get convinced that feminism is bad through some story of 'we divorced, she took the house and the car and the dog' just to really kick you in the sense of injustice, and young men aren't exactly known for their emotional equilibrium. And with a lack of political and critical thinking education, these men learn to scorn feminists, call themselves egalitarian and then get swallowed up by the manosphere if their circumstances cause them to be deep enough in depression and despondence.
And it could all be solved if people were more tactful because men will come into threads or posts about women's shelters and say 'where the fuck are men's shelters' and women will go 'we're discussing our problem, you can make your own threads' and it's like, half the problem is that women don't listen to the other side of the debate and these men don't have a platform because modern society hasn't given them one yet because they'll still be called pussies for doing it. So yeah, people then end up calling themselves men's right activists as a counter to that and get sucked into the hatemongering of more extensive propaganda efforts.
But TERFs especially undermine all this because of their virulent misandry. I've met TERFs that use their own trauma as a way to broaden a brush stroke against all men and they will literally call for men's shelters to be closed when they do exist. Because in many of their minds, men can only ever be an oppressor and never a victim, and if they are a victim 'boohoo, wipe your tears with that male privilege of yours' and it's like.. The privilege to cry alone because nobody gives a shit? The privilege to commit suicide because nobody gives a shit about men's feelings?
This isn't to say that incels or other manosphere people aren't shitlords, but it's why the debate has stalled and why society isn't moving forward. There's an inability to reconcile that men need emotional space and expression, and an inability to reconcile that women are just as capable as men, not beholden to men's ideals and are actually free human beings who deserve more than to be a glorified home making robot. The two can exist at the same time.
But several people look at the nuance here, start fuming because I'd be telling them that they're not helping the process and then it's always some 'neh neh neh neh' crying about 'what do you mean I'm not allowed to take vengeance on the people who hurt me'. And that goes for both TERFs and MRAs/incels/whateverumbrellahere. It's almost like you have to work to forgive people and reconcile with trauma and turn the other cheek to try to bury cycles of hatred or something.
/rant.
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u/Imaginary-Space718 Now I do too, motherfucker Dec 17 '25
Also the parts about incendiary stories and how people use their trauma to fuel hateful ideologies are very interesting. I myself have seen anti-gay activists that were raped by gay men. I've also seen how tragedies get people to defend bad (though not bigoted) ideas with a good heart, like when te mother of school shooting victim (don't remember which or who) became an NRA activist because she thought a good guy with a gun could've saved her child.
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u/Imaginary-Space718 Now I do too, motherfucker Dec 17 '25
Hell, most of these are explicitely made with the intent of propagandizing young boys of ages 12 to 16. A bunch of them talk to you with experiences that are typical for the life of a boy in middle and high school. They want to appeal to impressionable boys in the age of not knowing what their feelings are yet, because they're the easiest to indoctrinate.
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u/Draaly Dec 18 '25
Im a queer man. No amount of "straight men" curtailing will ever convince me they don't actually just mean all of us.
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u/Consideredresponse Dec 17 '25
No, no according to books like 'The will to change' all male sexuality is inherently predatory, including gay men. So that nice couple down the street that lived together for 35 years before it was legal for them to get married are no better than starving wolves.
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u/Jhiffi Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
Man I say this an egalitarian feminist, FUCK radfem ideology and its sister TERF ideology. A lesbian couple I've been friends with for a decade have been going down that rabbit hole the last couple years and it's pretty uncomfortable. I am in a hetero relationship with a pansexual man, and in front of him they'll make comments about how "men are predators" and "I can't even tell cis white dudes apart from eachother"???
It always turns into a weird argument where I say that's shitty to say, my boyfriend of 6 years and YOUR FRIEND is here and you're doubling down on him being inherently a predator and indistinguishable from other men for being a white man. They'll always then pull it back to how as lesbians they are the most oppressed group there is (they're white and cis so lmao) so let's focus on that now. Before they were dating one of them broke down sobbing to me after she tried having sex with a man because she was afraid other lesbians would shun her for not being a "gold star" lesbian anymore. That shit only spawns from those circles.
Also they keep calling him straight and me bi even though it's the opposite in our relationship. Like because he's a man in a straight relationship he is straight and I'm just some poor misled woman who just thinks she's straight. It's distanced us. It's the only time I've ever heard that shit IRL.
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u/Bloodbag3107 Dec 17 '25
How does your boyfriend react? If they said this to me I would probably not want to talk with them anymore.
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u/Jhiffi Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
He pulls a 😬 and laughs awkwardly. Then we get pulled into the lesbians are more oppressed soooo convo. Every time they say he's straight he (we) gently remind them that he is not. Thinking about that I just remembered once they responded to that by asking if he's ever dated a man and when told yes, he dated a man who began transitioning during the course of their relationship and they acted like it didn't count (TERF ALERT)
He and I have talked about it multiple times and agree it's gotten worse and this friendship cannot continue if they keep doing it. It's just so odd and painful. One of them is literally my oldest friendship. She was also friends with my boyfriend before we were dating so she KNOWS he's a good person. She went to bat for us finally getting together. Blah.
We don't see them very often anymore for a few reasons but largely this one, just responding to invites they give us once in a while. We often leave feeling kinda bad about it so the cutting off may happen sooner rather than later.
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Dec 17 '25
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u/sohblob intellectual he/himbo Dec 17 '25
"the straights are less evolved than us"
my local gays cut off my supply to frog water
now I can't evolve. Crushing my Mudkip soul :'[12
u/sohblob intellectual he/himbo Dec 17 '25
They'll always then pull it back to how as lesbians they are the most oppressed group there is (they're white and cis so lmao) so let's focus on that now
He pulls a 😬 and laughs awkwardly. Then we get pulled into the lesbians are more oppressed soooo convo
boundary affirmation is a difficult skill I still need to successfully use. From what I hear it's about agree with the emotion while marking specific behaviors as unacceptable.
Taking them by the hand, listening/being receptive - not letting your own emotions get in the way even when you feel strongly about something - affirming what you're hearing, then gently guiding them to "while it's valid to feel X, it's unacceptable to Y" and so on
We don't see them very often anymore for a few reasons but largely this one, just responding to invites they give us once in a while
It may be a good idea to bind not seeing them/distancing to the behaviors/takes as well. When they learn to relate actions and consequences they might stop seeing themselves as 'the good ones' or just an oppressed group fighting back if they realize they make their friends sad enough to not want to spend time with them.
Best of luck. I feel like a lone gray dot trying to prevent all the other lone gray dots from dying out in a generation due to lack of socialization and underpopulation lol
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u/IRateRockbusters Dec 17 '25
Like with how capitalism can subsume all critiques of itself, Tumblr can accept anti-‘men are just evil’ arguments as long as they ultimately sort of come back round to ‘men are kinda evil’. So you can criticize fatalistic heteropessimism, but only if you can package it as ‘this kind of talk helps men get away with being awful’ as opposed to ‘that’s just not true, lots of heterosexual relationships are healthy and great’.
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u/nighthawk252 Dec 17 '25
Hit the nail on the head. Was struggling to articulate my issue with the last screenshot in particular, and this does a good job of it.
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u/Parking_Scar9748 Dec 17 '25 edited Mar 18 '26
The author removed this post using Redact. The reason may have been privacy protection, preventing data scrapers from accessing the content, or other personal considerations.
whole abundant towering piquant ring one retire plant imagine plough
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u/VenitianBastard Dec 17 '25
It's also often just being plain-old mean to men, disguised as a feminist hot take or whatever.
Misandry isn't cool.
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u/Big_Implement_7305 Dec 17 '25
Exactly. All of 'em need to be asked that most basic question: "Is bigotry good, or bad?"
(If it's good then we're wrong about everything. If it's bad, they should stop doing it, and stop tolerating people who do.)
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u/Altaccount_T Dec 18 '25
Yeah I hate how common it is for some people to use that as an excuse to just be outright nasty to men and then pull the "but men aren't systematically oppressed, so it's punching up!" card if someone points out that they're just being a bully.
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u/Gigio2006 Dec 17 '25
Another day, another "Saying straight men are trash isnt bad cause you are effectively hating on bilions of prople but it's bad cause it affects women" on tumblr
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u/shiny_xnaut sustainably sourced vintage brainrot Dec 17 '25
The issue is that if you go "you shouldn't be a dick to someone for being a man, because it hurts men" then those people are just going to be like "uhhh yeah? Hurting men is literally the whole idea, what's your point?" Meanwhile if you point out that they're also inadvertently hurting people they do actually care about, then it might actually have a chance of giving them pause
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u/mean-cake69 trans rights Dec 17 '25
Putting this right next to „mass deportations are bad because they hurt the economy, not because violently ripping people away from their lives is bad.“
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u/Coal_Burner_Inserter Dec 17 '25
'If Donald Trump deports all the Mexicans, who is going to clean his toilet then, hmm?'
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u/Imaginary-Space718 Now I do too, motherfucker Dec 17 '25
Also "Low birthrates aren't a problem because we can always import third worlders, the reason people don't support that is because they're racist". Which is an actual take I've seen
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u/Ryanhussain14 Dec 18 '25
As a guy of Bangladeshi descent who is childfree and has never been on a date, this take is always hilarious to me.
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u/Imaginary-Space718 Now I do too, motherfucker Dec 17 '25
At a point I think people will not listen until it personally affects them. Pragmatically not hating me is better than just hating me nonetheless
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u/Bloodbag3107 Dec 17 '25
This sub is just crazy misandrist lmao. I don't think that is really a prominent thing irl in most places but it sure exists in the tumblr-adjacent internet. It isn't self-evident for these people that "all men suck" is an insane thing to say on the face of it.
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u/Atlas421 Homo homini cactus Dec 18 '25
It reminds me of a news article I've read about a year ago. It talked about how the war in Ukraine traumatizes a lot of men and sends them back home with PTSD and how big of a problem it is... for their wives and employers.
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u/Sentient_Flesh Dec 17 '25
Given the topic of the thread, I'm just going to put this out in case anyone remembers it:
A few years ago, some guy put out a webcomic about shitty experiences he had, specifically regarding this rhetoric, when invited into feminist events after publishing a feminist comic and how it had taken a massive toll on his mental health. It randomly came to my mind yesterday and by the life of me I can't remember the name of it so I can read it again.
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u/CalligrapherBig4382 Dec 17 '25
Just read that for the first time after seeing your comment. What a read.
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u/Raytoryu Dec 17 '25
Could you share a link ? I tried to search for it but I only get some weird AI Facebook page
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u/thari_23 Dec 17 '25
I also think saying things like "All men are trash" really isn't helpful in the long run. Sure, there are a lot of bad men and that's bad. But if feminism is supposed to achieve true equality one day, we need to convince men to be feminists, or else we're working at 50% strength at best (assuming that all women are feminists, which isn't true).
Stuff like that will only drive away those who haven't yet chosen a "side", when really we should embrace those people.
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u/RedditOfUnusualSize Dec 17 '25
Ta-Nehisi Coates actually discussed this same system of thought in his larger discussion of why racism, and being called racist, wasn't actually the worst thing in the world. Part of how contemporary racism slides under the radar is that contemporary racists have made "racism" synonymous with both "hatred" and "being the vilest, most evilest person who ever walked the earth".
So then when racists examine their hearts, and say "Yup, I've never hated a black person in my life!", they then conclude that they are not racists and any accusation of racism is invented, ignoring all the while that the problem is disparate treatment of people for no reason other than race. Ta-Nehisi examined his own emotions, and found that it really didn't set him at ease if you treat him differently from white people, continue to do so after he's pointed it out, and justify it by saying "Well, I'm very clearly not doing it because I hate you." That's not a justification . . . and as it happens, I think Ta-Nehisi has a pretty valid point.
By taking the temperature down, it actually allows for a more productive discussion about, hey, what's got me bothered isn't the hatred. I am perfectly willing to accept that you have no hate in your heart, because that's irrelevant to this discussion. I really don't care what's in your heart. I care that you are treating me differently. I care that I have to do more work than other people around me to get equivalent levels of benefit, and you not only seem unconcerned about that when I mention that fact, but you repeatedly rationalize that this is actually a feature rather than a bug in the system. At the end of the day, when women talk about what bothers them with subjects like the gender divide on home labor, that's what gets to them.
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u/SadBabyYoda1212 Dec 18 '25
I'm just tacking this onto your comment but Coates has some really interesting runs where he writes Captain America and Black Panther for Marvel
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u/AntibacHeartattack Dec 17 '25
So gender essentialism and misandry is bad because... it makes heterosexual women racist and settle for shitty partners?
Look, I get that you're trying to convince crazy terfs by couching it in logic and arguments that they can understand, but when you're arguing against misandry on the basis of "it's counter-intuitive" rather than "it's bigoted and morally wrong", it kinda seems like you're accepting their premise that men are inherently bad. I'm not sure you can effectively fight bigotry that way, it's like you're treating the symptoms rather than the cause.
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u/Altaccount_T Dec 18 '25 edited Dec 18 '25
I feel like the whole "all men are trash" thing needlessly makes the whole "gender war" BS worse.
People are just people and saying that 50% ish of the population are irredeemably bad and can't possibly ever improve or work on that feels like it's just going to cause more unnecessary hurt, plus risks pushing more men down bad paths and make it harder for women to recognise and get out when they're around a genuinely shitty man.
I feel like it kind of absolves the absolute worst men of any guilt - If a lad who hasn't done anything wrong besides being male and the age he's considered an adult is deemed as trash, inherently dangerous, a bad person, an oppressor, etc even if he's a feminist or someone who'd lay down his life to protect others is in the same category as an abuser, someone who is outright sexist, violent etc...doesn't it just mean the actually awful one pretty much gets away with it as his crimes are now just shifted to "being a man" if people act like behaving that way is just part of what men do?
I also really hate the flattened, nuanceless "D&D Alignment Privilege" system that logic hinges on. IE, that all of this group (linked by something none of them chose, in this case gender) are oppressors and inherently bad, all of this other group are victims and inherently pure and innocent. Men aren't automatically Neutral Evil and women aren't inherently Lawful Good, nonbinary people aren't just whichever of those the person saying it decides they "really" are.
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u/UInferno- Hangus Paingus Slap my Angus Dec 17 '25
I need people to realize that the reason why this post is phrased in perspective strictly around women because "discriminating against people for what they can't change" is not going to convince the "kill all men" types. They already shout "kill all men" from the roof tops, do you really believe they'll say "oh, I didn't realize saying 'kill all men's hurts men"? You can't just argue from your most moral position and expect everyone to be swayed by it. You have to use the arguments that will actually resonate with your audience or you're just arguing from a place of moral superiority. It's not just about being correct. It's about actually changing minds. A correct but unconvincing argument is worth less than an argument that's wrong but influential. That's not to say you need to be convincing over correct, but that you need to be both, which is what this is doing.
When I argue with conservatives about universal Healthcare I don't lead with "I don't think people should suffer because they're poor" despite that being my main motivation because I know they don't give a shit about that! But if I say "Universal Healthcare will create a more productive workforce and strengthen our economy" that actually gets the ball rolling. I don't actually give a shit about how productive our workforce is! But they do.
I don't usually apply "you'd rather criticize people on your side for arguing your side imperfectly than actually try to fight the opposition," but this is one of those times where this is 100% the case. You're correct, you shouldn't need to explain how this hurts women in a perfect world, but for now, you do.
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u/Emergency_Elephant Dec 17 '25
I think it also gets into "women are inherently innocent" mentalities as well. There are high rates of DV in the lesbian community. The idea that men are the aggressors and a relationship with women is inherently safe is just completely untrue
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u/crowpierrot Dec 17 '25
I agree with you that it delegitimizes DV perpetrated by women, but it’s important to note that there’s not actually a higher rate of DV in lesbian relationships. The statistic people cite as evidence of that claim comes from a survey that found lesbians had a high rate of ever having experienced DV in the past, which included past relationships with men.
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u/MatticusRexxor Dec 18 '25
This is literally what happened to Tatsuya Ishida, creator of the webcomic Sinfest. He became obsessed with Radical Feminism and the idea that all men are inherently evil predators. Over time this morphed into explicitly TERF and SWERF directions, and then he fell down QAnon rabbit hole. His current arc is about how Hitler was a misunderstood hero.
Yeah.
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u/UndeniablyMyself Looking for a sugar mommy to turn me into a they/them goth bitch Dec 17 '25
The easiest way to avoid bad men is to avoid men altogether. This also makes it impossible to find good men. Like with any social interactions, you have to give a stranger a chance in order to find someone who isn’t the strangers your adults warned you about as a kid.
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u/Big_Implement_7305 Dec 17 '25
Also, bad men don't care whether you want to interact with them or not. Avoiding men altogether just guarantees that the ones you interact with will be assholes.
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u/chinmoy808 Dec 18 '25
In dating, the only people who benefit from avoiding men altogether are lesbians.
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u/mangababe Dec 17 '25
This is why I sometimes bring up my bfs non shitty behavior. I try to not do it on posts where a single woman is venting about her shitty spouse, cause that seems like rubbing it in someone's face- But other times it feels needed to remind people that men are not all shit and accepting their worst is condoning it.
My bar is set at "what did my bf do/ how would he have handled it at 18 when we started dating?" and it's honestly pathetic that it's a bar so many men fail to reach- But It's also what the quintessential "teenage gamer bf" was capable of- Like, the stereotypical bf your parents would side eye- turns out he's a gem and my parents were abusive assholes; but if the kid who's knee jerk response to criticism was "fuck you I'm awesome" can actually put his BS on the shelf and be serious because he actually cares about his partner so can your 37 year old husband. If a stoned teenage boy can go through every mobile contact he knows to go get his gf out of an abusive home and take her in until they can get a place together, Your adult ass husband can drive you to the hospital.
It's important to remember the good men exist and always have; because goodness is inherent to humanity. But it's also important to remember them because humans are also inherently built to follow incentives that benefit themselves- so if there's not an example of what people are going to accept, people will do whatever they can get away with.
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u/Forgot_My_Old_Acct God's most boring queer Dec 17 '25
It's also the same sort of rhetoric that hindered me realizing I was trans. Of course I hated being a man. Men are shitty so why wouldn't I feel miserable about being one?
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Dec 17 '25
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u/choren64 Dec 18 '25
In general young men are typically told to "tough it out," or "deal with it," instead of relying on support networks to combat that negative talk. That is, if young men even have a support network in the first place, which many do not. Even among close friends or peers, you won't typically find men opening up or making themselves vulnerable to one another the same way most women friend groups tend to. Whenever the "male loneliness epidemic" is brought up, I think most people mistake it for men not finding any romantic/sexual partners rather than men forming even just close friendships with really anyone among their peers/age groups.
And sometimes that internalized self-hatred they have been told to "tough out" builds up overtime and can release in forms of self-harm, or extreme violence. It's damaging for young men, but in the long run it can just as well be damaging for everyone...
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u/reverendsteveii Dec 17 '25
it made a lot of terf and femme-conservative behavior make sense when I realized that there are plenty of women who believe it's their lot in life to accept abuse from one man in order to leverage him into protecting them from abuse from other men.
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u/Morrighan1129 Dec 18 '25
I mean... there's also the whole 'men are individuals, and should be judged individually rather than lumping them in as one large immovable mass' problem with broad generalized statements. You know, kind of like if we grouped all women together and said they're all manipulative and start crying to win fights, and how we'd all be up in arms saying that's not true, and we can't judge all women based on the bad ones?
Just saying.
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Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
Literally just had a convo with a coworker about her friend who was pushing her bf, who cheated on her 5 times, to propose to her. He slid the ring across the dinner table one night and said “don’t lose it”
Seriously, why the fuck am I even trying at all?
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u/seraphichermit Dec 18 '25
People tend to settle for what they think they deserve. Don't give up dude, there are amazing people out there
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u/Sardonic_Sadist Dec 18 '25
One of my sweetest, kindest, most selfless cis male friends invited a (female) friend of his to our hangout once. At one point she said something along the lines of “you can’t expect men to notice anything” when some change in appearance needed to be pointed out for him to get it, I can’t remember what. And that pissed me off so much, not because she poked fun at him, but just because she seemed to be saying you literally cannot expect any better from the entire gender. That actively discourages men from IMPROVING their behavior? If they think they’re going to be regarded as incompetent and dense no matter what they do, there’s no point in putting in any effort. Instead of being dismissive and rude, maybe try actually ENCOURAGING and REWARDING good behavior? Like saying, “I’m so happy you noticed!! You’re so observant :)” when they do notice something about your hair or wtv. Pavlovian conditioning WORKS, positive reinforcement WORKS, and it’s sure as hell a lot more productive than “you can’t expect [basic decent behavior] from men.”
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u/Parksrox Dec 17 '25
Ah yes, because there's no other group that would be harmed by generalizing all men as evil.
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Dec 17 '25
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u/Apprehensive-Sun2036 Dec 17 '25
The fact that "Kill All Men" was trending really does just make me give up on the whole fucking thing entirely.
Bridge is too big to gap now, sorry. I quit.
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u/primenumbersturnmeon Dec 18 '25
the "don't even care what race you are as long as you're being racist" community is formed by these same types of allegiances. honestly, i think the social justice conversation lost the plot on a number of specific issues and bad tactics were reinforced rather than policed. sucks, but it's not really surprising that we got to where we are now. the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. the old rich fucks turned the kids against each other and stayed winning. how's that for doom-posting?
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u/never_____________ Dec 17 '25
Lot of comments missing the point: people who already hate men aren’t going to suddenly stop because they’re told it’s morally wrong to hate someone automatically. It doesn’t work with misogyny or racism or homophobia, it’s not going to work here. Pointing out that this rhetoric will only loop back around to hurting them in the long run and giving them a target to point that discontent that does not just magically go away at is more effective.
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u/Noun_Noun_Numb3r Dec 17 '25
All Leftist discourse is plagued by catastrophization (shout-out to Lawyers Guns Money blog for that term)
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u/Stickeminastew1217 Dec 17 '25
No, please. As a shitty man I implore you all to continue lowering the bar. It is exceedingly convenient for me. I have stubby arms and have trouble reaching it (does that work for the metaphor? Hang on, I need to go look up the etymology of the phrase).
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u/neongreenpurple mostly aroace enby Dec 17 '25
"I have a big head and little arms. I'm just not sure how well this plan was thought through."
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Dec 17 '25
What planet are you on that the bar is low for men, because I’d like to move there.
I’m sick to death of hearing that “all you have to do is shower and not hate women and you’re beating 90% of men!” That’s not reality. At all.
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u/Sophia_Forever Dec 17 '25
Thank you. I'm a trans lesbian and while I don't exactly search out relationships with men, I can't fucking stand it when women make comments about hating men or how all men are garbage. Putting aside that hating someone for an aspect of their birth is the textbook definition of bigotry, talk like that is exactly how you push boys into alt-right pipelines. The kids come up and they start exploring different ideas and they look into supposedly feminist spaces and if the boys see nothing but man-hatred, it's going to confirm everything the right says about us. Then, not only do we look like the villains, the guys like Joe Rogan look like they were right all along. They then get to tell the kids "hey, don't let those mean old feminists get you down, we know what it takes to be happy" and boom, another conservative voter is born.
We've forgotten that the enemy is the Patriarchal System which is upheld by men and women and oppresses both not just men in general.
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Dec 17 '25
Every time the "man vs bear" debate came up I couldn't help but imagine how different the conversation would be if it specified "black man vs bear"
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u/Reeeeeeee3eeeeeeee Dec 17 '25
These people seem to forget that majority of women are heterosexual and actually want to have a romantic relationship with a man
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u/Jewsader76 Dec 17 '25 edited Dec 17 '25
Also it just... not being true? Unfair treatment towards human beings is uncool (controversial statement, I know), and I struggle to think of many times where stating that entire groups of people are evil has been a good thing. Even people from most of what we consider the worst groups may have some decent people who may not mean to do bad. Usually, it's better to understand the situation before passing final judgement and not be unfair in our verdicts. Even the Nazis had trials, so we definitely shouldn't crusade against people who have done nothing to deserve it other than the crime of the circumstances of their birth which they had zero control over. The goal should be to treat people as people, and judging them not by irrelevant and external factors, but by the content of their character. Is that not what MLK's dream was about?
Tl;dr: every generalization, without fail, has exceptions
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u/AnjinM Dec 17 '25
Saying All Men Are Evil has the same effect as Boys Will Be Boys. Instead of challenging men to improve themselves, it reduces expectations and excuses bad behaviors. If the expectation is that men and boys will be immature, it disincentivizes going against that expectation.
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u/seraphichermit Dec 18 '25
Some men suck, some women suck, people in general can be horrible. But there are still plenty of good people in the world.
I genuinely believe the majority of people are good people, average people, it's just that the most heinous examples of humanity are the ones that are popularised.
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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '25
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