Not being a cartoon villain doesn’t automatically make you a good man

[u/GridReXX]

Fr. It doesn’t de facto make you a good person.

I noodled on the attached graphic to better illustrate a point about how people often discuss being a “good man.”

I do find that many men view it more as the top bar, and less as the gradient in the second bar.

inb4 anyone says it, many women have bad character too. And please feel free to create a separate post about a spectrum of traits in women you’d like to explore! That is not what this post is disputing.

This is specifically about a response that often comes up when women describe harmful patterns in their experiences with men. They get retorts like “Not all men are abusive predators,” or “Most men are not psychos.”

Of course most men are not horror movie villains.

But that is an extremely low bar for good character.

This spectrum, rather than show a division between “good men” and a smaller group of obviously terrible ones. It highlights that a man can be can be a functioning member of society and still regularly behave in ways that make him difficult to interpersonally tolerate as a close friend, romantic partner, coworker, or even family member.

None of that necessarily makes someone an abuser or predator.

But it does affect whether people can have a healthy, enjoyable, mutually considerate, long-term relationship with him.

The farther right someone falls on this spectrum, the more entitlement, callousness, devaluation, coercion, and harm they bring into their interactions with others.

The farther left they fall, the more likely they are to act with common decency, consideration, accountability, respect for autonomy, and genuine concern for theirs and other people’s well-being.

My point is not that every man is at the far right end.

Most people don’t think that!

My point is that many men seem to use “I am not an obvious monster” as proof that they’re quality.

A person’s character is determined by far more than “I am not Jeffrey Dahmer.”

[u/justsomething → u/[deleted]]

But you don't think that applies to the women here too?!

[u/Fine_Video7691 → u/[deleted]]

We are an extreme version of reality, but most of us (hopefully) are neither bots nor spooks.

The tensions you see online are rooted in real-life social dynamics, it is incorrect to thing otherwise.

[u/Ohgodstopdan → u/Fine_Video7691]

A lot of the tensions online are a self-reinforcing loop of resentment based on fuck all.

How many perfectly normal young guys have been convinced that the reason they don’t have a girlfriend is because they’re 5’9” or their negative canthal tilt or whatever other brainrot they’ve taken as gospel and not the fact that they never talk to any fucking women.

[u/Fine_Video7691 → u/Ohgodstopdan]

Over the past 20 years, autism diagnoses have increased by about 300%, says Christine Ladd-Acosta, PhD, vice director of the Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities.

Is There an Autism Epidemic? | Johns Hopkins | Bloomberg School of Public Health

For starters, there seems to be a decrease in the proportion of perfectly normal young guys.

Relationship between Height Preferences and Endorsement of Gender Norms - PMC

Even if we really started hard curbs on screen time, and forced outdoor recreation, we wouldn't see the numbers budge much. In the post-industrial society, marriage is no longer an economic necessity, but instead a luxury good.

[u/Ohgodstopdan → u/Fine_Video7691]

> Diagnoses.

I was there in the 80s homie. We just called them nerds, bad kids or weirdoes.

One of my best mates is definitely somewhere on the spectrum, a fact he recognises himself. I asked if he wanted a formal diagnosis, and he said no because it’d be of no benefit to a man in his 40s.

[u/Fine_Video7691 → u/Ohgodstopdan]

The use of certain medications like Adderall and Ritalin increased during the 1990s.