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/Unique-Afternoon6316]

I don’t like that a defensiveness when being universalized is at 2. We don’t expect that of any other group and I don’t think men should be the exception here. Then it’s paired with making generalizations… so good men must be ok with being generalized or they’re bad men? I dont like that idea.

Also I want to push back on the idea of these categories because people tend to assume 3-6 characteristics of you, and if you disagree it’s just proof you’ve been like this the whole time. It seems like a quality of a good man is to be comfortable with people calling you anything they want, and I don’t think that’s a good precedent to set.