Sometimes I need to see the twitter feeds of people like this, as a reminder of exactly what women mean when they talk about men being scum.
Sometimes it hurts to be generalized into a category I don’t feel I belong to and it’s tempting to push back, but knowing that people are out there spending what appears to be all of their free time being horrible online and harassing women is a good reminder that women are pretty justified in having a low opinion of men in general.
Now I can go back to pretending twitter doesn’t exist for a while again.
The easiest way to see if it’s OK is to swap out “men” with any other protected characteristic. If, having done that it suddenly becomes problematic, it was always so and they should’ve known better.
I think youre right not to engage them though. For all their talk of equality, anyone who talks like that just wants to be at the top of a new hierarchy. Remove or subjugate the men and most women (who haven’t decolonisated their minds) will just replicate the same power structures, adopting the position of patriarch without a hint of self awareness. The way forward is to help other men see the pain caused to them by the patriarchy, as its only then that we can see the pain we cause through the patriarchy, due to the rituals of disregard and empathy killing we go through as boys.
I’ll finish by saying the same thing I said to my dad, shortly after he lost his job" "yes dad, of course I’ve heard of the phrase ‘sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.’ However, you can’t always do that, especially when you’re meant to be firefighter, you doughnut.
You should reference my other comment in this thread. You’re correct that statements like “all men are trash” are unjustly prejudiced, but you’re making a false equivalence.
My point is that is that both are wrong, not that they are or are not both equally wrong. So, would you mind explaining where the equivalence is please?
I mean, I know its more of a case that some people don’t like that both of those things are wrong to do but I’m gonna need a little more than that and a misunderstanding of an informal fallacy, sorry.
The easiest way to see if it’s OK is to swap out “men” with any other protected characteristic. If, having done that it suddenly becomes problematic, it was always so and they should’ve known better.
No. You are making an equivalence argument that misses the reality of power dynamics and the context of like centuries of documented social oppression.
Edit: Fuck I didn’t see erin beat me to it.
No, it’s not an equivalence argument. I didn’t say they were equally wrong or the same thing. Also, nether power dynamics nor oppression make those things right.
You’re telling me that you see no problem with black people saying the same about all white people then?
No, really that doesn’t make it ok. You’re generalizing half the population. It’s not my fault that other people are and have been trash, it’s not my fault that I was born male, and it sure feels great to be generalized with the assholes when I wish every night to just magically wake up with a cis woman’s body (for various reasons am not transitioning and run around as male presenting).
Thank you.
All landlords are parasites. All women are parasites.
One is rather true, in a metaphorical way. The other is a sexist, misogynistic slur.
I’m never quite convinced by this equivalence argument.
So just because shitty men exist, we’re supposed to say “welp generalizing us is fair because technically men like this exist”?
I have found pushing back is useless. People are just waiting for you to be a horrible “fragile man” instead of just realizing that being accurate in who you blame for being shitty matters. So yeah I wouldn’t really conclude that if you see one example of someone being disgusting then you have to allow yourself to be falsely aligned with them.
You can just know the shitty generalizers are bigoted, and hope it’s a phase for them. I certainly have never seen any value in either supporting that generalization or fighting against it.
People on the Internet love thinking they’re better than you and that you’re scum. The only way I know to deal with it is just by accepting it
This definitely misses the power imbalance of punching down vs up. If someone genuinely believes all men are “scum,” yeah, that’s prejudiced. However, there is a big difference between a group that has less power in society pushing up against the class that has more power or oppresses them and the reverse. The idea that “y group is (insert pejorative)” and “x group is (insert pejorative)” are equally bigoted statements assumes that x and y groups are equal in social power. Statements like “men are trash” or equivalent don’t necessarily represent an individual’s true opinion of all men, but a general pushing back against a group with more power, many individuals of which attempt to exercise their perceived privilege over women.
Women that say “all men are trash” or similar might not be thinking with this level of introspection and subtlety, but it’s a subconscious reaction to their position as a group with less power. They rarely hold that on a personal level against every individual man, unless they’ve been deeply hurt. I have experienced things that make it harder for me to trust men. My friends have experienced things that make it harder to trust men. I do not think every man is evil. When you see the damage around you on societal levels, see the people calling for your rights to be taken away, see how they treat you like an object or property because of who you are, and you see it in the lives of many many people like you, it creates a resentment of the group that is responsible.
I am not suggesting that there are no women that take advantage of men. I am not suggesting that men cannot be abused. I am not suggesting that it’s okay to make men feel responsible for the actions of people that share only a gender with them, nothing else. However, I am explaining why women might feel hurt or disempowered enough to push back against men in general, and why “men are trash” and “women are trash” (though far more often, the phrase when targeted at women takes a sexual connotation: whores, etc) are not equivalent statements. Both the women that have been hurt and the men that feel hurt by the byproduct of their resentment are victims of the patriarchy. Until everyone, regardless of gender, holds the same societal power, there will always be people of all groups being hurt by the imbalance.
TLDR: Don’t resent the women who are a product of their environment saying “men are trash,” resent the patriarchy that hurts men and women alike.
Additionally, statements like men are trash can hurt other marginalized groups. I’ve heard “men are trash” be followed or countered with “except trans men.” This is transphobic. I’d like to make it very clear that “men are trash” is an unjustly prejudiced statement, but it is one that is a product of a broken system. See: ACAB.
Thanks for saving me the keystrokes here, I appreciate you (for real, which I’m having to say because text and… you know… how online people are).
Ah, the kid brother defence. “But big brother did it, I had the right to!”
Still wrong! Someone else being shitty and prejudiced does not in any way, shape or form excuse your prejudice. I’m sorry you’ve had to face prejudice, but this way you are paying it forward.
Honestly if you have to write paragraphs to defend something that is intuitively ignorant and bigoted to do, you’ve lost the argument by default
So just because shitty men exist, we’re supposed to say “welp generalizing us is fair because technically men like this exist”?
Yep.
See the sibling reply from @erin@lemmy.blahaj.zone here for a great explanation about how power dynamics work on this topic, but also:
So yeah I wouldn’t really conclude that if you see one example of someone being disgusting then you have to allow yourself to be falsely aligned with them.
One example? Really? That’s horse shit and you know it. Misogynistic behavior is a rampant, massive problem everywhere; online and in real life.
Your comment proves my point. Hoping in vain that some day I’ll block all of you
You can’t justify racism or sexism in any direction without indirectly justifying it in the other direction.
Blaming an entire group for the acts of a subset of that group removes the disincentive to become a part of the subset and adds a disincentive to support those who want to fight the injustice that gets reduced to another racial or gender conflict.
I think it’s no wonder that many gen z males have decided to reject the mindset that demonizes white men in general, even though that mindset is often quick to add, “there’s some good ones!”
And the whole justification of “they have more power” means dick all to individuals that fall in the group that feel powerless in their life. Plus there’s that little voice wondering if the racism will fade if the power balance does shift or if it will be the same thing but with oppression going in the other direction.
Your argument sounds suspiciously like someone looking to justify shitty behavior.
“You can’t acknowledge an extremely well documented culture of hate because that’s reverse sexism/racism”
“You can’t say men are bad because some men are good and if you don’t give them special attention for being good they might start being bad.”
“Some men have it hard too so power imbalance doesn’t exist and you can’t use it to explain why some women are mistrustful of men in general”.
“We need to leave the status quo because if we don’t maybe the others will get control and then they’ll treat us like we treat them now”
All of the above are shitty arguments.
And you sound suspiciously like you don’t want anything to get better and want to see increased racial and gender tensions by rebutting with a series of strawman arguments of the worst ways you could interpret anything I was saying.
Have you tried not to hate yourself? WTF are you even on, there is a high chance that it’s a joke, and even if it isn’t why would “men” be scum here instead of individual?
He clearly doesn’t hate himself. Stop trying to us vs them.
“Men” are harmful in the same way that you don’t put your hand on an electric stove. You assume it’s going to hurt you until you find out otherwise.
No, “men” aren’t harmful any more than “women” are, unless you are completely delusional. People don’t assume that random “men” are going to hurt them unless they have serious problems, or living in the active war zone. This over-dramatization doesn’t help anyone and isolates you from absolute majority if you really think that way. You can isolate yourself, just don’t act like it’s normal in any way.
Sorry but if you don’t see how that comparison is beyond not ok somethings wrong here. Which isn’t to say you can’t feel like that bc that’s just the natural result of bad experiences.
Easily half the turkish immigrants I’ve interacted with were people begging or threatening me on the street, that doesn’t mean I assume turkish immigrants are assholes. Because I know it’s both selection bias (most normal ppl just mind their business and don’t randomly talk to you, immigrants are poorer on avg so there are more homeless immigrants). And even if 95% were pieces of shit I’d still at most be more careful, but not somehow try to include all the ones that aren’t a problem in the group that I’m complaining about.
I don’t hate myself.
I hate that enough men out there are such amazing assholes that it has created a generational issue which understandably has led to the assumption that as a man I’m probably an asshole too.
I hate that women understandably see me in public and make assumptions about my risk factor to them because victimizing women is way too common place.
Me, however, I’m pretty ok with.
Unless you are an asshole, why would you say that you are asshole, if you aren’t sure you can ask. Statements like ‘I don’t hate myself, but actually I think that I’m an asshole because someone else is’ are somewhat conflicting.