this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
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I understand this, but I also think it's not reasonable to expect people to always stay silent when someone's venting/feelings leads them to make broad, declarative statements about the badness/problems of a large heterogenous group.
Like, I know I have a lot of personal baggage from growing up in a household where my accomplishments were overlooked and every problem with myself or my actions magnified. The longest streak of doing well could be brought down with a single minor screw up. I know I'm far more sensitive to this sort of shit than the average person.
That said, there is a difference between all and most, or all and enough that it's a problem. I don't think it's wrong to insist that difference is important, or at the very least that the difference exists. Insisting upon that distinction does not need to be a dismissal of the very real issues, it can simply be an insistance that the distinction exists.
Just as we should allow people to have their feelings that x group is bad, shouldn't we also have some room to allow people to feel something when they've been lumped in with an amorphous blob of "badness" that they don't actually belong to?
If you want to argue that "the bad feelings men experience by being lumped in with the bad elements of men are less important than the danger to women from those bad elements" then I'd agree with you fucking 100%. Actual danger trumps feelings, no fucking questions asked.
My issue is that usually the argument is instead that "If your feelings are hurt because someone said all men are abusive, that means that you must be an abusive man upset that you were called out", "see, you saying not all men just means that I was right", or just mocking the true statement of "not all men".
Again, the distinction is important. This post is the first time I have ever seen someone suggest that the response to "not all men" is "enough men". Fucking hell I'm behind that response all the way. I'm not about doubling down on insisting all men are shit.
Venting to your best friend or friend group is not the same as venting in a public forum. Or even to your male partner. Understanding the issue so that it can be solved in a systematic way is our default reaction, not "oh she just wants to vent let's hug her". We don't even have the same emotional response to that, source as of yet unknown. Going out on a limb: Probably not all nature, probably not all nurture.
That said, the proper answer still isn't "not all men" simply because it doesn't have the proper impact. "I don't understand why you're angry at me" is a much better way to stop an "all men" rant mid-sentence because now you're not opening an abstract discussion about the nature of the universe but telling her about the direct emotional turmoil and therefore labour she's causing, leading her to re-evaluate the relative importance of both. YMMV when it comes to online but in-person I can definitely recommend it.
Eh, i find the while 'not on a public forum!!' To be pretty fucking weaksauce as someone whose been visibly female on the internet since the 90's. It rather smacks of rules for thee but not for me.
I've never seen mofos produce such stenorious walls of pontificating text about anything but hurt male feelings
And hurt male feelings aren't ok to talk about because...? Please elaborate.
I get that a lot of your statement is hyperbolic, but you should probably be more careful about throwing out wildly untrue statements, unless your intent is just to sow division and further contribute to the cycle of hate
Are the walls of text wrong though? Or do you just not like what you're hearing?
It's just very...something seeing a demographic that has traditionally had no real problems with broad swathes of denigration suddenly paint such behaviour the Worst Thing Ever and start using other people's words to explain how it's so very very wrong the instant it happens to them.
It's a kneejerk reaction, and so very useful for clouding the issue and abrogating recognition of unconscious bias, advantage and continuation of behaviour.
Right, so surely you agree that painting with such a broad brush is bad in the general case? What makes it different here? Just that men have historically perpetrated it? Does that give us the right to treat them badly as a form of revenge or w/e?
Patriarchy isn't the rule of men, it's the rule of fathers. And most fathers answered to an authority above them. Denigration was rampant. Still is, under capitalism. When did you last hear an employee laud their boss for being such a great person.
Though of course that's besides the point as revenge doesn't ever lead to societal good anyway.
Ah, women have it worse, so men should just shut up, then?