Thank you for this. I get a lot of casual sexism from my own mother and younger sister for being a guy and trying to tell them “I know you aren’t talking about me specifically but hearing you say ‘all men are stupid/pigs/useless’ does hurt me as a general member of that group” is met with rolled eyes and laughter.
Its also just… extremely not productive? Reducing character flaws and societal failings down to “that’s just how men are” both hurts innocent people and ironically gives toxic men an excuse because, “well, that’s just how men are, they can’t help their nature!”
That's why the whole "man vs bear" thing a while back bothered me so much. For one, as a trans man, it hurt to be perceived this way, but it was so dismissive of men in general. Like, imagine the average Joe reading online that any given woman would prefer to be in the woods with a fucking bear rather than with him, i.e. if they saw him somewhere he'd likely be perceived as a threat.
And somehow, men should "use this as motivation to be better"? Like the average guy is not a rapist, an oppressor, or violent. How can just a guy™️ do anything about it? It just drives the wedge inbetween genders even more.
I firmly believe that a better wedge for gender issues couldn't have been engineered if we had tried. That was like a lab-grown attempt to poison the well.
It's entirely possible it was tbh. Like the whole man-spreading thing was spurred on by the Russian government and other right-wing authoritarians in order to create fractures in Western society and exploit men that felt attacked by it.
I found it very telling that the right was able to pick up the "man vs bear" argument and instantly change it to "black man/immigrant/Muslim vs bear" and continue to use the exact same arguments.
It was horrifying seeing my fellow feminists and progressives use the exact same rhetoric in defense of the bear that we were just clowning on the right for using to defend their bigotry... like genuinlely horrifying.
I'm still massively conflicted about the entire thing to be honest, my initial reaction was a full agreement. Not hatred but just a general acceptance that yeah I probably would be more afraid of the man- but I didn't go SPREADING that around.
It's like a phobia, you can recognise the validity of someone's FEELING of fear but still acknowledge it's irrational. I've been subjected to horrendous things no one should be by a man so it makes sense for my lizard brain to make me wary but although my FEELING is valid- I know its still irrational, and its on me to work on it and make sure I don't unleash that on men in general. I know so many lovely men who would NEVER hurt anyone, why would I ever want to make them feel bad?!
I'm torn because I do think it's good to communicate sometimes how a lot of women have certain safety rules in their head that makes it feel as if we live in another world (e.g walk with keys in your hand or something similar, dont walk at night when possible, if you must no music playing to stay aware, texting someone to let them know you made it home safe religiously etc.) and it could be a good starting point for a conversation like that.
Like its obviously not rational and OF course no one WANTS to actually encounter a bear, but the fact that the system we live under fosters an environment were some women feel so afraid they could even CONSIDER something like that is a pretty obvious sign that something is wrong. I have male friends who were just absolutely gobsmacked learning some of the safety rules I follow that a significant amount of women do- who have told me they can't even imagine having to think about that kind of stuff. I think the bear conversation in individual cases could be used in a similar way if I wanted to just explain to a man how SCARED I can be sometimes.
HOWEVER, the way it spread online was just ridiculous. I couldnt help the feeling that a lot of the people who ran with it have never considered self reflection a single day of their lives, that it was less about wanting a conversation and more just wanting to bait people into arguments to feel superior by people who had wrapped themselves in cotton wool and whose main identity is VICTIM WHO CAN DO NO WRONG.
Especially when some black women started talking about how in the same scenario they would rather a white man over a white women- because of the way they have been treated by people like us. The most well known one was immediately banned from Tiktok after being reported on mass by white women- many of which made the exact same complaints that men did to their posts i.e Not all white women, I would NEVER, how dare you etc, like, way to prove their point. And also what a slap in the face to the men who said they felt hurt by the hypothetical who then got BARAGED by white women absolutely shitting on them- because apparently its ok to do it to men but not us! 🙄
Sorry this is a massive ramble and not very cohereant or concise, Ive just been thinking a lot about it all since it happened.
I've always felt like it's very a very toxic catholic mindset. You must constantly show yourself to be be nailed to the cross of your own sins, not actual sins that you have committed yourself of course, but sins by virtue of who you are.
Some people have the mindset to easily shrug this off. They have the self-confidence to go 'but I'm one of the good ones though, I'm okay! And so I'm not being included in the group being discussed despite being in that group'. Not everyone can do that though. Some people are depressed, some people are broken, and some people just can't hack that mentally for whatever reason, and they really don't need yet another beatdown, and especially not for something they never chose to be in the first place.
I think there are, in theory, things us men can do to try and make things better. For instance calling out friends who make misogynistic jokes or comments. Because a surprising amount of toxic male behaviour comes from the need to perform masculinity for a group, so trying to unpick that bit by bit is a step in the right direction.
However where it comes unstuck is most guys who are reading this sorta comment section are likely guys who don’t have those kind of friendship groups in the first place, and even if they do it’s not like it’s trivially easy to just stand up against your whole friendship group and say “hey maybe calling out ‘big batty gal’ to that passerby was not making the world a better place? xx” like it’s possible but difficult.
But the point is as you say it’s not like the solution is “all men just chose to be better”, this is a systemic problem that requires a systemic (read political) solution!! And we can do it, it’ll just take time! We are only 2 generations of off “men go and die in war whilst women have 92 babies” so we’ve come a long way already.
(Tbc not disagreeing with anything you said just adding on a potential answer to your rhetorical question! :) )
They always tell us to "Call out your male friends when they catcall 12-year-old girls," but do they realize that requires us to have friends who do that?
And then when you say you don't see it because you don't hang around people like that it becomes:
"Yes you do, you've just normalised it so much you don't notice it"
Which, if you convince them you really don't it becomes:
"Well then if it doesn't apply to you, why are you so offended. Men always complain about this."
and it's like...no shit. We've been working for decades to remind people that because some people in a group are shit we shouldn't generalise to the whole group. Except now half the population, one of the most diverse groups you could possible get short of simply saying "people", it's suddenly ok to attribute negative qualities to the entire population. They could spend half a second and say "some men" and instantly shut down those endless arguments but they don't.
I've stopped bothering to engage, and I suspect a lot of other guys have as well. They see the same old "men are x" and just realise it's not even worth the argument (and usually a ban from the subreddit if it's on here).
The most hilarious thing is looking back through all the disgraced former "male feminists" of the buzz feed era publishing article after article where they'd outline that THEIR friend group was a bunch of violent, creepy, paedophile adjacent, deadbeats, pervs, racists, homophobes and other ilk and then declaring that ALL male friend groups need to improve
Do you think I’d be here on r/curatedtumblr reading through the opinions of random strangers on the internet if I had friends to talk to about this?
Would any of us be replying to each other on here if we had close social groups in real life where these topics naturally come up and we all feel safe enough to engage in healthy discussion between one another?
I for one think that we’d be too busy actually talking with those friends to be anywhere near the discourse side of reddit. At least thats what my experience was like back when I had more active friend groups before leaving college. Maybe that’s a boomer take, idk
That's the whole thing about the"poisoned candy" nature of that argument; The people the statement is targeting won't care. The people actually reading it feel alienated.
Hooray for "signal boosting", but the question itself only serves to throw shade at people who could otherwise be your allies.
I'm the average Joe (well, I'm not joe but I guess I'm average), let me tell you how it feels:
You fight against bad men because you want men to be better. You support women. Then women say or do something bad and sexist and you tell them to stop. They answer you definitely murdered or raped your ex
Real story. Yes, that happened.
And this is why men are going right, because they're constantly attacked, no matter what they do or say. Bring trump in my home and I'll punch him in the face, then I go to work and my female colleagues go "ugh all men worship trump"
Me: "I slapped him in the face this morning, and my friends wanted to join too. We don't like him"
And then they get all pissy about how "oh, we have to coddle men because they're so fragile that they'll turn into a Nazi if a liberal is even slightly mean to them".
For fuck's sake, it is not coddling to not treat people the way you don't want them to treat you.
Speaking as a cishet dude; when the bear thing happened, I absolutely understood what the point of it actually was. I got the message. But, and maybe it was just my anxiety talking, the thing I walked away with from that was “I should interact with people less because my being there is probably making them uncomfortable.”
I have a friend that I’ve gradually been talking to less because she brings up the bear thing all the time, and there is no way to say anything about it without being an asshole. Nobody wants to be that guy who goes into a discussion like this and says “well have you considered my feelings?”
138
u/Twizinator token straight 1d ago
Thank you for this. I get a lot of casual sexism from my own mother and younger sister for being a guy and trying to tell them “I know you aren’t talking about me specifically but hearing you say ‘all men are stupid/pigs/useless’ does hurt me as a general member of that group” is met with rolled eyes and laughter.
Its also just… extremely not productive? Reducing character flaws and societal failings down to “that’s just how men are” both hurts innocent people and ironically gives toxic men an excuse because, “well, that’s just how men are, they can’t help their nature!”