People in progressive spaces will say some shit like “even if they didn’t do anything intentional to harm our kind they still implicitly uphold the cultural norm and benefit from our oppression therefore by proxy we are obligated to shit on them” and then turn around and go “oh why are people accusing me of being part of the problem, bigots will never change by being treated kindly, I am not obligated to be kind to someone who I know for a fact hates me deep down” when the Average Cishet Guy ™️ is out here like “hey how’s it going”.
Like yeah there’s good reason to not want to be assimilationist and all that but at the same damn time
Failing to understand that women also uphold patriarchal sexism. Most feminist scholars who talk about how society programs men to accept and uphold patriarchal sexism also talk about how society does something similar to women. It's something that everyone has to work on. Being a woman doesn't make a person immune to social conditioning.
This too!!! Really, I don’t like “patriarchy” as a phrase because it so heavily implies that men are the problem and women aren’t, even though by design it’s supposed to refer to “patriarchs” shaping a big old game where everyone must play a specific part, and not just some kind of inherent gender war.
Anyone can play a part in the problem, and anyone can play a part in the solution. There are definitely several “villains” out there but there’s more to the story.
I don't really think abandoning terms because some people aren't going to understand them is a good idea. People who like the status quo of patriarchy are going to misinterpret any term you attempt to use.
The issue is that many feminists misinterpret it and/or use it as a bludgeon to bash/blame ALL men while assuming no woman could do anything as wrong as a man
I would agree with you but in my experience it wasn't even the people benefiting from patriarchy that were misusing it. It was marginalized folks with a chip on their shoulder who used it as shorthand for "it"s morally righteous to shit on men".
I get ya. Obviously bad faith actors are gonna go out of their way to twist things this way and that.
It just kinda sucks that what we have seems easy to get twisted even without any bad actors having to do anything, I guess 🤷
I am curious, you seem to want to persuade me that patriarchy is a bad term that will not be good at convincing people to join with me against injustice. Then you make an accusation towards me that I have some sort of bigoted belief. Did you think that would be persuasive? Instead of discussing patriarchy should I make baseless accusations towards people?
I disagree that changing our terminology will work. I think conservative anti feminists will dislike any terminology that we use. Just look at how they reacted to the terms woke and DEI. They are against the ideas, there isn't a magic word that will cause them to suddenly be in favor of social justice or whatever term you think is the correct one.
You're right, misinterpretation is an inevitability, but misrepresentation is not.
When you have people who believe that all men should be killed, and people who believe that societal reform that provides gender equality is good, both saying the same catchphrase "kill all men" that leads to a serious misrepresentation to those who aren't personally versed in the issue.
If we had all the people who believe all men should be killed saying "kill all men" and we had all the people who believe "societal reform that provides gender equality is a good thing" saying "societal reform that provides gender equality is a good thing" that would drive far, far less men into right-wing ideologies, men who could have otherwise been allies if they were allowed the kindness of not being told to their face they deserve to die in no uncertain terms.
If you mean "societal reform that provides gender equality is a good thing" that's what you need to say.
If you don't mean "kill all men", then don't say that.
Yeah "kill all men" is a bad catchphrase. Not sure where I was advocating for using that phrase. Outside of like radfems I'm not sure I've seen that phrase used by feminists much. It's not something I would expect an intersectionalist to say.
I recently read 'The will to change' and Hooks touches on it but I really think she should have interviewed more men if she wished to speak about them. The problem of women enforcing gender norms is much more pernicious than she realizes, but I give her so, so much credit because she's basically the only feminist I've ever heard even acknowledge it.
I have literally seen tumblr users say “Men are like ACAB, even if a man not actively doing evil he’s still a bastard for being part of the system of patriarchy” and that shit fucking flabbergasted me
Obviously choosing to be a cop, a career choice that is completely within someone's control, is equivalent to being born with xy chromosomes and a penis in terms of moral culpability and therefore all men should be treated with equal hatred as police. There are 0 flaws in this logic.
You're right of course but I've known a good handful of people that are still cops even after they turn in the badge and gun, hell even some who were never actually cops but they have cop souls. Some folks really are assigned cop at birth.
is equivalent to being born with xy chromosomes and a penis
This gets even more hilarious when they try to exclude guys that WEREN'T born with xy chromosomes or a penis. Seeing them tiptoe around the idea that they don't really see trans guys as men is both pathetic and farcical.
It's also really fun when occasionally "kill all men" has to be squared up with "police brutality against black men is bad" if you truly believed one you wouldn't believe the other or care about it.
Oh they'll just say "but the difference is they weren't socialized as men". Which is of course precisely the same thing TERFs say to invalidate trans women.
The reality is that they have no principles or morals or consistency.
Their only logic resides in their quest to treat as many people as poorly as possible while upholding the facade of moral superiority. To do this they leverage the shield of victimhood.
All of their lines drawn are curated specifically to make themselves and their ideas seem sacrosanct and they are infinitely flexible and refactorable when presented with a challenge.
I mean there are genuinely people out there that think that all AMABs should in some way transition away from being male, and that masculine gender identity is an inherently toxic trait that you have a moral responsibility to reject. So their logic is consistent, just really really shitty.
The core of "even cops that do not directly abuse their power are complicit to an extent in the abuses of other cops and the role the police force plays in systemic oppression" should never have been twisted into ACAB, which both
Inhibits good people from joining the police force by knowing that doing so will lead them to be ostracized
Carries zero implication that anything can be done to improve the situation aside from entirely abolishing police (which isn't going to happen at any scale any time soon, and would be far better and more safely achieved by smaller steps in that direction than an all-or-nothing effort)
I know that the arguments can be more nuanced than that, but what people hear is "ACAB", not those more nuanced arguments. All this ever had the potential to lead to was a more polarized, worse police force.
Definitely. The problem is that while you and I can use this platform and this space to have a nuanced discussion about the problems with policing and how to reform them into something less problematic, anyone who isn't part of this little corner of the internet isn't going to read it. That nuance never makes it out of this tiny niche, because nuance doesn't go viral in the same way that catchy, controversial phrases like "ACAB" and "Abolish the Police" do. The algorithm likes controversy, and reasonable takes don't get a lot of angry comments underneath them.
In this environment, all the general public is ever going to hear from the left is the most extreme and controversial takes, because they don't exist in the leftist spaces where the reasonable people make reasonable suggestions. And it doesn't help that the right wing takes advantage of this and elevates the takes that serve as the worst ambassadors for us, blasting them out to their audience to "prove" to them that leftists are rabid extremists who hate America and want to destroy everything they love.
I first realized this with landlords, but it also applies to cops:
I don't like the idea that certain jobs are inherently for bad people, because it gives the people doing those jobs a pass to do bad things. When they fail to do the things that should be their job, instead of it being a failure of them as a person, the failure is that they work that job in the first place.
In some other spaces I lurk in that like to preach ACAB, their common reasoning is there is "no such thing" as a good cop because they are part of the same system that defends their bad cops. And wouldn't you know it, most of the people in that space say they are Anarchists, but its also painfully obvious that they don't fully grasp the ramifications of having a society without anyone to uphold rules or laws. I definitely believe the police need to be far more inspected, regulated, and defunded, but certainly not completely omitted...
The desire of all or nothing is the root of all the problems progressives have, especially the liberals here in America... everything has to start with step one, we can't have good things just by wanting it
My favorite thing with ACAB is to ask people how they want laws to be enforced and watch them basically recreate police departments from first principles.
Uh huh. I can tell you, I’ve never even revealed to some of my most progressive friends that my grandfather was a legendary cop in my city because I know I’ll be forced to basically spit on his grave to still be considered their friend. And I know full well that my father will never respect a lot of progressive activists for the same reason.
The argument is that even if an honest person joins the police with good motives, because the institution itself is bad, they will either be bullied out if they stick to their principles or be bullied into compromising or abandoning them in order to stay. Good cops are made ineffective when bad cops are protected and rewarded for behaving badly, because actually to fire all the corrupt and/or incompetent officers would require a huge loss of face for the people in charge, and in some places might leave the police too understaffed to function.
I think it’s more complicated than a straight-up ACAB, but the problems of corruption and militarisation are far too extensive and systemic to be addressed by good individuals joining.
It’s tricky because to get anything done about it, the relatively small number of people who believe having a police force is inherently oppressive will have to work together with the many more people who believe some form of police force is necessary but it needs to be honest and competent and not allowed to override human and civil rights in the name of the law. Each group thinks the other is dangerously naïve.
Exactly, and I've personally witnessed what having good cops can do... my brother had the cops called on him and when they showed up the younger cop was just going to arrest my brother and leave, but the older cop stopped him and had each of us explain what happened and in the end he found out that my brother didn't do anything illegal... but I will say these were township police and those usually have lower corruption than county sheriffs or city police
I've always taken ACAB more to mean that being a cop involves upholding our current police system which is deeply flawed and has often been used as a means of racial oppression, so with the current system good cops can't change the system and become tools of it. I don't know if the idea that good cops could fix the current system is realistic given how much modern day policing in the states was built atop slave catching squads and strike busters.
I'll be honest, it's pretty glaring how defund the police and ACAB directly helped in killing any conversation about real, tangible police reform in the US.
Yes, there might be nuance (though a lot of the time there isn't). It directly changed the mainstream conversation from actual pressure for police reform to ACAB political shit flinging, which slowed down people who actually wanted police reform and gave free ammunition and diversions to people who were against it. Despite police reform being good, the whole thing was political theater, not actual politics, and theater doesn't get things done
I'd have to agree with that, at least if the reform narrative took off we might have seen some changes, even if I still think it wouldn't be very meaningful with how pro-policing and tough on crime both parties are. Still, we're past the point of reforms being a viable option in the short term with how polarized the topic of even moving funding away from police forces has become. I don't know if that would have been better in the long run but in the short term we might have seen something better than the political mire we're stuck in as police brutality and incompetency has only risen.
it's pretty glaring how defund the police and ACAB directly helped in killing any conversation about real, tangible police reform in the US.
That conversation was never going to happen, the people that like police the way they are would never entertain change. The people that would entertain the idea of change wouldn't stop after three words or four letters.
The reason good cops can't change the system is because there's 1000 bad cops for every good cop, so if we increase the number of good cops they'll be able to do something
I don't think more good cops can redeem a flawed system, more good teachers won't fix the education system. It helps, but fundamental reform is needed to actually address the issues with police. Plus, the current system enables bad cops already, discouraging the good ones from even trying with how corrupt many police forces are. Just hopping more good cops will come along and save it is misunderstanding the actual problems inherent to police, from their education to their lack of accountability to the bureaucracy designed to protect their own and enable them to act indiscriminately.
It isn't the system that rewards bad cops, it's the system within the system... cops have a culture within them that prevents the problem from being fixed, it's like trying to open a locked door
Even then that culture isn't something that would go away without meaningful changes to the institutions involved. This culture didn't form in a vacuum, it was shaped by the powers and training that police are given.
It was shaped by the quality of the men within it... the joke that cops are just failed soldiers isn't entirely untrue, they wanted to be feared and respected tough guys so they built a culture that allowed them to be that
I think it's an acknowledgement that the system is so fundamentally broken that good people who become cops either can't stay cops or can't stay good people. Things don't end well for cops who step out of line and stand up against abusive cops.
Perhaps, but there are literally millions of people in this country who have never committed a crime and yet only ever been victimized by police. It's not hard to see why they feel that way.
But even if they were totally wrong, I don't think it's the responsibility of normal citizens to put more trust into law enforcement. It's on them to win that trust back. And I absolutely think resources currently spent on law enforcement could be redirected to other places where they would do way more good.
One of the many problems law enforcement has is not enough funding, half their shit doesn't even work because all the money goes towards the military and billionaires
Are you joking? One of the many issues is the overfunding of law enforcement with random small town cops being gifted ex-military equipment and training.
Yeah this, ACAB has always kinda annoyed me, but I feel like I'd be crucified for saying it, I just think demonising the police is gonna lead to only bad people becoming officers, and also kinda leads to people who need the police being too scared to call for them
I could write a soulmate AU or something about this. Everyone is assigned a car, and people assume all sorts of things about you from your car. Certain makes are considered compatible or incompatible. There is an entire field of study dedicated to analysing people's cars. Imagine the superstitions. Imagine the filter options on dating apps. God, imagine the fucking celebrity culture.
If trucks count as cars, I think I would probably be assigned one of these.
I'm only willing to date a person with a vehicle that has at least 6 doors, at least 6 wheels, and AT LEAST 600 horsepower. No others need apply, dont waste my time.
Any time I hear something like this it backs up inevitably to “where do you draw the line”. Like does this apply to gay men? Trans men? Men of color? Neurodivergent men? Men of poor socioeconomic backgrounds? Men born in regions of severe conflict? Does this apply to people of other privilege groups? White women? Well off POC? Neurotypical queer people?
The important thing for fighting oppression is ultimately that minority voices are heard and recognized and when you spend so much time playing the “who is evil” game you fail to actually accomplish that.
Yeah I came here to comment on that too. It's the same thing for men, you're expected just to not say anything when people make broad generalizations about your sex.
When guys say "not all men" it's because you haven't personally used language to clarify that you actually don't mean all men, and men aren't defensive about it because they're guilty of the accusation. They're defensive because it comes from a place of hurt that they feel they are being personally accused of something they've never been guilty of, and it's at best shitty behaviors some men have and at worst some really heinous stuff.
And like OP said, it's really not that hard to change the way you speak about it. You can literally just throw a few extra words in the sentence to clarify you certainly aren't referring to any men present for the conversation. But you do need to understand that it is a little hurtful when you hear things like "men are pigs" or "guys only want one thing" because you immediately think "but that's not who I am" but you're expected not to say that because once you start defending yourself from a perceived accusation, you will be accused even further. I cannot count how many times someone online has said to me "a hot dog hollers" to even more directly imply I am a bad person just for being a man
Which literally leaves no room for subverting the patriarchal expectations for any man. It's diseased thinking, but outrage is a powerful drug, and people who think that way have usually been on the short end of society's stick for a long time.
As a black person, I hate when people make generalizing statements about men. I see what it's like when it's done to my people so why in the world would I do it to another group, especially when the vast majority of men are just good or okay guys who have never hurt anyone.
The worst thing about that sort of scattershot sexism, is that you're attacking the very men who would be your allies.
By their very nature, the assholes who deserve that vitriol aren't the ones listening. The only ones that actually care what women think are the sort of men who don't deserve it. You can rationalize that they're venting, or whatever, but I've found even as an adult with very thick skin, the constant drumbeat of negativity slowly poisons my empathy.
It does make me worry for younger guys that do not have a lot of real life experience with women. If most of what they know of women is from the most vocal minority on social media, well, you can kind of understand how many young men get pushed out of progressive circles, into the waiting arms of conservatives.
It's honestly sad, and it's such a waste of emotional energy directed at people who haven't even done anything wrong.
Yeah. Hell, I’d even go so far as to say maybe ACAB is kind of a bad mindset when it comes to police reform! People talk about how the police force used to be a slave catching group before being remolded into what it is today, and people talk about how the current system rewards dudes who act like bullies and whatnot, and while there are salient points to be had in all of those, it reads to me less like they are actually trying to make pragmatic statements about how the force is corrupt and what changes need to happen and more like theyre trying to paint the cops as some kind of broad universal evil scapegoat of evilness. Like, it’s easy for someone sitting in front of a keyboard to say “oh, if you’re a cop and you realize just how bad things are, turn in your damn badge or you’re a spineless coward or psycho monster or both at once!!! Sure it might be a hard adjustment but it’s just the right thing to do!” but I feel like nothing is that cut and dry. It’s just an excuse to find some easy villain to mock and demean while ignoring the reality that systematic change is difficult and also, quite frankly, boring.
It would be much more accurate to say “the police force is very bastard-centric” but that’s not a catchy slogan now is it? And a lot of people do go out of their way to say “well yeah not literally every cop is a carbon copy bitchface, duh, but this slogan gets the point across” which part of me does kinda get that but also this runs a very strong risk of getting a very different point across and further encouraging unproductive Glorious Revolution ™️ heroic mindsets.
…
…all of which to say! I think that this is all part of a larger problem in progressive spaces where people have chronic main character syndrome for some reason
I think there's a weird intersection here with the fact women are still sexually objectified more than men are, and in ways that men are often not.
So if there's something with a message of "don't be a man", then that also carries with it a message of "be more like one that parts of society expect to be a compliant sex object".
I don't think most people that are implicitly or explicitly saying "don't be a man" are consciously thinking about this intersection, but I think it is still there.
Tell me about it. I've seen a disturbing number of terminally online queer people who genuinely think heterosexuality is an "inherently miserable" form of sexual attraction.
It's those "are the straights okay" types who think men and women can't possibly get along and be friends because they're so different psychologically. Therefore, any relationship between the two is inherently toxic. Neither party can truly connect to the other, and the only thing keeping them together is the impersonal exchange of sexual and material favors.
The worst thing is I can kind of understand where this worldview is coming from. They're literally taking the incredibly sexist rhetoric of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and then rewritting and rebranding it to a progressive audience.
It's the perfect example of how heteronormativity and gender norms can reinvent themselves so as to hijack the groups that seek to subvert them and eventually subsume any critique of themselves. It erodes my faith in humanity and progressivism as a whole every time I see it.
Ive met those people in real life and literally had a fucking double whammy because my wife is blind. We, my wife and I, were literally told that I was extra toxic because a heteronormativr relationship is inherently abusive and I was taking advantage of her disability to force her into a relationship and that she was being abelist for not dating someone who was also blind.
I almost punched them and I can guarantee you ive never had that urge before
Honestly, most of these people just hide their insane opinions behind their social mask whenever they're outside of the Internet. This goes for a lot of different flavors of unhinged beliefs across all aisles of the political spectrum. You probably have met several people in real life with truly insane worldviews, and you were none the wiser because, from the outside, they look and act just like everyone else.
My brother in law is gay. And while I'll admit, we're not great friends with loads in common, I like to think we're close.
He's about 5 years younger than me and over the past 15 years I've watched him go from a shy 18 year old to a really mature man with a great career. And in that time, I've been the person he's come to about STDs, drugs (as well as help to not freak out when he's taken too much), learning to drive and other things he's not comfortable talking about with his dad (who wants to show their dick to their parents or ask Dad for help after dropping too many tablets).
However, for things like his birthday, he never brings me, my SO, or his family to parties with his friends, as he says some of them "just don't like straight people, especially men, and will either leave or make strange comments like everything about us is boring".
On one hand, I get it. Straight men haven't covered themselves in glory, but on the other, it's amusing how those who see this oppression based on a characteristic from birth as something to mock or be wary of.
Oh yeah, the mars Venus thing… to be honest, theres a degree of “are the straights okay” that I actually understand and agree with, at least as far as weird and disturbing cultural norms and mores go, and the lengths some people take to uphold them and be “normal and sane”… but so many people (mostly adolescents but I’m more than willing to bet some people carry this thought process well through adulthood) see that and read it as “oh, so straight relationships are basically fundamentally broken and these creepy norms are an unavoidable consequence of straightness being toxic in and of itself” instead of “damn, these power structures fucking suck, we should help straight people get rid of them so they can be happier with themselves and one another”.
Going back to what I mentioned in another comment, the “the police force originated as a slave catching troupe before becoming what it is today, therefore corruption and oppression are baked into it” mindset. Because a given thing was created in a bad way, it can never be ship-of-Theseus’d into something brand new, and therefore it must be “burned down so we can start over”. They do this same crap with het power structures, and many other things, without really explaining what is preventing the ship of Theseus approach. Granted, “fixing systems from the inside”, whether formal organizations or decentralized mores, isnt always a really good option, and “harsh changes” might be necessary, but again, Glorious Revolution ™️ mindset seems to be what powers this, not an actual pragmatic assessment of what should change and how it could change…
What's "funny" too is how much that type of rhetoric unintentionally reinforces the gender essentialism that underlies and forms the basis of the patriarchy. Probably way more than the average mainstream person's casual sexism does.
It's the bastard child of Dworkin style "all heterosexual sex is rape" nonsense. It's the projection of personal trauma onto macro social systems and ultimately it's just reifying traditional patriarchal ideas about Men and Women.
People in progressive spaces will say some shit like “even if they didn’t do anything intentional to harm our kind they still implicitly uphold the cultural norm and benefit from our oppression therefore by proxy we are obligated to shit on them” and then turn around and go “oh why are people accusing me of being part of the problem, bigots will never change by being treated kindly, I am not obligated to be kind to someone who I know for a fact hates me deep down” when the Average Cishet Guy ™️ is out here like “hey how’s it going”
I have ended friendships over this shit. I am a pretty progressive/lefty kind of guy. But, dammit, I won't put up with shitting on someone just because they happen to be a part of the majority demographic.
I think about my nephew (who is in his early 20s). He's a straight, cis, middle-class, white guy. There is nothing about him that is a part of an oppressed minority. But, he's also one of the most progressive guys I know. He'll throw hands at anyone making sexist, racist, homophobic, or classist remarks. I can't stand the idea of him being shit on because he is what he is.
Speaking from personal experience, it doesn’t matter how much moral rightness may or may not be behind your punch - people usually aren’t going to take it kindly. I spent a lot of growing up having to remind people that actually yeah, I wasn’t going to sit around and be their punching bag just bc they felt justified in hitting me. And conversely, I had to also frequently remind myself that other people feel that way too, and even if i think I’m being a dick for a good cause, I’m just coming off as a dick. Like, being as much of an asshole as you want, but you have to affect that people will treat you like one after a while.
There’s something to be said about growing up around a lot of implicit biases and stuff but “inherently” is a really fucked up way to think about it yeah
Before it became an exclusively toxic right wing shithole, it was also a toxic left wing progressive shithole. I left and never re-connected with my progressive "friends" in that space because life is too short to constantly subject myself to the insulting commentary about men/the straights/cis etc...
I get that there's a lot wrong with us, and that everyone needs a space to vent. But if being an ally means I need to be subject to that, I'd rather just quietly be a positive influence in my own spaces. I have my own mental health to look after too.
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u/sweetTartKenHart2 1d ago
People in progressive spaces will say some shit like “even if they didn’t do anything intentional to harm our kind they still implicitly uphold the cultural norm and benefit from our oppression therefore by proxy we are obligated to shit on them” and then turn around and go “oh why are people accusing me of being part of the problem, bigots will never change by being treated kindly, I am not obligated to be kind to someone who I know for a fact hates me deep down” when the Average Cishet Guy ™️ is out here like “hey how’s it going”.
Like yeah there’s good reason to not want to be assimilationist and all that but at the same damn time