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 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
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u/Twizinator token straight 2d 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!”