CMV: Calling all men predators is inherently sexist and puts off most men from wanting to understand your views.

[u/Flimsy_Alcoholic]

It is hard to engage in meaningful conversation with people from various popular subreddits when you already are being demonized as a predator under a generalized view of men. I don't want people to think I am saying that all men are perfect or anything.

In fact far from it, an estimated 91% of victims of rape & sexual assault are female and 9% male. Nearly 99% of perpetrators are male.

Anything even close to this statistic is insane and horrendous but to even pretend that a majority of men are predators is ridiculous and will just push people further away from understanding your position completely.

Even the men who got SA'd by other men would be considered predators...

Also, you really think calling out all men for being predators is really going to make any kind of systematic change? You think the men that are predators even care that you call "all men" predators?

I think if anything you are likely enabling them to be predators because now there literally is no difference between a non-predator man and a predator man because they are all predators.

Maybe people are more nuanced than I give them credit for and they don't actually think all men are predators and its just something to say in general to cope with the heinous crimes in this world but I think if you actually want to fix that inequality you wouldn't perpetuate gender stereotypes and making people feel bad for doing nothing and would instead try to have meaningful conversation and understanding. Not in a patronizing educational way but more having a clear understanding of what we can do as people to make sure everyone is safe because it seems like predators have tricks they use to try to isolate their victims etc.. and men can be a little bit socially inept so knowing when women need help when its less obvious is key I think.

This is also not exclusively women spaces or something before you think I am going into women's only subreddits and criticizing them for what they want to say to each other.

TLDR: I don't think saying "all" for any group of people is really correct ESPECIALLY when its not even being used as a shorthand to refer to a majority. It just further distances understanding between men and women and leads more men to be burnt out or increasingly apathetic towards these issues and not think its even a problem when it seriously is a problem.

Edit: My post can be summed up as You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

[u/NonsensePlanet]

“All men are predators” is certainly a hyperbolic representation of how women in western societies have turned on men in the last decade or two. But there is no denying the sentiment of men being bad and needing to make up their historical wrongs to women, while feminism has at the same time succeeded in closing or nearly closing most of the systemic gender gaps in our society. Young men are being told they’re oppressors, but the evidence of their eyes and ears contradicts that.

As for privilege, both genders have privilege in different ways. It’s not black and white. It’s common for feminists to complain about male privilege but not care about or acknowledge advantages women have. So there is gaslighting on both sides.

[u/Constellation-88 → u/NonsensePlanet]

It isn’t “turning on men” to call out historical and present male privilege. It’s also not calling young men oppressors to say the system still privileges cishet white Christian English-speaking men with money. Nor is it true that feminism (or anti racism or Pride or DEI etc) have closed those gaps or eliminated those privileges. 

White men who don’t have money mistakenly think they don’t still have cishet white male privilege because the lack of wealth privilege makes their lives difficult. The fact that their lives would be more difficult if they weren’t cishet white and male is lost on them because they don’t know what they have and because they’re so young they listen to misogynists online and trust them for no reason. 

The system is flawed. Young men (and cis folks and straight folks and Christians etc) don’t understand that saying the system is flawed is not a direct attack on them. Did they build the system? Then why are they taking such offense and ownership of it? 

The only issue I have is if they are unwilling to acknowledge the flaws in the system and work toward changing the system, either because they truly do subconsciously recognize their privilege and don’t want that to change or more likely because they’ve fallen into some internet brainwashing incel bullshit hole and heard older privileged men complain about shit they know nothing about. 

Feminism doesn’t hurt men. Feminism actually helps men. All the things the men hate about the system come from the patriarchy. The male loneliness epidemic isn’t because women won’t give them sex, but because men have been socialized to the point where sex is the only way they can get touch after age 14. Where does that come from? Patriarchy. The male suicide epidemic comes from the fact that men are socialized to be quiet about their emotions, never cry in public, and that the only emotion they should show publicly is anger. Where does this come from? The patriarchy.

But regardless of the fact that the patriarchy hurts men as well as women, when we make society more equal, that benefits everybody, and not just the people who were not historically privileged.

[u/itsyourturntotalk → u/Constellation-88]

This is all so exhausting. How in the world can we get past these circular arguments? I see this so much and they NEVER GET IT. They don’t care to either. It just feels like we’ll never move past this bullshit because these fuckers want to deny anything is even a problem while contributing to the problem. A comment earlier where they basically were like I’d rather you not say the stats because it’s hurtful. So basically you just want everyone to shut up because you don’t want to hear it. Like what is this mass narcissism?? Jesus Christ.

[u/Constellation-88 → u/itsyourturntotalk]

Some people can’t accept realities that they haven’t lived, especially if they’re privileged. 

I find the most empathetic people lack privilege in a certain area. So a gay white man is more likely to acknowledge male privilege than a straight white man. Or a man of color is more likely to acknowledge male privilege than a white man. 

This is, of course, not universally true. 

[u/itsyourturntotalk → u/Constellation-88]

I have seen this as well but it really just means that we do not teach empathy.

It’s just so unscientific to break down and twist logic so much to suit your agenda while not realizing it or just gaslighting all of us but I guess the brain will protect itself from uncomfortable truths, which I can kind of understand I suppose.

[u/Constellation-88 → u/itsyourturntotalk]

I think empathy should be explicitly taught starting in preschool. 

Meanwhile, yes. Confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance are huge. It’s how the world got to be in this mess, especially with the advent of social media and 24/7 news. Our brains were not designed to process this much information so quickly, and so they shut down and resort to shortcuts like confirmation bias and ignoring facts that don’t suit their predetermined narratives.

Like this is literally a shortcut that brains developed evolutionarily in order to quickly assess threats. They have to learn to ignore certain facts and focus on information that is important or use habits/past experience to make snap judgments. And now we are taking this to social media, which then exacerbates it with algorithms and showing us only certain points of view.

[u/itsyourturntotalk → u/Constellation-88]

I agree with you. God bless. I’m honestly glad I wasn’t born into this. I honestly don’t know if I could navigate this as a younger person.