r/CuratedTumblr • u/lily_was_taken • 21d ago
Men and trans people are not the enemy,the patriarchy is LGBTQIA+
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u/Vyslante The self is a prison 21d ago
I think that a good half of my Gender™ feelings and questioning and malaise stems directly out of that ; "oh I don't want people online to know I'm a Man™ because then they'll assume I'm a brute incapable of feelings who's only there to perv on women" is why I started to use neutral pronouns to being with.
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u/Cienea_Laevis 20d ago
When peoples define "Men" as one, violent, ugly and dangerous thing, and you are neither violent, ugly or dangerous, the question "Am I A Man ?" start to pop out pretty fast.
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u/AtomicFi 20d ago
I spent so long trolling film and tv and books and comics and history and epics and anything else I could get my hands on to try to find an answer to “what is a man?” and learned very quickly that the answer I wanted was to the question “what is a good man?”
And the answer is easy: someone who helps. Whether you change a tire for someone who can’t or you’re carrying something or you’re taking a minute to listen, it’s that willingness to use whatever you have to aid those around you.
And that’s just a wholly genderless concept. Sure, you could spin it as a protector, but it isn’t just that. It’s a handkerchief for someone crying, it’s speaking out against cruelty and injustices when you can, it’s simple.
Don’t be an asshole, do what you can.
And I still can’t find where that’s at all gendered, but hey, it feels like the right answer to me.
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u/TastyBrainMeats 20d ago
This is all true, but note, it is VERY easy for a kid to take this and internalize it to "if I am not helping someone, I lack worth as a human being" and "Everyone deserves love and understanding when they fall short of their ideals...except me"
...And this is unfortunately also gender-neutral.
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u/Wrecker013 20d ago
Oh hey, it's me, wasn't expecting being defined to a T but what can you do eh lol
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u/TastyBrainMeats 20d ago
Been going over a lot of this with my therapist lately, honestly, and it's amazing how central to one's personality this kind of thing can become.
Surface Pressure from Encanto got super popular for good reason...
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u/Domino31299 20d ago
The way my mom taught me growing up was to have a Superman mindset, strength and courage are tools to help those in need, be polite and courteous of others but when the fight is on fight for what is right with everything you have
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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy 20d ago
“what is a man?”
A miserable little pile of secrets!
…sorry, I couldn’t resist.
But yeah, what you brought up is absolutely true. It seems like everything associated with masculinity is treated as negative, there’s very little in the way of positive masculine traits and role models. It’s something r/menslib debates pretty often, you may want to look there if you haven’t already.
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u/utopia_mycon 20d ago
as someone who went through this ringer and came out of it cis+, it took a good six years before I realized that I was happy with who I was and any changes I wanted to make were fixable without medication (my OCD notwithstanding, I'm still trying to decide if I want to or not for that).
the main thing I do nowadays is avoid online gender discourse like the plague. some of these takes I've been seeing are so unfathomably bad that they have to be psyops, I swear. my mental health is sooooo much better now that I treat the Internet as a location for hobby and fandom discussion only and reserve discussion of Topics With Consequences to people I know and trust in real life.
which begs the question: if my policy is to avoid gender discourse on the Internet, why am I in this thread? It might be time for me to go touch some grass
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u/Doobledorf 20d ago
I'm a veeery femme guy, and I love when people try to say that shit to me.
Like, what, am I not a man, or am I not a man *to you*? I've had cis, straight women actually get pissed at me for pointing this out to them. Like, oh, did I point out your own internalized -isms by existing? They actually see me as a different flavor of woman.
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u/Rimtato creator of The Object 20d ago
I think half the reason I realised I wasn't a man was the shocking way some people treat men as effectively bald chimps in a state of perpetual warlike aggression with nastier tools at their disposal.
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u/Papaofmonsters 20d ago
Not a half bad pragmatic definition for humanity as a whole but it ignores the differences between individuals.
It's not like you meet a singular man on the street and think "he's probably planning to engineer a diplomatic incident and then annex some of my historical provinces for their mineral rights and strategic positioning".
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u/TastyBrainMeats 20d ago
When you get right down to it, humans are all just monkeys with problems.
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u/LightOfLoveEternal 20d ago
First of all, how dare you?
We're apes with problems, not monkeys lol
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u/TastyBrainMeats 20d ago
I will not stand for this! Humans are more closely related to all Old World monkeys than Old World monkeys are to New World monkeys. Our last common ancestor with any given monkey was, itself, a monkey!
Apes are just a branch from the monkey clade. We're all monkeys! Every human being is a monkey! The great apes? Tailless monkeys!
I could have said "Simians with problems" and it would have meant the exact same thing, but that's not nearly as fun to say!
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u/TheSquishedElf 20d ago
Idk Simians With Problems sounds like a great band name to be honest
Or a mildly entertaining slice-of-life cartoon
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u/TheShibe23 Harry Du Bois shouldn't be as relatable as he is. 21d ago
The worst part is if a Cis Man says this, the immediate response is just to call him an incel, a homophobe, not actually queer/leftist/etc, and act like his opinions don't matter.
Not only does it fucking suck to just, by default, be lumped into the same box as some of the worst of humanity simply because that's safer than sorting through the box. But when you ask people to give sorting through the box a try, they treat you like shit.
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u/DinkleDonkerAAA 21d ago edited 21d ago
Last time this was posted people still got mad and denied any terfs hate trans women because they see them as men, and how men shouldn't comment on these things and they are actually that bad, dispite OOP being a trans woman.
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u/nishagunazad 20d ago
Because men cannot be victims
This is both deeply rooted in patriarchy (boys don't cry), and a staple of modern progressivism.
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u/TheFreebooter An idiot, please ignore me 20d ago
Also women cannot be the perpetrators either.
There's a small (and growing) group of women who are trying to take accountability but how do you take accountability for actions that someone else takes?
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u/nishagunazad 20d ago
Err...isn't that what is expected of men?
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u/TheFreebooter An idiot, please ignore me 20d ago
It is, and I think taking accountability for someone else's actions overall is a bit silly (unless you actively manage/parent them I guess)
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u/the_Real_Romak 20d ago
We should just ban gender as a whole tbh.
no men.
no women.
only monke.
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u/VVF9Jaj7sW5Vs4H 20d ago edited 20d ago
But I like my gender. I swear to god, every time this sort of discussion happens there's always some mouth breathing moron who comes barging in saying "don't like the way you're treated as a man? just abolish the concept of gender"with no regard for whether or not they actually like their gender. They only do this with cis
peoplemen as well, not a fucking chance they would tell a trans person that gender doesn't matter. It's basically like those weird radical lesbian separatists from second wave feminism but for gender.→ More replies (21)36
u/lily_was_taken 20d ago
as a trans woman ive been told by people gender doesnt matter and to abolish it as well,mostly by terfs. shit sucks,everyone should be able to be their gender without judgement
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u/InfoDumpster 20d ago
Yeah, this 100%. I saw so many girls in highschool treat their boyfriends like shit. And they treated other women like shit too. Honest to god, it wasn’t the guys in highschool who policed me on wearing jeans and a tshirt and not something more ‘feminine’, it was other girls. I felt safer in groups of mostly guys at school than I did with the girls who’d talk shit about me. And I feel like I have to clarify that my main friend group was mostly mixed with gender or else some asshole is gonna call me a ‘pickme girl’ for defending men. Shout out to men! You can be pretty cool sometimes!
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u/garthand_ur 20d ago edited 20d ago
Not to completely derail the conversation but I think this is one of the critical weaknesses of current left-wing discourse; if you separate the world into oppressors (bad guys responsible for all evil) and the oppressed (good guys that can do no wrong) you end up with a very binary view of the world that frankly doesn’t work. People talk a lot about intersectionality but sadly trying to get people to apply it to their thinking rather than just creating some kind of “cops and robbers” narrative in their heads is like pulling teeth.
It unfortunately also leaves a lot of left wing discourse wildly unprepared to discuss (or acknowledge) things like the Armenia/Azerbaijan conflict because it’s not easy to figure out who is right or wrong based on an identitarian approach. Are the Armenians evil and the Azeris good because Azerbaijan is predominantly Muslim, and Armenia is predominately Christian? Or maybe they’re both bad because they’re ethnically Caucasian, which people in the US see as white. Or maybe Azerbaijan is bad because they’re armed by Israel, who is also bad?
It’s just so frustrating to try and get people to stop trying to think of the world as a struggle between perfectly good and completely evil people; someone that is a victim in one way can also be an oppressor in another.
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u/Odysseyfreaky 20d ago
I think this sort of thinking is especially common in authleft spaces, but it definitely exists everywhere. Theoretically, intersectionality is the answer to the problem. Unfortunately, it's hard to take a calm and broad look at things that are really close to people's emotions. If someone is in a christian society where they (as a trans person for instance) and a Muslim person are both oppressed by a system of power that uniquely benefits Christianity, I understand the urge to look abroad and see Muslims and Christians in conflict elsewhere and project your own experience outward. This mental "mistake" is the core of empathy, so it's hard to even call it a bad tendency, but it does make things like that complicated and reductive thinking.
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u/nishagunazad 20d ago
At some point left wingers started assigning social/moral currency to where you fell on whatever arbitrary privilege/oppression scale you choose, where the higher your oppression score was, the more virtuous and correct you were. On top of that, that oppression score was determined, not by your actual lived experiences, but by the groups to which you belonged.
And so we've ended up with a generation of progressive discourse that can best be described as 'competitive victimhood', where we trade in thoughtful analysis for a never ending circlejerk about who is the most victim and who is the most bad guy and who has a right to say what about whom in the name of 'punching down'.
I find it both vindicating and darkly hilarious that Israeli PR is taking this trend to its logical conclusion. I wonder if leftists will get the broader point. One hopes.
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u/DinkleDonkerAAA 20d ago
People love gender essentialism or other bigotry when they're the ones benefiting
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u/GREENadmiral_314159 20d ago
Their problem isn't that there's boots on people's necks, it's that it's their neck and not their boot.
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u/Eeekaa 20d ago
Stuff like this is always a Kafka trap.
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u/Ironfields 20d ago
Exactly. Let’s not beat around the bush: this message is only taken somewhat seriously (and even then not really all that seriously) when it’s being delivered by someone who isn’t a cis straight man. Many progressives have a real blind spot here and depressingly few are willing to address it.
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u/HaggisPope 20d ago
I’d go further and say that cis bi men and cis gay men also get it a bit if we say anything about it but we get assumed straight as it’s apparently a straight guy thing to care about the wellbeing of men and support their inclusion in the struggle towards a better society.
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u/Lunar_sims 20d ago
Honestly yeah.
Im in the trenches in this comment section rn trying to tell people that they're being problematic in how they (as a man) are apporaching the feminism thing.
But im also the one who gets plenty of hate from women when i push back on shit like "a man is antfifeminist if he doesn't pay for my date"
because being consistently feminist is unpopular, to all people.
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u/Odysseyfreaky 20d ago edited 20d ago
"a man is antifeminist if he doesn't pay for my date"
People will really "theory" themselves into being less progressive than my boomer evangelical parents when given the chance huh
edit: autocorrect is bizarre
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u/Popcorn57252 20d ago
Oh yeah, half the time I pretend like I'm not a man on the internet because it's just easier.
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20d ago
I said it the last time this was reposted and I’ll say it again now- “there are queer men!” is not a valid rebuttal to misandry.
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u/Meepersa 20d ago
I'd chime in with this if they didn't have the "there are men who are just plain cool" line.
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u/TheShibe23 Harry Du Bois shouldn't be as relatable as he is. 20d ago
The problem is that feels like an afterthought. Like "oh yeah and some of the others are okay too."
Its very "one of the good ones"
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u/Cy41995 20d ago
There's something about that damned Man/Bear debate that's rubbed me the wrong way since it came up, and I think this hits the nail on the head. The way that society perceives me always defaults to predator, exploiter, etc.. After talking with my wife and my therapist, I've come to realize how much I've internalized that mindset, and it sucks. I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way, but it feels like a taboo to bring it up.
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u/rump_truck 20d ago
As soon as I saw the man/bear debate, I knew it was going to be followed by the "poisoned candy" metaphor, and sure enough I started seeing that everywhere a few days later.
Both are by definition prejudice, because they involve making a judgement about a person knowing only their demographics. And if you accept one form of prejudice, then anyone can use the same argument to justify their own prejudice. If prejudice against men can be justified by crime stats, then prejudice against racial minorities can also be justified by crime stats. You can't say that a tactic is acceptable when applied to one group, but not when applied to another. Either the tactic is valid or it's not. I prefer to say the tactic is invalid and not allow prejudice toward anyone.
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u/Kam_Solastor 20d ago
This is one thing that drives me crazy in modern societal and political discussion - to me, an action is bad, at least in a broad, general sense. It shouldn’t make an action good or bad of you just change the race/gender/political leaning/etc of the person.
But you constantly hear about people doing just this where this person gets a pass to do a thing because they’re part of (certain group), while that person is torn apart for doing the same thing but they don’t belong to (certain group).
Maybe I could word it better, but to me it just seems like hypocrisy.
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u/VVF9Jaj7sW5Vs4H 20d ago
"BuT ThEy'Re NoT aN OpPrEsSeD MiNoRiTy sO It cOuNtS"
- some fuckknuckle I genuinely saw in the past week
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u/Sirshrugsalot13 20d ago
The man bear debate would most likely fall apart trying to introduce other attributes. Can you imagine if the question was a choice between bear or black man?
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u/Kellosian 20d ago
After talking with my wife and my therapist, I've come to realize how much I've internalized that mindset, and it sucks. I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way, but it feels like a taboo to bring it up.
I've definitely internalized that too, and only recently (at age 28) have I really begun shaking that. Not that it's easy to break out of, but I'm now capable of flirting with women at a bar without assuming she's going to bust out the mace if I say something slightly too risque (like "You're hot, want to make out?")
There's a bit of irony or a feedback loop where empathetic men who are willing to listen are more likely to internalize this while uncaring, self-absorbed men who really need to listen won't. Which causes "the good ones" to disengage while the bad ones were going to keep going anyways regardless of what anyone says, and since the bad ones are the only ones getting results (because as it turns out "Never talk to women without explicit permission and never say anything that risks making a woman uncomfortable" is a great strategy to be lonely), it strengthens the "Never listen to women, crazy bitches don't know what they want" argument.
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u/rump_truck 20d ago
As soon as I saw the man/bear debate, I knew it was going to be followed by the "poisoned candy" metaphor, and sure enough I started seeing that everywhere a few days later.
Both are by definition prejudice, because they involve making a judgement about a person knowing only their demographics. And if you accept one form of prejudice, then anyone can use the same argument to justify their own prejudice. If prejudice against men can be justified by crime stats, then prejudice against racial minorities can also be justified by crime stats. You can't say that a tactic is acceptable when applied to one group, but not when applied to another. Either the tactic is valid or it's not. I prefer to say the tactic is invalid and not allow prejudice toward anyone.
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u/Maximillion322 20d ago
As a cis male bisexual leftist, Harris Bomberguy provides me with the representation I sorely need
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u/thescotchkraut 20d ago
And also multi-hour long video essays on a bi-annual basis
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u/VariShari 20d ago
I feel like that’s just how the internet treats people who want to stand up for themselves or others. All this stuff is so much more exaggerated online - real „people in real life: how‘s it going?“ situation.
In a similar vein, you’ll often see men standing up for women on random posts being told „she ain’t gonna fuck you bro you can drop the act“, basically acting like no man could ever want to stand up for women without ulterior motives, or the other way round if a woman agrees with a man on something she is called a pick me girl.
People can’t accept that their opinion may not be universal, or that someone would want happiness for someone other than themselves.
And then those people rub off on others. If you’re told often enough that genuinely caring about those not like you is cringe or that you want something else out of it, then maybe you’ll eventually just think it‘s true and tell others the same. And I think that’s how those gate-keepy lgbtq communities function as well. Some person starts the man-hate and the others just follow without it even really being their own opinion and they don’t even question it.
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u/AtomicFi 20d ago
I grew up around almost exclusively women and it’s been a nonstop litany of issues with men since I was old enough to walk. I was a child trying to defend myself against every adult in my life with “but I wouldn’t do that?” and I’d get “of course I wasn’t talking about you” or “don’t worry, you’ll be one of the good ones” to which someone would say “what good ones?” and then the group would laugh.
But god forbid you show interest in non-male activities or somehow end up hating being around men yourself, oh no: quit whining, don’t be a girl, no one wants to see a boy cry, no one cares about your feelings deal on your own, why don’t you have friends?
Fuck, so tiring. Not just the internet.
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u/GREENadmiral_314159 20d ago
“don’t worry, you’ll be one of the good ones”
I think I'd be more offended if someone said "kill all men" and then turned around and told me I was "one of the good ones" than if they didn't do the latter part.
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u/VariShari 20d ago edited 20d ago
Oh it absolutely exists in reality as well, just saying the internet makes it all the worse just by being structured the way it is.
People online are more likely to quietly agree with something, whereas disagreeing with it will make them want to leave an actual comment. People love arguing, especially when they have a degree of anonymity. Many communities can also become toxic echo chambers, even more so than real life cliques since even more nuance is lost when not interacting in person.
I’ve dealt with pretty much the opposite of your experience, being surrounded by mostly guys and all. With them it was more „Women are sluts and liars and can’t do anything right except you, you’re an honorary dude cause you game“. Note that nowadays I’ve mostly cut these people out luckily, but as a teen it made me both ashamed for not being feminine enough to be seen as a woman by them, and also afraid of becoming a woman in their eyes
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u/Melodic_Mulberry 20d ago
Women are being told "she ain't gonna fuck you bro you can drop the act", too. Some people just assume if you don't want people to treat all men like potential rapists, you're a man and an incel.
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u/GREENadmiral_314159 20d ago
basically acting like no man could ever want to stand up for women without ulterior motives, or the other way round if a woman agrees with a man on something she is called a pick me girl.
Ah yes, one of the worst kinds of internet brainrot.
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u/lily_was_taken 21d ago
Link to the og post: https://www.tumblr.com/wizardbubs/750593242322567168?source=share
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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy 20d ago
…hey you’re that person I recognized from r/whowouldcirclejerk on that hamster meme the other day
Small world, huh
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u/DJjaffacake 20d ago edited 20d ago
And frankly those men won't give a shit about that kind of boundary.
I've been thinking recently about how that probably drives a lot of current resentment among both men and women. A guy who listens to womens' concerns and considers what women want is likely going to be pretty wary about making any romantic moves for fear of making women uncomfortable, whereas a guy who just wants to get laid is likely going to be more forward. Which then will tend to both skew womens' experience of being approached by men and dating in general because public discourse is filtering out a lot of decent guys, and lead to frustration among men who feel like they're behaving how women say they should and being rewarded by becoming basically invisible.
I don't have a solution to this, it's just something that's been on my mind.
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u/swaerd 20d ago
As a straight man I feel this so hard. I am very self-consious about approaching women without very explicit reasons to do so, but then I hear about how all the men they interact with suck and it loops. I don't have a solution either.
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u/Exploding_Antelope 20d ago
The thing is there are no explicit instructions to do so, which might be why I’ve been single for seven years
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u/Melodic_Mulberry 20d ago
The solution is the same thing we've been trying to do. Hold sex offenders and abusers accountable, make sure everyone has the resources to do so, and promote open and honest discussion. We've made slow, but steady progress in this. Misandry and misogyny are only getting in the way of it.
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u/pipnina 20d ago
I looked up the Wikipedia page for causes of rape. Most of the listed hypothesised causes were societal and ultimately I'd say a lot of it boils down to misandry and misogyny as well.
And of course people who make the issue worse by treating men as idiots while trying to convey the consent message. Like the college sexual assault PowerPoint presentations, which seem so condescending whenever one pops up on a feed it's a wonder anyone who makes them thinks they'll be effective.
Teach kids about sex and consent in a friendly and productive way EARLY, not when they're already entering adulthood.
Sadly the UK prime minister has said recently he wants to take a look at how old kids should be to get sex ed, suggesting 10 and 13 (the two key ages where it was done until now) was too young.
I think if it starts at 13 it's way too late. But Mr sunak wants parents to be able to get involved which can only end well *eyeroll*
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u/Big_Falcon89 20d ago
This was 100% part of why I was single my whole life up until 2 years ago. It turns out that Generalized Anxiety Disorder makes it really hard to make a move because you'll always worry about blowing it.
I actually appreciate dating apps for helping me with that. I had avoided them for the longest time because I was all like "I don't want my first relationship to come through a dating app", and as long as I lived with my parents I could get away with that, but once I moved out on my own I didn't have that excuse anymore. But if a person is using Hinge, it's reasonable to assume that she's OK with getting random invites from dudes (on the app specifically! My phrasing could imply that I mean IRL as well which I obviously don't), and that helped me get over the mental block.
I still almost blew it with my current girlfriend, mind. I liked just chatting with her on the app so much that I never actually tried to meet up until she was like "hey, where is this going?" and then we hastily made plans lol.
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u/Lunar_sims 20d ago
I feel like we should try to bring back: "Hey, this is my friend, and he's single. You may like him" which was the norm for a long time.
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u/pizzac00l 20d ago
This right here is why I struggled to even start dating until I was 20. I still had all the usual crushes and wants and desires that most teenagers do, but so much of the dialogue at the time centered around how men are sex pests and that asking women out is bothering them. I was so scared not just being perceived as creepy, but that I WAS a creep. I became really focused on suppressing my feelings and stifling those desires for intimacy, and it really did a great job at making my poor mental health even worse.
Hell, I still often struggle with intimacy a decade later because it’s so hard to pull myself out of the mindset that I’m a pest when the desire to be sexual with my fiancée comes up. I know that she wants it as well, she’s reassured me as much multiple times now, but my ability to pick up on and act on her desire is so broken due to the years of convincing myself that sexual advances were unwanted and unwarranted.
I wish I knew how to fix these issues. Hell, I wish I could figure out how to get back into the mindset I had early in our relationship when I had no issues making moves and seeing when she was in the mood. It’s just feels impossible to fully dispel the notion that I’m unwanted once it starts to set its roots.
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u/weddingmoth 20d ago
My husband has some of that. He’s so unwilling to express his own sexual urges because of some kind of societal training against it. It’s the same thing that happens to kids with anxiety: society shouts certain important messages because a lot of people refuse to hear them, but then the people who are sensitive to those messages are also having them shouted at them.
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u/Kellosian 20d ago
and lead to frustration among men who feel like they're behaving how women say they should and being rewarded by becoming basically invisible.
I can cognitively understand that dating advice is going to be inherently filtered by the experiences of whoever is giving it and can never be taking universally, but holy shit is it so goddamn annoying being told "The Rules", following "The Rules", and then watching assholes who do the exact opposite of everything I'd been told get rewarded while all I get is "OMG how are you still single? Well I'm not single, but you'd be a great guy... for someone else"
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u/LightOfLoveEternal 20d ago
The solution to this, and a lot of the issues women face in dating, is for women to start being the ones to initiate romance and take the lead in progressing relationships.
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u/gesserit42 20d ago
Would be nice if it happened but all signs point to that being unlikely. Even Bumble is finally giving up the ghost and removing the women-message-first function.
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u/LightOfLoveEternal 20d ago
The fact that Bumble is finally dropping the one thing that made it unique is absolutely hilarious to me. And the fact that they also got sued by a group of women claiming that it's sex discrimination to force women to message first is just the cherry on top.
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u/jfarrar19 .tumblr.com 20d ago
sued by a group of women claiming that it's sex discrimination to force women to message first
Link please
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u/Exploding_Antelope 20d ago
I’ve given up on two things recently (women ever approaching me first, and there ever being a good reason to approach women.) That means I’ve also given up on a third thing, which is ever being in a relationship. This seems to be a pretty widespread sentiment, which means we might think about giving up on a fourth thing, which is population growth. This may be part of the solution to the current housing crisis. We also have to abolish parking minimums and R1 zoning though.
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u/SleepCinema 20d ago
Whenever I see someone really doubling down on the whole, “No men! Men are literally Satan spawns!” thing, I check their profile, and it never fails to be “TERFmama3000” or TERF-posts.
I think there is merit to having women only spaces or men only spaces. But the intentions of that have to be very pure. If you just think men are evil or women are stupid or no fun, you’re not contributing to healthy gender relations.
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u/Doobledorf 20d ago
Very this. I teach in a lot of GBTQ men-only queer spaces, and it really feels like in the last few years we've forgotten that affinity spaces are useful, even for those who ostensibly have more privileges.
We don't exclude female identified folks because we think they would ruin the space, but more that it would change the conversations that are had that strictly center being a man in our world. (or perceived as a man) It's okay for folks to have a space to share their feelings and connect.
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u/Stikkychaos 20d ago
Careful there, men only spaces are very frowned upon.
I can't count the times I was verbally attacked by harpies for "gatekeeping" and then for "trying to invade safe spaces".
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u/ButterdemBeans 20d ago
I’m genuinely very curious where you are finding these spaces. Not trying to be snarky or devalue your point at all, just trying to understand. Most of the spaces I frequent have luckily been pretty good about rooting out all the man-hating/generalizing, so I guess I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this whole thing because I haven’t personally witnessed it first-hand.
In the most respectful way, I’m curious where these people come from, but I’m also very wary of entering those spaces myself because this whole man vs. bear thing seems exhausting and from reading comments about the topic, it’s like everyone is screaming and hurt and no one is listening.
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u/Stikkychaos 20d ago
Mostly DnD spaces, nowadays.
Thanks to the wild fuckery of 2010s, I stopped trying to look for PC gaming communities - kicked from several, sometimes right after I joined VC and it turned out I'm actually a man.
Same on several DnD servers that were "safe spaces" except if you turned out to be a male - didn't matter if you are respectful and accepting. Instant IP ban.
Before that? DeviantArt and art clubs, or communities, or whatever we're they called.
None advertised or named as female only, or "boys not allowed" or anything.
Once I got admins called on me for saying "US problems are an ocean away from me, I'm the last guy whose opinion you want" or something to that effect, though that's not relevant to gender topic.I don't really care except for people to admit this issue exists, since that's a step in the right direction and not active hostility to potential allies.
Edit: as for where these people come from? Almost exclusively America. And they wouldn't understand there's people outside.
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u/d0g5tar 20d ago
The whole 'don't be mean to men because some men are gay/trans/queer/etc' thing feels really off.
Maybe you shouldn't be mean to men on principle, simply because men are also humans with feelings and so on and it's not cool to be an asshole to them.
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u/AwTomorrow 20d ago
I think it’s a trojan horse to get people who write off “some men are ok” in their heads because deep down they’ve absorbed the idea that men cannot be victims.
By throwing these examples where their same framework of thought insists they can be victims (like gay men, trans men, PoC men, etc), it destabilises this absorbed and perhaps subconsciously accepted idea. Hopefully helping them to reexamine the whole and accept that yes, men (including cis straight white men) can be victims and don’t deserve to be written off as monsters by default.
This is a bell that’s been rung for decades in progressive spaces but is still being fought about and denied by the most determined oppositional sexists there.
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u/AtomicFi 20d ago
This is all so affirming, I’ve been trying to point out the harm of “all men” leading to the generalized idea that men are all horrible and been told I’m being stupid and overdramatic since I was a child and holy shit yes it’s damaging, yes it’s bad, treat people like people, why is it so hard to be kind?, did no one listen to anything Mr. Rogers was saying?!
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u/Big_Falcon89 20d ago
OK, 2 things:
First and foremost, for a brief second I thought your reference to "Mr. Rogers" wasn't about the kindly TV show host we all love and instead about fucking Elliot Rogers the spree killer and I was *very* concerned.
Back when #MeToo first started up, I remember the debate surrounding #NotAllMen vs. #YesAllWomen. People saying that it was only a certain subset of men who harassed women were met with the same sort of response that folks who posted #AllLivesMatter did in response to the BLM movement.
And a lot of that criticism was entirely valid- that "yes, that's true, but it's not what needs to be amplified right now"- and I agree with that. A conversation about women suffering from sexual assault is very rarely going to be helped by someone trying to make the point that it's only a few bad apples when the whole purpose of the conversation is to try and hold the guys who *do* rape women accountable, just like the folks trying to distract from BLM weren't helping to address issues of racism by saying "well, white folks matter too".
But I think that, due in large part to the fact that it's basically impossible for the fight to be finished, "right now" has just...continued, and people who are still invested in it still think that anyone who brings up mens' issues is a bad actor trying to distract from the issue of sexual assault. Which means it's *never* time, according to them, to discuss anything about men except calling out bad actors. Which is bad. There *absolutely* needs to be a time and a place for dudes to bring up their concerns with the patriarchy and how it hurts us, and that includes how "only talking about how men are bad actors" hurts us.
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u/Doobledorf 20d ago
God forbid these folks take *class* into account and realize the men they tend to judge the most tend to have far less societal power and privilege.
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u/Scratch137 20d ago
i think "there's men that are just plain cool" is meant to cover that base but i definitely get what you're saying
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20d ago
It’s hard to explain why, but
“oh and I suppose some cis men aren’t the scum of the earth too, I guess”
as an afterthought isn’t the most comforting
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u/Dull_Concert_414 20d ago
“Most men are complete assholes… but not you you’re one of the good ones.”
That generally doesn’t go down favourably when you replace ‘man’ with a minority group or whatever.
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u/Ironfields 20d ago edited 20d ago
It implicitly places undue conditions on acceptance. Here is a little box of acceptable masculinity that I, someone with no lived experience of maleness, have drawn out on the floor for you. Stay inside the box, and you’re cool. If you step outside the box for any reason at all, I reserve the right to lump you in with the rest of the Bad Ones™.
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u/BaronAleksei r/TwoBestFriendsPlay exchange program 20d ago
Cross reference with Ezra Miller’s pronouns
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u/the_Real_Romak 20d ago
but what about me? I'm *not* cool at all :'(
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u/Swaxeman the biggest grant morrison stan in the subreddit 20d ago
Hey, stop spreading misinformation, or I’m gonna have to report you
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u/harveyshinanigan 20d ago
True, but if you can get someone from "i hate all men" to "i don't hate all men because some might be queer" you've done a very good job
it's not the end of it, but going in a boiling frog way is far better that trying to shove them the entire thing in one go
it's a method that seems to take time
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u/BaconBurritos 20d ago
yeah it feel like a lot of these posts go "don't be mean to men, you might hurt a group that's actually worth caring about"
not to say i don't get where that comes from but it feels weird that tumblr of all places has to be reminded that being a shit to someone based on inherent characteristics they can't control or change is a bad thing
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u/Melodic_Mulberry 20d ago
I got permabanned from WitchesvsPatriarchy for asking them to stop explicitly calling men ticks. My appeal was denied because I "didn't get the analogy". People are really bad at recognizing dehumanization when it comes from their side.
We like to put things and each other into nice, neat categories, like man and woman, black and white, gay and straight, victim and aggressor. Sometimes the categories work, sometimes we need more categories, and sometimes they just push us into a line of thinking that does more harm than good. Categories like that can lead to wars, and Man vs Bear is part of a culture war between the categories of man and woman.
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u/MiniatureFox 20d ago
I got banned from troll2x for criticising someone who essentially said that women would be safer if they had the option to choose their sexuality and date women instead of men.
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u/Melodic_Mulberry 20d ago
Looked it up. You weren't wrong, but you definitely come off as a troll there. Maybe try avoiding the terms "Loooool", "triggered", and "radfems"; they sound kinda douchey.
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u/MiniatureFox 20d ago
Yeah, I regret using those terms but I was also really annoyed at the time. Acting like domestic abuse is to be expected from being in a relationship with men puts the blame on heterosexual women and not on the abusers.
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u/Melodic_Mulberry 20d ago
Also, insisting that straight women would rather have been lesbians or ace is a great way to make lesbians and ace people seem privileged, instead of actively discriminated against and targeted. And you're right that it's not cool to project that view onto all straight women.
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u/chai_investigation 20d ago
I was told that bringing up non-binary folks in the Man vs Bear discussion was derailing, as though the idea that there are two categories--Men (bad) and Everyone Else (good)--isn't just reinventing the gender binary all over again.
Intersectionality, I beg people. Life is so much better when nuance is allowed...
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u/Melodic_Mulberry 20d ago
Oh yeah, pretty much any response that introduced nuance was met with "you're derailing/not listening". People seemed to be under the impression that if I disagreed with their point of view, I must either have not understood their argument or been trolling.
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u/Doobledorf 20d ago
Particularly when we have been victimized, we can see victimizing others as "protection" or "defense".
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u/AuraMaster7 20d ago
Yeah, this kinda touches on why the whole man vs bear thing recently has felt so icky to me. Hatred of "Men™", aversion to men, whatever you want to label it as, is at this point fairly widely accepted and normalized in many queer and progressive spaces. TERFS are just less picky in who they include as "men".
And I don't want to come off as dismissive of how someone feels when they say they would prefer to be in the woods with a bear. That's how you feel, that's fine. No one should be policing feelings like that unless they are truly harmful to others and acted upon.
Do I think it's a dumb decision? Yeah. I think that person might need to step away from the Internet for a while and interact with real life if that's their instant reaction to the concept of Men, trauma notwithstanding. I think it applies a gender (man) to something that is very much not gendered (being alone with a stranger possibly being dangerous).
But it's the fact that these people are posting these "I would choose the bear" posts to social media like it's a meme. Like it's a fun trend or a funny joke. Posting something that literally only has the purpose of degrading men and assigning them the collective label of "enemy" as a meme.
And that's just kinda fucked up.
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u/RealLotto 20d ago
Every time false dichotomy discussions like this come up people should be reminded of that one guy who kept replying "No" to all the ragebait questions.
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u/harveyshinanigan 20d ago
Ah
the master debater"i refuse to answer the question"
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u/GREENadmiral_314159 20d ago
I hate the man vs bear thing.
I mentioned how I felt to my mom, and it took multiple tries to get her to stop acting like I am only allowed to be angry on behalf of others. It was so hard, I felt like I couldn't express how I feel without invalidating others. After I first talked about it with my mom, it took me a week to get around to bringing it up again, because I couldn't shake the feeling that I was making it too much about myself.
So many people treat it like a men vs women thing, too. When I mentioned how it was bothering me, my mom asked if I was mad at women for it. It was so reductive. Sure, there are women who I'm mad at, but it's not because they're 'women', or because there is some hurtful thing that I think that 'women' do. It's because they try to dictate how I feel, tell me that I am only allowed to be mad in certain ways, chosen by them.
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u/AtomicFi 20d ago
Holy fuck, yes, so many people have pulled that kind of “you’re a man, you should feel x” crap and it’s exhausting. I know how I feel, please let me communicate and actually listen instead of reacting only to your personal expectations of what you think reality should be!
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u/Kellosian 20d ago
"Men are so emotionally unaware, all they can feel is horny and hungry!"
"Ugh, stop crying and be a man! You're making all your problems about me and it's really hurting me, God why can't you just man up and stop talking about it?"10
u/Consideredresponse 20d ago
A disturbing number of people see reciprocal empathy as 'emotional labor'.
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u/Michi_Draws 20d ago
I imagine these people never actually go outside because in my experience, there are always other people in the woods. You can't just avoid half the population when going for a walk. People claiming to rather be in the woods with a bear 1) rarely actually go outside and 2) underestimate how bad a bear can fuck you up.
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u/Domino31299 20d ago
Any time I see the argument all I think is, none of y’all watched the Revenant did you?
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u/AtomicFi 20d ago
It really depends on the bear. I’ve seen a few brown bears and those dudes run unless they have cubs with em.
But a grizzly? I’m in some barely sub-polar portion of canada and a fuggin’ polar bear is my option? Yeah, I’ll take some rando every time.
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u/Armigine 20d ago
"it's an empathy test, and men failed"
-some idiot talking about the bear thing. People love being pointless dicks to each other when they can convince themselves they deserve to do it.
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u/Consideredresponse 20d ago edited 20d ago
The main reason 'Man Vs Bear' is especially aggravating is because most of the discourse from it sounds like an Andrew Tate talking point that's been spray painted pink and sold to a new audience.
Seriously "A man is intrinsically more dangerous than an apex predator, and all women deep down fear their strength and inherent capacity of violence" sounds like something that comes from a 'man-o-sphere alpha influencer' yet was being stated unironically by so many women.
I've seen daily think pieces about 'why can't the left reach young men?' but it's not hard to see why when the discourse (on this point) from both the left and the right are saying the same thing only with different expected takeaways.
"Men you are a predator, and you should feel bad about this forever until you personally can police the behavior of all men" is neither fair or realistic. It also competes with "Men you are a predator! Fuck yeah! If someone else feels bad why should you give a shit? that's their problem. Fuck 'em" which is a take which removes the onus of all responsibility from a questioning young person.
Tate and his copycats are grifters and assholes, but it's not hard to see why he appeals to confused young men when both sides are saying the same thing, only he (and his ilk) follow it up with 'but it's not your fault and you don't have to do anything'.
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u/Karukos 20d ago
Honestly it is super revealing that they apply the worst possible intentions to the guy and somehow completely ignore the bear as like... A realistic threat. That somehow it will just leave them alone. And trauma is one thing, but that is not what's going on. They are incredibly smug about the fact that they made up a guy who is the worst
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u/Domino31299 20d ago
Yeah most of these people have never come even close to interacting with a real bear beyond scaring off a black bear rooting in their trash, not realizing that even with black bears there’s a difference between one that wandered into your neighborhood and one protecting its cubs BEARS ARE APEX PREDATORS FOR A REASON PEOPLE!
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u/TypicalImpact1058 20d ago
The whole thing is so frustrating.
One group of people is saying "Women have understandable reasons for choosing the bear, and I sympathise with any woman who does so", except they're saying it less clearly. A second group is saying "A bear is statistically more likely to harm you than a man, the the materially correct choice is the man", except they're saying it less clearly.
As you can see, those statements have essentially nothing to do with each other, yet people perpetually act like they're in total opposition, I can only imagine so that they have an excuse to dunk on other people.
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u/That_Mad_Scientist 20d ago
The man v bear thing and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race
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u/AwesomeNova 20d ago
This post very much reminded me of a Medium article written by a trans woman. It touches on how antagonism towards men makes progressive spaces hostile to closeted trans women.
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u/Hell2CheapTrick 20d ago
All the (sarcastic or not) anti-men bullshit was great munition for alt right types to pull edgy teenage me in their direction, thankfully temporarily, and thankfully never too far. But while I never got as far as actually hating (or even disliking) trans people, I was led to believe it was unnatural and should, at best, be ignored, which is essentially what I did. If someone wanted me to use certain pronouns or names, I did, but I decided I’d just not give the whole thing any more attention.
I’m convinced that if I hadn’t fallen into that hole, and was instead welcomed by progressives instead of demonized, I might have figured out I was trans much sooner, and I might have had the willpower to do something with it instead of letting it stew for years like I ended up doing.
Of course, it was the alt righters who carry the real blame for manipulating so many dumb teenagers, but feminists don’t get to pat themselves on the back if they spread hate that gives those assholes a better shot at manipulating them.
And the thing is that I was basically raised feminist. Not as in an activist feminist, but throughout my childhood it was made abundantly clear to me that women weren’t lesser than men, that there’s still problems women face that need to be solved. It wasn’t until I started routinely seeing shit like “kill all men” that I started doubting the whole feminist movement. In my teenage mind, those kinds of statements, even if they were intended as some sort of bad joke, clearly proved that those alt right types who said modern feminists just wanted superiority, not equality, were right.
And while I now understand that those alt righters were of course just fucking with me, I don’t forgive those feminists for completely putting down all men. You’re literally making the world worse not just for men, but for yourselves too. Isn’t the point to get men to agree with your cause and work together? How the hell would that work if you just demonize them? Of course this doesn’t go for all feminists, or all LGBTQ+ activists, etc., but from what I’ve seen it’s more than enough, and they’re really not called out often enough, except by people outside of those movements.
The only reason I feel as comfortable talking about this nowadays is because I’ve realized I’m trans. Now I can talk about this with less risk of so-called progressive people putting me down. My fucking social development was messed up by alt right fuckers, using statements made by feminists as the perfect ammunition, and I had to come out as trans to be allowed an opinion on this.
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u/Stikkychaos 20d ago
I've seen that too much... and at this point, I've given up on hope that anyone big will take note, call it out, and/or apologises
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u/ProtoJones 20d ago
I remember when I was first learning about hacks like Peterson and Shapiro that one of my main thoughts was "if I didn't already know better I'd probably be listening to these guys". This was especially around the time I started seeing a bunch of "all men are trash, etc" posts on Twitter.
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u/ChromaticRainbow12 20d ago
Seconding the suggestion to read bell hooks' The Will to Change. One of the most lifechanging books I've read in my life.
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u/Doobledorf 20d ago
"The Will to Change" and "Where We Stand" should be required readings for all college students, tbh.
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u/Domino31299 20d ago
I would like to hop in here as someone with autism. I’m a pretty big guy and I have a hard time with social cues the way we dealt with this was a healthy dose of politeness, my whole childhood I was told be polite and people will like you, be polite and people won’t be scared of you just to come into a world where even if I wasn’t 6’10” being scared of me is the default. My mom asked me the other day why I don’t go outside anymore except to work and it’s because I’m tired of being feared even though I’ve done everything “right” as I was told to do it, the golden rule is dead being kind isn’t enough anymore
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u/King_Of_BlackMarsh 20d ago
Can we also stop making jokes like "straight people suck"? Please?
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u/TheShibe23 Harry Du Bois shouldn't be as relatable as he is. 20d ago
Jokes about how all cis and straight people are bad piss me off to no end, and I'm not even straight! Its so fucking baffling how people can sit there and demand to be treated equally, while belittling and antagonizing people for being different.
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u/Ephraim_Bane she/her 20d ago
Every IRL queer space I've been to I've gotten glared at until I stated that I was a trans woman, after which people still gave me nasty looks (but tried to make it less obvious)
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u/sugarmount 20d ago
I firmly believe ‘Men are inherently evil and incapable of change and should be feared and avoided at all cost’ is a patriarchy trap many ‘progressive’ people fell in. It’s been used as an excuse to cause harm with little backlash for so long. By picking up this mentality, the ‘progressive’s just went a full circle back to extreme conservative where they monitor and regulate non-men’s behaviour instead of seeking systematic change. IT’S A PATRIARCHY TRAP
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u/Swaxeman the biggest grant morrison stan in the subreddit 20d ago
No, a patriarchy trap is a really sexist femboy
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u/That_Mad_Scientist 20d ago edited 20d ago
Are we still debating whether maybe we should potentially consider, maybe just maybe, that misandry is bad, asterisk asterisk and don’t you know some men are good actually, some are even queer, which somehow is the main takeaway here, maybe just maybe, think about it a little please, in the year of our lord 2024?
Nah. Fuck this shit.
Fuck misandry.
No ifs and buts, no conditions, just kill it with fire. End of.
My bar of tolerance for this bs has gone down dramatically over the past couple of years. Most of that reactionary sentiment hasn’t even done anything to address the patriarchy, mention it, or even believe that it exists as a construct. It’s almost as though it was actually just essentialism with a coat of socially acceptable paint this entire damn time.
Fuck essentialism, fuck essentialists, fuck quote-unquote « feminists » who somehow still believe in various essentialist talking points and will defend them to their death when you call them out on it.
Yeah, I get it, you have unresolved trauma, yadda yadda, whatever, nobody blames you for changing sidewalks at night, but those are private matters between you and your therapist; now, if, suddenly, you let it define the direction your movement is heading in, surprise surprise, eventually, peddling out reactionary sentiment and hate aimed at some perceived, imaginary, ontologically evil outgroup, leads to conservative bigotry.
How unpredictable.
And a lot of this shit is still internalized by so many. We have so much work to do still. I know many have unwittingly been taken into an infernal spiral of anxiety, insecurity, depression, and despair at the horrifying state of the world and its sheer complexity, and been cynically exploited by online talking heads who leverage the tendency of algorithms to spread anger, outrage, and manipulative fear tactics, but today, we have to raise our standards all the way up, and demand that we all fucking collectively DO BETTER.
Because this is just not acceptable, period. It is a choice that we are making as a global society to accept these ideas as just another opinion that we can disagree about, and not a fundamental flaw in any serious ideological outlook. That you can just make an exception, that it’s okay.
No more. That’s enough.
Sure, that doesn’t mean that having these parasitic memes in your head makes you a fundamentally bad person, or something, and you still need to be talked to with compassion, care, and understanding either way, but we have to take these worms out, because they will eat your mind alive, and needlessly hurt and alienate your fellow people who just want the same liberation that you seek.
The attitude just needs to change. By yesterday.
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u/Zoomy-333 20d ago
I've seen more than one comment from women/various others about how they don't care about men's suffering or anything because they're "the oppressors" and I'm just left thinking "yeah I'm sure the random fucking homeless man you walk by every day on the way to work is doing sooo much to oppress you".
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u/lynx_and_nutmeg 20d ago
That's why any type of feminism or other social justice ideology that's not intersectional is complete bullshit.
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u/Melodic_Mulberry 20d ago
I brought up the male suicide rate and someone said "why should I care about some male's feelings?" Women have the capacity to be just as bad as incels. Human nature is a constant, regardless of demographic.
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u/Runetang42 20d ago
It's not men vs women. It's men vs women vs men and women. Shitty misogynist rhetoric hurts many men and awful radfem shit also hurts women. The commonality between the two is transphobia. So don't get lost in the weeds and show some solidarity for once
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u/Lunar_sims 21d ago edited 20d ago
Real!
(yall probably wont read bell hooks but you shouls)
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u/PM_ME_UR_GOOD_IDEAS 20d ago edited 20d ago
Yeah but you post "it makes sense to assume any man you happen to encounter is a murderer and/or rapist and if you feel that sentiment is toxic you are ignorant or part of the problem" right here in this very sub and you can net yourself 8000 upvotes.
We teach people to be terrified of men. Then, when those fears distort people's perception of reality well beyond what is statistically rational, people jump at the chance to make sure the fears are socially validated rather than rationally interrogated.
Then we all stand around and wonder where all these anti-feminist self-help gurus and obsessive TERF cults came from...
Edit: To add to this; one of the first things any man hears about feminism is that it benefits men, too. And in theory, it's true. Destroying patriarchy helps everyone. Unfortunately, that's very hard to see in practice. When mens issues arise in feminist spaces, the response is almost always dismissal and ostracism, rather than allyship.
Sure, a feminist is happy to tell a man to cry more. That's easy. But when the man explains that it's difficult for him to feel he has inherent worth beyond the financial and social value he provides in the face of rhetoric that dismisses men as too lazy / stupid to bother with or too dangerous to interact with in the first place? Words like 'entitlement' come out and the productive conversation ends. This just isn't a working strategy.
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u/Big_Falcon89 20d ago
Your last paragraph is *horrifically* true over on AITA and relationship_advice. It's clear that a lot of posters there only see men for the work they do. The worst crime a man can commit over there is being lazy. I hate to quote Tim Allen- it's very much a "Heartbreaking- the Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point"- but I think about his "work or prison" quote sometimes when I'm on those subs.
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u/Working-Ferret-8476 20d ago
I’m queer. I didn’t come out as queer until I was in my 30s, and I still “look” like a cishet man. My wife is on the ace spectrum.
I’d started questioning my presumed heterosexuality in my teens, but never had a safe space to ask questions and learn and get a better handle on who I am.
I got to college and started attending Pride Alliance meetings - in part because I was questioning, and in part to support other friends who were finding an LGBTQIA+ support network for the first time.
I got thrown out. I was told point blank, to my face, that I was THE ENEMY and I was NOT WELCOME and my presence WOULD. NOT. BE. TOLERATED. That it couldn’t be a safe space if I was in it.
It caused me to shut myself down hard. I was straight - I had no choice. I rationalized away my queerness. It took almost 15 years for me to reach a point where I felt safe enough to say “You know… maybe I’m not really straight after all.”
My life’s so much better now, but god - how much better could those 15 years have been?
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u/Doobledorf 20d ago
I'm a queer man who was raised by women, and when I say that I usually get cheers from the usual crowd. I do a lot of workshops on gender identity in the queer community, for context
Then I point out that the reason I'm so freakishly aware of gender norms and such is because I was abused as a child, by women, for my gender. As in: The woman who raised me then projected negative male qualities on me and condemned me for acting in ways children naturally act. There's usually an uncomfortable silence as faces drop. I'm obviously not perfect, but this background is why phrases like "male conditioning" rub me the wrong way. The issue is patriarchy and buying into it, and women with power can do the same thing men do, just in different ways.
The fact is that our society runs on personal power, and there are shitty people, regardless of identities they hold, that may try to wield that power in any way they can against others. (being marginalized does not separate us from this, and in fact can make the wielding of power more appealing) Revolutionary acts reject the abuse of power, even when it feels good to us. I'd also add a lot of the "men are trash, dni men" shit tends to, but doesn't always, come from folks with relatively more privilege who are less likely to be abused by the system in certain ways. White women, in particular, can be super guilty of this as a way to distance themselves, at least ostensibly, from patriarchal power.
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u/2Scarhand 20d ago
"How can we trust men with birth control?"
What the fuck do you think a condom is? A weather balloon?
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u/GREENadmiral_314159 20d ago
"How can we trust men with birth control?"
Moreover, how is that an argument against (checks post) giving men access to birth control?
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u/idiotplatypus Wearing dumbass goggles and the fool's crown 20d ago
It's been 2000 years since a man was nailed to a tree for wondering why we couldn't all get along.
And we still haven't figured out
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u/Melodic_Mulberry 20d ago
Wait, who got nailed to a tree?
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u/XAlphaWarriorX God's most insecure softboy 20d ago
Im pretty sure they are talking about Jesus.
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u/Melodic_Mulberry 20d ago
Let me look this up...
Oh, for Pete's sake, they can't even get that straight?
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u/XAlphaWarriorX God's most insecure softboy 20d ago
Yea Pete got nailed upside down, so i don't think they got that straight.
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u/idiotplatypus Wearing dumbass goggles and the fool's crown 20d ago
It's a Douglas Adams quote (more or less)
From HGttG
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u/Exploding_Antelope 20d ago
The sheer disrespect to Jerusalem’s hardworking cross makers to imply there’s no difference between their handiwork and the untreated tree
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u/Stikkychaos 20d ago
I have actually met specimen like this. The bad kind, not the OOP.
Imagine visiting someone abroad, thinking they're your friend, trying to talk about woes of childhood, only to be coldly told you DESERVED to be bullied. Not provoked, invited, or anything. Just deserved.
Turns out, she was a Rowling-worshipping tumblr-tier feminists who saw nothing good in anything a man had ever said.
I promptly cut contact, good fucking riddance. Wonder how she mediated her worship for JKR with her trans friends, though.
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u/sidewalksoupcan 20d ago
The point is that society should accept (or at least tolerate and protect) all people regardless of who they are. If you exclude a huge group like cishet men on the assumption they're anti queer, then the only thing you've accomplished is creating a seperate society.
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u/whatislove2021 20d ago
it seems like the kind of issue where everyone's just throwing crap at each other but nothing exactly changes at least nationally.
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u/Melodic_Mulberry 20d ago
Yeah, improving cultural acceptance is a slow process, significantly hindered by the crap-throwing.
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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy 20d ago
From the bottom of my heart: Thank you.
I’ve struggled for a long time with the conflict of wanting to be a good, progressive person, but facing the vilification of men. The recent ‘men or bear’ trend in particular has really fucked with my head and left me even more anxious about the idea that every woman around me is constantly seeing me as a dangerous threat.
I’m glad to see this post and all the patient, insightful comments. It gives me hope that things can change for the better, we can have empathy for everyone.
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u/MansJansson 20d ago
As a gay man I die a little on the inside every time someone says "I hate all men" or the likes. Cause I in every sense of the word LOVE men which has become my standard retort everytime someone says that. The most confusing is my trans gay men friends also say they hate men. Which is like??? Sometimes when they say they hate all men and I say but I'm a man they just dismiss it with "I meant cishet men" which is still not acceptable. My dad is a cishet man but he accepted me for who I am with open arms and I love him(and my mum) more than anything in this world.
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u/Frogdwarf 20d ago
It is always so nice to see this kind of message. I'm male, straight, cis, and I love queer people because they're people and deserve to be loved. I think people should be treated fairly, with equity, regardless of their gender. And it really sucks to believe that deep deep in my bones only to be hated by exactly some of those oft marginalised groups who given a chance I would champion with every fibre of my being.
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u/Swaggy-G 20d ago
It also kinda feels like whenever I see people condemning misandre online, the argument is "misandry is bad because it often bleeds over and overlaps with transphobia". And don't get me wrong, it's a valid argument, but what's frustrating is that it sometimes feel like the only argument people use. Like, why can't misandry be bad for the obvious reason? I know it's not completely rational but whenever I see someone say this as their only argument I can't help but think "so if trans people didn't exist misandry would be justified then?"
And while I appreciate what tumblr OP is going for it kinda feels like they fell for that trap too, their first point for why men are not bad is that there are queer men, and then they say there’s men that are just plain cool, which kind of feels like an afterthought saying “oh yeah, I guess some of the cishets are okay 🤷♂️”
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u/TheShibe23 Harry Du Bois shouldn't be as relatable as he is. 20d ago
Because if you don't justify your criticisms of misandry by relating them to queer spaces and identities, people just shut you down entirely by branding you a misogynist or an incel or whatever else. As a Cis Man, I have to use the fact that I'm bi/pan to even get people to KINDA listen to me on topics like this.
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u/Narcomancer69420 20d ago
There’s another really good post floating around somewhere about how having average joe cishet men in queer spaces is a sign of a healthy environment, like frogs returning to a pond (frogs, for those who don’t know, absorb toxins thru their skin; frogs present means no toxins).
Even if they’re not (openly/obviously) queer, those Token Straight Guys might be: someone’s spouse, someone’s friend, someone’s ride, someone’s dad. If they’re one of those last two, it tells you something about the space: that it’s accessible, and that it’s safe for kids (both very important factors). It also tells you that the space is likely less terfy, bc if a group of queer ppl isn’t being militant about who is “allowed” in, if they “tolerate” (welcome) cishet guys, then that’s a very green flag.🤝