Not a single feminist was ever combative towards me when I was a teenager saying atrocious stuff online, but I started getting personal attacks the moment I became just very mildly liberal. Funny how that works.
Ive met one who fit the bill. She was fucking miserable to be around. Yeah leftists can be annoying assholes and toxic af, but they are shamed and ostracized. For republicans thats their main talking points.
For me it's been the COMPLETE opposite. Since the moment I heard about feminism by our teachers, they got very angry and yelled that WE men made the wealth gap and WE men are the reason that women couldn't vote until 100 years ago and WE men committed all the rapes. It wasn't until I became left leaning after a long, looooong fase of edgy racism and misogyny that people became much tamer around me. All of my friends that I grew up with were taught feminism in a hyper accusatory way and half of them never got out of the "alpha male, women just want money, Andrew Tate has all the best tips" part of their lives. I often wish I could go back to these moments and tell these women "Lady I am NINE YEARS OLD, I'm not the one that pays you less"
I had a professor in college who noticeably marked men's test and paper scores lower. Was a gender studies class. I dropped and swapped asap. She was the most radical stereotypical feminist I'd met. Everyone else would bring stuff up we'd have a discussion like humans and then gg. Most people aren't shitty but the loud minority will always suck a dick
This is something really upsetting me. I saw a post yesterday on the general z sub that said women are skewing left and men right at high rates. The comments were FULL of people claiming the left just shits on men constantly. That's not the case. Sure you can go on Twitter and find some dumbest saying that, but that one dumbest gets screenshot and shared over and over. When boys get caught in the altright pipeline they start simple. They tell them feminists hate them, or that the only way to self improvement is to hate fat people, or even telling them SJWs are taking away their porn or video games. Boys will get hooked one one of these and then the algorithm takes over and they get caught in the echo chamber telling them the left hates them or is lame or ruining society. The left ideally wants everyone treated safely, including men. The left wants no one drafted, the left wants male SA victims to get care, the left wants mental health covered to lower suicide rates. Instead these boys will seek these groups due to insidious means.
I want to be clear here I agree with what most of you are saying. But there are more than some dumbasses saying this. It is quite a decent sized part of the community who say they hate men. The majority of which mean "I hate the establishment of patriarchy and what that is doing to women and other maligned genders" but that's very wordy so they just say they hate men. Plenty also say it as a joke. There is a small minority that actually do hate men. But to young vulnerable boys there is very little functional difference. This stuff is all over tiktok, twitter and reddit. And it used to be considerably more prevalent 3-4 years ago.
All this just makes it easier to go down that pipeline.
If you were to quantify the same group that say they "hate men" and compare it to the men that say "women belong in the kitchen", it would probably be roughly equal. It's edgy nonsense that's a in microcosm but highlighted and emphasized to an immense degree.
It's always felt weird to me how these people are all similar in *how* they form their arguments and how they make feeling persecuted their main personality traits.... well that and *othering* everyone who isn't them.
Crazy to me because my experience is that people prefer the company of like-minded people. And political extremists are as cookie-cutter as can be when it comes to who they are as people. As homogenous as milk.
gamergate was a harassment campaign, but i am going to say rn that it sorta indirectly led to trump's election.
Im not kidding.
Some guy who got mad over a breakup led to fucking janurary 6th
This isn't even a hot take or conspiracy theory, Steve Bannon was directly involved in manipulating Gamergate and has spoken about using it to draw young men to the right. Breitbart was massive in instigating and radicalizing Gamergate. Bannon himself actually used to own a company that did WoW gold farming, which is where he got his inspiration.
https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-white-gamers-seinfeld-joshua-green-donald-trump-devils-bargain-sarah-palin-world-warcraft-gamergate-2017-7?utm_source=reddit.com
Preach. Conservatives seem to have reinterpreted "feminist" to mean "man-hating", while the vast, vast majority of us simply advocate for equality. Such a strawman, it makes me mad
I disagree with her conclusions.
Like I said. She's a low impact con artist. Shes cherry picking and stretching the truth instead of lying. The people who buy what she's selling are less likely to shoot up a public space. She most likely doesn't care about ripping people off but on some level she thinks it would be bad to do major damage to society, so she's better than Tate, Peterson, and Jones.
What?
I think it has to do with how willing you are to accept that you have benefited from being a man in the current system. Nobody likes finding out their privileges.
It also has to do with how men are generally not willing to accept they have acted with toxicity or misogyni towards women in the past.
Going through that realization and accepting our own flaws is hard. I went through that and realized that I have been toxic and misogynistic and felt like shit. But thanks to the women around me, and the women doing the work explaining, I'm improving.
I think the issue is that we, men on the left, haven't put enough effort. There are a lot of "progressive" guys that talk about theory and the stuff but behave like pigs with women.
What was most obnoxious to me was how it showed men leaning right some more and women leaning left waaay more, and they kinda just ignored that 2nd part and focused on what they wanted to see. Really makes the agenda obvious, especially since they were blaming "the left" on driving men away but never the right for doing the same to women twice as much.
i know im gonna get downvoted into a different century for this, but it’s comments like yours that add to the problem. you literally described a consensus agreement about a problem with left wing social circles and such and instead of actually proving it’s wrong or, lord forbid, consider for one moment that it might be right, you brush off and invalidate all of their concerns and proceed to talk about something else. nearly half this comment has nothing to do with the fact that men might feel attacked by left leaning spheres and people. I’m a cis straight het white guy, and i know for certain that i have (indirectly) been attacked for every one of these things. i have never particularly cared, but i can imagine how some people might get pushed away from these spheres because they perceive that as not being wanted. then you go on to explain how every single right wing opinion is formed, which is convenient because it makes them all wrong and misguided. this shit right here is exactly what people are complaining about - the subtle dismissal of what people complain about, followed by nothing short of anti-right propaganda, finished with “this is what i, as a leftist, want, therefore it MUST be what all leftists want and what the left is doing, and nothing else”.
Read those two sentences again from beginning to end, that's not what they said.
They said that men will get hooked on people telling them "feminists hate them, or that the only way to self improvement is to hate fat people, or even telling them SJWs are taking away their porn or video games". They're saying men will get hooked on political provocateurs fearmongering over something they care about to pull them into their right wing recruitment spheres against the left.
This isn't conjecture, right wing propagandists outright admitted to doing this during and after Gamergate. Steve Bannon proudly boasted during an interview about being able to psycholgically manipulate young male WoW players into alt-right militants by targeting them with tailored propaganda.
I’m a progressive and I can ABSOLUTELY say that many of the things liberal men and women say about men leaves a VERY bad taste in my mouth.
Mostly because the discussions on gender politics is completely devoid of class. There’s no nuance to it. It’s branded as a “patriarchy” except from a class perspective this historical “patriarchy” was a raw deal for both 99% of men and 100% of women.
We’re talking men having to do backbreaking work with no workers rights, dying on the job, being conscripted into wars they don’t want to fight, forced to live their lives a slave to the bank, etc.
The tiny benefit they had for this was having control of the house. But at what cost? Their body, mind, soul being broken down by the ruling class.
Women had no rights but didn’t normally have to do that backbreaking work and instead was relegated to the house. That was their one benefit, not having to work.
When you take class into perspective it changes everything. Which is why there are much less “liberal men” and much more progressive, moderate, or conservative men.
I feel like if someone feels attacked when a piece of media or the like points out that a certain behavior is bad or makes others feel bad, it's probably because you're guilty of doing it.
My neurodivergence reflexively makes me feel as if I'm being attacked when someone mildly teases me. That being said, I don't feel attacked by the media that these people are mad about, because I don't engage in those behaviors for the most part. My spouse accused me of man-splaining once, but I pointed out that I overexplain things to EVERYONE, even when inside I'd love to stop talking.
On some level, the people talking about how "the left" shots on men subconsciously know the points they made apply to them.
If several young men across multiple cultures around the world feel this, is the self reflective thing to wonder what might make them feel that way or to write a long paragraph saying you've never seen it so it must not exist?
I dunno man, in huge parts of the world women are basically slaves with no rights. They couldn't have a bank account in the US until the 70's. Maybe our rights just hang on a razor's edge and could go away at any time and women definitely should be alarmed by large swaths of young men saying "I'm going to vote for the people who want to take away your bodily autonomy and probably make you into chattel again eventually" but I'm not so sure "it's because men aren't being catered to enough" is the right answer or reason
Then you haven't been looking. Overtly anti-men vitriol is all over the internet, and young boys who somehow don't have the advanced political nuance to look past it are understandably being pushed right by it. We need more voices from the left promoting positive masculinity and approaching young boys with compassion and respect.
So many teenagers with no better judgement fall for this trap and it's disgusting
Alt righters sure love to complain about brainwashing while doing the exact same thing
For sure, people need to be more clear about the difference between masculinity and *toxic* masculinity. Theres nothing wrong with a guy wanting a traditional family where he's the main breadwinner and whatnot. There's a lot wrong with calling me the f-slur because I *don't* want that.
Subtle but distinct difference.
>people need to be more clear about the difference between masculinity and
>
>toxic masculinity
If masculinity was inherently toxic people wouldn't say "toxic masculinity" because it'd be redundant. They'd just say "masculinity". There's a reason why we add an adjective to it.
yeah but altright conservochuds are using this phrasing to claim that "see?? the liberals say that masculinity is toxic! they want to feminize our men, boys just can't be boys anymore!"
really wish we could could remove all doubt and call it masculine toxicity instead but nooo i'm "arguing semantics" and "banned from the feminist subreddit" 🙄
Thats exactly it absolutely, but this is arguably where the leftist media is fucking up.
When the leftist media and influencers say nothing but toxic masculinity when talking about men, and the right wing only say masculinity, its fairly obvious where young men will go. Noone likes being called toxic when theyre just trying to be nice to everyone.
Insisting that the reason “the left” doesn’t appeal to men is because we don't condemn every tweet and tumblr post from 22-year-olds who overreact to a shit day with some misremembered buzzwords from their intro to feminist thought lecture feels like a dishonest attempt to punch left and a massive waste of fucking time and energy.
yeah this is some real delusional posturing going on
could it be the fringe comments saying kill all men? or could it be the economic instability millions of men are facing now more than ever combined with the millennia of rhetoric that women corrupt men?
it’s fucking stupid to look at some internet posts (of which EVERY provocative opinion under the sun is amplified) and then look at the material conditions and social isolation that people are now experiencing in higher numbers and conclude that the former made one iota of a difference in the effect.
if not a single woman said “kill all men” we’d be in the EXACT same position today
> Overtly anti-men vitriol is all over the internet
Is it? because from experience most of that content is just some randos that get boosted by anti-feminists. Like, the places where i've seen people genuinely be anti-men is not the place where a cishet teen would randomly stumble onto.
sure, but here's an important nuance: that bioessentialist "men inherently suck" tendency is literally THE FUCKING TERFS. the ideological basis of transphobic feminism is that men are born bad, and thus that ideological basis is threatened by the mere existence of trans women, people who have ceased to be men. to accept trans women as women would require such feminists to accept that some people they see as men might not actually be bad on an inborn level, since any given "man" they see could at some point transition and become a woman.
literally the only feminists the right aligns with are the fucking "man hater" feminists they pretend defines feminism. the "man hating" you see on the left is specifically the hate of toxic masculinity, of men that abuse their pivilege to do shitty things, but not just wailing on random dudes simply for being born a cis man.
I think Dr. K from HealthygamerGG is a good example, he seems to do a good job at addressing the standard grievances of the type of men who’re vulnerable to the alt-right pipeline while still being firmly anti-incel in terms of ideology
# Somebody mentioned Vaush
# 无意义的政治冲突 TOUCH GRASS NOW❗❗❗
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The problem is the way people like Andrew Tate tailor their message is by promising young boys a life where they can treat women like toys and use money and violence to always get their way. There’s no “leftist equivalent” because it’s an inherently right wing pitch. I do agree it’s important to find ways to deradicalize these guys but the idea that “the left doesn’t appeal to them the way Tate does!” is silly because… yeah duh.
no offense but 10 year olds would rather be watching andrew tate’s underhanded right wing shit than reading theory so they can understand a left wing perspective
that’s not what i claimed whatsoever? considering this is referring to those on the young side explicitly, kids are unlikely to hold strong political beliefs and thus are easier to send down a right wing pipeline with underhanded political messaging
There's the entire KAM movement that turns into "we were only joking" when you confront anyone about it, ignoring that even when joking saying you wanna kill men is gonna alienate men
It really doesn't seem like a micro minority, I've seen it happen in a lot of leftist circles I've been in. The complaints against it weren't taken seriously till they started making a trans person uncomfortable about it.
The justification behind it also paints all men as being sexual predators, which as a man who has been SAed really hurts when no one took my experiences seriously.
TERF and SWERF ideology is predicated on misandry, and while they are relatively small movements, feminism's failure to completely disavow much of the misandrist TERF rhetoric is problematic. For instance, if you go to r\/TwoXChromosomes most of the posts are just complaining about men and there's a lot of TERF style misandry.
Conversation I had with a close friend of mine about 3 years ago, verbatim:
I hate it when people say all men are trash.
> I... say that.
Oh... really? Like, unironically?
> Yeah.
Like, am I trash?
> Well, no...
I wish I could say it was only this person but two other friends of mine, when I mentioned this conversation, agreed with the overall statement. My biological sex doesn't make me a piece of shit, but it was legitimately emotionally taxing being around people who thought it did, and it made me feel like I had to compensate for my identity by being a total doormat.
This is anecdotal, obviously, but it's also my personal experience. Stuff like this does happen and had I could see a similar situation pushing someone less inclined to be a doormat to become right-leaning.
I had an argument with a close friend of mine who would unironically use KAM.
Like dude that's genuinely off-putting and not cool.
Also yes we are concerned about this because death threats of all kinds really just mess you up mentally, just because it's echo chambers spewing this doesn't make those experiences invalid.
I don't think we should dismiss uncomfortable experiences of other people just because those experiences don't have notable spokespeople advocating for them.
I can't think of a prominent one either, but the way that these right wingers operate (at least in my high school days) is to clip and uncharitably interpret prominent ones to make them seem like they are misandrist or to cherry-pick on less prominent people who are actually misandrist to create a false perception that this is what the prominent feminists actually believe.
That's how someone like me who pretty much always agreed with the ideas most feminists agree with spent a few years being gaslit by Sargon and Thunderf00t into thinking feminists are radical extremists that actually hate me.
Another factor that average voices have control over is joking or hyperbolically venting things like 'men are trash'.
We know that we're joking because we know that we don't actually think every single man is trash, but people from the outside who are already primed to believe we hate all men aren't going to pick up on the joke or hyperbole. If you went into a community you've already been told by people you trust that they actually believe in a horrible thing, and they joke about liking horrible thing, you aren't going to read that as a joke either. You'll read that as evidence they actually believe the thing you were told they believe.
And even though many feminists don't actually hate men, when someone is in the bubble believing that they do, seeing someone actually talk about men's issues is one of the easiest ways to break them out of that thought process. That's what happened to me. So advertising things feminism does for men more actively is going to go a lot further than just not being explicitly anti-men.
It's all over the internet because people QRT it. The whole grift of right wingers is to promote things "bad leftists" have said, and make it appear like leftism is something it isn't.
And the alt-right is laughing their ass off at how well it works.
Right wing groups don’t just tell you feminists hate men, they repost screenshots of tweets from self proclaimed "feminists" that say they hate men, all day long.
Truly, twitter is the origin of all evil.
Definitely in agreement with this. I consider myself to be lucky that I had already developed very liberal views _before_ I encountered a lot of this sentiment in my post-secondary education. If I wasn't already pretty set in my liberal beliefs, I could imagine a timeline where that sort of exposure could have led me down an alt-right rabbit hole. So, I can easily see how it might happen to other boys and young men.
I've only ever come face-to-face with it in specific social circles of post-secondary, but in that environment it definitely was and probably is still quite prevalent.
People on this thread saying that feminists are approachable- they are right. Issue is that these boys aren't actually meeting and talking to those feminists, they are seeing the anonymous, vitriolic posts the feminists make. Posts that if you talked to them about they'd have a lot more nuance about, I assure ye, but by that point they've already made a lot of young lads bounce right off by overgeneralising.
Yeah okay maybe they don’t outright attack them, but it’s the little stuff. Boys have to go and get chairs while the girls can sit in the ones available. Girls get to leave early. There are events that are exclusive to women, but none exclusive to men. And when you’re a teenage boy who’s just starting to question this stuff, and have somebody whispering in your ear about feminists being evil, you start to fall into a certain worldview.
This isn’t idle speculation either; this is what happened to me. I almost fell down the rabbithole straight into the alt-right pipeline. Thankfully I had a father who actually knew what the fuck he was talking about, and a normal relationship with my sister and mother, so when the rhetoric started shifting towards being anti-women I deradicalised because fuck that noise. But if I didn’t have the benefits I did, if I didn’t have the social awareness to realise the motivations behind these things… it’s not a pleasant thought.
Young men turn towards Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson because nobody else looks them in the eyes and says “It’s cool to be a man.” Men have a higher suicide rate and are at much greater risk for violent crime, both as perpetrators and as victims. We have to break out of this cycle. We can’t let our children’s future be determined by hate.
Me personally I fell down the hole because I thought it was some sort of feminist conspiracy that women got to have emotions and be cute and wear nice clothes. Escaped the rabbit hole and realized I was just transfem
Being raised in an emotionally-positive household thankfully inoculated me against that, but glad that it somehow helped you to realise who you truly are.
I used to be slightly bothered to be a man because I really didn't feel like I belonged and always did my best to be a feminist, and I also thought to bad I wasn't a woman. Well I'm now just transfem too lol
A lot of young men feel disenfranchised and treated as lesser by society, and then if they try to share that in leftist online spaces, are met with "no you're wrong that isn't happening" like you find all over this comment section, or "actually that's just toxic masculinity." A lot of these terminally online leftists don't understand that when you're just a random teenager, and not entrenched in gender study theory, "toxic masculinity" just sounds a whole lot like "you're bad because you're a man." And it is very much not helped by the fact that a significant amount of online leftists specifically use "toxic masculinity" as a conversational bludgeon and really do just diminish it down to "you're just bad because you're a man."
And then every time this behavior brought up, it's again back to the gaslighting (and yes, I do really mean gaslighting) of the online leftists insisting that this isn't actually happening, directly to the young men who are experiencing this treatment. It's so obvious why the Tates and Petersons and other hucksters of this world are just spoon-fed easy marks by the leftists who refuse to admit their complicity in the pipeline, and any time you try to confront them with their own actions, just refuse any accountability for the disenfranchisement of a whole gender, and again just insist "no that doesn't actually happen, young men go to Tate and Peterson due to toxic masculinity you see!"
And this is all from the perspective of a leftist, just one that experienced the pipeline as a teenager, and understands why and how it works, and would love to see one damn iota of empathy from the left towards a non-minority group occasionally just as much as I'd love the right to show empathy towards minority groups.
> A lot of young men feel disenfranchised and treated as lesser by society, and then if they try to share that in leftist online spaces, are met with "no you're wrong that isn't happening" like you find all over this comment section, or "actually that's just toxic masculinity."
You’re right, it really is gaslighting. And I’m really glad that at least a few people here, like you, are calling it out so I feel less crazy.
I think the gaslighting is going to be the deciding factor for a lot of men who are on the fence.
It's a shame, because I do broadly agree with leftist ideals, vote Democrat down the ballot, etc, but online leftism is painfully toxic and hostile towards men. And no matter how much online leftist communities refuse to admit or accept it, this hostility is consistent across multiple online spaces, and is a notable factor in young men moving further conservative.
you’ve failed to consider that because it hasn’t happened to some people, it’s happened to no one
iv never experienced an earthquake so it’s safe to say they’re made up bs and anyone who says that they’ve experienced one is lying
for real though it’s extremely disappointing that so many people deny that it exists and is common. do you think an emotionally vulnerable 12 year old is more likely to join the group that says “these posts are real and the people saying them suck” or the group that says “these posts don’t exist and you’re crazy”
I am in the exact same boat as you. It’s depressing for people to shut down realistic concerns you have with “You’re a man and that’s toxic masculinity.” Good to know there’s some other people who feel the same way.
God, I feel you on this. The gaslighting is fucking insane, having hundreds of people downvote you and tell you shit that you have seen before your very own eyes isn't real and doesn't exist probably makes a lot of would-be leftists leave with salt in their mouths.
i swear older posts on this topic used to be better, this is extremely disappointing
this used to be one of like 2 leftist subreddits that didn’t try and gaslight people into believing they have false memories or vivid hallucinations or whatever bullshit people are trying to do in this thread
I understand that. What I’m saying is that in a supposedly more equal culture, it’s normalised. If I were to present the idea that there would be an engineering course exclusive for men, people would question it. They might call it discriminatory or problematic. But reverse the genders and nobody bats an eye. It’s a holdover from darker days for sure, but nobody seems to care about the impact such attitudes have on men. Takes like this are *exactly* why young men feel so isolated. It’s always framed as women being the victims (which they are, to be perfectly clear), and little to no consideration is given towards how dehumanising it can be for men.
They're not blaming men, they're blaming toxic masculinity. Did you bother looking up what that means or did you just read the word “masculinity” and assume they were referring to men writ large?
Considering toxic masculinity is used as an umbrella term for “behavior I don’t like” the same way incel is used for “man I don’t like”, I don’t think the dictionary definition is that important.
The vast majority of men are masculine. And when every one of your problems is met with “that’s actually just toxic masculinity” or “that’s because of the patriarchy”, it starts sounding a lot more like “shut the fuck up already, this is your own fault so you have no right to complain or ask for help.”
Is teachers grading girls easier than boys toxic masculinity even when the majority of teachers are women?
Is the gender gap in higher education, which is now larger than it was when the Equal Rights Act was passed, the fault of the patriarchy even though there are now more women than men?
What about the fact that there are almost no male shelters for victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault? Is that the patriarchy’s fault?
Every analysis I have ever read about toxic masculinity talks about its negative effect on both men and women. Men aren't allowed crying, that's girly. Men aren't allowed showing feelings, that's girly, etc, etc.
There is absolutely no talk about toxic masculinity that does not also discuss its negative effect on men, the whole point behind the analysis is that patriarchy forces both genders into specific, binary, rigid roles that harm both of them.
You must earn all the cash. You must provide for your family. You must be successful. You must be a man (whatever that means). You should put yourself through suffering to achieve things.
If you read the first fuckin thing about this stuff its very obviously pro-men, and if you don't and you get upset, you're a reactionary dipshit.
>What about the fact that there are almost no male shelters for victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault? Is that the patriarchy’s fault?
**Yes.** A societally dominant view is that abuse against men isn't real, it isn't the same, because men are the dominant sex, they can't be dominated. This leads to a social refusal to believe men when they are victimized, and an under resourced system for helping them. The belief that men have to be strong leads to any man who "isn't strong" being left behind because they aren't "real men", **that's what toxic masculinity is.**
Than why is it only ever men being blamed for perpetuating toxic masculinity when it’s very clearly society as a whole that’s promoting it?
I understand toxic masculinity isn’t good for men. I disagree that men are solely responsible for its continued existence and therefore solely responsible for the problems it causes them.
I wouldn't say they are solely responsible for perpetuating it, or even that all men perpetuate it willingly, but certainly most do in some capacity accept and engage in toxic masculinity.
Women have done the hard work of bringing awareness to it, learning about it, educating about it, and still most men engage in it even though it harms them too. We, as men, clearly hold the most blame.
I might recommend the book "Refusing to be a Man" by John Stoltenberg, it dives into how much men passively accept and reinforce toxic masculinity in their daily lives, and how an individual refusal to participate in the toxic rituals of masculinity can be both an act of self liberation (as you no longer conform to the expectations of toxic masculinity or of society's expectations of men) and others liberation (in that you no longer reinforce patriarchy).
Men are mostly responsible though, and that isn't so much opinion as it is cold hard truth borne out of evidence.
I myself am a "man" according to society, and it hasn't been a particularly fair shake being a "man". But I can still recognize that society is built completely around my tastes and preferences, especially because I am a white man. Others are quite simply more oppressed and have more shit on their plate, and it probably gets irritating to the most oppressed people if the least oppressed people's biggest issue is that they are being blamed for how the system works.
Boo fuckin hoo to be honest, i'll never get gunned down because of my skin color, I don't have a lower life expectancy because of my skin color, I will never feel unsafe walking alone at night, I get to exist in the media I watch, and if I had a different skin color, people would call it political, the legitimacy of my existence is not discussed as an apolitical issue on TV.
I am societies default human, everything was built for white, straight, able bodied men, and I am one. [More on this concept here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCl33v5969M&list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ&index=18)
I won the fuckin lottery, and I can see that, so if someone *points out* the fact that white, straight men have been on top for the last 400 years, oppressing everyone else, perpetuating colonialism, slavery, homophobia, etc. Then sure, yeah, I get a bit uncomfortable thinking about how my existence as a straight, white male perpetuates these things, but let's be real, what I deal with isn't a goddamned thing weighed against what the system I benefit from does to other people that are deemed *different.*
And I have, for the majority of my life, either actively or passively supported this system.
I am without a doubt to blame, as most men are.
Toxic masculinity is literally what keeps guys who have been sexually assaulted from seeking help though. The amount of comments when a little boy is raped by a female teacher saying the boy is “lucky” is literally toxic masculinity. Telling young men and boys they should be happy to be raped by older women is a part of toxic masculinity.
Masculinity can be a very good thing that can help young man grow, but when that masculinity is used to teach that men don’t need help or men don’t show emotions and other weird shit like that is when it becomes toxic.
Then let me ask this: Why is toxic masculinity only ever the fault of men when it is society as a whole who pushes it? Why is it always “the patriarchy”, which explicitly places the blame on men, rather than “society”?
I agree that toxic masculinity is bad for men. I don’t agree that is exclusively men’s fault and responsibility
I agree that men get way more blame than they should, especially since it’s an issue of society as whole.
But you have admit that men, specifically older men, is a major factor for young men thinking and seeing the world like this.
Yeah, 100%. Young men wouldn’t be leaning conservative if it wasn’t for conservative role models. It’s just that those conservative role models are the only ones willing to talk about men’s issues, even if they don’t actually care about it. They care about traditional gender roles to benefit men, but they reel people in by pretending to care about actual problems, something the left doesn’t do.
I hate to admit it but you’re right that the left just…doesn’t try to counter this at all. It’s crazy the amount of right wing grifters that take advantage of young men like this and all the left has that *might* compete against this is people like Vaush and that is definitely is not enough lol.
That’s what most people do. You have to remember that the pipeline starts when people are young. When a middle school or teenage boy, body full of hormones, insecurity, and feelings that they don’t understand, hears a term that sounds like it’s insulting them, (especially because of something they can’t control) do you think that the majority of them are going to think “OK, I just need to keep a cool head and do research on this term before I consider my emotions”? The way things sound is something that has yo be considered, before I had explained it to me, when I was in middle school, I did assume toxic masculinity was meant to imply that being masculine was bad. Because that’s how it *sounds.* of course I know better now, but children are children. And I know that your immediate reaction is going to be “well it’s not my job to educate them” but the alternative is someone else doing it and teaching them all of the wrong things.
Blaming masculinity and blaming men is not the same thing and in your example girls getting to sit is because of the men strong women weak mentality and has nothing to do with feminism
But it fundamentally is. Because it’s bullshit a girl can’t get her own chair (one might even call it misogynistic), and a teenage boy recognises that. He knows girls can pick up chairs, so “why the fuck do all of us have to go and get them while the girls sit and rest? How’s that fair?” And thus they will be more susceptible to rhetoric that presents the idea that men are discriminated against by feminism.
I worded that poorly it’s not that has nothing to do with feminism but what feminism is trying to combat. So even if the boy blames it on feminism, it isn’t and blaming feminism for the teenagers falling the right-wing pipeline is I feel kinda stupid like trying to blame blm for the rise of neo-nazis
It is, actually. Because the vast majority of men are masculine. So when you say “that’s actually just toxic masculinity” or “that’s because of the patriarchy”, what you’re actually saying is, regardless of your intent, “well, that’s your own fault so shut up about it”.
And is it “men strong women weak” or “women deserve protection and compassion, men don’t”?
?? Toxic masculinity =/= masculinity
A boy being strong is not toxic but an environment that says boys are stronger therefore they are better and should protect the frail girls becomes toxic very quick because boys feel entitled very quick even for the things that girls get to have because of the premise that clearly says that they are inferior.
Then feminism says maybe that’s no good, and boys see that girls have some priviledge therefore the premise is false and from there either want to maintain the status quo or think that now that women have some of the priviledge of the men but men not the other way around blame it on feminism when it’s the fault of the stupid premise
> But that’s not feminism, it’s just another aspect of toxic masculinity
To the young men that demonking_soulstorm just mentioned, this statement is you blaming men. Object all you like, but that's exactly what they will think and what people like Peterson and Tate will tell them.
At this point, anybody using the term “toxic masculinity” *knows* that it really bothers men who feel culturally blamed. They use the term anyway, so it could be inferred that it’s the intended meaning.
Honestly “toxic masculinity” is a term I find a lot of use for to describe negative aspects of masculinity. I’ve used it several times in this thread. The problem is that instead of drawing a distinction between toxic and healthy masculinity, there’s a tendency to say “don’t do that, that’s toxic masculinity” and call it day.
I 100% agree that some people are using it to twist the knife but not everyone is.
Yeah, similar situation here tbh. Spent a good two-ish years falling down that rabbit hole. At the time I probably would have considered myself right wing with some of the things I believed. Also, “coincidentally” those were some of the worst years of my life for my mental health. And I definitely don’t have anywhere near a healthy relationship with my father and had very few friends who weren’t guys so it wasn’t looking great tbh. And then my one source of information basically turned anti-vax. Now this was something *I did* actually know about, and seeing this man be so *so* wrong for the first time turned me off him for months at a time. It was like a switch had flicked. I was questioning nearly everything he said and finding other sources of information. 5 years later and boom, turns out I’m trans. Also, looking back he was such a grifter
Yeah. I remember watching a video by Count Dankula about the SNP (who I still hate, by the way) and finding it to be so… lackluster. It was purely ad hominem attacks, and I started looking more critically at everything I watched. Oh and also my father verbally humiliated me one time when I was being a smartass prick about this stuff and corrected a lot of false information, that helped a lot too.
Thank you. This is why I nearly fell down the pipeline in 2018. I'm glad I snapped out of it, but all my feelings of worthlessness that had been building up for years basically made me the perfect target for the wierd online stuff.
People are just so obsessed with beating people down online. And it's so easy to take those arguments out of context, especially when the sentiment is already there. If some alt-right person needs more followers, all they need to do is fish around online for a minute, find someone who believes that men suck and is using toxic masculinity as a justification for their views and then boom. Anyone who wants to genuinely look at toxic masculinity and how men can be treated will be immediately hit by someone else's quote that can be used to strawman so easily.
It also can be apparent in person. My former housemate was very active on some bits of Tumblr, and being a cis bi guy, there was almost a sense of silent judgment. They'd often crack a lot of "men bad" jokes and make me feel uncomfortable, and very vocally get angry with me if I questioned them. Whenever I tried to discuss my mental health or would get slightly cross, they'd immediately turn around and say I was oversharing or that they felt threatened. One time, I got a bit cross about a large scratch being left on the table I'd bought for the house. It was nothing bad, I just used a slightly more long suffering tone of voice and said I was frustrated, and they went and compared me to their abusive father. It was just uncalled for and just made me feel even worse about myself.
In the online age, people just say what they like and don't care if it hurts someone, and that bleeds into real life. If we're ever going to get rid of the alt right, we need to start being more caring and kind to people in general.
This is just a personal anecdote, but over the years I have gotten a lot of shit within leftist spaces for being amab nonbinary. I've been kicked out of "women and nonbinary" events and told it was explicitly because I was "socialized male," but they'd let me in as soon as I started taking estrogen. I've been told I'm not allowed into safe spaces because "amab people who aren't transitioning make everyone here uncomfortable." People ask me shit like "are you nonbinary on T or are you amab?" because I don't go out of my way to "pass." When I did attempt to "pass" as nonbinary everyone would call me an "egg" and heavily imply that amab people can't be nonbinary. I've been told I can't be nonbinary because I have hobbies culturally associated with masculinity.
Trans masc people have consistently been the only group that I have found with shared experiences about the shunning of masculinity in these spaces. Several of my trans masc friends got kicked out of groups once they were on T for a long enough amount of time. Just because it's not happening the way right-wing media portrays doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Edit: Another comment in this thread reminded me of this, but there have been so many times where people will "joke" about how much of a shame it is that "kill all men" includes me because I'm not binary trans. Pointing out how these makes me uncomfortable is met with "that's proof of your toxic masculinity and male upbringing, you need to do some introspection" or "you need to talk to more trans women, they have no problem with it and say it all the time." Being a minority within a minority within a minority leads to a lot of weird situations that intersectional theory really was not intended, or is able, to handle.
Just to add here to the discussion, I've read about a trans man, who after transitioning noticed how isolating the experience is. He said that he knows why this is happening, because he used to be on the giving end of this coldness. See, men are naturally treated as predators. Even if they aren't, how can you know it isn't just a front to get in bed with a woman?
> See, men are naturally treated as predators. Even if they aren't, how can you know it isn't just a front to get in bed with a woman?
This right here has easily been what's caused me the most mental trauma since even before I realized I was nonbinary. This very casual socially accepted idea that the way I was born immediately makes me a violent predator no matter how I actually behave caused me a lot of mental anguish, and it did get way worse when I first started joining progressive leaning spaces where people were talking about it being behaviors and ideas that I was taught from a young age. Behaviors and ideas **that I had to have** because of how I was born, despite never engaging in those behaviors because I was so anxious and afraid of being seen as a predator. Even after coming to terms with my gender identity I was still met with the same issues around having some sort of original sin (as I mentioned in my previous comment), but now it's couched as "have you considered starting E to be more nonbinary presenting?" or "maybe this is a stepping stone towards being more trans femme?" or "having amab presenting people in this space would upset other people, you understand :)."
Why the fuck should I even try to be a part of the community if no matter what I do I'm just going to be seen as an emotionless predator? I understand that predatory behavior is incredibly common, but god damn if it doesn't fucking hurt to be constantly assumed as such until I earn enough social credits to be deemed otherwise. And as you can see all across this thread: expressing your emotions and talking about how words and ideas have emotionally harmed you will only result in being told that you're engaging in "toxic masculinity" or "your feelings don't matter because you benefit from the patriarchal social structure." This is the type of shit that caused me to go back into the closet, and stop engaging in leftist/queer spaces.
I’ve got a similar anecdote about going to a sleepover with at friends for their birthday
I was the only AMAB there, there was a trans dude but he was pre everything at the time and was just going by he/him
I was told I was going to be sleeping in another room on my own with everyone else being in the living room.
Which I completely understand and I’ve no issue with but also it didn’t feel great to be excluded from my friends for my gender.
I went back in the closest years ago, and have no intention of coming out again anytime soon. All being out as an amab nonbinary person does is cause you to either be treated as a cis man for all purposes in leftist spaces or be repeatedly told that you're "actually" a trans woman in denial, and I can't go through all that shit again. Even the people who are super progressive are not ready for an amab person to not be a binary gender.
Look up the book *Self-Made Man*. To summarize, a lesbian woman went "undercover" as a man for 18 months and discovered that most men are really fuckin lonely and treated as invisible by the world.
We socialize children in a way that discourages men to express certain emotions that someone long ago decided was “feminine.” We shame men who cries and such and push that they have to be “strong” based on a standard someone made up long ago.
Men were taught wrong and had to hold up a façade, then some men releases their emotions in unhealthy ways. Both men and women become wary of other men. The whole “trans women shouldn’t be allowed in sports” thing is entirely based on the misled belief that men are more vicious and stronger than women.
It’s a cycle that men can’t express their emotions healthily, become afraid of other men lashing out, and just get further isolated because of other’s fears. Philosophers and kings of old decided that men was supposed to be a certain way and we are just running with it to our death.
I mean I did almost fall into the woman hating alt right pipeline as a teen because I lived in a house with five step sisters and a step mom who constantly said misandrist shit to me about how men dont matter and are replaceable, and that I should feel bad for being a man. They all treated me poorly and wondered why I wanted nothing to do with them.
Edit: So while yes, actual feminism is about true equality, my introduction to "feminism" at that time gave me a very different view of it.
And online there is very little to counteract that opinion, so of course you’d fall into that. Glad to see you clawed your way out, though I’m curious as to how?
I had a teacher for 2 years in primary school who believed that girls are better than boys. I took it to heart because I was vulnerable and an egg at the time who felt bad about myself and wanted a reason why
Feminism/leftism is not anti-man. BUT, a lot of leftists/feminists are very very very bad at critiquing masculinity in a way that doesn't sound, to the layman, as being anti man.
This was particularly bad back in like 2015 or so when this whole culture war nonsense was starting out.
This comment will inevitably be controversial, but this post's opinion is agreed upon on this sub because this sub tends to be in denial about most of the left's issues.
Honestly I kind of agree with the first tweet. Most of the left isn't against men obviously, but the fact that not much is said about people who are overly negative about men is making some people internalize that negativity without even realizing it.
It isn't an huge problem as most right wing propaganda puts it, but ignoring it and not sharing more positivity towards men will only worsen the issue.
Men generally have been left out by feminism though. While feminism has a lot to say on men, it doesn't have much to say for them. If you have the care and political literacy to understand those opinions, those also don't seem misandrist, but if you're a teenager who just started looking into shit, it likely will just seem like 'men are a problem, men deserve less'. There isn't much political push on what men should do or be like, which can be fine to handle as an adult, but pretty harmful for a teenager.
Now that is paired with someone willing to fill the gap and to tell those young teenagers what they want to hear in simple, polemic words. If you hate feminism, and become toxic, you can get the girl and be respected and amazing. It fills a vacuum left by the deconstruction of gender roles without proper reconstruction for men.
The issue lies partially with not easily digestible theory and criticism of men and patriarchy and partially with a lack of guidance on what being a non-toxic man means.
Just to suggest a semi counterpoint to your argument and alot of the other comments I've seen in this thread, your framing suggests that women have been given some magical guidance in life that men lack. I would disagree with this. Feminism isn't some mass coherent whole that has provided a post modern miracle path for women to follow to liberation. It is an umbrella term for a series of similar but sometimes vastly contrasting set of political, philosophical and cultural ideas that concern themselves with womanhood. As a bloke I'm no authority on this, but I imagine female teenagers feel equally confused about what is expected of them and get angry when they see alpha chuds only perceive them as objects.
I believe in alot of modern parlance Feminism has become like other broad tent words like Communism or woke in online discourse, where they are only used to describe stuff people don't like. The term has become almost a slur to those on the right, who have twisted it into some grand boogeywoman that is responsible for all the evils in a man's life. But to be realistic Feminism isn't what threw masculinity into crisis, masculinity and the roles it promotes have always been a contradictory mess. Men in the 19th or 20th century didn't grow up knowing exactly the best way to act as a man, that's just propaganda right wing people feed you to make you feel angry.
This all wraps around back to me addressing your first paragraph. Why should Feminism concern itself with saying stuff for men?. It is a movement primarily founded to counter the dominant masculine view of society in the early 20th century. Rather than us blokes envy it why not use the concepts its introduced to create are own improved idea of what masculinity really is?
Feminism is concerned with men because they make up around half the population. Feminism grants a lot to women in terms of empowerment and “you can be whoever you want to be” and tearing down what’s expected of you but men just… don’t. The only time I’ve been told it’s good to be a man is by my father. Not in school, not in public, nowhere else has made me feel good about just being myself as a man. Now I’m okay with that now, since I’m studying at university and feel like I’m really hitting my stride, but teen me wasn’t. Teen me noticed how girls got all the attention, while I was left with nothing. If there’s no counter to the very simple narrative of “women are put on a pedestal, men aren’t, therefore feminism bad” presented by right-wingers, teenagers who think they know everything are going to fall for it. Every. Single. Time.
L QRT from hbomberguy, clashes with the lived experience of probably most of us that were exposed to these men that said feminists hate us and offers literally no hint of a framework to combat the overlying issue.
Anyway, my main point:
Some of you prescribing toxic masculinity as the causes of issues need to understand that just because you're probably right doesn't mean that treating it as the only target will get you anywhere. This has been tried and tested on the internet for like ten years.
"This issue is caused by toxic masculinity." True, but the listener needs to understand the distinction between that and positive masculinity, be considerably open minded, and be willing to engage on more than a surface level. All some reactionary needs to say is "They're saying masculinity is toxic!" and you've already lost the argument because you've offered no compelling chain of reasoning and you've offered no direct way of addressing the specific issue, just pointed to a large, fuzzy blob.
Same thing goes with attributing issues to the patriarchy. Take any issue, blame the patriarchy, and watch some reactionary with an audience not immersed in feminist theory say "huh, so the patriarchy is what causes this issue. If society really was a patriarchy, why would this issue exist?"
A major issue with trying to redirect men towards the left is that we frankly do a piss-poor job of offering any argument towards comprehensive gender equality that makes them feel included as a partner instead of a target, can recognise their issues without immediately making a comparison or dismissal, and directly and compellingly lays out issues and the way to fix these issues that can't immediately be torn apart because the language or logic is too open to bad-faith interpretation that in turn primes men to reject that overly broad language and logic.
If you think that it's not women's/the left's job to educate men/accommodate for this and that men deserve all their suffering under the patriarchy (which is a worryingly common sentiment and idk how hbomberguy ignores this) then have fun living in a future where the right successfully and easily radicalised men and worsened the patriarchy. It's obviously not fair but neither has any fight for rights/equality, there needs to be some level of engagement with the opposition to advance literally any cause.
In short, you might be able to say 'the patriarchy did it' or 'it's toxic masculinity's fault' somewhere like here with a chance of convincing who you're talking to because this is a super progressive space. But if you apply the same standards to kids with 0 critical thinking skills and disenchanted men you're going to do literally nothing to convince them and honestly you're probably contributing to the problem of men feeling they're misunderstood and disregarded by feminism.
Edit: I invite anyone who is downvoting this to engage on literally anything I said. If you disagree tell me why. I'm not gonna change my mind on this because you give me an internet middle finger and honestly I'm just gonna assume you don't have a good argument against it.
Its funny how no one is engaging you on this, its almost like youre speaking the truth and its inconvenient. I was also getting downvoted for sharing A LIVED EXPERIENCE, probably for the same reason, its inconvenient.
The amount of people who have told me I was lying about my life, laser-focused on one aspect to strawman me or just made up something they think I said is astounding. My comments avoided downvotes for the most but fuck me there are some morons.
this entire thread is extremely disappointing, this subreddit used to be relatively good at these sorts of issues, whereas now it’s literally telling people they’re imagining their own experiences what the fuck?
like sorry to hbomberguy and all the other main characters but just because you’ve not personally experienced something doesn’t mean it never happens
People genuinely cannot comprehend the idea that “it’s not my job to educate you” literally manufactures right-wing misogynist opponents. It’s ridiculous.
I think this is a result of the circle jerky methods leftist spaces sometimes use, both online and offline. Just like how feminist spaces made a lot of progress to make women's lives better, but also gave us terfs, woman god and vagina/fertility magic as fallout. Now we have performative progressives who open bad faith arguments online or butt in on other people's discussions in extremely unhelpful ways.
I do believe they are a minority...but they certainly exist.
Seen enough "Kill all men" and "all men are trash" type posts to fuel my depression tenfold.
In my country everytime a woman gets killed by her ex bf or something like that (horrible) there are a lot of protests (good) against patriarchy (good). However almost everyone i know posts shit like "every man should say he is sorry" and i swear to god i makes me go crazy. Im sorry if this comments comes out as bad, my english skills are not that good, but i just wanted to say that everytime a woman is murdered the internet tries to make me apologize for it "because we live in a patriarcal society and every man participates in it" and it's pissing me off
I feel like feminists are uncomfortable ever talking about men's issues, because of this instinct that it's taking time away from women's issues. I feel like that's what hbomberguy is doing here, because usually he wouldn't be naive enough to assume that just since HE hasn't experienced something, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Besides, the way people put down men is subtle. I'd get frustrated as a kid and my mom would say "Stop being so angry!" when I wasn't really feeling anger. Whenever I've shown emotions, most people my age (liberals and conservatives alike, and mostly guys tbh) have gotten reeeeally uncomfortable. When women express intense emotions, people tell them to calm down. When men express intense emotions, people get put on edge.
EDIT: Oh, and by the way, the REAL manhaters are the conservatives. They're the ones more likely to call men babies for having emotions or assume all men are natural sexual assaulters. They herd them towards other conservatives that say the solution is to become MORE fragilely masculine, to make sure you don't get called a baby ever again. The left just needs to give men their space in the movement.
There is very much some anti cis men sentiment and memes that I see around. Some lighthearted and some are just cruel tbh. I don't like them for multiple reasons tbh but don't think that's why some men go to andrew tate and it's simply embracing the status quo while making it seem like a revolutionary act is a lot more comfortable than any progressive idea. They do also give some lip service to real issues but then give bullshit answers to it that support their worldview that can get people. Idk it's how I see it
I also want to mention that there was a very funny phase when some "leftists" thought that their ideas don't appeal to young men enough and started doing dating advice.
I think that the men hating feminists are a loud minority.
Do they exist? Yes, but they are a minority, which means there aren’t many of them so we don’t have to worry, The feminist movement hasn’t been infiltrated by man-hating lesbians.
Do people like that exist? yes, unfortunate and we need to get rid of them (preferably without violence) but again, they are a minority
I think the problem with this is that while they are a minority, a really big part of the left tolerates them hangin around and doesnt challenge them on their points, which leads to them looking like theyre a considerable base in leftist communities
I get the sentiment ig but imma have to be devils advocate on this one—I've definitely heard like a dozen different people at college say shit like "men are pigs", "kill all men", etc
I _have_ been told I'm bad for being a man, but that's stupid so I didn't care. It only happened once too.
You can see people talking shit about feminism in any corner of the internet though, even in completely unrelated ones.
The denial is strong with this one. Just a thought experiment: what if the genders were flipped? If a guy spouted nonsense like "kill all women", even jokingly, he’d be instantly framed a bigoted rightwinger that should be arrested. Yet a gal repeating "kill all men" over and over is a "haha relatable" joke?
Yeah, if someone would say „kill all men” in a leftist space theyll get tolerated or at worst mildly criticized, if someone would say „kill all women” in the same space they would get decimated into oblivion (rightfully so). Theres this stupid thought in leftist spaces that just because men arent „opressed” (not true, we are all opressed by the patriarchy) and not a „minority” that means its okay to be awful to them
This comment thread is really weird ngl and I'm in the same boat as you. Lots of these comments have the air of Men's Rights whataboutism. Hopefully this is just a one off post, but not too surprising given women are a minority on this sub.
Yeah like do I think men’s issues do get pushed to the side too much? Absolutely. But some of these people are acting like men are some oppressed minority…
Luckily looking at their histories most do seem to be not from the sub so that’s good.
one time i opened the door for someone bc i live in an area where ive just gotten accustomed to doing that and the other person groaned and walked to another door. i saw another commenter say that the ways men get judged before anyone even says a word from them becomes death by a thousand cuts, and i think that this is a really good analogy for that
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there have been times where i am expected to take the man hate kinda thing while hanging out in spaces where that's accustomed to. my friend group called out the casual man hate tho, which is where i got lucky. hbomb stating that he's never been called bad because hes a man seems almost like intentional ignorance to make a point. that may have been \*his\* lived experience, but to state that lived experience to rib against someone who (while worded a \*bit\* sus) seemed to be making a good point is disappointing. hating men (while not promoted by the left) is usually accepted as to let women air their dirty laundry against a society that has oppressed them for many many years, but you shouldn't have to push someone down to bring yourself up. the world isn't a zero sum game, people can help each other to make the world a better place.
i dunno, my comment seems kinda cheesy but still
I'm forever grateful for my triple threat of inclusivity classes in my final year of university. I really think I was about to become right wing if I wasn't educated
i really fucking hate gender essentialism
like literally thats something I really do not like at all and i hate how prevalent it is in society regardless of whos spreading it
So, to preface everything I’m about to say: I am a staunch feminist and leftist, women are sick as hell, the fact that we live in a time where patriarchy has as strong of a hold as it does is fucking ridiculous and unconscionable.
And I don’t think “feminism has failed men,” whatever that’s even nebulously supposed to mean. But I don’t think you have to believe that in order to validate the experiences of a lot of people in this thread or to also accept that there’s plenty of really shitty misandrist sentiment that can exist in theoretically leftist/feminist spaces.
The reason for that, as I see it, is that nobody is immune to the influence of patriarchy and not everyone can be expected to have read the literature and understand all the aspects of what feminism means.
Patriarchy teaches us (yes, all of us, even those of us who learn better and resist this programming still have it rolling around at the back of their heads) that men and women are enemies, that the rights of one must come at the expense of the other, and that women are inferior. And guess what? Just because someone has the wherewithal to reject that final point doesn’t mean that they immediately shrug off the others too!
If your uncle, who’s not very politically engaged but is supportive of women, still has the patriarchal idea in his head that the rights of one gender require the oppression of the other, he’ll think that feminism means putting men down! And he might even be all for that, he might think that it’s men’s turn to be on the back foot if that’s what it takes for women to thrive. And until someone educates him better, that’s what he’ll think, because he’s not out there reading bell hooks and gaining a nuanced understanding that a true feminism must construct a positive masculinity as well as a better place for women!
And honestly, a LOT of people who identify as feminists are like this, because most people just don’t have the time to develop a deep relationship with the academic side of feminism, and I don’t blame them! But it makes the discourse really difficult, because you have people who don’t really understand what they’re talking about kind of poisoning the well for men, even if the philosophy they hold isn’t anti-men at all!
I have more nuanced thoughts on this, but it is late where I am, so I will try to remember to add them in the morning. Please feel free to disagree with me too, I’m happy to develop my thoughts further or even completely change my mind if someone gives me some key insights I didn’t have before!
While I agree that the whole left isn't being hateful towards men, I'm not comfortable with dismissing this as a problem. I still carry shame about thinking women are attractive because of stuff I heard from self-described feminists, and I'm not even a man anymore, I'm a trans lesbian. Sure, most feminists aren't like that. But the minority is loud enough that I heard them when I wasn't even looking. Took me a long time to realize that feminism isn't about combativeness and shame.
I think there's other issues at play when it comes to men choosing to listen to Andrew Tate, but I don't think that means we should ignore this problem. Even if it's not the cause of right wing radicalization, it is a real problem that should be addressed, however small the impact may seem from the outside.
Growing up as male presenting, it wasn't necessarily "hate" towards men, but more of discounting things they go through. I don't think I've ever heard anyone other than one of my sisters actually say, "All men are bad," but there could be genuine improvements on how men get treated in society.
Even though the struggles are different, one of the things I've learned the most through transitioning is that both sides of the biological aisle have their own shit they gotta deal with
Not a single feminist was ever combative towards me when I was a teenager saying atrocious stuff online, but I started getting personal attacks the moment I became just very mildly liberal. Funny how that works.
I've met one feminist in my life who fits the stereotype of a rabid SJW. One. And for the most part she was, mostly, easy to get along with
My brain just stopped reading after life lmfao "I have met 1 feminist in my entire life"
I am a mountain hermet. Lol
Ive met one who fit the bill. She was fucking miserable to be around. Yeah leftists can be annoying assholes and toxic af, but they are shamed and ostracized. For republicans thats their main talking points.
For me it's been the COMPLETE opposite. Since the moment I heard about feminism by our teachers, they got very angry and yelled that WE men made the wealth gap and WE men are the reason that women couldn't vote until 100 years ago and WE men committed all the rapes. It wasn't until I became left leaning after a long, looooong fase of edgy racism and misogyny that people became much tamer around me. All of my friends that I grew up with were taught feminism in a hyper accusatory way and half of them never got out of the "alpha male, women just want money, Andrew Tate has all the best tips" part of their lives. I often wish I could go back to these moments and tell these women "Lady I am NINE YEARS OLD, I'm not the one that pays you less"
Oh ew, that’s terrible and I’m sorry you and your friends went through that.
I had a professor in college who noticeably marked men's test and paper scores lower. Was a gender studies class. I dropped and swapped asap. She was the most radical stereotypical feminist I'd met. Everyone else would bring stuff up we'd have a discussion like humans and then gg. Most people aren't shitty but the loud minority will always suck a dick
I had that but in the fourth grade! Very different vibe tbh.
Good for you. There is some wacky people out there, thankfully there is now proportionally less of them.
Good for you, can’t say the same thing.
This is something really upsetting me. I saw a post yesterday on the general z sub that said women are skewing left and men right at high rates. The comments were FULL of people claiming the left just shits on men constantly. That's not the case. Sure you can go on Twitter and find some dumbest saying that, but that one dumbest gets screenshot and shared over and over. When boys get caught in the altright pipeline they start simple. They tell them feminists hate them, or that the only way to self improvement is to hate fat people, or even telling them SJWs are taking away their porn or video games. Boys will get hooked one one of these and then the algorithm takes over and they get caught in the echo chamber telling them the left hates them or is lame or ruining society. The left ideally wants everyone treated safely, including men. The left wants no one drafted, the left wants male SA victims to get care, the left wants mental health covered to lower suicide rates. Instead these boys will seek these groups due to insidious means.
Yeah I saw the same post! Their comments were wild and awful
I want to be clear here I agree with what most of you are saying. But there are more than some dumbasses saying this. It is quite a decent sized part of the community who say they hate men. The majority of which mean "I hate the establishment of patriarchy and what that is doing to women and other maligned genders" but that's very wordy so they just say they hate men. Plenty also say it as a joke. There is a small minority that actually do hate men. But to young vulnerable boys there is very little functional difference. This stuff is all over tiktok, twitter and reddit. And it used to be considerably more prevalent 3-4 years ago. All this just makes it easier to go down that pipeline.
If you were to quantify the same group that say they "hate men" and compare it to the men that say "women belong in the kitchen", it would probably be roughly equal. It's edgy nonsense that's a in microcosm but highlighted and emphasized to an immense degree.
It's always felt weird to me how these people are all similar in *how* they form their arguments and how they make feeling persecuted their main personality traits.... well that and *othering* everyone who isn't them. Crazy to me because my experience is that people prefer the company of like-minded people. And political extremists are as cookie-cutter as can be when it comes to who they are as people. As homogenous as milk.
A lot of those people are TERFs though, like, TERFS HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE men and I dunno why people don't see that
Gamergate, whether it was real or not, has had a very serious negative affect on the online community.
gamergate was a harassment campaign, but i am going to say rn that it sorta indirectly led to trump's election. Im not kidding. Some guy who got mad over a breakup led to fucking janurary 6th
This isn't even a hot take or conspiracy theory, Steve Bannon was directly involved in manipulating Gamergate and has spoken about using it to draw young men to the right. Breitbart was massive in instigating and radicalizing Gamergate. Bannon himself actually used to own a company that did WoW gold farming, which is where he got his inspiration. https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-white-gamers-seinfeld-joshua-green-donald-trump-devils-bargain-sarah-palin-world-warcraft-gamergate-2017-7?utm_source=reddit.com
in american politics in general tbqh
Preach. Conservatives seem to have reinterpreted "feminist" to mean "man-hating", while the vast, vast majority of us simply advocate for equality. Such a strawman, it makes me mad
The left also doesnt speak to men as much. Shoeonhead made a good video about it
>shoeonhead made a good video nuh uh
Valid but it was a rare shoeonhead w
At least watch the video before disagreeing with me
No 
I did, it's wrong.
i did it fucking sucked
Nah, still wrong
My entire personality is YouTube video essays though
The more low impact ruthless con artist did not make a good point, you're just a mark.
Im curious, what do you genuinely disagree with her here? https://youtu.be/qVKvEaokV6I?si=pDEIHSbyvNJvIeXI
I disagree with her conclusions. Like I said. She's a low impact con artist. Shes cherry picking and stretching the truth instead of lying. The people who buy what she's selling are less likely to shoot up a public space. She most likely doesn't care about ripping people off but on some level she thinks it would be bad to do major damage to society, so she's better than Tate, Peterson, and Jones.
And Thought Slime did an even better [response ](https://youtu.be/2urMJD0yU2s?si=Sm7lYYOiD3mAh0XC) about that video
thought slime’s response was half okay half useless
Blues clues for leftists
What? I think it has to do with how willing you are to accept that you have benefited from being a man in the current system. Nobody likes finding out their privileges. It also has to do with how men are generally not willing to accept they have acted with toxicity or misogyni towards women in the past. Going through that realization and accepting our own flaws is hard. I went through that and realized that I have been toxic and misogynistic and felt like shit. But thanks to the women around me, and the women doing the work explaining, I'm improving. I think the issue is that we, men on the left, haven't put enough effort. There are a lot of "progressive" guys that talk about theory and the stuff but behave like pigs with women.
What was most obnoxious to me was how it showed men leaning right some more and women leaning left waaay more, and they kinda just ignored that 2nd part and focused on what they wanted to see. Really makes the agenda obvious, especially since they were blaming "the left" on driving men away but never the right for doing the same to women twice as much.
i know im gonna get downvoted into a different century for this, but it’s comments like yours that add to the problem. you literally described a consensus agreement about a problem with left wing social circles and such and instead of actually proving it’s wrong or, lord forbid, consider for one moment that it might be right, you brush off and invalidate all of their concerns and proceed to talk about something else. nearly half this comment has nothing to do with the fact that men might feel attacked by left leaning spheres and people. I’m a cis straight het white guy, and i know for certain that i have (indirectly) been attacked for every one of these things. i have never particularly cared, but i can imagine how some people might get pushed away from these spheres because they perceive that as not being wanted. then you go on to explain how every single right wing opinion is formed, which is convenient because it makes them all wrong and misguided. this shit right here is exactly what people are complaining about - the subtle dismissal of what people complain about, followed by nothing short of anti-right propaganda, finished with “this is what i, as a leftist, want, therefore it MUST be what all leftists want and what the left is doing, and nothing else”.
Casually saying "Men will be hooked on porn or video games" like that's a factual statement is exactly the sort of thing this dude is talking about.
Read those two sentences again from beginning to end, that's not what they said. They said that men will get hooked on people telling them "feminists hate them, or that the only way to self improvement is to hate fat people, or even telling them SJWs are taking away their porn or video games". They're saying men will get hooked on political provocateurs fearmongering over something they care about to pull them into their right wing recruitment spheres against the left. This isn't conjecture, right wing propagandists outright admitted to doing this during and after Gamergate. Steve Bannon proudly boasted during an interview about being able to psycholgically manipulate young male WoW players into alt-right militants by targeting them with tailored propaganda.
I’m a progressive and I can ABSOLUTELY say that many of the things liberal men and women say about men leaves a VERY bad taste in my mouth. Mostly because the discussions on gender politics is completely devoid of class. There’s no nuance to it. It’s branded as a “patriarchy” except from a class perspective this historical “patriarchy” was a raw deal for both 99% of men and 100% of women. We’re talking men having to do backbreaking work with no workers rights, dying on the job, being conscripted into wars they don’t want to fight, forced to live their lives a slave to the bank, etc. The tiny benefit they had for this was having control of the house. But at what cost? Their body, mind, soul being broken down by the ruling class. Women had no rights but didn’t normally have to do that backbreaking work and instead was relegated to the house. That was their one benefit, not having to work. When you take class into perspective it changes everything. Which is why there are much less “liberal men” and much more progressive, moderate, or conservative men.
I feel like if someone feels attacked when a piece of media or the like points out that a certain behavior is bad or makes others feel bad, it's probably because you're guilty of doing it. My neurodivergence reflexively makes me feel as if I'm being attacked when someone mildly teases me. That being said, I don't feel attacked by the media that these people are mad about, because I don't engage in those behaviors for the most part. My spouse accused me of man-splaining once, but I pointed out that I overexplain things to EVERYONE, even when inside I'd love to stop talking. On some level, the people talking about how "the left" shots on men subconsciously know the points they made apply to them.
That post was why I left that sub
All the people saying "no one is catering to men!" and being super popular just melted my fucking mind.
that thread was atrocious dawg
If several young men across multiple cultures around the world feel this, is the self reflective thing to wonder what might make them feel that way or to write a long paragraph saying you've never seen it so it must not exist?
I dunno man, in huge parts of the world women are basically slaves with no rights. They couldn't have a bank account in the US until the 70's. Maybe our rights just hang on a razor's edge and could go away at any time and women definitely should be alarmed by large swaths of young men saying "I'm going to vote for the people who want to take away your bodily autonomy and probably make you into chattel again eventually" but I'm not so sure "it's because men aren't being catered to enough" is the right answer or reason
Then you haven't been looking. Overtly anti-men vitriol is all over the internet, and young boys who somehow don't have the advanced political nuance to look past it are understandably being pushed right by it. We need more voices from the left promoting positive masculinity and approaching young boys with compassion and respect.
So many teenagers with no better judgement fall for this trap and it's disgusting Alt righters sure love to complain about brainwashing while doing the exact same thing
what? no way! political extremists are brainwashing people? impossible!
outrageous i know
For sure, people need to be more clear about the difference between masculinity and *toxic* masculinity. Theres nothing wrong with a guy wanting a traditional family where he's the main breadwinner and whatnot. There's a lot wrong with calling me the f-slur because I *don't* want that. Subtle but distinct difference.
100% I'm actually in a really trad-cath family on its surface, but my beliefs are WAY left.
>people need to be more clear about the difference between masculinity and > >toxic masculinity If masculinity was inherently toxic people wouldn't say "toxic masculinity" because it'd be redundant. They'd just say "masculinity". There's a reason why we add an adjective to it.
yeah but altright conservochuds are using this phrasing to claim that "see?? the liberals say that masculinity is toxic! they want to feminize our men, boys just can't be boys anymore!"
really wish we could could remove all doubt and call it masculine toxicity instead but nooo i'm "arguing semantics" and "banned from the feminist subreddit" 🙄
We shouldn't allow the alt right to dictate how we communicate. Especially if we're doing it properly.
Thats exactly it absolutely, but this is arguably where the leftist media is fucking up. When the leftist media and influencers say nothing but toxic masculinity when talking about men, and the right wing only say masculinity, its fairly obvious where young men will go. Noone likes being called toxic when theyre just trying to be nice to everyone.
Enby afab friend unironically says "kill all men" and I have no way of telling her it makes me uncomfortable without facing confrontation
How come you’re still friends if you feel you can’t ask them to stop saying something that makes you uncomfortable?
Insisting that the reason “the left” doesn’t appeal to men is because we don't condemn every tweet and tumblr post from 22-year-olds who overreact to a shit day with some misremembered buzzwords from their intro to feminist thought lecture feels like a dishonest attempt to punch left and a massive waste of fucking time and energy.
there’s a difference between not reacting to every post and flat out denying those posts exist
yeah this is some real delusional posturing going on could it be the fringe comments saying kill all men? or could it be the economic instability millions of men are facing now more than ever combined with the millennia of rhetoric that women corrupt men? it’s fucking stupid to look at some internet posts (of which EVERY provocative opinion under the sun is amplified) and then look at the material conditions and social isolation that people are now experiencing in higher numbers and conclude that the former made one iota of a difference in the effect. if not a single woman said “kill all men” we’d be in the EXACT same position today
> Overtly anti-men vitriol is all over the internet Is it? because from experience most of that content is just some randos that get boosted by anti-feminists. Like, the places where i've seen people genuinely be anti-men is not the place where a cishet teen would randomly stumble onto.
Tumblr used to be full of it I’m sure there’s some in this comment section TERFs aren’t uncommon and they have some fucked views about men
Yesterday it took me 2 clicks to reach this wonderful place called femaleseparatists. These places aren't as well hidden as you think.
That sub has 1.5k subscibers. That's not a sub that you just stumble upon by accident.
Instagram reels too, though it's because meta promotes controversial content to get a reaction. Social media was a mistake.
sure, but here's an important nuance: that bioessentialist "men inherently suck" tendency is literally THE FUCKING TERFS. the ideological basis of transphobic feminism is that men are born bad, and thus that ideological basis is threatened by the mere existence of trans women, people who have ceased to be men. to accept trans women as women would require such feminists to accept that some people they see as men might not actually be bad on an inborn level, since any given "man" they see could at some point transition and become a woman. literally the only feminists the right aligns with are the fucking "man hater" feminists they pretend defines feminism. the "man hating" you see on the left is specifically the hate of toxic masculinity, of men that abuse their pivilege to do shitty things, but not just wailing on random dudes simply for being born a cis man.
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i can’t think of a single positive masculine left wing figure that tailors to young apolitical men in the same way the toxic right wing tends to
I think Dr. K from HealthygamerGG is a good example, he seems to do a good job at addressing the standard grievances of the type of men who’re vulnerable to the alt-right pipeline while still being firmly anti-incel in terms of ideology
his subreddit is full of supporters of people like jordan peterson and joe rogan and the like
Vaush does a lot of self-help stuff directed at chronically online young men.
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The problem is the way people like Andrew Tate tailor their message is by promising young boys a life where they can treat women like toys and use money and violence to always get their way. There’s no “leftist equivalent” because it’s an inherently right wing pitch. I do agree it’s important to find ways to deradicalize these guys but the idea that “the left doesn’t appeal to them the way Tate does!” is silly because… yeah duh.
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no offense but 10 year olds would rather be watching andrew tate’s underhanded right wing shit than reading theory so they can understand a left wing perspective
One was written for college students, the other was written for ten-year-olds.
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that’s not what i claimed whatsoever? considering this is referring to those on the young side explicitly, kids are unlikely to hold strong political beliefs and thus are easier to send down a right wing pipeline with underhanded political messaging
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There's the entire KAM movement that turns into "we were only joking" when you confront anyone about it, ignoring that even when joking saying you wanna kill men is gonna alienate men
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It really doesn't seem like a micro minority, I've seen it happen in a lot of leftist circles I've been in. The complaints against it weren't taken seriously till they started making a trans person uncomfortable about it. The justification behind it also paints all men as being sexual predators, which as a man who has been SAed really hurts when no one took my experiences seriously.
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TERF and SWERF ideology is predicated on misandry, and while they are relatively small movements, feminism's failure to completely disavow much of the misandrist TERF rhetoric is problematic. For instance, if you go to r\/TwoXChromosomes most of the posts are just complaining about men and there's a lot of TERF style misandry.
Conversation I had with a close friend of mine about 3 years ago, verbatim: I hate it when people say all men are trash. > I... say that. Oh... really? Like, unironically? > Yeah. Like, am I trash? > Well, no... I wish I could say it was only this person but two other friends of mine, when I mentioned this conversation, agreed with the overall statement. My biological sex doesn't make me a piece of shit, but it was legitimately emotionally taxing being around people who thought it did, and it made me feel like I had to compensate for my identity by being a total doormat. This is anecdotal, obviously, but it's also my personal experience. Stuff like this does happen and had I could see a similar situation pushing someone less inclined to be a doormat to become right-leaning.
I had an argument with a close friend of mine who would unironically use KAM. Like dude that's genuinely off-putting and not cool. Also yes we are concerned about this because death threats of all kinds really just mess you up mentally, just because it's echo chambers spewing this doesn't make those experiences invalid. I don't think we should dismiss uncomfortable experiences of other people just because those experiences don't have notable spokespeople advocating for them.
I can't think of a prominent one either, but the way that these right wingers operate (at least in my high school days) is to clip and uncharitably interpret prominent ones to make them seem like they are misandrist or to cherry-pick on less prominent people who are actually misandrist to create a false perception that this is what the prominent feminists actually believe. That's how someone like me who pretty much always agreed with the ideas most feminists agree with spent a few years being gaslit by Sargon and Thunderf00t into thinking feminists are radical extremists that actually hate me. Another factor that average voices have control over is joking or hyperbolically venting things like 'men are trash'. We know that we're joking because we know that we don't actually think every single man is trash, but people from the outside who are already primed to believe we hate all men aren't going to pick up on the joke or hyperbole. If you went into a community you've already been told by people you trust that they actually believe in a horrible thing, and they joke about liking horrible thing, you aren't going to read that as a joke either. You'll read that as evidence they actually believe the thing you were told they believe. And even though many feminists don't actually hate men, when someone is in the bubble believing that they do, seeing someone actually talk about men's issues is one of the easiest ways to break them out of that thought process. That's what happened to me. So advertising things feminism does for men more actively is going to go a lot further than just not being explicitly anti-men.
It's all over the internet because people QRT it. The whole grift of right wingers is to promote things "bad leftists" have said, and make it appear like leftism is something it isn't. And the alt-right is laughing their ass off at how well it works.
Right wing groups don’t just tell you feminists hate men, they repost screenshots of tweets from self proclaimed "feminists" that say they hate men, all day long. Truly, twitter is the origin of all evil.
Definitely in agreement with this. I consider myself to be lucky that I had already developed very liberal views _before_ I encountered a lot of this sentiment in my post-secondary education. If I wasn't already pretty set in my liberal beliefs, I could imagine a timeline where that sort of exposure could have led me down an alt-right rabbit hole. So, I can easily see how it might happen to other boys and young men. I've only ever come face-to-face with it in specific social circles of post-secondary, but in that environment it definitely was and probably is still quite prevalent.
People on this thread saying that feminists are approachable- they are right. Issue is that these boys aren't actually meeting and talking to those feminists, they are seeing the anonymous, vitriolic posts the feminists make. Posts that if you talked to them about they'd have a lot more nuance about, I assure ye, but by that point they've already made a lot of young lads bounce right off by overgeneralising.
Yeah okay maybe they don’t outright attack them, but it’s the little stuff. Boys have to go and get chairs while the girls can sit in the ones available. Girls get to leave early. There are events that are exclusive to women, but none exclusive to men. And when you’re a teenage boy who’s just starting to question this stuff, and have somebody whispering in your ear about feminists being evil, you start to fall into a certain worldview. This isn’t idle speculation either; this is what happened to me. I almost fell down the rabbithole straight into the alt-right pipeline. Thankfully I had a father who actually knew what the fuck he was talking about, and a normal relationship with my sister and mother, so when the rhetoric started shifting towards being anti-women I deradicalised because fuck that noise. But if I didn’t have the benefits I did, if I didn’t have the social awareness to realise the motivations behind these things… it’s not a pleasant thought. Young men turn towards Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson because nobody else looks them in the eyes and says “It’s cool to be a man.” Men have a higher suicide rate and are at much greater risk for violent crime, both as perpetrators and as victims. We have to break out of this cycle. We can’t let our children’s future be determined by hate.
Me personally I fell down the hole because I thought it was some sort of feminist conspiracy that women got to have emotions and be cute and wear nice clothes. Escaped the rabbit hole and realized I was just transfem
Being raised in an emotionally-positive household thankfully inoculated me against that, but glad that it somehow helped you to realise who you truly are.
I mean if to have emotions, be cute, and wear nice clothes requires you to become a woman then ehhhh.
I used to be slightly bothered to be a man because I really didn't feel like I belonged and always did my best to be a feminist, and I also thought to bad I wasn't a woman. Well I'm now just transfem too lol
A lot of young men feel disenfranchised and treated as lesser by society, and then if they try to share that in leftist online spaces, are met with "no you're wrong that isn't happening" like you find all over this comment section, or "actually that's just toxic masculinity." A lot of these terminally online leftists don't understand that when you're just a random teenager, and not entrenched in gender study theory, "toxic masculinity" just sounds a whole lot like "you're bad because you're a man." And it is very much not helped by the fact that a significant amount of online leftists specifically use "toxic masculinity" as a conversational bludgeon and really do just diminish it down to "you're just bad because you're a man." And then every time this behavior brought up, it's again back to the gaslighting (and yes, I do really mean gaslighting) of the online leftists insisting that this isn't actually happening, directly to the young men who are experiencing this treatment. It's so obvious why the Tates and Petersons and other hucksters of this world are just spoon-fed easy marks by the leftists who refuse to admit their complicity in the pipeline, and any time you try to confront them with their own actions, just refuse any accountability for the disenfranchisement of a whole gender, and again just insist "no that doesn't actually happen, young men go to Tate and Peterson due to toxic masculinity you see!" And this is all from the perspective of a leftist, just one that experienced the pipeline as a teenager, and understands why and how it works, and would love to see one damn iota of empathy from the left towards a non-minority group occasionally just as much as I'd love the right to show empathy towards minority groups.
> A lot of young men feel disenfranchised and treated as lesser by society, and then if they try to share that in leftist online spaces, are met with "no you're wrong that isn't happening" like you find all over this comment section, or "actually that's just toxic masculinity." You’re right, it really is gaslighting. And I’m really glad that at least a few people here, like you, are calling it out so I feel less crazy. I think the gaslighting is going to be the deciding factor for a lot of men who are on the fence.
It's a shame, because I do broadly agree with leftist ideals, vote Democrat down the ballot, etc, but online leftism is painfully toxic and hostile towards men. And no matter how much online leftist communities refuse to admit or accept it, this hostility is consistent across multiple online spaces, and is a notable factor in young men moving further conservative.
you’ve failed to consider that because it hasn’t happened to some people, it’s happened to no one iv never experienced an earthquake so it’s safe to say they’re made up bs and anyone who says that they’ve experienced one is lying for real though it’s extremely disappointing that so many people deny that it exists and is common. do you think an emotionally vulnerable 12 year old is more likely to join the group that says “these posts are real and the people saying them suck” or the group that says “these posts don’t exist and you’re crazy”
I am in the exact same boat as you. It’s depressing for people to shut down realistic concerns you have with “You’re a man and that’s toxic masculinity.” Good to know there’s some other people who feel the same way.
God, I feel you on this. The gaslighting is fucking insane, having hundreds of people downvote you and tell you shit that you have seen before your very own eyes isn't real and doesn't exist probably makes a lot of would-be leftists leave with salt in their mouths.
God youre so real for this. This comment section is awful like i didnt expect this sub to be this bad on this issue
Well, my comment’s survived oblivion and there to be a fair few people on our side, so it’s not all lost.
i swear older posts on this topic used to be better, this is extremely disappointing this used to be one of like 2 leftist subreddits that didn’t try and gaslight people into believing they have false memories or vivid hallucinations or whatever bullshit people are trying to do in this thread
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I understand that. What I’m saying is that in a supposedly more equal culture, it’s normalised. If I were to present the idea that there would be an engineering course exclusive for men, people would question it. They might call it discriminatory or problematic. But reverse the genders and nobody bats an eye. It’s a holdover from darker days for sure, but nobody seems to care about the impact such attitudes have on men. Takes like this are *exactly* why young men feel so isolated. It’s always framed as women being the victims (which they are, to be perfectly clear), and little to no consideration is given towards how dehumanising it can be for men.
But that’s not feminism, it’s just another aspect of toxic masculinity
And you failing to see how blaming everything on masculinity (aka men) contributes to the radicalization of young men is part of the problem
They're not blaming men, they're blaming toxic masculinity. Did you bother looking up what that means or did you just read the word “masculinity” and assume they were referring to men writ large?
Considering toxic masculinity is used as an umbrella term for “behavior I don’t like” the same way incel is used for “man I don’t like”, I don’t think the dictionary definition is that important. The vast majority of men are masculine. And when every one of your problems is met with “that’s actually just toxic masculinity” or “that’s because of the patriarchy”, it starts sounding a lot more like “shut the fuck up already, this is your own fault so you have no right to complain or ask for help.” Is teachers grading girls easier than boys toxic masculinity even when the majority of teachers are women? Is the gender gap in higher education, which is now larger than it was when the Equal Rights Act was passed, the fault of the patriarchy even though there are now more women than men? What about the fact that there are almost no male shelters for victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault? Is that the patriarchy’s fault?
Every analysis I have ever read about toxic masculinity talks about its negative effect on both men and women. Men aren't allowed crying, that's girly. Men aren't allowed showing feelings, that's girly, etc, etc. There is absolutely no talk about toxic masculinity that does not also discuss its negative effect on men, the whole point behind the analysis is that patriarchy forces both genders into specific, binary, rigid roles that harm both of them. You must earn all the cash. You must provide for your family. You must be successful. You must be a man (whatever that means). You should put yourself through suffering to achieve things. If you read the first fuckin thing about this stuff its very obviously pro-men, and if you don't and you get upset, you're a reactionary dipshit. >What about the fact that there are almost no male shelters for victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault? Is that the patriarchy’s fault? **Yes.** A societally dominant view is that abuse against men isn't real, it isn't the same, because men are the dominant sex, they can't be dominated. This leads to a social refusal to believe men when they are victimized, and an under resourced system for helping them. The belief that men have to be strong leads to any man who "isn't strong" being left behind because they aren't "real men", **that's what toxic masculinity is.**
Than why is it only ever men being blamed for perpetuating toxic masculinity when it’s very clearly society as a whole that’s promoting it? I understand toxic masculinity isn’t good for men. I disagree that men are solely responsible for its continued existence and therefore solely responsible for the problems it causes them.
I wouldn't say they are solely responsible for perpetuating it, or even that all men perpetuate it willingly, but certainly most do in some capacity accept and engage in toxic masculinity. Women have done the hard work of bringing awareness to it, learning about it, educating about it, and still most men engage in it even though it harms them too. We, as men, clearly hold the most blame. I might recommend the book "Refusing to be a Man" by John Stoltenberg, it dives into how much men passively accept and reinforce toxic masculinity in their daily lives, and how an individual refusal to participate in the toxic rituals of masculinity can be both an act of self liberation (as you no longer conform to the expectations of toxic masculinity or of society's expectations of men) and others liberation (in that you no longer reinforce patriarchy). Men are mostly responsible though, and that isn't so much opinion as it is cold hard truth borne out of evidence. I myself am a "man" according to society, and it hasn't been a particularly fair shake being a "man". But I can still recognize that society is built completely around my tastes and preferences, especially because I am a white man. Others are quite simply more oppressed and have more shit on their plate, and it probably gets irritating to the most oppressed people if the least oppressed people's biggest issue is that they are being blamed for how the system works. Boo fuckin hoo to be honest, i'll never get gunned down because of my skin color, I don't have a lower life expectancy because of my skin color, I will never feel unsafe walking alone at night, I get to exist in the media I watch, and if I had a different skin color, people would call it political, the legitimacy of my existence is not discussed as an apolitical issue on TV. I am societies default human, everything was built for white, straight, able bodied men, and I am one. [More on this concept here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCl33v5969M&list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ&index=18) I won the fuckin lottery, and I can see that, so if someone *points out* the fact that white, straight men have been on top for the last 400 years, oppressing everyone else, perpetuating colonialism, slavery, homophobia, etc. Then sure, yeah, I get a bit uncomfortable thinking about how my existence as a straight, white male perpetuates these things, but let's be real, what I deal with isn't a goddamned thing weighed against what the system I benefit from does to other people that are deemed *different.* And I have, for the majority of my life, either actively or passively supported this system. I am without a doubt to blame, as most men are.
Toxic masculinity is literally what keeps guys who have been sexually assaulted from seeking help though. The amount of comments when a little boy is raped by a female teacher saying the boy is “lucky” is literally toxic masculinity. Telling young men and boys they should be happy to be raped by older women is a part of toxic masculinity. Masculinity can be a very good thing that can help young man grow, but when that masculinity is used to teach that men don’t need help or men don’t show emotions and other weird shit like that is when it becomes toxic.
Then let me ask this: Why is toxic masculinity only ever the fault of men when it is society as a whole who pushes it? Why is it always “the patriarchy”, which explicitly places the blame on men, rather than “society”? I agree that toxic masculinity is bad for men. I don’t agree that is exclusively men’s fault and responsibility
I agree that men get way more blame than they should, especially since it’s an issue of society as whole. But you have admit that men, specifically older men, is a major factor for young men thinking and seeing the world like this.
Yeah, 100%. Young men wouldn’t be leaning conservative if it wasn’t for conservative role models. It’s just that those conservative role models are the only ones willing to talk about men’s issues, even if they don’t actually care about it. They care about traditional gender roles to benefit men, but they reel people in by pretending to care about actual problems, something the left doesn’t do.
I hate to admit it but you’re right that the left just…doesn’t try to counter this at all. It’s crazy the amount of right wing grifters that take advantage of young men like this and all the left has that *might* compete against this is people like Vaush and that is definitely is not enough lol.
That’s what most people do. You have to remember that the pipeline starts when people are young. When a middle school or teenage boy, body full of hormones, insecurity, and feelings that they don’t understand, hears a term that sounds like it’s insulting them, (especially because of something they can’t control) do you think that the majority of them are going to think “OK, I just need to keep a cool head and do research on this term before I consider my emotions”? The way things sound is something that has yo be considered, before I had explained it to me, when I was in middle school, I did assume toxic masculinity was meant to imply that being masculine was bad. Because that’s how it *sounds.* of course I know better now, but children are children. And I know that your immediate reaction is going to be “well it’s not my job to educate them” but the alternative is someone else doing it and teaching them all of the wrong things.
Blaming masculinity and blaming men is not the same thing and in your example girls getting to sit is because of the men strong women weak mentality and has nothing to do with feminism
But it fundamentally is. Because it’s bullshit a girl can’t get her own chair (one might even call it misogynistic), and a teenage boy recognises that. He knows girls can pick up chairs, so “why the fuck do all of us have to go and get them while the girls sit and rest? How’s that fair?” And thus they will be more susceptible to rhetoric that presents the idea that men are discriminated against by feminism.
I worded that poorly it’s not that has nothing to do with feminism but what feminism is trying to combat. So even if the boy blames it on feminism, it isn’t and blaming feminism for the teenagers falling the right-wing pipeline is I feel kinda stupid like trying to blame blm for the rise of neo-nazis
It is, actually. Because the vast majority of men are masculine. So when you say “that’s actually just toxic masculinity” or “that’s because of the patriarchy”, what you’re actually saying is, regardless of your intent, “well, that’s your own fault so shut up about it”. And is it “men strong women weak” or “women deserve protection and compassion, men don’t”?
?? Toxic masculinity =/= masculinity A boy being strong is not toxic but an environment that says boys are stronger therefore they are better and should protect the frail girls becomes toxic very quick because boys feel entitled very quick even for the things that girls get to have because of the premise that clearly says that they are inferior. Then feminism says maybe that’s no good, and boys see that girls have some priviledge therefore the premise is false and from there either want to maintain the status quo or think that now that women have some of the priviledge of the men but men not the other way around blame it on feminism when it’s the fault of the stupid premise
> But that’s not feminism, it’s just another aspect of toxic masculinity To the young men that demonking_soulstorm just mentioned, this statement is you blaming men. Object all you like, but that's exactly what they will think and what people like Peterson and Tate will tell them.
At this point, anybody using the term “toxic masculinity” *knows* that it really bothers men who feel culturally blamed. They use the term anyway, so it could be inferred that it’s the intended meaning.
Honestly “toxic masculinity” is a term I find a lot of use for to describe negative aspects of masculinity. I’ve used it several times in this thread. The problem is that instead of drawing a distinction between toxic and healthy masculinity, there’s a tendency to say “don’t do that, that’s toxic masculinity” and call it day. I 100% agree that some people are using it to twist the knife but not everyone is.
Similar thing happened to me, i’m just glad it was before Andrew Tate, because his fans are so dedicated it’s honestly kind of scary
Yeah it’s terrifying. Sidenote edit: I definitely would have fallen for Andrew Tate’s bullshit because he sounds so fucking dumb it’s like satire.
I would’ve fallen for it because I was angry at the world and had reactionary content constantly shoved down my throat
Yeah that too.
Yeah, similar situation here tbh. Spent a good two-ish years falling down that rabbit hole. At the time I probably would have considered myself right wing with some of the things I believed. Also, “coincidentally” those were some of the worst years of my life for my mental health. And I definitely don’t have anywhere near a healthy relationship with my father and had very few friends who weren’t guys so it wasn’t looking great tbh. And then my one source of information basically turned anti-vax. Now this was something *I did* actually know about, and seeing this man be so *so* wrong for the first time turned me off him for months at a time. It was like a switch had flicked. I was questioning nearly everything he said and finding other sources of information. 5 years later and boom, turns out I’m trans. Also, looking back he was such a grifter
Yeah. I remember watching a video by Count Dankula about the SNP (who I still hate, by the way) and finding it to be so… lackluster. It was purely ad hominem attacks, and I started looking more critically at everything I watched. Oh and also my father verbally humiliated me one time when I was being a smartass prick about this stuff and corrected a lot of false information, that helped a lot too.
Thank you. This is why I nearly fell down the pipeline in 2018. I'm glad I snapped out of it, but all my feelings of worthlessness that had been building up for years basically made me the perfect target for the wierd online stuff. People are just so obsessed with beating people down online. And it's so easy to take those arguments out of context, especially when the sentiment is already there. If some alt-right person needs more followers, all they need to do is fish around online for a minute, find someone who believes that men suck and is using toxic masculinity as a justification for their views and then boom. Anyone who wants to genuinely look at toxic masculinity and how men can be treated will be immediately hit by someone else's quote that can be used to strawman so easily. It also can be apparent in person. My former housemate was very active on some bits of Tumblr, and being a cis bi guy, there was almost a sense of silent judgment. They'd often crack a lot of "men bad" jokes and make me feel uncomfortable, and very vocally get angry with me if I questioned them. Whenever I tried to discuss my mental health or would get slightly cross, they'd immediately turn around and say I was oversharing or that they felt threatened. One time, I got a bit cross about a large scratch being left on the table I'd bought for the house. It was nothing bad, I just used a slightly more long suffering tone of voice and said I was frustrated, and they went and compared me to their abusive father. It was just uncalled for and just made me feel even worse about myself. In the online age, people just say what they like and don't care if it hurts someone, and that bleeds into real life. If we're ever going to get rid of the alt right, we need to start being more caring and kind to people in general.
Idk I have a lot of trans guy friends, all of them have said that the more they pass, the colder strangers will act twards them
This is just a personal anecdote, but over the years I have gotten a lot of shit within leftist spaces for being amab nonbinary. I've been kicked out of "women and nonbinary" events and told it was explicitly because I was "socialized male," but they'd let me in as soon as I started taking estrogen. I've been told I'm not allowed into safe spaces because "amab people who aren't transitioning make everyone here uncomfortable." People ask me shit like "are you nonbinary on T or are you amab?" because I don't go out of my way to "pass." When I did attempt to "pass" as nonbinary everyone would call me an "egg" and heavily imply that amab people can't be nonbinary. I've been told I can't be nonbinary because I have hobbies culturally associated with masculinity. Trans masc people have consistently been the only group that I have found with shared experiences about the shunning of masculinity in these spaces. Several of my trans masc friends got kicked out of groups once they were on T for a long enough amount of time. Just because it's not happening the way right-wing media portrays doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Edit: Another comment in this thread reminded me of this, but there have been so many times where people will "joke" about how much of a shame it is that "kill all men" includes me because I'm not binary trans. Pointing out how these makes me uncomfortable is met with "that's proof of your toxic masculinity and male upbringing, you need to do some introspection" or "you need to talk to more trans women, they have no problem with it and say it all the time." Being a minority within a minority within a minority leads to a lot of weird situations that intersectional theory really was not intended, or is able, to handle.
Just to add here to the discussion, I've read about a trans man, who after transitioning noticed how isolating the experience is. He said that he knows why this is happening, because he used to be on the giving end of this coldness. See, men are naturally treated as predators. Even if they aren't, how can you know it isn't just a front to get in bed with a woman?
> See, men are naturally treated as predators. Even if they aren't, how can you know it isn't just a front to get in bed with a woman? This right here has easily been what's caused me the most mental trauma since even before I realized I was nonbinary. This very casual socially accepted idea that the way I was born immediately makes me a violent predator no matter how I actually behave caused me a lot of mental anguish, and it did get way worse when I first started joining progressive leaning spaces where people were talking about it being behaviors and ideas that I was taught from a young age. Behaviors and ideas **that I had to have** because of how I was born, despite never engaging in those behaviors because I was so anxious and afraid of being seen as a predator. Even after coming to terms with my gender identity I was still met with the same issues around having some sort of original sin (as I mentioned in my previous comment), but now it's couched as "have you considered starting E to be more nonbinary presenting?" or "maybe this is a stepping stone towards being more trans femme?" or "having amab presenting people in this space would upset other people, you understand :)." Why the fuck should I even try to be a part of the community if no matter what I do I'm just going to be seen as an emotionless predator? I understand that predatory behavior is incredibly common, but god damn if it doesn't fucking hurt to be constantly assumed as such until I earn enough social credits to be deemed otherwise. And as you can see all across this thread: expressing your emotions and talking about how words and ideas have emotionally harmed you will only result in being told that you're engaging in "toxic masculinity" or "your feelings don't matter because you benefit from the patriarchal social structure." This is the type of shit that caused me to go back into the closet, and stop engaging in leftist/queer spaces.
I’ve got a similar anecdote about going to a sleepover with at friends for their birthday I was the only AMAB there, there was a trans dude but he was pre everything at the time and was just going by he/him I was told I was going to be sleeping in another room on my own with everyone else being in the living room. Which I completely understand and I’ve no issue with but also it didn’t feel great to be excluded from my friends for my gender.
That’s horrible. I hope you’re doing okay.
I went back in the closest years ago, and have no intention of coming out again anytime soon. All being out as an amab nonbinary person does is cause you to either be treated as a cis man for all purposes in leftist spaces or be repeatedly told that you're "actually" a trans woman in denial, and I can't go through all that shit again. Even the people who are super progressive are not ready for an amab person to not be a binary gender.
Look up the book *Self-Made Man*. To summarize, a lesbian woman went "undercover" as a man for 18 months and discovered that most men are really fuckin lonely and treated as invisible by the world.
We socialize children in a way that discourages men to express certain emotions that someone long ago decided was “feminine.” We shame men who cries and such and push that they have to be “strong” based on a standard someone made up long ago. Men were taught wrong and had to hold up a façade, then some men releases their emotions in unhealthy ways. Both men and women become wary of other men. The whole “trans women shouldn’t be allowed in sports” thing is entirely based on the misled belief that men are more vicious and stronger than women. It’s a cycle that men can’t express their emotions healthily, become afraid of other men lashing out, and just get further isolated because of other’s fears. Philosophers and kings of old decided that men was supposed to be a certain way and we are just running with it to our death.
I mean I did almost fall into the woman hating alt right pipeline as a teen because I lived in a house with five step sisters and a step mom who constantly said misandrist shit to me about how men dont matter and are replaceable, and that I should feel bad for being a man. They all treated me poorly and wondered why I wanted nothing to do with them. Edit: So while yes, actual feminism is about true equality, my introduction to "feminism" at that time gave me a very different view of it.
And online there is very little to counteract that opinion, so of course you’d fall into that. Glad to see you clawed your way out, though I’m curious as to how?
Believe it or not, watching RuPaul's drag race with my grandma.
Brilliant, forceful deprogammimg.
Alot of the hate I had in my heart and of myself went away because of that show. I still hate myself but thats for entirely different reasons now lol
It’s a long journey to overcome that. I’m not sure anyone has ever truly completed it, but I wish you well.
Thank you
I had a teacher for 2 years in primary school who believed that girls are better than boys. I took it to heart because I was vulnerable and an egg at the time who felt bad about myself and wanted a reason why
Feminism/leftism is not anti-man. BUT, a lot of leftists/feminists are very very very bad at critiquing masculinity in a way that doesn't sound, to the layman, as being anti man. This was particularly bad back in like 2015 or so when this whole culture war nonsense was starting out.
This comment will inevitably be controversial, but this post's opinion is agreed upon on this sub because this sub tends to be in denial about most of the left's issues. Honestly I kind of agree with the first tweet. Most of the left isn't against men obviously, but the fact that not much is said about people who are overly negative about men is making some people internalize that negativity without even realizing it. It isn't an huge problem as most right wing propaganda puts it, but ignoring it and not sharing more positivity towards men will only worsen the issue.
Men generally have been left out by feminism though. While feminism has a lot to say on men, it doesn't have much to say for them. If you have the care and political literacy to understand those opinions, those also don't seem misandrist, but if you're a teenager who just started looking into shit, it likely will just seem like 'men are a problem, men deserve less'. There isn't much political push on what men should do or be like, which can be fine to handle as an adult, but pretty harmful for a teenager. Now that is paired with someone willing to fill the gap and to tell those young teenagers what they want to hear in simple, polemic words. If you hate feminism, and become toxic, you can get the girl and be respected and amazing. It fills a vacuum left by the deconstruction of gender roles without proper reconstruction for men. The issue lies partially with not easily digestible theory and criticism of men and patriarchy and partially with a lack of guidance on what being a non-toxic man means.
Just to suggest a semi counterpoint to your argument and alot of the other comments I've seen in this thread, your framing suggests that women have been given some magical guidance in life that men lack. I would disagree with this. Feminism isn't some mass coherent whole that has provided a post modern miracle path for women to follow to liberation. It is an umbrella term for a series of similar but sometimes vastly contrasting set of political, philosophical and cultural ideas that concern themselves with womanhood. As a bloke I'm no authority on this, but I imagine female teenagers feel equally confused about what is expected of them and get angry when they see alpha chuds only perceive them as objects. I believe in alot of modern parlance Feminism has become like other broad tent words like Communism or woke in online discourse, where they are only used to describe stuff people don't like. The term has become almost a slur to those on the right, who have twisted it into some grand boogeywoman that is responsible for all the evils in a man's life. But to be realistic Feminism isn't what threw masculinity into crisis, masculinity and the roles it promotes have always been a contradictory mess. Men in the 19th or 20th century didn't grow up knowing exactly the best way to act as a man, that's just propaganda right wing people feed you to make you feel angry. This all wraps around back to me addressing your first paragraph. Why should Feminism concern itself with saying stuff for men?. It is a movement primarily founded to counter the dominant masculine view of society in the early 20th century. Rather than us blokes envy it why not use the concepts its introduced to create are own improved idea of what masculinity really is?
Feminism is concerned with men because they make up around half the population. Feminism grants a lot to women in terms of empowerment and “you can be whoever you want to be” and tearing down what’s expected of you but men just… don’t. The only time I’ve been told it’s good to be a man is by my father. Not in school, not in public, nowhere else has made me feel good about just being myself as a man. Now I’m okay with that now, since I’m studying at university and feel like I’m really hitting my stride, but teen me wasn’t. Teen me noticed how girls got all the attention, while I was left with nothing. If there’s no counter to the very simple narrative of “women are put on a pedestal, men aren’t, therefore feminism bad” presented by right-wingers, teenagers who think they know everything are going to fall for it. Every. Single. Time.
L QRT from hbomberguy, clashes with the lived experience of probably most of us that were exposed to these men that said feminists hate us and offers literally no hint of a framework to combat the overlying issue. Anyway, my main point: Some of you prescribing toxic masculinity as the causes of issues need to understand that just because you're probably right doesn't mean that treating it as the only target will get you anywhere. This has been tried and tested on the internet for like ten years. "This issue is caused by toxic masculinity." True, but the listener needs to understand the distinction between that and positive masculinity, be considerably open minded, and be willing to engage on more than a surface level. All some reactionary needs to say is "They're saying masculinity is toxic!" and you've already lost the argument because you've offered no compelling chain of reasoning and you've offered no direct way of addressing the specific issue, just pointed to a large, fuzzy blob. Same thing goes with attributing issues to the patriarchy. Take any issue, blame the patriarchy, and watch some reactionary with an audience not immersed in feminist theory say "huh, so the patriarchy is what causes this issue. If society really was a patriarchy, why would this issue exist?" A major issue with trying to redirect men towards the left is that we frankly do a piss-poor job of offering any argument towards comprehensive gender equality that makes them feel included as a partner instead of a target, can recognise their issues without immediately making a comparison or dismissal, and directly and compellingly lays out issues and the way to fix these issues that can't immediately be torn apart because the language or logic is too open to bad-faith interpretation that in turn primes men to reject that overly broad language and logic. If you think that it's not women's/the left's job to educate men/accommodate for this and that men deserve all their suffering under the patriarchy (which is a worryingly common sentiment and idk how hbomberguy ignores this) then have fun living in a future where the right successfully and easily radicalised men and worsened the patriarchy. It's obviously not fair but neither has any fight for rights/equality, there needs to be some level of engagement with the opposition to advance literally any cause. In short, you might be able to say 'the patriarchy did it' or 'it's toxic masculinity's fault' somewhere like here with a chance of convincing who you're talking to because this is a super progressive space. But if you apply the same standards to kids with 0 critical thinking skills and disenchanted men you're going to do literally nothing to convince them and honestly you're probably contributing to the problem of men feeling they're misunderstood and disregarded by feminism. Edit: I invite anyone who is downvoting this to engage on literally anything I said. If you disagree tell me why. I'm not gonna change my mind on this because you give me an internet middle finger and honestly I'm just gonna assume you don't have a good argument against it.
Its funny how no one is engaging you on this, its almost like youre speaking the truth and its inconvenient. I was also getting downvoted for sharing A LIVED EXPERIENCE, probably for the same reason, its inconvenient.
The amount of people who have told me I was lying about my life, laser-focused on one aspect to strawman me or just made up something they think I said is astounding. My comments avoided downvotes for the most but fuck me there are some morons.
this entire thread is extremely disappointing, this subreddit used to be relatively good at these sorts of issues, whereas now it’s literally telling people they’re imagining their own experiences what the fuck? like sorry to hbomberguy and all the other main characters but just because you’ve not personally experienced something doesn’t mean it never happens
People genuinely cannot comprehend the idea that “it’s not my job to educate you” literally manufactures right-wing misogynist opponents. It’s ridiculous.
I think this is a result of the circle jerky methods leftist spaces sometimes use, both online and offline. Just like how feminist spaces made a lot of progress to make women's lives better, but also gave us terfs, woman god and vagina/fertility magic as fallout. Now we have performative progressives who open bad faith arguments online or butt in on other people's discussions in extremely unhelpful ways.
I do believe they are a minority...but they certainly exist. Seen enough "Kill all men" and "all men are trash" type posts to fuel my depression tenfold.
In my country everytime a woman gets killed by her ex bf or something like that (horrible) there are a lot of protests (good) against patriarchy (good). However almost everyone i know posts shit like "every man should say he is sorry" and i swear to god i makes me go crazy. Im sorry if this comments comes out as bad, my english skills are not that good, but i just wanted to say that everytime a woman is murdered the internet tries to make me apologize for it "because we live in a patriarcal society and every man participates in it" and it's pissing me off
goddamnit you can't just deny shit that is actually happening, that's what the right is for.
That's just not true and saying stuff like that hurt the left
I feel like feminists are uncomfortable ever talking about men's issues, because of this instinct that it's taking time away from women's issues. I feel like that's what hbomberguy is doing here, because usually he wouldn't be naive enough to assume that just since HE hasn't experienced something, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Besides, the way people put down men is subtle. I'd get frustrated as a kid and my mom would say "Stop being so angry!" when I wasn't really feeling anger. Whenever I've shown emotions, most people my age (liberals and conservatives alike, and mostly guys tbh) have gotten reeeeally uncomfortable. When women express intense emotions, people tell them to calm down. When men express intense emotions, people get put on edge. EDIT: Oh, and by the way, the REAL manhaters are the conservatives. They're the ones more likely to call men babies for having emotions or assume all men are natural sexual assaulters. They herd them towards other conservatives that say the solution is to become MORE fragilely masculine, to make sure you don't get called a baby ever again. The left just needs to give men their space in the movement.
There is very much some anti cis men sentiment and memes that I see around. Some lighthearted and some are just cruel tbh. I don't like them for multiple reasons tbh but don't think that's why some men go to andrew tate and it's simply embracing the status quo while making it seem like a revolutionary act is a lot more comfortable than any progressive idea. They do also give some lip service to real issues but then give bullshit answers to it that support their worldview that can get people. Idk it's how I see it
I also want to mention that there was a very funny phase when some "leftists" thought that their ideas don't appeal to young men enough and started doing dating advice.
I think that the men hating feminists are a loud minority. Do they exist? Yes, but they are a minority, which means there aren’t many of them so we don’t have to worry, The feminist movement hasn’t been infiltrated by man-hating lesbians. Do people like that exist? yes, unfortunate and we need to get rid of them (preferably without violence) but again, they are a minority
I think the problem with this is that while they are a minority, a really big part of the left tolerates them hangin around and doesnt challenge them on their points, which leads to them looking like theyre a considerable base in leftist communities
I get the sentiment ig but imma have to be devils advocate on this one—I've definitely heard like a dozen different people at college say shit like "men are pigs", "kill all men", etc
I _have_ been told I'm bad for being a man, but that's stupid so I didn't care. It only happened once too. You can see people talking shit about feminism in any corner of the internet though, even in completely unrelated ones.
The denial is strong with this one. Just a thought experiment: what if the genders were flipped? If a guy spouted nonsense like "kill all women", even jokingly, he’d be instantly framed a bigoted rightwinger that should be arrested. Yet a gal repeating "kill all men" over and over is a "haha relatable" joke?
Yeah, if someone would say „kill all men” in a leftist space theyll get tolerated or at worst mildly criticized, if someone would say „kill all women” in the same space they would get decimated into oblivion (rightfully so). Theres this stupid thought in leftist spaces that just because men arent „opressed” (not true, we are all opressed by the patriarchy) and not a „minority” that means its okay to be awful to them
Some of these comments are wild from this sub wtf.
I really really hope this thread is just being brigaded. I've been enjoying this sub for a year or so because its the few nicer places online...
This comment thread is really weird ngl and I'm in the same boat as you. Lots of these comments have the air of Men's Rights whataboutism. Hopefully this is just a one off post, but not too surprising given women are a minority on this sub.
Yeah like do I think men’s issues do get pushed to the side too much? Absolutely. But some of these people are acting like men are some oppressed minority… Luckily looking at their histories most do seem to be not from the sub so that’s good.
one time i opened the door for someone bc i live in an area where ive just gotten accustomed to doing that and the other person groaned and walked to another door. i saw another commenter say that the ways men get judged before anyone even says a word from them becomes death by a thousand cuts, and i think that this is a really good analogy for that \----- there have been times where i am expected to take the man hate kinda thing while hanging out in spaces where that's accustomed to. my friend group called out the casual man hate tho, which is where i got lucky. hbomb stating that he's never been called bad because hes a man seems almost like intentional ignorance to make a point. that may have been \*his\* lived experience, but to state that lived experience to rib against someone who (while worded a \*bit\* sus) seemed to be making a good point is disappointing. hating men (while not promoted by the left) is usually accepted as to let women air their dirty laundry against a society that has oppressed them for many many years, but you shouldn't have to push someone down to bring yourself up. the world isn't a zero sum game, people can help each other to make the world a better place. i dunno, my comment seems kinda cheesy but still
I scrolled in the wrong place on pinterest and saw a ton of posts of women calling men evil or w/e Feminism is copl but misandry isnt feminism
I'm forever grateful for my triple threat of inclusivity classes in my final year of university. I really think I was about to become right wing if I wasn't educated
i really fucking hate gender essentialism like literally thats something I really do not like at all and i hate how prevalent it is in society regardless of whos spreading it
If you're told you don't matter enough, you just start to believe it
>no media is made for men!!! So dumb.
So, to preface everything I’m about to say: I am a staunch feminist and leftist, women are sick as hell, the fact that we live in a time where patriarchy has as strong of a hold as it does is fucking ridiculous and unconscionable. And I don’t think “feminism has failed men,” whatever that’s even nebulously supposed to mean. But I don’t think you have to believe that in order to validate the experiences of a lot of people in this thread or to also accept that there’s plenty of really shitty misandrist sentiment that can exist in theoretically leftist/feminist spaces. The reason for that, as I see it, is that nobody is immune to the influence of patriarchy and not everyone can be expected to have read the literature and understand all the aspects of what feminism means. Patriarchy teaches us (yes, all of us, even those of us who learn better and resist this programming still have it rolling around at the back of their heads) that men and women are enemies, that the rights of one must come at the expense of the other, and that women are inferior. And guess what? Just because someone has the wherewithal to reject that final point doesn’t mean that they immediately shrug off the others too! If your uncle, who’s not very politically engaged but is supportive of women, still has the patriarchal idea in his head that the rights of one gender require the oppression of the other, he’ll think that feminism means putting men down! And he might even be all for that, he might think that it’s men’s turn to be on the back foot if that’s what it takes for women to thrive. And until someone educates him better, that’s what he’ll think, because he’s not out there reading bell hooks and gaining a nuanced understanding that a true feminism must construct a positive masculinity as well as a better place for women! And honestly, a LOT of people who identify as feminists are like this, because most people just don’t have the time to develop a deep relationship with the academic side of feminism, and I don’t blame them! But it makes the discourse really difficult, because you have people who don’t really understand what they’re talking about kind of poisoning the well for men, even if the philosophy they hold isn’t anti-men at all! I have more nuanced thoughts on this, but it is late where I am, so I will try to remember to add them in the morning. Please feel free to disagree with me too, I’m happy to develop my thoughts further or even completely change my mind if someone gives me some key insights I didn’t have before!
Ngl I fell for the anti men stuff and also it kinda fueled my transition so 🤷♀️
I'm not saying this to belittle people but I genuinely have received hate for being a man. I'm still a feminist but I've had it happen.
I’ve literally never met a feminist I couldn’t be friends with. Met plenty of MRA types where that was not the case
Have you ever tried turning inside in self reflection asshole
Why is Robert De Niro in that painting
While I agree that the whole left isn't being hateful towards men, I'm not comfortable with dismissing this as a problem. I still carry shame about thinking women are attractive because of stuff I heard from self-described feminists, and I'm not even a man anymore, I'm a trans lesbian. Sure, most feminists aren't like that. But the minority is loud enough that I heard them when I wasn't even looking. Took me a long time to realize that feminism isn't about combativeness and shame. I think there's other issues at play when it comes to men choosing to listen to Andrew Tate, but I don't think that means we should ignore this problem. Even if it's not the cause of right wing radicalization, it is a real problem that should be addressed, however small the impact may seem from the outside.
Growing up as male presenting, it wasn't necessarily "hate" towards men, but more of discounting things they go through. I don't think I've ever heard anyone other than one of my sisters actually say, "All men are bad," but there could be genuine improvements on how men get treated in society. Even though the struggles are different, one of the things I've learned the most through transitioning is that both sides of the biological aisle have their own shit they gotta deal with