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"Why can't we hate men?"

luchog said:
Part of the problem is that, IME, the majority of the men who feel it necessary to pipe up with "But I'M not like that" are, in fact, like that. They may not be full on abusers, stalkers, Incel idiots, but they still have entitlement attitudes and a need to prove their masculinity.
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Which literally leaves us with nowhere to go.

Any argument which reaches the "Defending yourself is strong evidence and/or proof of your guilt" level sort of doesn't leave us a way to win.
 
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Sabrina said:
You're not wrong.

Don't misunderstand me; I'm fully aware that not all men are responsible for the actions of a few, nor do I blame anyone but that small subset when I read about casual sexual assault or harassment, but I share in the indignation of most women when guys come back and say, "But I'M not like that" like it somehow excuses culpability for the (admittedly slowly shrinking) mindset that it's okay to treat women as mere sexual objects or like they don't have minds and personalities of their own. It would help if, instead of protesting that "not all men" are like that, that men would instead simply acknowledge and vehemently disparage the attitude of the men who DO sexually harass/assault and offer their simple support to women who suffer it.
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"But I'm not like that" doesn't excuse culpability, it denies culpability. The problem is you're equivocating between men as a group and men as individuals. You want the convenience of tarring men as a group, but also all the credit for not tarring individual men.

It seems like this is the conversation you want to have:


WOMAN: Men are so toxic!

MAN: I agree! Men are totally so toxic!
​

Or possibly:


WOMAN: Some men are so toxic!

MAN: I agree! Some men are totally so toxic!
​

But the conversation you (predictably) keep getting is:


WOMAN: Men are so toxic!

MAN: Some men, sure, but don't lump me in with that ****.

WOMAN: Ugh! Why can't you just agree with me, instead of making excuses?
​

As long as you keep having conversations about men as a class, with individual men, those individual men are going to keep pushing back against being unfairly lumped into that class. And then you're going to start getting articles similar to the one in the OP, suggesting that we're justified in hating men as a class in part because they won't play along with the stereotyping. And good men have no reason to think things will work out well for them, if they play along with the stereotyping.
 
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God, I hate the word "manly." I think the only word I hate more is "ladylike."

They're such stupid, subjective, meaningless words. They do nothing but provoke annoyance and put people on the defensive. I don't even understand why people still use them.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Which literally leaves us with nowhere to go.

Any argument which reaches the "Defending yourself is strong evidence and/or proof of your guilt" level sort of doesn't leave us a way to win.
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I think luchog is demonstrating a different problem: Denying guilt is always wrong, because all men are guilty of something.

Sabrina's variant seems to be: Denying guilt is always wrong, even for men who aren't guilty, because it undermines the process of social justice that we're going through right now.
 
theprestige said:
I think luchog is demonstrating a different problem: Denying guilt is always wrong, because all men are guilty of something.

Sabrina's variant seems to be: Denying guilt is always wrong, even for men who aren't guilty, because it undermines the process of social justice that we're going through right now.
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Well neither of those are anything I'm going to getting onboard with.
 
isissxn said:
God, I hate the word "manly." I think the only word I hate more is "ladylike."

They're such stupid, subjective, meaningless words. They do nothing but provoke annoyance and put people on the defensive. I don't even understand why people still use them.
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I bet people still use them because they don't provoke annoyance in everyone, nor do they put everyone on the defensive.

Do you ever wonder if making these kinds of sweeping, blanket criticisms of people might be counter-productive to your aims?
 
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theprestige said:
I betting people still use them because they don't provoke annoyance in everyone, nor do they put everyone on the defensive.

Do you ever wonder if making these kinds of sweeping, blanket criticisms of people might be counter-productive to your aims?
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What aims are those?


ETA - Sharing an opinion in this annoying thread? Nope, not counterproductive, seeing as I've managed it.
 
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isissxn said:
God, I hate the word "manly." I think the only word I hate more is "ladylike."

They're such stupid, subjective, meaningless words. They do nothing but provoke annoyance and put people on the defensive. I don't even understand why people still use them.
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It is bizarre to me on a deep level that after gender progressive for the last.... my lifetime has been removing all the unnecessary roles placed on the two genders how many of them have come roaring back just in really weird, vague, half spoken ways lately from the voices I would least expect.

There does seem to be a concentrated effort to... reintroduce some "essence" and man-ness and woman-ness back to the conversation in a... weird way.
 
JoeMorgue said:
It is bizarre to me on a deep level that after gender progressive for the last.... my lifetime has been removing all the unnecessary roles placed on the two genders how many of them have come roaring back just in really weird, vague, half spoken ways lately from the voices I would least expect.

There does seem to be a concentrated effort to... reintroduce some "essence" and man-ness and woman-ness back to the conversation in a... weird way.
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That's kind of what I was driving at. If we're talking about traditional paradigms, "masculine" seems to work just as well to me. "Manly" has a more judgmental connotation in my opinion. It's essentially the counterpart of "ladylike," which almost no one uses anymore besides older people. "Manly" should head out with it.
 
And in a broad sense this topic is why I'm sour on so much "cause" right now.

I get, respect, and agree with the idea that we can't look at issues in a vacuum and have to look at broader social causes and general societal cultures.

But when it gets the point, as it always does, of just everybody not completely 100% on your side in absolute lockstep agreement as to the problem, solution, priority, mentality, tone, language, perspective and narrative is just as bad as actual enemy because they are part of the "culture" that either "lets it happen" or "helps it happen" we've gone too far.

Yes (Insert social problem X) can only happen because there's a broader (Insert social problem X culture) but when that turns into anyone who disagrees with you about any detail about what (social problem X culture) is becomes just as bad as the people who actually commit (social problem X) you've defined too many people as the enemy.
 
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isissxn said:
God, I hate the word "manly." I think the only word I hate more is "ladylike."

They're such stupid, subjective, meaningless words. They do nothing but provoke annoyance and put people on the defensive. I don't even understand why people still use them.
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Presumably because some people still value distinct sex roles.

American evangelicals, for example.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Which literally leaves us with nowhere to go.

Any argument which reaches the "Defending yourself is strong evidence and/or proof of your guilt" level sort of doesn't leave us a way to win.
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Or rather, it means that it's not necessary for every man to pipe up every time to assert their niceness and lack of entitlement attitudes. A fact that all reasonably intelligent, rational entities involved in this discourse understand. If you're not the one being targeted by the claim, then it's not necessary to defend against it. And if the claim is explicitly "all men", then the claimant is clearly irrational enough that defending against it won't do any good anyway. Getting stridently defensive does not speak well to one's assertion that one is not part of the problem.
 
theprestige said:
I think luchog is demonstrating a different problem: Denying guilt is always wrong, because all men are guilty of something.
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:sdl:

Congratulations, you've reached an entirely new level of dishonesty that I've only seen from from now-banned trolls. I guess I can assume you're no longer interested in honest discussion.

d4m10n said:
Presumably because some people still value distinct sex roles.

American evangelicals, for example.
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Very much so. Not just them, but they're one of the biggest driving forces to keep those concepts and judgments active in American culture at the very least. Most legalistic religions and cultures derived from them have a very strict image of what a "proper" man or women is supposed to act like. Being homosexual is very much in violation of that image, but so are a large number of other qualities, which are often derived more from culture than from religion. In many Anglosphere cultures, there's the image of the "rugged individualist" male -- strong, stoic, dominant, unemotional, sexually aggressive, self-reliant, and so on. I say Anglosphere, because similar archetypes appear to be prevalent in other cultures, Australia for one. Anything else is considered effeminate, and associated with undesirable homosexuality.

While there has been some progress made in casting off these stereotypes, starting with the "hippy" movement/love generation, they are still very much ingrained in Anglosphere cultures, Anglo-American in particular. Even when not stereotypes as "queer", men who don't fit the "manly" stereotype are often ridiculed and derided as "sensitive New Age guy" or "bleeding ponytail", or in less polite terms, as "pussy-whipped".

isissxn said:
That's kind of what I was driving at. If we're talking about traditional paradigms, "masculine" seems to work just as well to me. "Manly" has a more judgmental connotation in my opinion. It's essentially the counterpart of "ladylike," which almost no one uses anymore besides older people. "Manly" should head out with it.
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The problem with that is, unless you're talking strictly about sexually-dimorphic physical features, "masculine" is still very much a value judgement based on culturally-driven stereotypes.
 
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So it's vitally important that men speak up about the misdoings of other men (lest they be part of the problem) without ever bringing up that they themselves don't do the misdoings (lest they be part of the problem.)

So "Hey everybody just want you to know I do NOT support men doing the bad things, but I have no statement as to whether or not I personally do the bad things."
 
Let's put this in literally any other context.

Let's take the statement "Some women/blacks/gays/Muslims are bad people."

You gonna henpeck the women/blacks/gays/Muslims that feel the need to defend themselves from that statement?

The modifier "some" doesn't not make a statement directed at an entire demographic okay.

I await a wave of "That's not the same because of privilege / macro-aggression / cultural baggage" excuses.
 
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If someone says "some" I don't care because it is clear. But when someone just says "X do Y" it is ambiguous enough that I don't know if they're talking about some, most, all...

So I'm more likely to challenge it or suggest a rephrasing or clarification.

Often the context of the rest of the paragraph/tweets/essay is enough to clarify but sometimes it isn't, and sometimes that clarification is such that I think they deserve critique (like the WaPo author)
 
JoeMorgue said:
Let's put this in literally any other context.

Let's take the statement "Some women/blacks/gays/Muslims are bad people."

You gonna henpeck the women/blacks/gays/Muslims that feel the need to defend themselves from that statement?

The modifier "some" doesn't not make a statement directed at an entire demographic okay.

I await a wave of "That's not the same because of privilege / macro-aggression / cultural baggage" excuses.
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Exactly. For example, there are people who detest Muslims, and consider them all to be terrorists. In this case, pointing out that it's a small, extremist number who are terrorists is attacking bigotry.
 
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