Please note: This post contains my own emotions and thoughts. I did not write this post to be inflammatory or cause drama. Also contains SA

I 100% believe the left can only succeed if we accept all people, regardless of identity. This includes men. I also believe that the only way we can keep young men from going alt-right is empathy for their plights.

That said, I've been dealing with a lot of irrational anger towards men as a group even though I don't want to be. Every time I read/listen to opinions by men on women's issues it drives me up the wall. It makes me so mad. These people have mothers, daughters, wives, friends who have most likely experienced assault or rape and they can't even be assed to believe women when they talk about their experiences.

It makes me angry that men have to be center of everything. I'd be so embarrassed if I interjected "what about meeeeeee" every time someone talked about their own issues. It makes me wonder how self-centered you must experience the world to do this.

I read a comment the other day by a woman on reddit. She wrote something a long the lines of "It took me 50 years of life experience and raising a daughter to realize that most men do not like women". I think I agree. I especially find porn extremely telling of this. As someone in their 20s I do notice how boomer men treat me like a stupid child, but have no issues sexualizing me.

Thoughts?

  • Multihedra [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Reading this post really reminded me of the introduction to bell hooks’s book, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love which is saw recommended here some time ago.

    I must shamefully admit that I barely breached chapter 2 (it’s very strange to think of myself as an emotional being tbh, it was a very good but very taxing read, even though it is very easy to read). I’ll definitely try to get further along, both because it is extremely thought-provoking, and for my personal development).

    Anyway, here’s a longish paragraph from the intro; hopefully I’m not way off the mark to find this post reminiscent of it.

    Before her death Barbara Deming was among those rare outspoken feminist thinkers who wanted to create a space for women to talk openly about our feelings about men. Articulating her concern that the wellspring of female fury at men was making it impossible for women to express any other feelings than their sense that “men are hopeless,” she stated: “It scares me that more and more women are coming to feel this way, to feel that men as an entire gender are hopeless.” Deming did not feel that men were incapable of change, of moving away from male domination, but she did feel that it was necessary for women to speak the truth about how we think about men: “I believe that the only way we can get where we have to go is by never refusing to face the truth of our feelings as they rise up in us—even when we wish it were not the truth. So we have to admit to the truth that we sometimes wish our own fathers, sons, brothers, lovers were not there. But, this truth exists alongside another truth: the truth that this wish causes us anguish.” While some women active in the feminist movement felt anguished about our collective inability to convert masses of men to feminist thinking, many women simply felt that feminism gave them permission to be indifferent to men, to turn away from male needs.

    To be clear, men have only ourselves to blame for this situation, but the conflictedness non-men feel about this state of affairs is so heartbreaking to me.