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?
I think it's a general rule of thumb that people care most about issues that affect them personally and that's understandable. We're often encouraged and manipulated by propagandists to "care" about issues that affect others, but in favor of the wrong side of the issue. It's probably good to get people to stop having opinions on things they haven't really looked into at all, but if we were able to do that all the problems in the world would already be solved. But those narratives surrounding 'social issues' are created in the same way as narratives around 'Iraq' or 'China' or anything else.
Maybe it's my dumb late night opinion but that's probably going to be the case until enough people join forces to topple the whole of western imperialism. Women's rights made great progress in the USSR and China, although that has obviously backslid greatly with the end of the USSR (and with reforms in China, as beneficial as they are in other areas). Making sure that all socialist organizing is feminist and disciplines and shuns people who are misogynistic hopefully ensures that women have a better foothold to improve things when change starts happening more rapidly. And that has the effect of also improving the strength of organizations internally (misogyny is also a fed tool) and with gaining new supporters.
A 'Cultural Revolution' in the US would probably have to be on a never-before-seen scale, despite how our media tries to "progressive-wash" this country by platforming people who discuss social issues. I almost think that when these reactionary politicians in the US and France and elsewhere talk about "woke cancel culture" or whatever as being a "new Cultural Revolution" there's almost some truth to it (in a good way obviously). But it's mostly just a culture-war/media thing still.