Edit: Okay, wow. if the statement from a woman of “we owe you nothing” immediately sets you off emotionally, I would really encourage you to think through why that might be.

A more systemic phrasing could have been “we owe the patriarchy nothing”. I changed it to that for a second before realizing, again, that it was fine. A guy that has worked through internalized patriarchy around this will understand it’s not about them.

Patriarchy on the whole conditions men towards having a sense of entitlement towards women’s bodies, time, attention, labor, etc. It also conditions women that they should feel obligated to provide this without setting boundaries or expecting reciprocal solidarity.

Remember, we literally all have degrees of internalized bigotry, misogyny, racism, transphobia, etc because these are systemic issues. Our responsibility to ourselves and our comrades is to work through that. You are not a bad person for finding those brainworms in yourself, only if you refuse to do the work to address them.

  • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The fact that it says "unstable and insecure men" makes it sounds more hostile and kinda mocking towards men that do struggle with mental health, compared to making a point about women not being obligated to provide mental health support.

    • Sen_Jen [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think the point is that men who are alienated and depressed tend to project their hopes for happiness on to a woman, usually someone they like romantically. Maybe it could have worded that better, but I didn't take away any kind of mockery or disdain towards men with mental health issues

      • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I mean, clearly many did take that away though, labeling someone as unstable is already something that can be extremely invalidating when it comes to mental health, and combining that with insecure makes it worse.

        Doesn't mean that it was intentional, but it should be done better.