eg “not all men” weirdos
—-
Edit: to further clarify the example above since it set off some brainworms, this can be seen when people respond to discussions about patriarchy and the way it shapes toxic masculinity with defensive “not all men” statements.
When we discuss systems, we are aware that not everyone who has privilege within them internalizes it the same way.
Men are not somehow evil. Masculinity is not somehow evil. Feminism is about liberation of everyone from patriarchy. The issue is that you can wind up needing to “protect” or cater to very fragile expectations of individuals and that can sometimes wind up recentering discussion on purely men and their feelings about patriarchy.
That is an important aspect of the discussion, but it cannot be the only one. Given that one of the patriarchal behaviors that many men are taught is to talk over anyone who is not a man, space must be intentionally created for others.
Anyway, this would be better covered in a dedicated effort post on feminism and positive masculinity.
This is however a meme featuring Josie and the pussy cats with a comments section that proves the meme is accurate lol
A huge part of the prevailing liberal ideology is the fetichising of personal responsibility as an explanation for social phenomena. Good things happen because good individuals choose to be good, bad things happen because bad individual choose to be bad.
When liberals hear about things like white supremacy, patriarchy or the exploitation of labour they lack the ability to contextualise these things as general social trends. When they hear you talk about an injustice they automatically assume that someone is to blame on an individual level. When they then hear that they are being privileged by said injustice, their minds jumps to the conclusion that you think they are the bad guys who are to blame for this.
The liberal mind immediately distorts any talk of privilege and oppression into personal accusations directed against them.
I think everyone feels at least a a little offended maybe when they first start down the pipeline, and then the more they learn the more they understand, and before you know it ur a self hating Anglo
I find it helps to remember that "White" and "Anglo" aren't things that you created, they're systems that were created to be used as weapons. You don't have to hate your self, your authentic self. You have to recognize the privileges you're given and your role within the system of white supremacy, patriarchy, and imperialism. Hating yourself is just indulgent and doesn't help anyone. It's counterproductive; You need to recognize your position in the class and racial system and fight against those systems. That means you need, at some level, to be confident and motivated. If you're overly concerned with yourself as an individual you're just trying to remove yourself from your class and racial role, from your place in the system.
I would do that one way or the other for entirely different reasons tho, tbh.
I don't like myself because I don't like my body (I used to have weight problems), or my brain (I have autism), and I feel like I am incapable of doing anything meaningful in the world, or of being able to work myself into a position to where I could positively contribute to the fight against Capitalism & Imperialism. I just plain don't think I got what it takes to get along in the world.
Hey, even if you can't do anything that feels "Big" right now, you can still be here talking with your comrades, commenting and thinking about comments. Just by being here and participating you're contributing to our discourse, which provokes thought and consideration, which makes us all wiser and stronger and better able to fight back against the systems of oppression in the world.
"From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs".
I really believe that. No one gets left behind. No one is expendable. We all contribute what we can, and we all get the support we deserve as human beings. That's the goal. That's the world we want to build. And there's room in that world for everyone.
I dunno. I try to help my sister; with money, or looking after her kids; when I can.
You can love yourself and your comrades while still hating/ fighting the systems that keep handing you privileges at the expense of others. It’s more fun that way and also you’ll be happier!
I feel like people see making self deprecating jokes as the end of the pipeline, but to me it’s always come off as insecurity. Like trying desperately to get some validation for being A Good One. I’ve done a lot of work on gender and the women and trans people in my life know that I’m a safe person who’s not prone to saying sexist or transphobic shit. Having done that work, I also know that I’m not as far long in my work in other areas. But I don’t hate myself for it and in general people complaining about men or white people doesn’t bother me
apparently he thought watching sports was like going to a church to stare at people worshipping lol
You seem surprisingly activated by a meme featuring josie and the pussycats
Your arguments are incredibly stupid. We don't have to defeat you in debate in the market place of ideas.
share the most in common with
If I’m a white man, I share the most in common with white men? Yeah, not my experience. Some weird idpol shit you’re doing
No one brought up nationality and I don’t “loathe what I am and everyone around me”. What are you talking about?
Do you organize?
Yeah I don’t have much in common with most people of my nationality either. If these aren’t practical concerns about work that you’ve actually had to do, then I’m not really interested either way
As you said
You’re putting words in my mouth, straight up. Don’t ever do that if I’m going to argue in good faith.
:data-laughing:
Yeah I don’t have much in common with most people of my nationality either.
Fine. We'll agree you said this though?
I'm sorry, but you're unaware with how much the people you grow up around affect you.
- The American nationality is so broad that, no, it does not just mean “the shared culture of the people I grew up around”
- I didn’t particularly jive in that culture even if I’m fluent in it
- I don’t only work with Americans
- The basis of my organizing relationships is typically about work or some form of shared media consumption. Not nationality
Every job I've ever worked, most of the white people are in management roles and 90% of everyone else is POC.
calling someone who uses they/them pronouns a boy
absolutely fuck off into the sun with that shit
I’m talking about ignoring things like “whiteness“
:bruh: that is impossible in the imperial core, especially Amerika and Canada. Both of those were founded on white supremacy and are still functioning as racial apartheid states.
do you organize?
no answer
i think we all know what that means :shrug-outta-hecks:
Nationality is also fake, what the fuck are you talking about? Do you think God created America at the beginning of time or something?
Straight up ignoring this thread if this is what it’s going to be like.
Good idea
I concede that you're embarrassing yourself in this thread, so yes, it would be a good idea for you to stop posting
Oh no, this dude really said cope. How am I gonna come back from this one. He fucking buried me. I'm dead
Next thing you know he's going to hit me with a wojack
"Next thing you know he’s going to hit me with a wojack"
:wojak-nooo:
Whiteness is a fake concept. Nationality is not.
PatSoc moment lol
Imternet: "Not all :lmayo:"
Hexbear: "Yes, all :lmayo:" :sicko-hexbear:
Any actions taken against the "first world" are self defense by the global south
At my work I'm the only male worker (childcare) and there's comments from my coworkers about men or white men followed by a "No offense, Shamwow." But it's cool, I get it. Men suck, no qualifiers. White ones especially.
It took me a while to learn this, and I'm still learning this. It's very important.
it’s hella hard to add that extra step, but it’s incredibly worth it
:soviet-heart:
Racists and sexists are showing their ass in this thread :ursus-hexagonia:
lmfao is this still going? misogynists are such snowflakes
:data-laughing:
What is life if not a great struggle session?
Actually you did though we were talking about whether taking cats outdoors is okay if they're on a leash.
what struggle session? all I see is one person losing their shit who reeks of 4chan
Always thought it was weird Josie and the Pussycats got a movie but the mainline Archie series didn't and still hasn't lol.
I know, I know, Riverdale, but that was over a decade later and not the same thing.
Is that who the photo in this is from? I thought it was maybe Britney Spears sister or something
I think the only way an Archie movie would be at all successful is if it’s some kind of ironic parody (like The Brady Bunch movie). Otherwise, Archie is just way too boring and sanitized to be at all entertaining. I’m pretty sure the only reason it was a thing in the first place was because of rampant censorship of pretty much anything not on the same level of wholesome (with the CCA and all that).
Eh, there's a market for clean entertainment. I honestly think a more sanitized movie about teens might do well because the weird sexualization of teens does make a lot of people uncomfortable, or the absurd way they show teen social interactions on TV. Just some guy trying to get to prom is still funny.
I haven't seen the Brady Bunch movie since I was a kid. That was ironic parody? It went totally over my head when I was like 5 lmao
Yeah, the main joke in that movie is how the family still wears stuff like 70s bell bottom pants and has goofy sitcom morality when it's actually 1995. Basic fish out of water nostalgia stuff, inexplicable 1970s style TV family in the real world decades later.
In this thread we have people defending conservatives and oppressors. Fuck this world. :deeper-sadness:
What happened to Rachel Leigh Cook anyway? Back in the 2000s it seemed like she was on track to be an A-lister, then just vanished.
Btw men suck, white people suck, Christians suck, conservatives suck, cis people suck, straight people suck!!!
If you get mad at me then you’re just a reactionary because I’m doing systemic critique
where did I say any of those things? Also conservatives do, in fact, suck
Have you ever had to actually organize with conservatives? Some of them have no issue putting aside culture war shit in order to negotiate better wages, but some of them actively disrupt meetings and alienate other coworkers because they won’t shut the fuck up about the gay agenda. And yeah, those people suck.
That's when you tell them to shut the fuck up and realise they're wrecking.
That's why you have to approach them, speak with them like they're people, and help them develop proper consciousness.
You also do the same with progressives starting shit as well.
Oh thank you for the long-forgotten wisdom of “if you want to organize, you have to talk to people and learn about them”. I’d never thought about that before. I was just going around chastising all my coworkers who are men for existing. No wonder it hasn’t been working out!
That's literally what this thread is about lol.
You literally agree and yet everyone is acting like I'm some kind of racist ready to throw minorities to the kerb.
Because conservatives do suck and you have to make them less conservative to get the job done.
"everyone is telling me i'm being a piece of shit by airing my terrible opinions!
...they all must be wrong about everything because only I can be right about things :blob-no-thoughts: "
No one had done anything but call me names and misconstrue my arguments.
It's not being horrible to say conservatives are people too, and that they can have revolutionary potential. Sometimes even moreso than someone who considers themselves progressive.
Do you think everyone in the Russian Revolution was "progressive" even by the days standards?
That's my main point of annoyance.
If you're willing to compromise with conservatives then yeah that's a reasonable assumption. There is no compromise with genocidal maniacs.
I have spent my entire life with almost exclusively Conservatives and Libertarians whose politics center around Lost Cause mythology and Manifest Destiny. They're fascists who won't admit it to themselves.
What you're saying we need to do, does not work on these people. They un-learn anything you teach them, and they want a fundamentally different kind of world than I do. To get them even to stop opposing pro-human policy, you have to change their misanthropic worldview at a very fundamental level
This post isn't condemning their morality, it's asking them to reflect on why they feel personally attacked by systemic critiques
Worshipping the proletariat as is, as a concept, and thinking that any understanding of society that they wouldn't like is bad or counterproductive is tailism.
Conservatism sucks. White fragility sucks. The fact that some members of the proletariat are conservative or fragile white babies does not change that.
if someone is too reactionary and brainwormed to view the rights of marginalized people as worth fighting for, then they’re useless to any broader socialist movements.
to put it simply, we have no obligation to include those who wish for our extermination.
BolsheWitch, another absolute banger of a thread. You really are the ultimate master of bait. Hexbear's greatest master baiter. :gold-communist: :bait:
hah thanks It really wasn’t intended as bait. I was trying to just think of an example off the top of my head quick and “not all men” was an obvious one on par with “all lives matter” and “why isn’t there straight pride” kind of takes.
Clearly this meme set off some unresolved brainworms and also brought out some weirdos.
It really wasn’t intended as bait.
I didn't really think it was, but you seem to have a gift for baiting the stupidpol brainworms out of users on here. :data-laughing:
I was trying to just think of an example off the top of my head quick and “not all men” was an obvious one on par with “all lives matter” and “why isn’t there straight pride” kind of takes.
:yea: And yet here we are at 166 comments.
Love how you guys took the concept of “punching up and down” which makes obvious sense in the context of comedy and decided for no reason that it also applies to actual hate speech
I don’t understand how this relates to the meme I posted?
it’s a similar thing to how people saying “all lives matter” are weird and missing the point lol
Interesting, I’ve only seen it brought up in response to folks talking about toxic masculinity. Wasn’t aware it was also attached to awful 2nd wave feminism shit
“Not all men” is sort of a meme or a cliche. This comic explains it better than I could http://listen-tome.com/save-me/
'Not all men,' as a phrase usually refers to the act of objecting to a casually unqualified statement about men.
Although systems of oppression degrade all participants, there's often a hierarchy. People of all genders are subordinated to capital, but within that system all other genders are subordinated to cis men. So when people criticize 'men' as an identity they generally mean cis men in the context of their societal role as mid-level oppressors. Men aren't forced to participate in the oppression, and many do their best not to with wildly-varying degrees of success.
'All men are predators,' for instance is reactionary. 'Men are predators,' is not reactionary by virtue of referring not to 'all men,' but to 'men' as a social construct at the peak of its own hierarchy of predation.
In short, it isn't 'all men,' so much as 'it's not necessary to qualify which men.'
Now that my main point is snarked out at you, yeah of course. Gender essentialism is deeply destructive and completely untethered from reality.
I'm not saying 'all or almost all,' I'm saying 'way, way too many for reasons that are deeply rooted in our concepts of what constitutes a man.' I'm sorry you've got guilt tied up in that - it's probably undeserved in the first place. But unless you mean gender essentialists like TERFs making sweeping statements about 'male nature' or other kook shit, I haven't even once encountered anyone talking about men who, upon my asking, didn't explain some variation on 'we're talking about the concept of manhood that men are taught to emulate, as well as the social structures propping that concept up.'
And I did ask a few different people. It pained me as a kid to see those statements, because I knew I wasn't like that, but the only people who ever clarified that they really did mean categorically all men were gender essentialists. So eventually, I just adjusted my understanding of 'men' as an unqualified group in accordance with how sane, non-gender-essentialist people were using it.
To me it mirrors the reactionary narrative of 'Black rights activists want you to feel guilty for being white.' The activists don't say that - their opponents do. The activists can and will explain systemic oppression until the sun burns out, but it will always be misrepresented in public discourse as 'white bad' because reactionaries eat it up, refuting it is longer and more boring to observe, and unfamiliar white audiences will enter the conversation in a defensive posture.
Of course, you can say stuff like “All men are predators” and be the best comrade in the world,
What? No you can't. That's been the whole point here - that 'not all men' is a reaction to 'men' more often than to 'all men'. You don't get to define other people's ideas for them by adding an incorrectly-inferred 'all' even if you do feel reflexively defensive about it.
Oh, lol no worries then.
In that case, my reply would be that this kind of messaging has limited use depending on context. This thread is the only occasion I've ever had to say the phrase 'men are predators' and it isn't a wording I'd usually go for. The times I've seen it brought up, though, have generally been decontextualized comments out of larger discussions surrounding toxic masculinity.
I grew up with an endless stream of, "Here's what the feminists/gays/etc think of you," media, so I very much default to asking the feminists/queer folks/etc to elaborate when they say something that doesn't sit right with me. Though, back when I was concerned enough about the phrase to ask people what they meant by it, TERFs hadn't really congealed into the grotesque mass we know and loathe today. At that time, the argument I usually saw was between 'our traditional gender roles are toxic' and 'our traditional gender roles are not toxic.'
Now there's usually some terf looking to assert that trans women are predators in disguise. I can't imagine that discussions of toxic masculinity go quite the same way they did back when I was reading more of them.
I'd pretty much agree with all of that, particularly if you count small communities as semi-private. My experience with it had generally been outrage-mill (often Fox News specifically) pieces where some so-called reporter had trawled small, publicly-accessible communities to grab screencaps out of larger discussions.
Meanwhile, the only left-ish organization I've had access to is a branch of the DSA that, shortly after I joined, purged all members who had been critical of the Steering Committee's anti-voting decisions. Being one of those people, this nipped my interaction with them in the bud. I don't meet many people left of John McCain, so I assume you're right about identity shitfights in progressive groups
You've got a real problem with English if you think that an unspecified quantity means 'all'
You’re on a leftist website discussing systemic patriarchy… these aren’t uncommon ways to talk about systems of oppression.
“Man” as we understand it when discussing patriarchy systemically is referring to that gender role in relation to the patriarchy.
Similar to discussing whiteness or class. We can understand that discussing the currents of those concepts is not necessarily a value judgement on the individuals within it.
Eh, I’m not going to defend the phrasing “men are predators”. I don’t particularly like that phrasing but can understand what was intended in context.
Regarding class, sure. The scenario I was thinking of was one where a person is born into wealth and decided to be the good kind of class traitor
It's similar to 'Black lives matter.'
Virtually no one's saying that to mean 'only Black lives matter,' but people respond to it as though that's the implication. It could be qualified each time we say it as, 'Black lives matter the same as all lives do, but Black lives in particular are being treated as though they don't matter in accordance with our longstanding policy of white supremacism,' but that that isn't necessary. In fact, the reaction that 'Black lives matter' evokes from sensitive crackers helps to illustrate the fact that they're more concerned with their own image than they are with drawing attention to systemic oppression.
Men are predators. We're taught and encouraged at every turn to be predators, and way way too many of us are. Sure, I'm not. My friends aren't. I'd bet your friends aren't.
But then, most men I know (US deep south) are vocally fine with 'non-violent' kinds of rape. When I hear people talk about a huge, systemic problem with our concept of manhood including predation, I'm not concerned with whether or not they make sure to explicitly leave room for me in their complaint. I have all the room I need in society for my identity as a white cisman. I don't need even more of it from discussions around toxic masculinity, but those discussions need succinct messaging for reach.
Gender is fake. "Men" as a cultural institution is a toxic concept that needs to either die or be reformed to the extent it's unrecognizeable. There is an ACAB kind of function happening here: not all men do bad things, but if you hold being a man in higher regard than being human, whether explicitly through beliefs or implicitly through the kinds of behaviors you defend, you are effectively a gender cop.
Oh no, a lady on the internet was mean to me. I'm so oppressed. In one paragraph she upturned 500 years of white supremacy and chattel slavery, 10000 years of patriarchal violence, and completely obliterated the rape culture that results in 1 in 3 women experiencing sexual violence. How will I ever recover?????
Okay, so in that case, why do you identify with an oppressive class of people? What do you get out it other than contradictions? This isn't me saying "be trans", btw, it's me saying "question what being a Man is." Should men be in childcare? Yes. Should masc rape victims be recognized and empathized with? Yes. Should men be allowed to break away from toxic masculinity and feel true freedom to be whatever they want? Also yes. But Men as a class of people needs to be dismantled completely for that to happen to a degree that establishes true equality. Tbh, I'm getting on board with abolishing gender in general.
It sounds like you’re dealing with a lot of internalized dysphoria and unprocessed trauma. I’m sorry you’ve experienced those things.
I hope you’re able to work through those as it’s currently being expressed in a pretty reactive way. Masculinity and men are wonderful when decoupled from toxicity.
Patriarchy harms all of us and an important step to dismantling it is acknowledging how it harms, which is why it’s necessary to talk about things like predatory behaviors.
allows them do so much damage without accountability and self-replicate and you described that stance as “reactive”
hmm? We must be talking past each other because that’s not what I described as reactive at all.
I’ll need to look back at who added the “men are predators” as an example, because that’s honestly a poor example as its liable to raise hackles.
I'm sorry that your personal situation sucks, and I hope you can figure it out. But everything else you said is just complacency.
"I don't want to interrogate masculinity because it's hard and everyone else is doing it, so actually you're bad for wanting to change the status quo." Like, cool for you that you get to choose to ignore this sort of stuff rather than wonder if the place you live is going to turn fash and make your existence illegal.
You are, though. You're taking the enlightened centrist stance. And while there's nothing wrong with being cis or masc in itself, the fact that you don't question your own gender even if as a thought experiment says a lot. One really interesting take I saw from a cis guy is: "You know, I realized that I've never had to question my gender and who I was in society, and that in itself feels like a kind of privilege I have over other people."
Gender, as it exists, enforces the patriarchy, and not even thinking about the fundamental questions of who you are and how your identity is propagandized, but rather going "I identify with this group to the extent I think these detractors are talking about me and need to defend myself" is supporting that gender ideology.
I also said that people respond to 'Black lives matter' as though it meant that only Black lives matter. Did I accuse all people of doing that, or did I say that people do it? You know, particularly the people who do it?
I'm not trying to reiterate that point here, though. I'm noting that "people respond to 'Black lives matter' poorly" doesn't refer to all people any more than "men are predators" refers to all men.
'Men are predators' and 'not all men are predators' are compatible statements. The reason why I think it's about the right level of specificity - which is to say it's ambiguous - is that specifying one facet of toxic masculinity reduces the discussion to only that facet. We're taught to be predators, allowed to be, encouraged to be, incentivized to be, enabled to be... It's a much broader problem than can be laid out succinctly in any specific terms.
Not all men,’ as a phrase usually refers to the act of objecting to a casually unqualified statement about men.
Although systems of oppression degrade all participants, there’s often a hierarchy. People of all genders are subordinated to capital, but within that system all other genders are subordinated to cis men. So when people criticize ‘men’ as an identity they generally mean cis men in the context of their societal role as mid-level oppressors. Men aren’t forced to participate in the oppression, and many do their best not to with wildly-varying degrees of success.
‘All men are predators,’ for instance is reactionary. ‘Men are predators,’ is not reactionary by virtue of referring not to ‘all men,’ but to ‘men’ as a social construct at the peak of its own hierarchy of predation.
In short, it isn’t ‘all men,’ so much as ‘it’s not necessary to qualify which men.’
Appreciate the systemic aspect you outlined here, although the example of men as predators is a pretty intense one. I also want to emphasize that I most often hear the “not all men” line in response to conversations about patriarchy and how it conditions men to behave and act.
