eg “not all men” weirdos
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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
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.
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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