this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
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My point is that it is a universal issue, all while many people are trying very hard to represent it as women-specific.
When male voices are shushed both under their posts and under those focused on women, they don't have much of a platform to speak out. And they need it, too.
If all sides have an opportunity to say things without being interrupted, there is no point in chiming in and saying the other side has it worse.
As much as you may be right that both men and women are experiencing this, the post was talking about how women experience it. And when women speak out about it, it's apparently hard to talk about just that and instead the male experience has to be discussed as well.
Again, I really don't think you intended anything bad here. But as you said:
Women try to talk about it (e.g. via this topic), but you interrupted by chiming in how men are also affected. That might well be true, but it's also the kind of interruption that can be frustrating because, and I say this as a man, the experience women have is probably different (on average) from the experience men have.
You're not one of the voices in the comic shouting "misandrist" or anything, but it is a kind of "and what about the men?" type of statement. And I don't think you're trying to be dismissive here at all and I do believe your intentions are good, but the result here is that what women want to talk about is once again not talked about, which is what the comic is about.
Your well-intentioned statement I think perhaps unbeknownst to you is steering the discussion away from the intended topic. And it's exactly that problem that this comic addresses.
Right, but if I made a post about how "Men poop," and women came in to say "women poop too," it would make complete sense. Maybe we should be talking about how everybody poops and everyone's poop stinks at that, instead of "women's poop stinks, no men's poop stinks!"
We're not talking about basic biological functions here. We're talking about issues that men and women may experience differently. This example is apples to oranges.
Except it isn't though. Take cases like the last thread I can recall on lemmy that could have inspired this comic, the french protesting against that one guy who had people come rape his wife. The front facing image of that post was a woman holding a sign that says "not all men but always a man." What this sign should have said is "rape is bad," instead it pretended the two women who raped me don't exist and that I'm guilty by association of my genitals instead of a victim like them for going through the same thing they did. What's more, I'm told to shut up and let women speak at best, usually with one or two "well you must've liked it," or "what're you, gay?s" thrown in for good measure, yet the second you say a woman must've liked it or what is she a lesbian you're still the problem, can't beat em, can't join em. Even better, nobody says "shut up and let men speak," we say "stop generalizing us as abusers for having penises," and that is met with "shut up and let women speak."
I'm sorry that you're unable to parse metaphors, but everybody poops.
I see where you're coming from, and I agree for the most part (and I also don't agree with people taking pitchforks on you), but the direction I take to "steer it away" is to look at it as something universal, which is simply more helpful to understand why it happens, not to tie attention to men's issues specifically.
I believe we've come at the point where women and men issues are so intertwined, so much permeating each other that it's no longer helpful to see them as separate issues to begin with. Sure, we have different experiences, but those very experiences come from the interaction of problems on both sides, and looking at them from one side is essentially screaming into the void and hoping it helps - and when it predictably doesn't, this leads to people vilifying each other instead of exploring the reasons behind it.
Everyone has to familiarize themselves with the issues other sides face, and come from the side of compassion if they want to be part of an actual solution. That includes men, women and enbies, too.
I understand your intentions, but it doesn't have the intended effect. By doing this you are making the assumption that the way women experience these issues is (close to) the same as the way men experience it. But you can't really assume that, and often people disagree.
When women want to talk about problems they face, it's important to hear them out and address their issue, instead of what amounts to 'deflecting' to a "grander" issue. At its core it's a whataboutism that derails the conversation, and that's not what you intended.
So my genuine advice is: don't. Address these problems one by one. The solutions can often be different.
You have to assume that
may well not be correct, and it can feel incredibly invalidating to people by assuming that this is the case.
I tried to make it clear that women have a drastically different social experience. It is true, and it would be weird to debate it.
But we have to separate venting from finding solutions. My very point is that we often cannot practically address women's issues without addressing men's ones, and vice versa. Going one by one, you will quickly hit the wall, as men (or women, if we talk about men's issues) just won't be able to do what they're asked for. And instead of accepting that and working together, people tend to assume that the reason the other side doesn't change is because they act in bad faith. This is inherently imbalanced and unworkable.
I see, but the point of the comic is that women don't seem to agree with you and find that way of thinking about it fairly exasperating at times. In many cases there hasn't been a serious attempt to address the issues raised, so claiming that you can't address them without also addressing men's issues would be perhaps a bit premature.
I see where you're coming from, and not gonna debate it further.
Still, to me it looks this division is growing, and hostility is barely ever a good answer. There seemed to be more unity and more decisiveness to approach things together just a few years prior, and I'm not sure what ended it.
I'm sorry to hear what you have experienced. Male abuse victims are not only real and valid, they are more common than people normally think. Every time I see some bullshit like "always a man", I lose my temper a bit.
And for as long as I can, I refuse to allow this echo chamber to exist. Unfortunately, the path of non-intervention does not seem to be helpful to me, as feminists just continue to be boiling in a circlejerk of fear and loathing.
I do not intervene when people speak of their actual negative experiences with certain people, I think it's actively harmful, but when it comes to such general hate messages, this is something I will not tolerate - much like feminists themselves back in the day did not tolerate men being dismissive of them as nothing more than dumb housewives, for example. Because it shouldn't be tolerated and breeds a skewed and dangerous worldview.
With that said, you do you, and with the experience and trauma you have faced, I 100% understand you not wanting to have anything with women you don't already know. I hope you'll have more positive examples around you, though, as most women, as I have experienced, still do not buy this misandric shit at least for the most part, and are not hostile.