#this got fightey at the end. i'm probably gonna reword this later

[problemnyatic]

The reason, by the way, you keep seeing thinkpieces on how Hating All Men is Bad is because this actually is a feminist issue. Writing off all men as inherently tainted by Evil Man Juice due to their Loud, Intrusive Masculinity not only lets them off the hook for their actions, but asserts bioessentialist and gender essentialist narratives which are directly counterposed with progressing the conversation on human rights and feminism in a useful direction.

It's not saying Not All Men, it's not saying "men are the REAL victims, actually," and it's not a dismissal of the very real dynamics of systemic sexism and patriarchy.

If anything is ever going to change, we need to assert the idea that men aren't inherently different than anyone else, and that means they hold responsibility for when they perpetuate systems of oppression. It means we acknowledge those systems of oppression and the way patriarchy cultivates toxic masculinity in men, rather than just pretending that testosterone just somehow makes you turn into The Oppressor, What A Shame.

Asserting that men are inherently dangerous, inherently trash, inherently untrustworthy, inherently different than women just asserts that likewise, women are inherently different than men. Ten fucking years ago this website was buzzing about how obviously bullshit that is.

Men and women get raised different, but that's nurture, not nature, and a given man is literally just some guy who like, probably has some biases to watch out for.

We cannot fight the patriarchy and we cannot disassemble systemic sexism if we're convincing ourselves that these things are just intrinsic to the male sex, with nothing to be done but induce an adequate volume of shame and ostricization in every man you meet in hopes that we punish the evil ghosts out of their blood.

Also, people are more receptive to change and criticism when you're not treating them like a fucking bomb for existing. It's not useful to treat men as a tainted category of person, and it actively contributes to the emotional isolation men are subject to by the patriarchy that only deepens the issues society tries to instill into them.

You don't need to be Personally Responsible for pulling every man you meet out of the partiarchal miasma of brainworms or anything, but upholding the narrative and belief that men are Just Worse, Because They're Men keeps the conversation misdirected.

The patriarchy is actively invested in teaching men to be emotionally isolated, and to fill that hole with entitlement over women's lives and bodies, and that it is the natural and Correct state of a Man. The least you could fucking do is stop fucking agreeing with it that Yeah, Men Are Just Like That, even if you're oh-so-progressively appending it with "Sucks, Huh?"