EDIT: It has come to my attention that this has been perceived as an appeal to stop being so harsh on our opponents. It was not meant like that at all. This is simply an observation I have made into what may make it so difficult for movements, us in particular, to be taken seriously by the public due to the misconceptions they hold.

I think we can all agree that one of the biggest issues we come across when arguing our points is that we're often reflexively branded as misogynists and consequently we are totally ignored. The idea that men get a raw deal that's worth protesting is laughed off at best, and at worst we're treated like whiny losers complaining about nothing.

Why is that? And for that matter, that text on the right side of the MensRights subreddit, "Advocacy isn't just about what is popular"... why is that statement a surprise to so many people, when every single advocacy movement started out being incredibly unpopular?

The answer is simple: one of the ways we as a society overcompensate for the follies of society's past actually only serves to retard the advance of social justice. I am talking, surprisingly, about society's tendency to demonize bigots. One of the two unfortunate side-effects of this tendency is for anybody who even looks like a bigot to be seen by everyone around them as somebody they'd be horrible to pay any heed to, and that certainly hurts us a lot. The stigma is a huge impediment to rational discussion, but there's another, bigger side effect: we lose sight of what bigotry really is.

I am not saying that bigotry isn't a bad thing, of course it's bad, but I'd like to remind everybody that we all almost certainly hold some bigotry that will be tackled in the future, yet we're all still normal human beings. And yet the way the stories about civil rights activists of times past are told, you'd think that until 30 or 40 years ago the country was almost entirely populated by sociopaths. We feel such shame for the injustices the previous generations perpetuated that we feel the need to portray our ancestors not merely as just being wrong, but as evil. Oftentimes we feel like it would be horribly backward to so much as draw a line as to when speaking ill of these people goes too far, and as a result the vast majority of discussions of the bigots of past and present don't paint them as the actual three-dimensional people that they were, with feelings and nuances and who loved their families dearly and who simply made devastating but still mentally-coherent conclusions based on inaccurate beliefs. No, we portray them as evil douchebags we can barely recognize as behaving like human beings.

And therein lies my major point: If we forget that bigots are human beings, then we forget that human beings can be bigots.

Demonizing bigots may make us feel better and let us feel like we're repenting for society's past actions, but it actually only serves to ensure that we walk away from the aftermath of this latest civil injustice having learned absolutely nothing. We are no better prepared to recognize our next prejudice when it is brought to our attention, because when we look at the ever-growing wall of shame with the heads of all of the injustices we've overthrown mounted on it and then we think of the alleged bigotry we're accused of, we simply say "Nope, this is totally different. Those were just hateful jackasses with no empathy for anyone different, while I'm acting out of righteous indignation towards a group that really is dangerous and harmful, and a desire to protect my country and loved ones."

Little do we realize that this is pretty much exactly what has motivated bigots all through history. Injustice has always worked through normal, everyday, mentally stable and well-adjusted people, people whose biological gut feelings (feelings that used to keep us alive but now merely divide us) tell them that there's something morally wrong with being different in a certain way or doing certain things. That's what bigotry is at its core: a primitive and now irrational impulse that has been encouraged and reinforced by culture.

I mean just think of the people who are against homosexuality, how they often claim that gay people intend to rape our children or infect them with their gayness or bring about the collapse of society, or put "the gay agenda" into motion. These are people who have taken that primitive and instinctual "icky feeling" many of us get when we see two men being intimate with each other, and it's been desperately rationalized through so many generations and for so long that they actually think that icky feeling is their conscience talking to them.

Bigotry is wrong, and bigots are wrong, but if we guilt ourselves away from understanding their motivations and simply dismiss them as despicable monsters who should be avoided like the plague, then we will never be able to see bigotry for what it really is, and every single advocacy movement will have to be shoved down our throats because we think that every form of social injustice should be inherently obvious to anybody with a soul.

To reiterate: If we forget that bigots are human beings, then we forget that human beings can be bigots.

Edit: Modified formatting a bit