This was the original post the comment was found on:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MensLib/comments/jqmwzy/askfeminists_send_me_here_good_books_on_toxic/

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Basically the original post was just one Menslibber asking for recommendations on books about toxic masculinity, and shared some of the recommendations Askfeminists gave the OP. In general, the post is very pro feminist.

One commenter responded by giving his takes on some of the books mentioned, and pointed out that Clementine Ford, one of the writers recommended by Askfeminists, is among the "Kill all men" and "Covid isn't killing men fast enough" breed of feminists, and probably shouldn't be trusted to have a non-toxic take on what's good for men.

A woman replied to this comment above with:

You understand why women say that stuff though, right? Heartache and pain make us all say things out of anger, as a way to express ourselves and our frustrations. We live in a patriarchy, it's no danger to you when a woman says "kill all men", but a man saying "kill all women" is dangerous. That's why there appears to be a double standard.

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And the response he gave was a work of rhetorical art:

In other context--if this was a discussion of the position of woman and the struggles woman face--I might agree with you. I don't feel my own safety threatened by this language. That is exactly what I mean to get at when I say that you might still want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, I think it is highly important that we recognize that such statements come from a place of fear and of pain and those feelings are valid and reflect real experiences.

But, in the context here, in this context of interrogating our own toxic masculinity, I want to stop and say: why, isn't that convenient? Isn't it an amazing coincidence that I'm expected to once again inhabit the subject position of the strong man: the one who doesn't feel threatened by annunciations of the desirability of my death--the one who is supposed to be willing to take one for the team and not feel anything--to know that I am actually invulnerable and that their speech is non material--when people say they wish me death?

Isn't it convenient that, once again, men's speech is automatically a threat when women's speech is apriori powerless and de-fanged?

Isn't it convenient that there is a reason for a double standard, which just so happens to be the same double standard that underlies the worst oppression of the gender system? The same double standard that treats women as so toothless as to be automatically incapable of working out side the home, so intrinsically and irrational emotional that their statements can't be taken literally...and, which renders male bodies as sacrificialable in war and interpersonal violence and in injury?

Isn't it convenient that, once again, when I read something that leaves 5% of me wanting to cry and 95% of me feeling nothing at all, I'm yet again tempted to prove my own value, my own strength, by smashing that part of me that is wounded and alone further into the ground?

And, anyways, this shouldn't be about me. It is one thing for me to feel that "kill all men" doesn't apply, or at least doesn't threatened, me. I'm a materially successful straight-ish cis white dude in North America. But, damn it, there are a lot of men who don't have the luxury of my feelings of security; a lot of men who live, to borrow a term from butler, "precarious lives"; a lot of men whose relation to masculine becoming is vulnerable and challenged, whose right to claim their subject position isn't so easy. There are men who are suffering, men who are depressed, men who aren't even sure if it is worth it to come out as being men.

It is not an exaggeration to say there are men for whom reading statements like those on social media is the thing that pushes them over the edge in their own doubt as to if their lives are of value; men for whom reading words like Ford's is the reason they kill themselves.

I'm not willing to endorse the theorizing on the male subject someone who doesn't understand the problems, or doesn't care, about the problems I just enunciated there. I'm not willing to defer to their emotional maturity. I'm not willing them to condemn billions of vulnerable men and boys to being always already marked as dangerous, already asked to be emotionally resilient to speech acts which are literally calls to exterminate them, on account of aspects of their being about which they had no choice.

And, neither should you.

*Mic Drop*
*Mic explodes on impact*

I just wanted to share this gem of argumentation with you, because on this Sub we talk waaaaaay too much Shit on r/Menslib (A lot of which is unfair and misguided in my opinion), when many of them have very valuable things to say.