Examples are here, here, here, and here. And that’s the first page of the google search “should we stop saying men are trash” alone. So it’s obviously pretty common for feminists to defend the phrase.

To which my response is, seriously?! The movement that pretends to be about equality and opportunity shamelessly puts an entire group in one singular negative category? One of the usual defenses seems to be “it OBVIOUSLY doesn’t mean all men” but that’s so clearly not true. I understand that kind of defense for an isolated statement like, say, “black lives matter” which has no implications about other lives, but when you start a sentence with a plural noun (I.e. “men”) it’s usually assumed to be inclusive unless there’s a descriptor (I.e. “some”). If I had a few isolated bad experiences with women and responded with “women are trash” I’d love to see how the feminist movement reacts. /s

Hell, going to the literal definition of “trash”, if a child said “my toys are now trash, you can throw them out”, and the parents did so, only for the child to respond with “I didn’t mean ALL my toys!!!” who would be at fault? I think most people would agree that it’s the child, for using a clearly misleading statement. Why is it suddenly okay to use that kind of generalization when you’re talking about a gender?

I also always see feminists say “well, I KNOW it’s not all men!!” Because obviously the world revolves around you. What about the twelve year old boy who’s just discovering social media? The autistic young man who’s exploring the internet to try to understand how “normal” people communicate through technology? The immigrant man who’s trying to educate himself on American/European culture and colloquialisms? Do they know it’s not all men when they’re reading your angry tweet? Likely not. It strikes me as such a snobbish and egotistical argument to say “well I know what I mean so you should too!!!” This isn’t a well-explained article, this is literally three words with a LOT of negative emotional charge. If men (or anyone else) fail to recognize the social and lingual nuances that you insist are so obviously there, they aren’t inherently shameful or “trash”.

Just as a disclaimer, I recognize that the phrase is a response to serious issues related to sexual harassment and similar injustices. As has been explained many times on this sub they’re reported in a biased way, but that doesn’t make them nonexistent nor does it invalidate the people who have struggled from them. It’s reasonable and good to want to combat such awful things. But blaming them on almost half of the population is reckless, counterproductive, and just plain insulting.