How do you keep hope when there's so much internalized misandry out there?

nogorth87 · 2022-03-05T11:54:49+00:00

To be honest i didn't have any hope until i found this subreddit. I was always feeling like there is no place for men like me in this world, i felt like i had no home. I don't even know if i'm left-wing but this place offers support, understanding and actual helpful information unlike other feminism-dominated groups or worse, trp and other such right wing groups.

Reddit really goes out of its way to demonize men, some of the most heavily upvoted posts from the more popular subreddits always have something to do with men doing something creepy/reprehensible, or women taking advantage of men in some way.

thereslcjg2000 · 2022-03-05T13:34:14+00:00

It definitely gets frustrating.

Having said that, 90% of r/OffMyChest and r/TrueOffMyChest posts are fake and are more a way to further various political agents and/or get attention than actual reflections of reality. I learned awhile ago that it’s better not to let Reddit, particularly subreddits like those, bring you down too much.

MelissaMiranti · 2022-03-05T08:42:07+00:00

It's sad, really. And it's even worse that the guy in that thread is so mired in his misandry that he blames all men for his problems rather than the one woman who started all of it.

Interesting_Doubt_17 · 2022-03-05T10:52:23+00:00

What's ironic is that he becomes the "man" that he described.

UncreativePieceOf · 2022-03-05T10:50:41+00:00

As a female antifeninist, I can relate. It's sad and annoying, especially when these people instantly jump into acusing you of being sexist even when you're not. Personally, I'm an antifeninist because I'm egalitarian, I'm far from being sexist (at least I hope I am).

Male feminists annoy the shit out of me, but at least I can laugh about some of their bullshit. One man tried to explain to me how a woman feels in front of stranger men.. isn't that "mansplaining"? Lmao.

But there's nothing worse than downplaying the shit men go through simply because of their gender, especially when it's argumented by "I nEvEr ExPeRiEnCeD iT" or "BuT wOmEn HaVe It WoRsE"..

Sydnaktik · 2022-03-05T13:35:56+00:00

Internalized misandry seems to work a whole lot like Christianity. It is a religion of guilt. I don't understand exactly how it works. I just know that it's extremely effective. You make the person feel intrinsically guilty and at the same time you offer them the salvation for that guilt. That's how the cult of MensLib operates.

SIWIJIAM · 2022-03-05T10:16:21+00:00

We have no inherent ingroup bias, while being fed lies all the times

goldenjuniper · 2022-03-05T17:36:37+00:00

I see tiny gains in the pubic zeitgeist.

A few years ago, Demi Levato pulled a "prank" on her manager/boyfriend where she gave his room key to a prostitute and had her sneak in and grab his dick.

She tweeted out how hilarious this was and surprisingly got a fuck ton of backlash about how this was sexual assault!

She deleted the tweet and doubled down by saying something like "i could say i like brown m&ms and it would be a controversy". And she got a fuck ton of backlash for downplaying sexual assault to favoring a color of m&m.

So I keep hope that the ideas are slowly creeping into the public consciousness.

More and more women are seeing feminism for the hate group that it is and distancing themselves from it.

We still have a long way to go, but there is momentum.

AmericanBoy505 · 2022-03-05T13:56:21+00:00

Him saying men created the environment and are responsible will backfire where people already believe men should just deal with it “like a man”.

So many people can’t stand helping out men.

Just-Ad-2576 · 2022-03-06T01:00:54+00:00

God...That post is awful. I am sorry that guy had to go through that, but him blaming men is just victim blaming. Cause god forbid women can be part of the problem too

Cunari · 2022-03-05T04:55:58+00:00

I disagree. MOst men have externalized misandry. Most men think they are awesome men and other men are terrible.

Itrusttheinternett · 2022-03-05T07:55:25+00:00

My hope is that the industrial leaders will selfishly see that feminist rhetoric etc isn't helping them maximise their profits and choose to withdraw support for such people and help organisations which help men, as men are the primary workers in all societies and produce the most wealth.

SpanishM · 2022-03-06T03:14:45+00:00

The post has been deleted by its author, apparently because he has finally realized it was wrong. Took him more than one day though.

Deadlocked02 · 2022-03-05T11:57:32+00:00

I don’t know what’s worse, guys who put out messages like this (where they’re usually the outlier, the one good apple in a basket filled with rotten apples) in search of approval or if it’s women who need their egos stroked to such extent that they need to constantly hear the verbalization that all men are awful and responsible for everything that’s wrong in the world, whereas they deserve collective absolution for being a part of the good gender.

Using collective guilt against women means inceldom, bigotry and generalizations, but using collective guilt against men just means you’re a normal and reasonable person, apparently.

rochesterslim · 2022-03-05T09:06:49+00:00

this sub honestly. in future just say to them and be honest and tell them they don’t have to say that/they’re being misandrist. If they listen, they listen. If not, forget it.

Uppmas · 2022-03-05T11:38:58+00:00

Because as a long-time netizen I'm numb to anything I see on the internet.

But realistically, because I don't see it irl so I don't care.

coolboy_24278 · 2022-03-05T18:07:19+00:00

The OP of that post is obviously misdirecting his anger

a-man-from-earth · 2022-03-05T04:18:35+00:00

You keep hope by reading the comments there. There's an outpour of support.

BloomingBrains · 2022-03-06T04:51:50+00:00

For me, its less about hope than cope.

Well, maybe not cope per se. That makes it sound weak, like you are barely holding on by telling yourself platitudes when really its so much more than that. But cope rhymes, so...*shrugs*.

In any case, I found my mental state improved drastically when I began reminding myself daily that I'm not like those toxic assholes (that are really a minority) people are talking about when they talk negatively about men as a whole.

In other words, its less about trying to convince yourself that people will somehow stop being misandrist sometime soon, as it as about replacing your need for external validation with internal validation.

If anything, people thinking "men are trash" means you should only stand out more prominently as a diamond in the rough according to their own point of view.

parahacker · 2022-03-06T12:24:03+00:00

I have to say, this is the first time I've ever seen a comment implying that women are pretending to be men online.

I mean, I'm sure it happens. But usually the meme is that women online are men faking it, not the reverse.

Kind of neat to see someone saying the opposite and mean it, and possibly even be right.

LettuceBeGrateful · 2022-03-05T20:28:41+00:00

This is probably not the answer you're looking for, but I wouldn't say I've gained much hope. The way that the conversation around men has evolved during this Ukraine crisis set my optimism back a bit.

However, I've found it really important to compartmentalize. That means having a life beyond gender politics and social media. For me, that means pets, friends, and stimulating hobbies. (And exciting work, I suppose, but I'm not career-focused, I just want to pay the bills.) Also, a willingness to cut misandrists out of your life, even though there will probably be social backlash at first.

Anyone, man or woman, will agree that you can't just turn off sexism like it's the lamp beside your bed, but there's certainly a lot less bullshit when I'm focused on the things that make me happy.

The world sucks, man. Your frustration is totally valid, I feel it too. I'm just very fortunate to have also learned a lot about who I am the past few years, and that gives me places to redirect my attention when I start feeling that knot in my chest. Life is too short to let the people who don't care whether we live or die define our value.

Existential_Sprinkle · 2022-03-05T17:42:55+00:00

A lot of trans women are really loud with misandry and eventually their dysphoria calms down enough that they chill out

As a trans man who's often the exception with people who won't date cis men but will date trans men my thing is always that a trans man is just as capable of hurting them as a cis man and they need better ways of determining which men they'll date and which men they wont especially since a lot of trans guys are stealth and they are going to fuck up big time when they tell a trans man that they only date trans men with no idea he's trans

Peptocoptr · 2022-03-05T17:37:22+00:00

I feel the same way. You have to be extremely careful in going about how to bring up those issues. I still haven't figured out the ideal way to really go about it. I'm just as lost as you, but this community gives me hope

hottake_toothache · 2022-03-05T17:53:47+00:00

Find and associate with people who aren't like that.

frankythecyborg12 · 2022-03-06T05:50:36+00:00

I have no hope left. Just accepted things. I just want to use the system for my advantage by being more aware and maybe when i am at a suitable position, i can think about changing things.

D_B_sucks · 2022-03-06T22:17:56+00:00

It is sad to see someone so hurt that they have decided to blame an entire group for the faults of some. The OP in that post has clearly been hurt badly, without a doubt needs help in processing his trauma, and being able to move past the negative thoughts and behaviors it is instilled in him. The way it read, he sounds very young, or potentially stuck at a certain level of maturity likely the result of such a horrible violation of him at such a young age.

I’m going to say something that will likely rub some people here the wrong way, but I think it needs to be said. His feelings are not wrong but his words are.

He is the victim of a horrible excuse for a human (his aunt) AND was revictimized by the men in his family. I don’t know that I would feel any different had I been in his shoes, and have to believe the reaction from the men he went to for help would be potentially more traumatizing than the initial acts of his aunt, because he was a child when it happened. Someone as young as he was when the he was first raped can’t understand nuance and certainly doesn’t have a fully developed theory of mind yet. Children see the world in black and white, good and bad. What his aunt did would clearly make her a bad person, and we expect bad people to do bad things. Her actions would solidify this world view in a child’s mind. And then when he went to the good guys, the ones that have to exist because his aunt is bad so there has to be an equally good guy out there, the good guys told him he was wrong about being hurt or lucky to have been hurt by this bad guy. This has to shatter everything a child has ever come to learn or expect from the world, and worst of all of this trauma happened to him entirely at the hands of his family, the people any child should be most protected by. So now everyone in his world is potentially a bad guy, because if you can’t turn your own father for support, who could you possibly expect to help you? Then a shining beacon of hope and love, in the form of his grandmother, believes him, saves him, and takes action against the perpetrator that initially hurt him, unlike the men in his life. What’s the most noticeable difference, in the mind of a child, between his grandmother and the people that he first went to for help? They are men and she is a woman. Naturally one might wonder why doesn’t it matter that his aunt, a woman, was the perpetrator? Because she’s a bad guy, which we know because she hurt him, and that “bad guy” classification out weighs the “woman” classification in this child mind. Ergo, men cannot be trusted to help you, but a woman, if she hasn’t previously hurt you, might actually help you. Combine this simplistic, but totally understandable childhood logic, with the years of abuse and, what is likely, a brain suffering from CPTSD, which is unable to see the world objectively, and you have a man that knows (albeit wrongly) that men are evil and not to be trusted. Then he grows up in a world that tells men and boys they are wrong for the fact of being born male, which only reinforces your view that men are bad.

I have a hard time saying his reaction to these traumas is inherently wrong, no one is wrong for feeling the way they do. What becomes wrong is choosing not to work through those feelings or refusing to take in new information to inform your worldview.

revente · 2022-03-07T00:31:19+00:00

Well, you could just forget about the political issues, live your life and be perfectly happy?

Not everyone is meant to change the world, and that's 100% fine.

Also, while it's men who're currently getting the short end of the stick, it's not like our lives are terrible because of that.

It's 10x better to be a man in the rich, misandric west than in some poor but patriarchal nation.

dentrake · 2022-03-05T19:59:42+00:00

But didn't he have a point in what he said though ? Ignoring his comments on men, what he said it's actually a serious issue that affects men. People don't rarely take a man being asked or raped by a woman seriously. They"wish it was me" comments can be seen on many such case news

2022-03-05T16:46:21+00:00

[permanently deleted]

No_Weekend_5779 · 2022-03-16T22:51:46+00:00

You should get off reddit and get a job

UnHope20 · 2022-03-06T02:54:01+00:00

One of the most frustrating things that I have encountered is internalized misandry until I learned to accept that it is probably biological in nature.

Title	How do you keep hope when there's so much internalized misandry out there?
Author	gabrielcoronel_
Upvotes	164
Comments	71
Date	March 5, 2022 3:43 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/t70o6e/how_do_you_keep_hope_when_theres_so_much/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/how-do-you-keep-hope-when-theres-so-much.1104076 https://theredarchive.com/post/1104076

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