Hey all, I had previously been heavily involved with the Leftist / Antifa / Communist side of Twitter, mostly through the tail end of the Trump presidency and a bit into 2021 until I just had to quit for my own mental health. The amount of man-hate there is so rich, and I wanted to just bring up a few discussion points. I'm sure they're often talked about but the cult tightness of this side of Twitter tends to amplify the feelings you can get there.

  1. The 'survivor' of an abusive relationship is typically the one who talks first

Men get it baked into their psyche so much that they are the powerful people that no one could ever believe they would be abused. They also have a serious problem with being imperfect victims, wherein people will question your abuse because you didn't come forward in a timely manner, or you may have done something off-color, such as a text with bad language, or not helping your abuser in their perceived moment if need. All these things mean men don't come forward out of fear: fear of not being believed, of ridicule, and of harassment. It just feels easier to Man Up and let it go (but then that becomes a toxic trait too so there's no winning)

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  1. The standards for men are set by it's worst perpetrators

There are bad men, we all know that. In my time on Twitter, there have been sex pests, homophobes and transphobes, racists, and a guy who tried to rape his two roommates AFTER THEY WELCOMED HIM WHEN HE WAS BROKE! These are all bad people. And yet, when any story like this comes to light, the undertone in these circles always drifts toward "this is why I don't trust / talk to / interact with men". If that kind of language would happen with woman (or frankly any other group) there would be an uproar, but we men are often judged by our worst, and are taught to be punching bags.

I do get this isn't a universal thing, and I could easily just cut those people out of my life (and I literally did because I'm off Twitter now) but these woman and enbies are typically the people I feel in line with politically and socially, they were the people I wanted to make progress with, but I felt I could never make progress alongside someone who just hated me for who I was.

By the by, I see a large sentiment of men in TikTok who have gone the opposite direction of just giving up on women, but not in the typical incel fashion, just mainly as mental health protection, and they generally get good feedback from it, so progress I guess.

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  1. Generalist Language

When I say Generalist Language I mean when a group is called out in general, in this case "all men", "white men", "men", "cis men", etc. As such it does relate a lot to #2, but it's another discussion of mental health. When these terms are used, and someone has a negative reaction to them, it is typically thought that the reaction points to exemplifying that negative trait (i.e. if you really were a good man like you say, you would just ignore it and move on). The only real way to prove you are a decent human being in these people's eyes is to just act like you never read it. Anyone who responds is dogpiled heavily and gets accused of mysogeny. (Note that this also applies to every other form of hate too, but obviously focusing on this issue right now). Now, most days it is easy to just ignore these things, but when someone is already having a bad day, sometimes it is just sobering to "correct the record" in a situation like this. Or maybe it's someone you consider a friend and would be hurt knowing they said something like that about you, as part of "Men". And the last thing someone already with mental issues needs is a huge dogpile. Seeing this happen to one of my friends is what made me leave, because in those circles, it's only a matter of time.

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So yeah, I'm sure all these have been brought up before, but I'd love to have some discussion around them.

I also have a lot of stories I'd like to recount from Twitter. I know it's generally good practice to hide names and such, but a part of me wants to leave things public so people know who the abusers are, especially because it's all public and would be easy to search for anyway. Any recommendations?

Thanks for reading