I tried to be so careful with being selective picking my current partner (I only do online dating, as it lets me find people at least within the ballpark of "empathetic"), but today we had practically a 20h discussion where I just feel like we have insurmountable differences, and I didnt know they thought this way for 9 months.. I would often try to bring up gender issues, but he (a transman) would say he felt off with talking about male issues, because of childhood sexual assault trauma (understandable), and that he agrees with me, and doesn't identify with feminism. Now all of a sudden he's telling me all these little things that just sounds so wrong to me.. I feel so wasted on them. I cant even find more than a dozen people anywhere on Okcupid who explicitly state they're not advocates of feminism (unless I include conservatives...)

Some things I learned today.. -He thinks "YES ALL MEN" is great, because its either a call to action to all men to.. police each other, within a culture that does not sufficiently criticize mtf sexual harassment (Im not sure if I have a problem with this. it refers only to men, but if women's participation is implicit, then it's just saying everyone should be against shitty behavior) (i guess it's a bit weird how they phrase it to kind of sound like if youre a man, youre more likely to be complicit towards shitty men than had you been a woman.. but it's really not the worst thing, as far as I can tell)

-He also thinks "YES ALL MEN" refers to how all men benefit from a misogynistic society.. So, he says he doesn't subscribe to the feminist patriarchy theory, and doesn't call himself a feminist.. but thinks masculine men oppress women, afabs, and effeminate men because they hate femininity (???) kind of only seem to acknowledge gender roles when it suits their pretty-much-feminist narrative

-He thinks we live in a rape culture, which he then reduced to a sexual harassment culture. So, he thinks im such an incredibly rare amab for not thinking sexual harassment is a cool thing to do -_-

-He thinks it's okay to be wary of any man, on the assumption of risk of danger or ill intent, and upon asking them through an analogy, YES, if they were a store owner in a high crime black residential area, they actually said they would be more wary of, and pay more attention to a black person who would enter their store, than an equivalent caucasian person. So.. profiling. yikes.

-He also loves the term toxic masculinity, and does not seem capable of grasping how the term obscures male victims of anyone who wants to reinforce masculinity in men (both men and women who subscribe to gender roles) with the focus on how men hurt people around them.

-He has no problem calling femininity an equality movement, and saying that it would be nice if there was another equality movement for men, but when asked about how feminism loves to elevate women even where no gender inequality is present, he reverts to "yeah.. but theyre just trying to help women". um.. if they help women not to accomplish parity with men in the areas women are deficit, then arent they just not even concerned with even checking for equality/inequality? wtf kind of equality movement doesnt care if things are equal.

-He likes referring to the archaic provider roles as essentially 'free to do whatever you want', but the old domestic role as 'pretty much a slave'

-He thinks im so rare in my bad luck with women, but in general.. they're not violent. they're (mostly) all angels. He thinks feminists who believe in the feminist patriarchy theory are only the radicals, and moderate feminists believe in gender roles, but just focus their efforts on women.

to quote him: "women are taught to be loyal to their husbands no matter how hard he hits! masculinity teaches men they're the master of a house, who gets to be served meals and to fuck whenever he wants and to value women just for their service to them"

I grew up in a very tradcon household, and I dont remember any of that, for me, or my sister. I wanna love him, but the amount of cognitive dissonance he's somehow been hiding is unbelievable.