Still it continues

First statement from Becky is correct- but two misandrists come in- Erin and AJ (the former on the first two slides; the latter on the next 5) the latter making our favourite analogy. Was wondering how long it would be before the “poisonous candy” analogy came in (the same analogy Donald Trump Jr used to describe refugees and rightly got a backlash for; by the same people who use that analogy themselves about men)- slide 3.

Source for the first misandrist is here- https://twitter.com/goodwitch829/status/1787128684857766232; source for the second is in one of the comments threads there.

As for the first one, she rightly points out in the comment thread that there are bad women too, but 1) her initial comment doesn’t mention that at all; and 2) surely that actually makes her whole argument fall apart- because just as a man (even one we know) could turn out bad, a woman could also turn out to be one of the bad ones- I think she’s using her own personal trauma with the men in her life (which nobody should have to go through) to try and justify her reasoning. And she calls men in a public place “strange men” but doesn’t call the women potentially strange women. It’s strange- she then comes out to say that she doesn’t hate all men (which I do believe because at least she did acknowledge that us women can be pretty dangerous too) but that she doesn’t know who’s a good one and who’s a bad one… it’s a well intentioned point but she also doesn’t know who’s a good woman and who’s a bad one- we shouldn’t automatically trust one gender over the others. She says she’s not sexist to men but that it was men who hurt her as a child; not women (which again, is tragic… I hope those men faced consequence; and that this lady is OK- nobody should ever have to face abuse or molestation, let alone children) so that’s why she holds that viewpoint… but it is sexist to let your own experiences with bad men tarnish your view of the gender as a whole. Some people have pointed out that her logic is the same logic racists use to smear black people, but she then gets defensive with “why are you making this about race”… because the logic is similar to that of racists? This woman clearly has a lot of trauma from the men in her life and it’s upsetting that those bad men hurt her; but it’s unhealthy to live our lives fearing men. She may not think she’s being sexist or intend to be; but she is, by openly stating that we don’t know which guys we can trust but essentially implying that we do know we can trust another woman, which isn’t always true.

But then there’s AJ, who is just a classic misandrist. The “men are poison” analogy- yikes. She’s a berserk button- she claims she doesn’t hate men, but the evidence suggests otherwise. At least the previous one was somewhat empathetic and I don’t think she was intentionally misandrist.

Also the “we don’t know which men will hurt us” is true, but we also don’t know which women will hurt us either- we should be cautious of dangerous humans as a whole, not only of one particular gender- we shouldn’t automatically assume the worst about someone based on their genitals. And plus we live in a world of self-identification now anyway so how do we know who’s a man and who’s a woman?

Many of us women may have had bad interactions with men which have affected our perception and mean that some of us will automatically see a man as a threat because we might have been assaulted by men in the past, so some will automatically perceive a woman as safer- which isn’t always true. But most men, and most women, relative to the amount in the world aren’t going to hurt us. I do get it- I was stalked by a man and a woman- a married couple- and it really clouded my views on men collectively for a while (and sexistly, if there’s such a word, it didn’t cloud my views on women, I guess because I’m one), but I realised in the end that that’s not the way to live.

I personally haven’t been attacked or assaulted by a man, so I don’t automatically see every man I come across as a threat- I don’t automatically know which ones are dangerous, but I also don’t know which women are dangerous either, so I don’t assume the worst about either of them- I just try to be aware of my surroundings in case I do stumble across a dangerous human.

This vilification of men and comparing them to poison may even play a part in why the male suicide rate is so high.

If the debate was simply human vs bear; fair enough, but the fact that it’s man vs bear is turning it into a sexist circlejerk.