Crosspost "How to deal with the “that’s sexist” argument?" from /r/AskFeminists:

So I was in a conversation about a friend who had someone grab her butt at a bar. I said “men need to learn boundaries.”

Another (white cis male) friend said “that’s a bigoted thing to say” I said, “It isn’t sexist, it is an undeniable well-studied fact that the majority of sexual harassment is done by men. It isn’t bigoted, it’s the truth.” He replied “rephrase it to say black people instead of men, and see how that sounds”. I said “well, I don’t know if more black people commit sexual harassment than other races, so it WOULD be bigoted if I said it about POC” He followed up with “Let’s rephrase it about something that statistically, we know for sure is perpetrated disproportionately by black people. Let’s use crime for example, would the sentence sound bigoted then?” I said “it’s not the same thing-POC are not a privileged group” you can’t be sexist towards men, they are the most privileged group of people. It isn’t the same as singling out a disadvantaged group” he replied “you can totally be bigoted towards a group of people with privilege, look at anti-Semitism in the USA, that is aimed at a very privileged group of people, but I think we can all agree it is wrong. In fact, their privilege was what had people feeling so justified in their hatred of them in pre-WWII Europe. The same thing is happening with Chinese-American immigrants today. Their “privilege” does not justify bigotry towards them. Bigotry is always wrong”

I didn’t know what argument to make after that. How do I make the argument that feminism isn’t bigotry? I feel it is true, but I don’t know how to counter his last point. How can I counter-argue points like this?

Posted by scotian-rhody | 21 February 2020 | Link