I'm sorry if this has been discussed before and I missed it.

I (male) consider myself a feminist. Proudly. I follow lots of gender equality accounts on social media. However, as should be no surprise to you folks, I too often see negative messages about men (as an entire gender). Statements like "Men are trash" or "men can't get it through their heads that...."

My personal take on this is that it goes against gender equality to paint an entire gender with one brush. Men can't say "women are trash" or "women can't get it through their heads that.." without being branded a misogynist. Further, I would never say "blacks are ____" or "Jews can't get it through their head that ..." because that's quite obviously wrong, racist, and hateful.

When i engage the feminists who have made these hurtful comments, they do 3 things that utterly baffle me:

  1. Angrily (very angrily) ask "Did you just 'not all men' me??!!!" Why is "not all men" a stupid argument to say "don't discriminate against an entire group of people based on the actions of the few" ?

  2. Explain that the groups in my examples (blacks, Jews, women, etc) are oppressed groups (which I don't disagree with) and that THAT is why it's okay to make hateful statements about men (which i DO disagree with). Why is a group's lack of oppression status a license to be hateful toward them?

  3. Explain that their original statement (that discriminates against our gender) wasn't REALLY about the entire gender, because they didn't use the word "all". They explain what they are referring to is the SYSTEMIC issue. Okay, so can I say "women are stupid" but I'm in the clear because I'm referring to the SYSTEMIC issue? I don't think i should be able to (nor do i care to). I humbly do not understand this argument.

Can somebody help me by educating me on either where I'm wrong (because i feel it could be done in a nonjudgmental way in this subreddit) OR vindicate my thinking?