#YesAllMen #NotAllMen #MaybeSomeMen How to be better?
I am honestly not sure making this post is a good idea, but I want to at least make an honest attempt at this topic and putting it in ~life.men - because it seems silly that this topic tends to get more discussed in ~life.women - and it obviously rarely ends well.
Please approach this with the best good faith intent and lets be civil.
I am 100% in the target group for that video, though I hope this doesn't end up being just another discussion of the same video but the topic in general, as I am a straight white man having worked in tech for two decades. And I am manager with women on my team, and I have been rightfully called out on certain biases and can recognize having glossed over problematic behaviour in the past.
I personally don't take much offense on the #YesAllMen thing, but I can understand why it can be irksome and there is a part of the me where it doesn't quite feel right to me, even though I know it isn't intended that way. It can feel like being lumped together in a "guilt by association" type of way, that we generally don't accept with other groups in society. And what I often have a problem with in these types of discussions, is how a very wide range of problems with very different severity is being lumped together - and I don't think that is fruitful. We see examples of open hostile sexism like "you fucking whore" or outright sexual assault, and most men of course don't recognize themselves in those sort of examples, and thus get defensive. Instead we should be more open to look at all the seemingly "minor" things that aren't as severe, but from what I think I understand from women on being a minority in a workplace is the "death by a thousand cuts"-effect. A constant reminder of seemingly minor things that just adds up, and is rightly being experienced as part of more severe forms of sexism.
Not sure where I am going with this - as I didn't write this as a well thoughtout thesis - just a quick way to try to start a hopefully healthy discussion in the right space, but I assume no men here on Tildes are outright sexually assualting women, but I would 100% believe that most of us still have blind spots that could be improved and is indirectly part of the problem.
I'm going to offer my piece. I lived the first 24 years of my life as a man before transitioning, and this topic is quite near and dear to my heart, because I've lived both sides of the issue. I've been the man being explicitly told that I was inherently an issue as a member of the patriarchy, and was treated differently for being a boy. I've also been a woman watching my male colleagues get better treatment from their male bosses, the shoulder to cry on for women who've been victimized by men, and watched as women have invalidated male suffering.
I am writing this, because I want to offer my perspective to men, and to offer what I have observed. I feel like I should be able to share how my perspectives of Testosterone vs. Estrogen have affected me. I should be able to help mediate as someone who has lived both sides. Instead, I don't feel like I can exist either as a man or woman in this conversation, because of the open hostility surrounding the issue.
I think that the current state of discourse has caused us to lose the actual issue. The actual issue, is of course, as follows:
How do we make a better and more functional society for everyone, regardless of gender?
At its core, the issue is essentially made up by relatively clear understandings regarding gender roles as well:
However:
And, this is also assuming that everyone is arguing their perspective in good faith. There are some people who obviously don't care, either out of personal bias, grifting, or outright malice. I'm not going to go into that, but I will say, as most people do explicitly have some agenda or perspective they're arguing from, and it would be foolish to assume that everyone acts in good faith.
To me, as a trans woman, I don't think that Feminists have answered this question for the 21st century. I think that there are fundamental gaps in understanding as to the human condition and gender dynamics in feminist theory, and these gaps inherently fail men who want to exist as allies as to the actual issue, better world-regardless of gender.
I personally, and quite bitterly, think that Third and Fourth wave feminism were ultimately derailed by intersectional issues, purity tests, pedantic behavior and witch hunts. I say this as a historian, and as someone who has watched the conversation stall since around 2000. I really, truly, do not want to come across as hostile or invalidating to feminism. In my opinion, there are some absolutely feminist examinations that can offer answers as to part of the question. There are absolutely some fundamental issues that Feminism has settled.
Examples
Just some achievements of Feminism that I want to highlight, and absolutely meet my bar of 'better for everyone, regardless of gender.' * Universal Suffrage * Universal Economic Participation (i.e. both genders can work and have a credit card) * Spousal Rights One could make antifeminist arguments here, I suppose, but I think these can be reasonably proven based on certain GDP, Life Satisfaction, and Health metrics.I will also say, that I cannot say that most of the arguments made by the man-o-sphere, 'traditionalists,' and 'conservative values philosophies' have provided an answer either. What it seems to me, is that these groups are providing solutions and answers that wouldn't improve the human condition generally, for either gender. Furthermore, I'd say that many of their arguments and perspectives are inherently unbalanced, cite ahistorical / garble historical fact, and often seem to be made in bad faith.
Regardless, I think most people in America/ Anglo-European Society's agree on these issues:
However, Feminists and Antifeminists both express open hostility towards any disagreement based on their interpretations of these issues.
In my opinion, the conflict perennially arises in that some amount of Feminists seem to frame the differences in specifics, and the inherent critiquing and investigatory questioning as outright malice. This doesn't win the hearts and minds of a lot of the general populace. Whereas Anti-feminists don't attack critique outright. Rather, they seek to 'inform' effectively smugly seducing, and poisoning the narrative to suit their beliefs.
This will always bother me, because we don't actually get to any actual conclusion based on this discourse. Let's evaluate this logically.
Suppose a society. In this society, an idea is being evaluated: 'This is a society with uncomfortable gender dynamics, that makes it worse for a specific gender to exist in.'
If we try to take those principles to our own society, we are immediately met with the fact that the discourse on this issue has broken down. That's not good!
I tend to agree in principle with most feminist leanings towards gendered equality. To me, I feel that there has been sufficient research to show that women are treated worse than men in certain areas and aspects of society, and that the world would be a better place overall if we worked to correct these issues.
However, I have been forced to conclude that these ideas can't even be properly argued for or against. I have concluded this, because of evidence:
Perhaps an easy 'out' here is to blame neoliberalism or to plug Marxist critiques as objectively superior to Feminism, but I don't think that advances the issue. This is what I know, I shouldn't have to keep saying that I don't know how men are supposed to be better allies to women. I should be able to vaguely gesture at some cultural or political touchstone as to what a better world would be. I should be able to do this because I am not a man, and I don't suffer y'all's burdens.
To me, a trans woman who's worked with victims, I roll my eyes at the current state of discourse. Ultimately, Trans women, are the women of women. I grew up being told men were predators, and that as a boy I was one. That's something that I've had to explain to millennials and gen-x'ers, as it seems like it arose post-columbine and 9/11. I grew up being told I couldn't be around girls or in queer spaces since I was a man.
As to the Cornell-7? It seems to me that a white woman from an affluent family went to a university with a rape problem, and joined Greek life, an institution with an exceptionally well known rape problem. I continue to question whether the problem is with the attitude toward rape in a patriarchal society, or elite institutions covering for rich rapists, and elites willing to use culture war issues as a cover for their behavior. Obviously, what happened to the victim is heinous, but given the context of the situation, I don't feel fair claiming that its some sort of indicator of anything other than our continuing problems with rapist elites in our country. I don't want victims, I don't want people to be hurt or raped or killed. However, I kindly remind people that there are large piles of victims and corpses anywhere you look.
Furthermore, my trans 'sisters' get raped all the time. Hearing about a gang rape is honestly.... par for the course, in my community. I've heard of so many worse things happening to trans women, things that would make your skin crawl. The difference here, is that trans women seldom get the cover of a national press when it happens. We still exist with legal defenses to murdering us on the books in many jurisdictions. (Note: Trans men and other trans people have similar experiences)
I didn't choose my gender more than any cis man or woman. I was born as a trans woman, had an awful time living as a man, and corrected it for myself. And I can explain to people how there are so many little cultural shifts in how men and women are treated. It exists in greetings, in glances, in conversational topics, in the posture keep around me. I like to think I understand men's issues sufficiently well enough to see that many average young men are struggling.
Are those things worse than fear about being raped? PMS? the glass ceiling? My answer is that we can't and shouldn't compare these things, and need to work to build a better society for everyone. That shouldn't feel like whataboutism, or Feminist or Antifeminist. People need to step up. I'd like to think that we're all working towards that, with discussions like these.
Anyways,"I think that the majority of us agree on the issue. If someone says that you're disagreeing with them, they should be able to explain why you are."
So, it's sad that someone got bullied off of our neat little forum, but the real issue here, is that our society has given up on solving this issue. I hope that y'all take something away from this, and if y'all want specifics, I can offer those as well. To anyone who actually read through my essay, thanks.
So I'm a hetero man, I'm also AuDHD, and I am FULLY supportive of dismantling the patriarchy and I fully embrace and support feminist values.
And it's interesting you ask this, because I am currently fighting for my life on an Instagram video like right now because I asked "How can men be enthusiastic allies without seeming performative?"
The video was specifically criticizing men for speaking out against the Cornell 7 out of place and called them performative for doing so, and the comments were full of women just dragging all the men speaking out against rape culture through the mud.
And it genuinely confused me, because the message I've gotten as a man who embraces feminism is that men shouldn't be silent in the face of rape culture, and that they should be more vocal about rape culture and speaking out against it. And this video specifically ridiculed and attacked men for doing so.
So I asked "How can men be better enthusiastic allies without seeming performative?"
And the responses have been staggeringly antagonistic, and not a single person has answered that question in a way that makes any sense. The majority have just been calling me all the worst things, and projecting so many untrue things onto me just for asking.
I've had to repeatedly state that I'm not asking for myself or my own ego or for appreciation or acceptance, but all the women there are accusing men of being performative and I'm asking how can they avoid that criticism for WOMEN's sake, so they can be better allies for WOMEN, not men's sake.
The most comprehensible answer I've gotten, which isn't very comprehensible, is "You should call your male friends out privately when they do something wrong instead of posting about it online," but A) I would already be doing that anyways whether or not I'm speaking out publicly or online, B) usually the type of men to gang rape a woman intentionally aren't friends with the type of man who'd turn them in, and C) that just works on "trust me bro" logic and that gives abusers the opportunity to lie and say they did when they didn't. I personally wouldn't take someone at their word when it comes to that.
But I've also been assured by my IRL women friends that I'm doing good speaking out against it and they trust me fully. And that's what really counts so that's where I choose to put my trust in.
With all that being said, as a man who recognizes how patriarchy negatively impacts men, wants to dismantle it systemically, and supports the core goals of feminism, I also have criticisms of what I see as blind spots within the broader feminist movement when it comes to understanding men's experiences.
And I don't raise those criticisms to speak over women on how to fix men's problems or to diminish women's struggles. I raise them because I believe understanding men's actual experiences within the patriarchy is essential to understanding how we can dismantle the patriarchy together.
It boils down to in the same way men can't speak to the experiences of women, women can't speak to the experiences of men.
Men absolutely benefit from systemic privilege, but that privilege doesn't automatically translate into happiness, security, or freedom from suffering, and I think that's the exact nuance that gets lost. Most men don't experience their lives through the lens of their privilege. They experience them through their struggles, many of which are directly shaped by the same patriarchal systems we're trying to dismantle.
And unfortunately, that's exactly where most men get lost when talking about feminism. The frustrating irony is that many men are miserable and struggling precisely because of the same patriarchal systems that oppress women. But instead of helping them recognize that shared problem, the messaging often makes them feel like they're on the opposing side of it and people shut down and become defensive.
And then the manosphere and similar spaces welcome these attacked men with open arms.
It's very common for cliques to form on the internet because it's easy for people to leave or stop interacting with a community whenever they see some bullying crop up — which, in practice, means hostile corners of the internet gradually drive everyone else away and reinforce their own hostility to ridiculous levels.
It sounds to me like you stumbled across just such a community, and a particularly bad one. They'll try to tell you they're representative of women at large (stock standard abuse technique: convincing the victim that the bully is always right and the victim always wrong, and no sane third party would ever sympathize with the victim) — but, fortunately, you're in a good position to judge because you can simply ask women you know.
To the best of your ability, I would disregard hostile communities and try not to let them color your perception of yourself or other people. The group you stumbled into are not activists, they're not trying to help women (believe me, in communities like that, women who in any way question the bullying they witness get an over-the-top hostile reception as well), and they don't offer any practical strategies for tackling the problems they keep beating everyone over the head with — and will actively tear down any solution somebody might come up with (as you yourself observed) because it undermines the abusive stranglehold they have on that corner of the internet (similar to how an abusive spouse or parent constantly undercuts the victim's attempts to make peace and somehow always manages to turn it around on the victim).
People who are actually fighting to make a change in the world encourage curious onlookers and welcome people who are potentially receptive to their message. They might still disagree with many of the opinions you offer, but they'll make an effort to explain their arguments without being alienating (which they might not necessarily succeed at, but at least they're trying), and part of their argument will include volunteering alternative solutions to the ones you have proposed. They may use logic or they may use emotional appeal but, either way, their goal is to get you on board, not beat you up.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, particularly about how hostile online communities reinforce their own behavior and aren't necessarily representative of the broader movement.
I actually just wrote another response that gets into this exact issue.
My point is that while you and I might recognize these communities as fringe and unrepresentative, plenty of other men don't necessarily have the understanding of algorithms or the media literacy to make that distinction. And algorithms can make that content seem far more widespread than it actually is.
So while I agree that disregarding these communities is the right approach, I think there's a larger issue worth discussing.
We can't just dismiss these experiences as isolated incidents when, for some men and due to these algorithms, they're a significant part of their exposure to feminism, and that shapes their entire perception of feminism and their susceptibility to red-pill content.
Because when someone's algorithm exposes them to a lot of feminist content that leans toward misandry, you have one group telling them their experience is wrong and that it's an outlier and not nearly as widespread as they think usually with a few jabs and condescension thrown in, while another group tells them it's exactly as widespread as their algorithm suggests. Which group do you think that person is more likely to align with? The one dismissing their experience, or the one validating it?
And from my experience, that's why I think this kind of content, while understandably cathartic for women expressing their very real frustrations and experiences, ultimately does more harm to feminism than good. I've literally seen red-pill content creators in the comments of these posts trying to get follows and stuff from the men getting attacked in the comments.
I've seen this firsthand in conversations with some of these men I've had with men trying to convince them that feminism is not their enemy.
But it's also something I'm hesitant to bring up, and I even have quite a bit of anxiety talking about it now, because it's so often met with dismissive responses like "sit down and shut up" or accusations that I'm trying to tell women how to solve their problems. And that is not my intent, but I feel that understanding accurate experiences should be important, even in a "know your enemy" kind of way.
I try to speak to all this from my own experience and still give room for other's experiences without talking over them.
I just want to say that I agree with everything you're saying here, and I completely understand your anxiety bringing it up. A lot of men I know have admitted similar anxiety to me.
I think something people forget is that it's not just men who encounter these communities. It's also boys — potentially very young boys. And this content can also be very damaging to girls (I know it would have been extremely harmful to me to encounter it when I was middle school age, and that's also the age I was most active in online communities and would have been most likely to encounter it if I'd been born just 5-10 years later).
It's not limited to gender discourse, either. Some of the most seemingly random, innocuous subjects can spawn incredibly toxic communities. I don't think the subject matter itself is what causes this. It just seems to be human nature for a subset of the population to snowball into the most vile bullies (and far worse, looking at the historical record) when they aren't kept in check by moderating forces.
I don't know what the solution is. Asking people to change or bullying them back doesn't work, and many of the legislative ideas I've seen are pretty frightening from a privacy standpoint. Directly targeting social media algorithms that push controversy into everyone's feeds would likely help, but it can't eliminate self-organizing communities where many of the worst abuses occur, like private Discord groups that people create and join voluntarily.
Personally, I think the solution is teaching emotional intelligence. Teaching people to understand their emotions, where they come from, and how to regulate them.
I think a lot of those bullying and toxic tendencies come from people who act and think impulsively on every emotion that comes to mind instead of catching them. A lot of people live on autopilot in this way never questioning anything they think, feel, or do.
I dream of a world where (the equivalent of) elementary school is just: reading, writing, a little math, physical activities and finally social skills & emotional intelligence.
I'm working towards my Master's in Elementary Education right now! I've also been working as a substitute teacher for over a year now, including a long term sub job. I haven't been in a single elementary school where Social Emotional Learning (SEL) isn't a part of the curriculum, with dedicated lessons on the subject matter throughout the day. There is still huge room for growth, in my opinion: for instance working towards aligning practices throughout a school or even district, having educators who are undergoing SEL work themselves, mandating therapy for teachers, and so on.
All of this said, my personal drum to beat is this one: class size has been shown to be the single greatest predictor of positive outcomes in school for over 50 years. Nothing has changed this, nothing will change this. If you want children to be happy, do well in school, and learn, then class sizes should be capped at a number that is lower than 20.
I don’t know if it was the intent for the video to reach men or if it was just catharsis for women. In my opinion if you want to affect change on sexism you need to have the title targeted at the marginal man. The man who would laugh at those jokes if given the opportunity today, but could be convinced to pause by the right video. Or the man that would pause but could be convinced to speak up.
A title like “My incel coworker and his work friends almost cost me my job” might grab those people’s attention. But then it would be a different video. I’m not completely sure how she wanted men to respond to the title. Is an eye roll and scrolling past the intention? If so I think she’s nailed it. Maybe it’s a well calculated move and she wants those people to ignore the video.
Social media algorithms prioritize engagement, not intent. And most of the videos I'm talking about are reels/tiktok videos/shorts, so titles don't really come into play.
If an algorithm shows a video to men who disagree and women who agree with it, then those groups get into heated arguments in the comments, that engagement signals to the algorithm to push it to even more of those kinds of people. From there people either get pushed into more extreme groups or they get their ideas reinforced.
So regardless of who the video was intended for, the algorithm can end up promoting it to precisely the audience most likely to react negatively to it in the name of engagement
And then you get into deliberate manipulation, where people who understand how these algorithms work can exploit that outrage to shape public perception, and use it as an arm of propaganda. But that's a whole nother conversation. lol
I have a theory that my algorithm's different and shows me a lot of this content that doesn't conform to my personal interests because I take a lot of privacy measures that prevents the algorithm from pinning me down with outside data. I often get stuck in loops of "cliche mens" content that I have little to no interest in like cars and sports and thirst trap content, despite having zero interest in any of that. Doesn't matter how many times I hit "not interested" either.
Things like a pihole that I've connected to my tailscale DNS so that all my electronics block all ads, tracking, and telemetry domains at a DNS level, I use a containerizor on my phone that isolates social media apps from seeing the other data on my phone, and I have a containerizor extension on firefox in my browser that isolates any social media tabs in their own virtual session. So all these apps have to go on is what I interact with within the app, which my theory is it throws the content algorithms off and defaults to cliche 35yo men's content.
I think it’s not worth your time to engage on these topics on large social media platforms. In the end even if you’re fighting the good fight we all know social media comments do almost nothing to improve the world. Recognize your insignificance in the world. You can’t fix big problems like that head-on. But also recognize that you have a tremendous amount of influence over your surroundings. What will matter is how you treat people you see face-to-face. If you’re doing well there you’re doing all you can do. And the fact is when you’re dead you’ll have helped out a few people important to you and the rest of the world will go on being fucked up.
So ask the women you know in person how you can be a vocal ally without seeming performative. If they say you’re already doing a good job then you shouldn’t worry about it.
This applies to many things. I don’t feel guilty I’m not personally fixing climate change, or genocides, or wars. I vote with my wallet, I speak up when given the opportunity. But I don’t expect to see much change on these matters.
I’m a hetero man as well. I've mentioned something in a similar vein in a previous comment of mine, so I won't go super deep here, but I can resonate with this.
I think part of the problem is of course that feminism isn't a monoculture - "your friends" and "the people calling you out on Instragram" ostensibly overlap a little in a Venn Diagram, but the same voice they are clearly not. So it can be tough to feel like you're "doing everything right" and you get this simultaneous dissonance of your close friends commending you, and the Internet turning on you.
And this is where I point back at my linked comment. Our mob mentality spaces do a good job of pushing people out, but we do a pretty shit job of offering alternatives, so when folks seek an alternative that even slightly affirms their preconceived notions, then it's an easy conversion from there. And I just wish we had a better way to tackle that issue as "men," broadly speaking. Understanding, of course, that "men" is not a monoculture either :)
Just a quick "drive-by" comment ... but I am convinced that everything everyone posts online, on any subject anywhere, is always performative. It is flatly unavoidable, because everyone knows, deep down, that they are not just posting to their intended audience, but also to the grand global group of onlookers, and we all--perhaps even unconsciously--are constantly spinning what we say online and how we say it ... to look "better" to the general audience.
Just my dos centavos.
I appreciate what you’re saying, trying to be better, open minded, etc. but I want to take a step back to look at the current conversation as a whole. You spent more than half your comment criticizing how women understand the experiences of men when the initial premise was “men need to be better about understanding women’s experiences and try harder to make the world less shitty”, and OP is asking “how can we be better?”
Do you see how that might be frustrating for a woman to read this thread and see the top comment is mostly reversing the question about how women can be better?
This thread is about men, so it makes sense for the comments to be about men as well. I think it's entirely fair for the men participating to talk about their experiences as men and not opine so much on the experiences that women have. I would much rather speak about my own experience as a woman (when relevant to the conversation) than read a dialogue between a group of men conjecturing about experiences none of them have had.
Personally, I think @crypticcuriosity629 has navigated this supremely prickly subject exceptionally well. (If anything, I think they're too cautious and hedging, but it's completely understandable given their previous experiences in online spaces. It honestly sounds pretty traumatizing.)
Yeah, I can understand how it might be frustrating to see a conversation about women's experiences shift toward men's experiences, especially given the context of the original discussion. And you're right that I spent a significant portion of my comment discussing men's experiences.
But I think there's nuance here that's you're overlooking.
The post I'm responding in was posted in ~life.men partly because of concerns about men dominating conversations in women's spaces, and I deliberately posted this comment here on this thread in this tildes topic for that reason.
And the OP specifically raises the issue of men becoming defensive in conversations about sexism, which is what I'm responding to.
So that is what I'm trying to explore, just from another angle.
However I suppose my response focuses less on "How can we, as men who already recognize these problems, do better?" to "How can we better understand and address the experiences of men who DON'T recognize these problems in the first place?" So I'll acknowledge that.
I believe if we want men to better understand women's experiences, embrace feminism and actively participate in dismantling patriarchy, we also need to understand the accurate experiences, perceptions, and social pressures that shape these men's responses to those conversations in the first place.
I'm deliberately approaching this by sharing my experiences and observations rather than prescribing solutions for women, because I recognize that it's not my place to tell women how they should respond to sexism or accommodate men's reactions to it. I just want to provide an explanation on why so many men have a hard time buying into feminism.
And I also deliberately didn't try to to prescribe that this was a bigger issue or anything until some of the responses dismissed it as an uncommon experience, which I don't believe it is.
But there's also a difference between understanding why men become defensive and excusing that defensiveness. Understanding the mechanisms behind a problem is essential to addressing it, regardless of who's responsible for fixing it.
And I'm DEFINITELY not excusing any man's toxic behavior in anything I'm saying or making excuses for them. Trust me, I have my own full opinions on the small minded men that fall for and spew sexist rhetoric, because I can be exposed to the same content and still come out with a level head and nuanced opinion, but I also recognize that the reality is is that no matter how stupid they are, thinking they're idiots and calling them idiots isn't going to fix the problem.
I agree that men need to do a better job understanding women's experiences. My argument is that understanding men's experiences is also part of figuring out how we accomplish that.
And I think that's particularly relevant in a discussion asking how men can be better. We can't meaningfully examine how men need to change and how to change other men's perceptions, without also examining the experiences and influences that shape their behavior in the first place.
I’m not debating, or arguing, or telling you that you’re wrong. I think it’s good to ask the questions you’re asking about these guys experiences. I’m trying to point out that this is one of those scenarios that’s going to make a woman’s eyes roll, like we’ve missed the point.
Like I said I think it’s good to examine the behavior and experience of men, but again I think there’s an issue with the framing of these thoughts as an answer to the original question. We can answer the question “how can men be better” before we examine and understand their experiences. Yes, I agree, exploring the subject is a good idea. I’m not trying to argue with you about it. But when the question is “how can men be better” and the response is “before we can answer that we have to ask what can we do to better understand men” it’s subtly deferring being better until after we’ve had this second complex, nuanced discussion. We can do both, and we can actually answer how to be better right away.
Well I think OP is not criticizing how all women respond but at most criticizing how that specific interaction went. The point I took away is that they want to be an ally, but they're getting mixed messaging on how to do so and getting heat when they try to get clarification. Now, if more men experience this "damned if you do, damned if you don't" response, the instinctive reaction will be to go silent and try to skate by. Right or wrong, there's some miscommunication somewhere making it harder for some men to participate even when they want to. This entire topic is born out of a desire for clarity on how us men can all do better and it's resonating with many here, so crossed wires are definitely at play for some.
I wouldn't put too much stock in this on social media unless you really know these people. You don't even know if they're really women, much less human. There are a lot of bots out there specifically designed to stir up trouble.
I obviously don't know your specific experience. But this reminds me that online content is often more extreme than real society. Maybe that video is just an outlier, and the comments have no actual lessons to give you? You probably don't know who those commenters were, what their motivations were, or, frankly, if they were even real people.
That's excellent to hear. And sounds like you've already internalized the point I'm trying to make. I support prioritizing the views of our real-life connections over anonymous online comments where we really don't know who's writing them or why.
Maybe it's just my algorithm, but even as a man who regularly engages with positive feminist content, I also get a distressing amount of content that borders on outright misandry and even TERF rhetoric. So in my experience, it's definitely not an isolated outlier.
(Disclaimer on my mention of misandry: It is not an attempt to downplay or equate it with misogyny. Misogyny is a far more pervasive and systemic issue, and the two are not on equal footing. I'm specifically addressing how exposure to anti-male rhetoric shapes men's perceptions of feminism, regardless of whether that rhetoric represents the broader movement. Pre-empting with that, because sometimes a man saying "misandry" immediately gets shot down.)
What's interesting is that feminist friends I know IRL often have no idea this content even exists and when I bring it up, the response can be immediately defensive, dismissing it as fringe or unrepresentative.
And I see that in a lot of positive feminist spaces as well. Whenever a man talks about seeing that content, their experiences are immediately shot down.
And here's the thing. You can tell me it's fringe, and I'd probably agree with you because I know algorithms can make fringe concepts seem wider than they are. But that doesn't change the fact that countless men are probably being exposed to it, and many don't have the media literacy or understanding of algorithms to recognize that distinction.
I understand that my algorithm isn't an accurate representation of feminism as a whole, so I don't let that content sway my opinions of feminism and the patriarchy. But someone who doesn't recognize that distinction could easily come away believing that hostility toward men IS representative of feminism.
And I think that's an important part of understanding men's experiences that gets overlooked. We can acknowledge that this content is fringe and isn't representative of feminism while also acknowledging that, for some men, it's a significant part of how they experience feminism online.
The result of thinking it's outlier content for everyone, means that whenever a man tries to express that experience, he often gets met with hostility.
And a LOT of my conversations with other men trying to teach them that feminism isn't their enemy stems from these kinds of experiences. But sometimes it feels like an uphill battle because the content is not in my favor a lot of the times.
Agreed. This gets to the heart of what's so unhealthy about social media. I wish I had good insights beyond saying "just get offline". I think, somehow, we all need to strengthen our offline social structures to counterbalance that. But that's an incredible amount of work and many people won't practically do that work, and I just don't know what we do about that. I'm nervous that this has gotten harder, not easier, as technology has evolved and concentrated itself into owners who feel no moral responsibility to regulate it.
Propaganda is a powerful influencer. Those who wish to apply propaganda have gotten so good at leveraging technology that I fear radicalism is now intrinsic to online media. The incentives to direct it that way are just too strong. That's a hefty force to push back on. If you've got good ideas to surpass that, let me know!
Gay man here.
My experience with sexism is different from yours because I’m not part of the in crowd. I only get to see the worst of it when people forget that I’m not in it, and while I have been “straight-acting” enough to see it, I know I haven’t seen the worst of it. And what I do know is that when straight men talk about having sex with women they rarely ever talk about them in a way that brings up simple things like respect or even consent.
So if you want to be proactive in the fight against sexism, just do the things that women keep asking you to do. When you see people talking about women like they’re meat, when you see people making dirty jokes that reduce them to objects, cut them off and let them know they are being an asshole and that you will not tolerate that level of disrespect, and if you ever see them treating a woman that way you will take steps to intervene.
It’s hard cause when you speak up you get iced out. So often men have to choose between having friends or standing up for women.
I can never think of a way to just be like “hey guys, thats kinda gross, maybe let’s not talk about women like they’re meat” without actually offending the men in the group.
More than once I havent been the only one uncomfortable though and most of the time someone else also speaks up like “yeah that was pretty gross” so theres that
That's an excellent point. I'd like to say if someone has this problem, the friends they're trying to keep may not be worth keeping. But of course reality's more subtle than that. And social acceptance and isolation are strong motivators for mental health and well being.
I'm lucky that I don't have to make that choice because I'm not bound to communities that would do that. But I recognize this is partially luck, and someone with a less fortunate social foundation may not be able to make this choice so easily.
Ultimately, I think every effort counts, even incremental ones. Maybe not everyone feels positioned to speak their morals decisively in every situation. But every little effort, when possible, makes a difference. And it's okay not to be perfect as long as your heart remains in the right place.
I think there is a distinction to be made here. All of us can have friends and stand up for women. There are plenty of men that wouldn't balk at those statements or sentiments. If you're choosing to surround yourself with men who would balk at it, that's a choice. It's possible to talk about attraction or women without being objectifying and you can nip conversation in the bud without making it awkward.
But I will admit that there are communities that are difficult to participate in while being an advocate for women. I would throw those in the bro-y camp, like I've experienced the "ice out" with mountain biking groups, volleyball teams, etc... Places and people who encourage "locker room talk". But you can also opt out of those. I had a friend who recently invited a different friend and I to join his weekly MTB group as part of an upcoming race. He's normally a shy and a total sweet heart. But man, it took about 5 minutes of "the boyz" getting together for that kind of talk to take off. Both of us bowed out and later said the group wasn't our vibe. Even if it would have been great to have new friends to go with, it wasn't worth the awkward "aw, I don't think we need to go that far" or "I mean, this is why no women feel comfortable joining these rides". I have other people to ride with that aren't a constant drain and don't end the rides with "man, don't be such a fucking prude".
I guess in a way I'm copping out too in not actively addressing it, but I still think you can have friends without having to give ground on that. But maybe that's what you're saying too.
I wrote this reply to another comment but that comment was removed and the user banned so I’m sharing it as a top level reply (nearly verbatim)
I’m going to try to state it as plainly and succinctly as possible for everyone’s benefit
It is as simple as:
It is not:
That’s it, that’s all. If only one dude reads this and realizes just how easy it is, I’ll be happy.
Cause it's rage bait. I feel like the intention was to bait people into posting hot takes.
Like, the point was to get people's attention and these days that's what it takes, but it seems like everyone arguing about it is totally unable to see past that and they're all arguing about the title or the really over the top things that she describes in the video instead of the actual problem, how women are actually treated in tech.
Anyone who's ever had a PR cut to pieces for no reason or a feature they've worked on totally overwritten by some hot shot hero developer 1 week later knows exactly what this video is talking about, and not a single comment said anything about this.
The top post got it right, if you see it, just call it out. Don't be part of the problem. You're in a position to say something. Say something.
I'll also add, if you're not seeing it, you're not paying attention.
True, but I think it is also a bit of a shame that the framing is something most can't outright recognize and thus easily dismiss it. The framing is someone calling her a whore, and I suspect many will just think "Okay, I don't do that", but then misses that they maybe also can have blind spots in like how they treat pull requests from different developers and if there could be an unconscious bias working there. I think that is why these type of topics often goes off rails, because the framing of the sexists examples that make people go quickly on the defense as "that is definitely not me".
Right like she opened with that?
I understand the attention grabber and also it wasn’t just a youtube video it was meant for a different setting with a live audience AND that did actually happen to her
But on youtube you’re gonna lose anyone who was on the fence with that opening statement. She said some really great stuff right after that which no one who needed to hear it heard.
I think we get so wrapped up in the message we forget that the people who need to hear it don’t want to hear it.
I really don't think her talk was aimed at the folks who are causing the problem, but rather for folks who are already allies looking for tangible ways they can effect things.
There's different audiences for every talk - the folks who need to hear this sort of stuff to change their behavior likely need to hear it from a conservative man that they already look up to (the Joe Rogans and such of the world) and needs to be spoon fed to them so as to avoid triggering their fragility.
Right that was sort of what I was getting at, once it’s on youtube it can be posted anywhere, for any audience to engage in.
The rage bait title and opening line are really unfortunate choices for something on a platform like that. It straw-mans the argument without anyone having to try. Anyone who disagrees just has to point at those two things and go “look, see! They’re demonizing the lot of us”
It sucks that social media is like this, but it is what it is.
I'm in the perhaps rather rare position of being a heterosexual man who has been seriously harassed by another man, so I don't find it hard to imagine what women have to face.
But that didn't help much in my 20s and 30s, because when you're in the situation where you might be the man who stops himself or another man from being a toxic moron, you mostly react from the gut. If you want to be able to do the right thing, you gotta have a strong foundation to push that action from. You have to be mentally strong, confident, most likely also physically strong, and you have to have your life in order. Having fuck you money doesn't hurt, in case you have to act against your employer or something like that. Perhaps a bit ironically, this is the kind of stuff Jordan Peterson talked a lot about when he was still sort of sane and not yet trapped by a culture war.
Now I have many of these things, and I've become pretty good at controlling myself, I think. But controlling others is still a thing that doesn't come easily.
#YesAllMen is ragebait and/or clickbait. Better just block them. Incidentally, it's roughly the same idea as when far right-wingers accuse all 2 billion muslims of not doing enough to combat the problem when a tiny subset of them does something evil. This is also why I didn't watch the video, so apologies if I'm arguing against something that was never said.
This and every thread in a nutshell, sadly.
You are being a toxic person and I demand that you stop that.
That is not at all what toxicity looks like, and your response is very aggressive.
I don't agree the use or implication of #YesAllMen deserves blocking, but the quoted paragraph presents an interesting angle which I hadn't considered previously.
Power dynamics between men very obviously factor into how we behave around and toward each other in day to day life, but somehow this had never crossed my mind.
Thinking back through my 20s and 30s I've almost always felt that I was at a disadvantage in this regard; I've rarely had the confidence to be assertive with other guys unless the topic in question falls immediately within the purview of my domain of expertise, and this feeling ironically intensified as I became more conscious of the challenges faced by women, LGBTQ+, and other minorities, which came along with a larger humbling realization of how little I knew and how wrong I had been on many topics. The only time I felt empowered to be loud was when I was a socially inexperienced dumb kid who was too clueless to have any idea how clueless he was.
This makes me wonder if there's a larger pattern of men who are the best positioned to be allies ultimately not speaking up either because they feel disempowered or that it's somehow not their place to do so. It may even be happening without the individuals in question being conscious of it, much like how people often unconsciously defer to the gregarious extravert of the group without realizing it. Please note that I am not condoning or justifying this behavior, but rather intend to pick apart the mechanics driving it in order to better understand it.
Thankfully I've not often been put into situations where there's been misogyny or similar that needs pushing back against (most of my time spent with others over the years has been with more conscious folk), but I now have a new blind spot to watch out for.
Not being a man, my best guess is that folks just don't know what to do.
Power is dynamic, almost everyone will at some point have the ability to help someone who is being treated inappropriately by someone with more power, either physically or socially. But if you've never done it before and have never seen or noticed it done, how do you know what to do?
The easiest thing to do is to think about it. If you see someone on the bus who sits next to someone else who clearly doesn't want them there, what would you do? If someone in a meeting repeats someone a person of lower social standing says and then gets credit for the idea, what would you do? If you hear folks telling inappropriate jokes at work even without the target person present, what would you do?
The simplest solutions I've seen are mild comments (pretty sure that was their idea), and callouts followed by moving on (Dude, not cool. Anyway ... subject change).
If someone really has no idea how to help and still wants to, I've heard good things about deescalation training.
Edit: I apologize for my tone here. I saw the hashtag in the title and thought it was the original post in life.women.
Something can have bad and good parts at the same time and we can hear all that a piece has to say and figure out which is which for ourselves. I held off watching the video because it seemed like another piece of ragebait in a sea of ragebait. But the video did have good information on just how weird and wrong corporate culture can get. Knowing about those examples will help me notice similar issues in the future so I can call it out. Not watching the video would have left me worse off.
So, here is my carefully considered hot take.
People claiming the #YesAllMen hashtag is ragebait/clickbait, y'all need to step back and look at the broader context. It is really just a rhetorical counter to the actual ragebait hashtag, #NotAllMen.
Relatedly, the #NotAllMen hashtag is not useless ... it is quite effectively doing exactly what it is intended to do, which is to undermine women's perspectives and somehow push the burden of proof back on them.
Here is my rhetorical counter ... #NotAllPeopleArePedophiles ... but you can't tell your child to "just avoid the pedophiles; everyone else is fine".
And yes, there absolutely is an unavoidable "guilt-by-association" thing going on here. That's not women's fault, either. The more we don't like being lumped in with the "bad" men, the more we need to think about how we can help to destroy the culture they (we?) thrive in.
Oh ... addendum: I watched the video. If you haven't, it's good; worth 30 minutes of your life.
I think it is a shame that any sort of nuanced perspective gets buried in hashtag wars. The #metoo was the exception that I personally think worked really well, because it was just one person stating something about their own experience and the power of that movement came from numbers alone - with how many could say the same. The various "#all" hashtags inevitably just ends up being weaponized one way or the other.
While I mostly agree with this in principle, I also believe it does have a downside that we somehow only accept that rhetoric when in comes to men. Saying #AllMuslims, #AllImmigrants, #AllBlackPeople or whatever is rightfully not accepted in the same shared responsibility. It depends on where you are in life as well, as if you are a relatively successful man with a stable job and maybe a partner and so on, it is easier to not get too hung up on this. But maybe if you are still young, struggling financially and lacking good relationships and generally not feeling life is as easy as some tell you you have it simply by being a man, then rhetoric that indirectly - or at least can be experienced as such - blames you for all kinds of problems you don't do simply because you have a specific gender, then it isn't exactly surprising that some people get picked up by the manosphere. Not sure what, but I would hope there is a less counterproductive way of talking about these things.
As the person calling that out, I haven’t ever used #NotAllMen. I understand it’s similar to #AllLivesMatter - semantically correcting while being dismissive of the original complaint. But I don’t think it’s good to further muddy the waters with a semantically incorrect and antagonistic response. I feel it does the talk a disservice.
Yup the # is bait. She's pretty clever to use it.
I do sympathize with most of what she said. I wish it were different.
And I still feel insulted enough by the # to respond.
It triggers the subject with a general confrontation / victimization / idk between sexes, which keeps attention high long enough to make her points.
But, this trigger converts the issue to an us-vs-them thing, which:
I decided to make a top level comment because I don't want this to come across as a response to anyone. Maybe just more food for thought.
A friend of mine I hadn't talked to in like 5 years called me out of the blue because she was feeling nostalgic. We had both gotten busy and were bad at keeping up, but in that call we had an awesome like 2 hour life catch up. After I was feeling nostalgic myself and went back to read some of our old facebook chats. I was pretty diassapointed with home much I just normalized weird behavior of the men she dated. This is like one excerpt, but there was dozens of these.
Her: "...and we like made out, a lot. A LOT"
Me: "well you went for it homie"
Her: "and he tried to put his hand up my dress but I didn't let him"
Me: "....well thats why you made out forever"
Her: "and then I felt bad...you know...like a tease."
Me: "naw, do you girl"
Her: "But he was really nice and told me not worry about it. Anyway, we're having early morning coffee tomorrow and I am kinda scared."
Me: "hahahaha, noice. Honestly sounds good for you. Both awkward but there was some chemistry"
I mean that's pretty light in comparison to other things from my past, but I wouldn't have even stopped to think about what I was doing. I think I understand the sentiment of #yesallmen because I spent a very healthy part of my late teens and early twenties being problematic. I have friends who I consider great guys that have been and sometimes still are problematic even nearing 40. I think I'm about as supportive as I could be now (all personal biases ignored ;) but I would throw myself in the "all men" bucket because of things I've done in the past. I'm kind of confused about all the folks getting up in arms about the video. Have people really not sat on the sidelines of a pretty problematic group chat thread? I mean I'd say if you managed to grow up without doing even that, kudos, but also there may be some memory editing going on. I think the sentiment is true. It doesn't have to be you right this instance, but I would wager that, yes, all men at some point have been at best problematic and at worst - well pretty fucking awful.
Could you help me understand what was weird about that chat? Was it the hand under the dress? Admittedly my experience in dating is limited and by the time it got to hands under clothes it was an expected progression of an extended makeout session (and usually not initiated by me), but it doesn't seem weird? It got heated, she said no and it was immediately accepted?
You could read "scared" as "scared of him" or "nervous with anticipation." That significantly changes how the entire thing reads. Was he pushing her or just going with the flow? What does "he tried to put his hand up my dress" mean? Was it a slow slide near the bottom? Was it aggressive?
That's why these conversations can be so fraught. Depending on your personal experience and how "actively" you empathize with people, you could interpret something in a totally opposite way than had been intended, even if you want to be supportive.
I don't know, obviously we are missing the most important bits of context here (maybe @rosco has more) but without any further info I would have a hard time reading the above as "weird behavior"?
Of course, things like that can definitely be problematic and I don't want to minimize how important consent and reading signals from your partner are but at the same time I think I understand why young people are having a lot less sex if that's considered weird/creepy these days.
"That", as in.. what exactly? As you say, we don't know because we weren't there.
My read on that situation is that it could have been quite bad and the woman may have been in need of support but struggling to express that directly. It is equally possible that it wasn't bad at all. But we don't know that, so someone caring won't assume so without checking first.
If we act like everything is okay and just joke about it, the signal it sends is something like: 'Even if there was a problem and you felt uncomfortable, I don't want to know about it. Let's just pretend you had a fun time'.
Instead, before reacting, we can ask things like: 'Did it feel uncomfortable? Are you scared as in worried about tomorrow, or just excited? Would you cancel a date with someone who made you uncomfortable?' The same questions aren't appropriate in every situation - it depends on how the person responds and the relationship between the two.
In any case a good listener is curious about the other person, willing to change their perception and actively creating space for it. Anyone who is merely reacting to what they think others meant is bound to miss a bunch of essential information because a) misinterpretations always happen, sooner or later, and b) people usually only volunteer their insecurities and shameful thoughts to someone they deem safe enough. And signaling - however unintentionally - that you don't want to know about it is a good way to make yourself feel unsafe.
For sure. Totally understand if rosco was disappointed in himself for not checking in and making sure. That’s not how I initially read it, but that could just be my reading skills.
I agree with that and I think the video in question is great as it is and not unwarranted or anything. It is her experience and it needs to be shared and listened to, as it is more common than we might think is comfortable to realize. People also learn things differently and I can't speak for everyone of course, but I can understand the initial gut reaction if you see something about how men are still sexists and the examples are very far from your own experience, then it is easy to dismiss it quickly as "not my problem". Depending on personal maturity and experience. And it doesn't help to just say "just educate yourself", because as we have seen women saying in many of these kinds of threads, they often encounter men who clearly have no clue they are doing anything wrong. We can't know our own blind spots. Unknown unknowns are hard to track, obviously. Sometimes someone need to tell you straight to your face about something concrete you are doing for it to land.
Problem is, when women do share their experiences with what I for lack of a better term can call "milder sexism", experiences that aren't outright assault or being called a whore, then they sadly very often gets completely dismissed as overreacting, complaining about stupid things or worse. Maybe men need to be better at sharing personal learning experiences for it to be better recognized and not immediately dismissed.
I am not in the tech industry, at least not for a career. And I haven’t seen anything like this in my chosen career field (winemaking). But it is something I am going to be on the look out for even more after watching that video.
I welcome feedback from both men and women on how I can be a positive change, even when it isn’t something I really see in my industry.
It is really hard to see when you’re not the one it’s happening to.
What helped me a lot is in my later 20s when I finally had the social skills to see the hierarchy within groups of men, I then noticed that in that hierarchy, most women are at the bottom.
Something I now see all the time: theres a special high risk feature/project and only one or two people on the team can work on it. On paper, all skills are equal, so the manager just gets to pick. They pick two guy devs because those two seem to have skills more related to the special project. If this happens once, its not a big deal for the woman, but consider that the woman may never be selected for such projects because shes low on the social hierarchy because she doesn’t understand male culture enough to move up on that hierarchy, and also you get relevant experience by actually doing the special project.
Then, if you, a man, speak up about it, you get iced out and now you’re low on the hierarchy just like she is. This is what they call the patriarchy.
I've had to train two women who were hired above me in title, not just on procedures but on how to become better at the job, and I continue to provide guidance. They're both still above me in title and have been selected for more career-advancing roles than me based on job title. The executives above me are also women, including the very top. Is this the matriarchy? I don't think so, and I don't think my situation has anything to do with gender. I understand that I can't generalize my experience to society as whole. Stuff like this happens. When it happens to men, it's just business. When it happens to women, should we assume that it is the result of systematic oppression?
Main Point: Individual experiences are valid, but they shouldn't be overgeneralized.
Yes, because it usually is. Theres all kinds of statistics to back it up. In fact, diversity hiring exists because of the systematic oppression that exists.
People, not just men, all people routinely assume that women/minorities do not deserve to be where they’re at. When I train men, I don’t assume they were diversity hires, or nepotism hires, or here just because they’re men, I don’t assume that some more deserving woman didn’t get the job because this man was here and took her spot just because he’s a man. People assume that of women. The purposeful inclusion of women and minorities in the workplace is used against them.
I'm not saying there are zero issues in society in this respect, just that in general, statistics or scientifically collected qualitative assessments are good, but anecdotes are to be taken with a grain of salt. There can be a lot of reasons for differences in gender ratios in jobs. There are fewer men teaching or nursing. Nursing is a high paying job, so it's not just men taking larger shares of high paying jobs. Some differences may be cultural, and that might be ok or not ok, depending on how society feels about that at large. Some "cultural issues" can be unfairly exclusionary while others could just be where people are at as far as roles and mindsets.
So, I disagree that we can assume that anecdotes are evidence of oppression. However, I'm not trying to say we shouldn't look to identify and address potential issues. I'm saying that some of the discourse is out of control and has a lot of it driven by reactions to individual events, rather than the data that you brought up. We can use some anecdotes to drum up attention to a matter, but as discussions move towards what to do about it, we should learn more and more on carefully collected data.
Data isn’t perfect, though. While I agree that anecdotes should be looked at cautiously, repeated anecdotes with a lot in common should be looked into more (as they may reveal something not being picked up by current data collection).
I feel like this isn't a good statement because it questions the value of data without acknowledging its usefulness. It also implies that I said that we should only care about data, which I did not. Of course data isn't perfect. It's not an either-or. You can't really be missing either. I would like to say that repeated anecdotes shouldn't be compared to scientific data collection because of the way human brains and culture work.
The typical way of things would be anecdotes that lead to people thinking about collecting data, which leads to collecting qualitative data, which leads to collecting quantitative data. These steps are additive and getting quantitative data doesn't necessarily invalidate everything that came before it, although it can disprove some assumptions. Once you get a number from the quantitative data, you can't just point to a number and say that this is the final answer. Something like an average ratio is also not fully representative of things, as I've pointed out already.
Like, we can suggest things without invalidating the other thing. Just because I'm suggesting that the anecdotes are overgeneralized and expanded on another comment's mention of data doesn't mean I think that data is everything and anecdotes are worthless. Maybe this is a problem with the discourse in general. If you're not just 100% in support for one single thing, people think you must be against it. "We've seen a lot of X, so how about some Y?" "Why do you hate X?" "WTF, I don't?"
The thing that I've learned when talking to minorities, is that it's always about being a minority. It doesn't have to make sense to you, not a minority, you just have to accept it, listen to what they say, and move on. This is because you can't experience what they're experiencing.
I used to try and fight it, try and bring logic to it, but there is none, they have their experiences, which they interpret, and you're not allow to tell them what they are and are not experiencing. You can only tell them what you experience, which, isn't what they're experiencing.
Imagine you're sitting in a cave, strapped to a wall, and the only thing you can see is the shadows of what's going on behind you. You're able to have a conversation with someone not strapped to the wall who can see the whole thing, and they're telling you how it is, but what they're saying doesn't make sense from what you've interpreted the shadows to be. Do you believe them? The people who can actually see?
Well, I am a racial minority, just not the kind that anyone cares about. But, everyone has their own experiences. I find it counterproductive to think of people as minority and non-minority.
The "they" you're talking about here are not special in having access to knowledge and experiences others haven't seen. Even if there are certain trends, in the same way that most people aren't the average height, generalizations about majorities or minorities can't be applied at the individual level. We never know what others have gone through. We all should look to understand others and be careful about overly broad statements for this reason.
Plato raises an interesting question though. Why should anyone believe anyone else about the parts of life they haven't seen? Well, it's a hard problem, and not exactly a solved one. We do have some technologies that can help us, like science, which is what I'm advocating for. I actually think it's not the best analogy for the situation. The truth is it's not like some are enlightened to the situation and some are not, but that we're all seeing only partially-overlapping slices of the world. I'll never fully understand the slice of your world that doesn't overlap with mine and vice-versa. Since I feel like my slice, especially the unique parts, has value, then with empathy I feel like so does yours.
Are you suggesting women aren’t really experiencing the oppression they’re telling you about because they’re biased by… being women?
Hmm... I've reached my 3 reply limit, but since you asked me a direct question, I don't want to dodge it, so I'm just going to quote my previous comment and hope that's clear enough.
Edit: I realized that this response could also be considered dodging the question so to directly answer your question, no, and frankly I'm a bit offended by your interpretation of my comments.
I don’t know what 3 reply limit means but it sounded like you were suggesting that your experience of sexism against women is as legitimate as a woman who actually experiences sexism, which is impossible.
Thinking that you know how sexism against women looks and works more than a woman who actually experiences it is the issue that women are having. You do not experience sexism against women. When interacting with that topic, you’re expected to just accept what they are telling you as truth, and support them.
You’re making this harder on yourself trying to argue against an expert, you’ll always lose when you try to tell someone that what they experience isn’t what they think it is. Thats called gaslighting, every woman knows what it looks like, and it makes you look very silly.
It’s easier just to swallow your pride and accept what they tell you about what they experience. I know thats really hard to do, but it gets easier as you practice.
It definitely is. That’s why I try to actively seek out anecdotes of this sort of thing, such as the video that caused all this drama and the things you have seen.
I would say I am quite clueless in social situations. Not sure if it’s my AuDHD or just my personality. But noticing these sort of things have been difficult when they are against me let alone against someone else. But my hope is that knowing how these things tend to play out will help me see it when it does happen.
I do have to say that the wine industry seems to be better off than tech based on the stories I have heard. At my current winery, 3 of 5 of the winemakers are female. 3 of 4 of the seasonal hires are female (I am the one male). The full time staff skews slightly male but the distribution still makes sense given random population sampling. One previous winery I worked at was almost exclusively female. I wouldn’t dream of saying there are no problems in this industry, but we do seem a bit better off than tech.
I also have this problem!
But I want friends, I want to be fair, and I want to be liked by people, so this is what drives me. I actually spend a good amount of my brain power to this end. Sometimes I imagine what I could accomplish if I just ignored it all, but, what sort of life would that be.
I think the video is a very good thought provoking (click bait or rage bit for some from what I read on the comment section) piece. Congrats to Jo Franchetti for putting out there something to think on and hopefully as she finished on the video, fix! I've been working in TEC for most of my life (working / student / kid) and the coders have been in my experience the biggest PITA, insufferable group within TEC. They have issues! No surprise on what she said of that group. The bigger surprise are the others who aren't coders; the other men from what I gather. I wish I had a fix for others; truly am a work-in-progress for myself. However, one thing that I think is not getting a lot of attention is her remarks on premenopausal. I think, it is mostly because most people are not at that age. Really interesting that she decided to go there within the context of work / career. I learned of it from my own personal life but not within the context of work. Within the job, I have so many things to think about but I don't think I've ever had a discussion or participated in a discussion on premenopausal impacts. Thoughts?
Man, just shut up and listen. Stop getting so fucking defensive. Accept that this is a person's experience and try to be empathetic; many women are distrustful of men because they've had bad experiences and that's ok, it's not about you.
Pitbulls are wonderful dogs, they're sweet and gentle, great with kids. My dog is a Pitbull and he's been with me for over 11 years now, but I can understand why someone might be cautious around him. I'm still cautious around other Pitbulls, even though I trust my dog fully with myself, my wife and my young children. But I don't get all angry and defensive when people might be scared of my dog just because he is what he is. It's not his fault, but I can absolutely understand why one would be mistrustful of him.
So calm the fuck down. Stop being defensive and stop self-flagellation. Boo fucking hoo your feelings got hurt because someone who doesn't know you might distrust you. It's warranted, because most women have these bad experiences and if you'd just talk to them and treat them like fellow humans and not objects you want to stick your dick in, maybe you'd be more empathetic.
Signed: White Straight Man
Who is this targeted at?