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I don't understand the appeal of referring to Men™ when you mean Shitty Men™, and I'd like to understand
It's something I've wondered about for a while, but I wasn't sure how to have a constructive conversation about it. For clarity's sake, I am talking about the common social-media post of a woman talking about a terrible experience with a particular man or group of men and framing it around "Men are shitty". To be clear, I understand that is said in specific context and rarely does the person mean it literally. My question is about the appeal in the first place. As a personal example, I've been hurt by many women, but the idea of ever saying "Women are shitty." makes me feel mega-ick. So I'm genuinely curious to understand why some people find that kind of language cathartic or useful in some way?
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I recently moved from Florida to Sweden, and I frequently talk about how comfortable I am walking around here, even during the summer in a short dress. I couldn't do that in Florida because men would say disgusting things to me.
I say "men" not because it's all men, but because it's only men. I don't say shitty men because, well, that seems a given. But also because as far as I can tell it's not culturally abnormal. It's happened in front of other men and none of them have ever said anything about it, either to the guy being gross or to me as a comfort. My guy friends might be the outliers in thinking that it's wrong. I haven't done a survey. All I know is that for years I couldn't enjoy a walk through my own neighborhood on a sunny summer day, and the people stopping me were all men.
It's a culmination of feminist rage from our collective experience of growing up in a patriarchal society and having no other means to express that anger. When I was working on an extremely toxic project that was dominated by toxic men, I came out of my office after a particularly bad meeting ranting about Men™ to my husband in an absolute fervor.
Maybe it wasn't the most couth way to express my emotions and he was an unfortunate ear for my rant, but I had simply had it. It was a release of months of being ignored, continually attempting to improve a bad work situation, and consistently being stonewalled by several men. Now imagine dealing with this everyday and feeling an inability to accomplish anything purely because of how you are treated differently because of your gender. Add in being screamed at by a male colleague and having other male colleagues take his side, constantly being ignored or talked over, dealing with persistent disrespect and purposefully trashing your work, and so much more; you get the ingredients for why someone such as myself would utter such a thing. To preface, the majority of my friends are male and I would never think of them under that umbrella. Nor would I couple the great male colleagues I've had the pleasure to work under that nominer as well.
What currates into saying Men™ versus Shitty Men™ is these scenarios that bottle up into such a reactive feel like routine things in our lives as women. It starts as we enter puberty and garner unwanted attention from men despite being underage, and just learning it's routine and never stops. Some of us deal with persistent bad relationships over and over again, too often abusive or manipulative in nature. I dated a couple of men before I met my husband, and it's so sad to realize he was the first to actually treat me decently. So many women have elected to leave the dating scene all together because of repeated offenses from men. Think coercion to meet at their place on a first date versus a public space or attempting sexual acts before attaining consent. Then add in the whole attack on women's reproductive rights often pushed by male law makers; it’s too much in addition to the strains of life itself that we all deal with.
It's the frustration of feeling like this behavior is the default by so many men and yet having to reiterate Not All Men™ otherwise you will be called a misandrist or a man hating feminist. But when it's so persistent and in every walk of life as an expected experience for the majority of women, it's easy to feel like it is Too Many Men™. I completely get your stance and the oddness of the double standard in this language, but I hope I explained why we defer to saying it as Men™.
Thank you for sharing your feelings, I think it helped me clarify my confusion a bit. I've been focusing too much on the inciting incident of the anger/venting, where there are particular shitty men. When it comes up, its a lot more of a "Fuck me, this shit again", not a "Fuck me, Tim is a real asshole". Feel free to clarify if I am way off with my reading.
That's exactly it! In the incident I shared above, I could certainly say "Bob is an asshole because of how he treated me!" But in reality, Bob is another man in a long chain of other men who I've had a frustrating experience with. Bob's supervisor, Eric, also fails to correct the power/respect dynamic in this situation. Other team members like Tim, Joe, Ashish, and John also see this behavior go unchecked nor calls it out when it arises. When that list becomes in excess of dozens of men and the scale tips into more unsavory interactions versus normal, these blanket statements arise.
They are a generalization and there's admittedly some toxicity that comes from that, but it's a defense reaction I feel like. While domestic violence exists in all genders, there's one that holds the capability to seriously hurt or kill me. I don't assume every toxic man I deal with would escalate things to that point, but damn are the statistics for violence and other reprehensible acts from men towards women are appalling. When we speak of these experiences with men as a generalization, it's a compounding of all those fears, frustrations, anger, apathy, hopelessness, and other negative emotions.
I think there are two similar phenomena that many group together here that I'd like to tease out from each other.
There's one element that is largely just venting. This is your "men are trash" type stuff. I think this stuff is fine as venting in certain (mostly private) contexts but not good for public discourse for a number of reasons, many of which are specifically in the context of trans issues (which are relevant to me, as I'm trans). In general I think this is often intended to just be cathartic and not a big feminist gesture, but I do think it's become too pervasive online even in that context. Due to being trans I don't go for this type of thing as much myself, so I can't really answer more specifically why people find it cathartic personally. Hopefully others here will do so.
The other type of issue, which you may or may not be including here, is complaining about specific neagtive behaviors that are common among men in our patriarchal society. For instance, discussing how men in heterosexual relationships tend not to take on an equal share of household tasks. This is the sort of thing where women will often get annoyed at the #NotAllMen responses. Because, yeah, okay, not all men do whatever shitty thing they're talking about. There are extremely few universals that would actually apply to all men, especially once you factor in trans people. But in these conversations the topic is almost always an issue that has a gendered element in our society, and the existence of men who aren't taking part in that shitty behavior doesn't negate the existence of a gendered problem. If a given man doesn't do whatever shitty thing, great, but chiming in the conversation to remind everyone that actually some men don't do shitty thing is taking a conversation about a wider issue and making it about his feelings. A more appropriate response is to either participate in the discussion from the perspective of someone who would like to learn more about how to influence other men in your life to behave better, or to simply not engage and let people discuss the problem without butting in to make sure everyone knows you aren't part of it.
I don't actually think this second type is what you're asking about here, but I included it in my comment because it's often described in the same terms as your title here and thus I suspect it would inevitably have come up in discussion here. While I don't think you did this, there are a lot of men who equate these two types of issue as being the same thing, so I think it's useful to very explicitly talk about how they're different.
The entire situation is a sad one, I think. This meta-topic about the subject is interesting, because almost anywhere else it would be relevant to say this is a place it absolutely wouldn’t be right to derail the conversation with, and quite frankly people would be entirely justified in thinking me shitty if I interrupted a thread about real, serious, often life and death issues to say my feelings are a little stung. But they are, nonetheless, after a thousand tiny cuts.
I’m not remotely trying to say that’s the core issue at hand, here - it pales to insignificance compared to actual day to day gender inequality - but that cumulative little tarnish is difficult sometimes, precisely because even mentioning it feels like whining. I’m immensely, blindingly angry that so many men participate in systems and behaviours and mindsets that are harmful. And I’m selfishly upset that their doing so has made “man” - something I am, a group I never chose to be a part of but one that anyone who sees me includes me in - something that’s so often said in the context of “ugh, men”. I’m pretty sure the “ugh” wasn’t aimed at me, I do everything in my power not to be one of the shitty ones, and I know that in the scheme of things my minor despondency isn’t the real issue. But it still hurts, knowing that’s how the group I’m part of is seen, when nobody asked if I even wanted to be a member in the first place.
If it helps, very few people assume you're trash for your identity as a man. I know a very few "man hating" folks, it isn't common. Just because people are frustrated doesn't mean that every time a woman sees a man she's immediately thinking "how disgusting of a person."
In the same way that no matter how much white supremacy there is, every black person doesn't look at me and hate me for what other white people do or what the system has done. I'll earn an eye roll and (hopefully) a call-in for saying something stupid and minor. But that's probably it unless I really step in it.
What you're experiencing seems really similar to the idea of white guilt/shame and I'm wondering if there's an equivalent term for men? I think it as stage to get over in our growth as we understand our majoritized identities, personally.
If it's a problem that stretches across most of a gender, then the thing that critical theory, particularly with regard to feminism, would say that it is extra wrong to blame men in general because their immaturity/executive dysfunction/what have you is a result of the same force victimizing women in that regard, and it benefits absolutely no one to make it a general men vs women issue. In fact, I'd argue that blaming men in general is more hurtful to feminist causes. It seems odd to say that women have more of a right to be annoyed by "#NotAllMen" than men have to be bothered by comments disparaging their whole gender.
I did mean this in a venting context, but I do appreciate the distinction. I hadn't considered it the context of Male privilege, where I can definitely see all the points your making. My main curiosity is about the why "Men are Trash" over "Timmy and his Bois are trash", which is a much less deep question. I've just been vaguely wondering about for a while.
I'm going to lock this—the responses so far have generally been fine, but the question's basically been answered, and I don't think letting it go on for a long time is going to end up being productive. (I also don't think it's a particularly appropriate type of topic for ~life.women overall)
Because there's a difference between "things that shitty men do", and "shitty things that men do". When you're part of the group that society and culture has tended to cater to, sometimes you do ignorant things without intending to or even realising. So most of the time I listen to that kind of venting and it doesn't apply to me cos I don't do that thing, in which case no reason to take it personally. But some of the time they are describing something I have done thoughtlessly and I gain some insight into how my actions come across to other people, so it's important that I was hearing the complaint as something that could potentially be about me. That step of considering "does this apply to me" is important.
If the whole thing was explicitly directed only at "shitty men", well I don't consider myself a shitty man so I wouldn't listen and wouldn't have gotten the insight.
I'm always reminded of a poll where men were asked if they'd ever sexually assaulted a woman and it was very heavily answered No.
But when men were asked if they'd done various specific acts - continued having sex after a woman said to stop, continued sex after a woman passed out, had sex with a woman who was clearly heavily intoxicated, etc. Many more said yes.
No one wants to think they're shitty, or sexist, (or racist for that matter), or, well, sexually assaulted someone, until it's laid out what that entails.
Venting about Men™ is venting specifically about bad behavior that has been historically and systematically done by men towards women, in which women are victimized primarily due to being women. Common examples include:
People of any gender can be assholes in lots of different ways. When it's a way that aligns with historical and systemic oppression of a marginalized group then it's more than just being an asshole, it's perpetuating oppression and the marginalized group has a right to call out the oppressive group as such.
I have said "men" the way I complain about "these kids" when students are being particularly disruptive. No one ever feels the need to be like "aw come on, some students are fine!" because they seem to understand that I'm talking out of frustration and this venting or actually talking about a subset of particularly frustrating students who keep making bad decisions or getting into fights or drawing penises on the wall. Whatever it is.
I am not even writing off those students. They're complex individuals going through a lot, lacking impulse control and the cultural /social understanding that fights as an adult at a university will get you arrested, not just talked to. They're not shitty students. They are usually students doing shitty things in the moment.
So I don't say shitty men, because sometimes I'm frustrated at my colleague who I otherwise respect, or my partner who I love. And those folks aren't shitty, they're doing a shitty or just frustrating thing that is usually a particularly gendered thing in our society.
If I'm yelling about men, I'm generally venting or engaging in some cathartic convo with women, non-binary folks, queer/trans folks and others particularly critical of gendered behavior and roles (including some cishet men too). If I'm having a thoughtful discussion I'll be more specific in my thoughts.
But it is exhausting to have to talk about my experiences with sexism in a way that makes some men comfortable, when I've spent all day adding emojis and exclamation points to my emails so other men don't tell me I was bitchy.
I’m not part of that group you are talking about, but I don’t have any particular reason why it wouldn’t be generalization. People know any large group is going to have good ones and bad ones, and so they leave it up to context to figure out there is a more specific group being discussed. Heck, we’re doing that same thing right now.
Granted I wouldn’t be surprised if some actually thought that most men were shitty men. They do tend to travel in groups.