this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
457 points (92.4% liked)
The Onion
4577 readers
1920 users here now
The Onion
A place to share and discuss stories from The Onion, Clickhole, and other satire.
Great Satire Writing:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
whenever i've felt like saying "not all men", it's in response to blanket statements about all men... and then usually includes a concession that indeed, a lot of men do and it's a problem, but that framing things as "all men" is problematic as it doesn't allow for improvement...
i mean um.... haha, yeah all men are dumb!!
The answer to "not all men" is indeed "enough men".
The issue isn't that it's 100% of men that do a thing. It's that it's enough you have to plan for it to happen every time. Ah in that case you may as well just assume it's all and be pleasantly surprised if you're wrong.
the exact same argument is used to justify racism...
misandry is no better than misogyny
I'm sorry, what even is this argument?? The commenter above you is saying that women have enough proven experience of men being shitty to have to prepare for it in every interaction. Even if they know that it's 'not all men' it's enough that they have to assume it could be any single one.
The only way this could be comparable to racism is if people had legitimate reasons to mistrust other races, which is not the case. Racism is the result of exaggerated stories and mistrust being created about a community with whom the racist generally has no connection.
Most of the time women being wary of men doesn't lead to misandry, it just leads to world-weariness and guardedness around men until we know we can trust them. But even if it did, misandry and misogyny are not equivalent. Misogyny is a prejudice which has been embedded in society for millennia and which has only begun to be deconstructed in the last century. Misandry is a response to this condition, but it is not structural, it's the position held by a handful of women exhausted by their shitty experiences with shitty men.
It's honestly a wonder that more women don't viscerally hate every man in existence, and men should be thankful that we continue to go out and put ourselves out there despite the plethora of bad and downright dangerous things we've experienced. Knowing that men can do awful things and preparing for that possibility is just a survival tactic for remaining in the world.
...sure, I guess? An argument can be repurposed to try and make a lot of different points. Here's the thing though...
A logical argument is considered valid if its conclusion follows necessarily from its premises, meaning that if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. However, an argument can be valid but not necessarily true (like the argument you're suggesting). This is because validity only concerns the form of the argument, not the truth of the premises or the conclusion.
Here are some examples of valid but not necessarily true arguments:
Modus ponens: If it's raining, then the streets will be wet. It is raining. Therefore, the streets will be wet. This argument is valid because it follows the form of a valid argument, but it may not be true if the streets are not wet for some other reason.
Modus tollens: If it is not raining, then the streets will not be wet. The streets are not wet. Therefore, it is not raining. This argument is valid because it follows the form of a valid argument, but it may not be true if the streets are not wet for some other reason.
Hypothetical syllogism: If it is raining, then the streets will be wet. If the streets are wet, then the roads are slippery. Therefore, if it is raining, then the roads are slippery. This argument is valid because it follows the form of a valid argument, but it may not be true if the roads are not slippery for some other reason.
In each of these examples, the argument is valid because it follows a valid logical form, but it may not be true because the premises or conclusion may not be true.
Now think about the "enough men" argument. It's not translatable to misogyny and racism because the context (the premises) is vastly different for people who don't identify as men, and for people who are not white, straight, or really any other centered group (these things vary a lot depending on the specific culture you're looking at and the intersectional dynamics that exist). Not enough women are violent towards men (though this does happen, and it is also bad) for men to have a realistic need to protect themselves in as many interactions.
Using the argument out of specific context, without true premises, nearly guarantees that the argument will no longer be true, while still being logically valid.
It's not misandry to be wary around men. Rape culture is a thing. It is not equivalent to racism.
It is misandry to generalize and discriminate against men because "all men are dangerous scumbags" or something.
Besides, it doesn't help anyone, really, and fosters extra anxieties and aggression.
We absolutely need cultural shift that would help everyone (both women and men) to expose rapists and any sort of harassment. We need to eliminate any cultural acceptability of those actions that remain.
We do not need to propagate hate based on gender/sex.
Absolute majority of men are perfectly normal human beings, like absolute majority of black people aren't criminals, or absolute majority of gays are not child molesters or whatever the stereotypes were. Besides, all of those traits are immutable.
It's a good thing literally no one actually thinks that all men are dangerous scumbags
You'd be surprised.
People might say that on the internet, but how many of those people have male SOs, or dads, or brothers? Could they be engaging in hyperbole?
Some women go as far as to reject any heterosexual relationships despite being attracted to men for precisely this reason, and they often come from bad families, so relationship with men in the family is also negative.
Sure, most women are less radical, but even for them this constant hyperbole often sends anxiety levels to the moon, makes them unhealthily cautious, obsessed, in some cases paranoid.
Many women who have never been abused or threatened (at least from what they say) in any serious way can develop fear and loathing of men simply by leaning into this narrative.
And this seriously messes with very real relationships.
And it's not a case of "women stupid", no. Men can and do absolutely fall for the similar traps, growing stereotypes about women and leaning into them. It's a universal human trait, and the one we have to address.
i didn't say misandry is equivalent to racism, i said the exact same argument is used to justify racism.
but there's definitely a lot of overlap between prejudice based upon sex/gender vs prejudice based upon perceived race.
and rape culture isn't really a thing, it's not a culture... it's a problem but that's the wrong word.
there's like, chinese culture and such... there's no, like, People of the Rape... misogyny is an aspect of many cultures, but it's not the culture itself and typically rape is extremely prohibited... and had the death penalty in most cultures throughout history...
misandry is an understandable response but, ultimately it's not leading towards any solution...
People use arguments to justify everything. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong. This is a stupid point.
If you can't be bothered to so much as type "what is rape culture" into google, I'm done talking to you
let me just google that real quick:
oh wow! i had noooo idea what you meant by that until i googled using a whole sentence instead of keywords like an idiot... wow, never heard that term before you used...
yeah i know what is meant by it, and it's a stupid term...
car culture is a culture around cars,
chinese culture is a culture around a people...
there is no culture around raping...
in most cultures, rape is seen as pretty bad.
"rape culture" is a misnomer, it's a stupid term. It is an invalid term no matter how many websites define it.
and this may be the dumbest string of words i've ever seen put together.
my point isn't that they are both arguments, it's that it's the EXACT SAME argument, only substituting gender for race... and as such, equally as wrong.
but, i do agree that it's pointless trying to talk to someone like you
Yes, literally everyone agrees that rape is bad. The problem is that in our culture, we have a bad habit of rationalizing what we do as not really rape. How many times have you heard someone ask what a woman was wearing, or why she was walking home at night instead of driving, or why she was alone at a bar, or why she didn't fight back, or why she didn't report sexual violence as soon as it happened? Why does nearly every woman have at least one experience with sexual violence? Why did we elect a guy who openly admitted to sexual assault as president? It's almost like we have a culture around enabling and forgiving rape, in large part by rationalizing it as "not really" rape. I wonder if there's a word for a culture that enables sexual violence.
never
never
never, this is 2024 and all your points are from 1970...
also not true
most of us didn't elect him, most of the country was outraged by this, and although he has sexually assaulted women for real, the way he said it was framed as joking... and a lot of people accepted it as just a joke (it turned out he was actually bragging...)
except it's not. And even if all your points weren't insane distortions, it's still not a culture around rape, it has been a terrible aspect of our culture in the past, but we've improved drastically, and continue to improve.
trying to say it's "rape culture" is intellectually lazy and actually destructive in that it hamstrings any attempt at reasonable discussion... so essentially, you're enabling rape by trying to make it about "all men" and redefining all culture as "rape culture"...
YOU HAVE JUST DESCRIBED RAPE CULTURE.
writing in all capital letters does not make a coherent argument.
in fact, the exact opposite.
btw, he was joking that as a celebrity, all women are automatically consenting to his gropes... not that as a celebrity he can sexually assault women....
you have to be famous to grope someone
I DID NOT JUST DESCRIBE RAPE CULTURE YOU MORON
Lemme try again. The same argument is not used (at least, not legitimately) to justify racism, because you do not have to actively take precautions to defend yourself from people of other races.
once you've screamed at me in all caps and called me names, nah... i'm done talking to you
But why have people I know given me a ton of flak for the actions of men that I've never met nor had the opportunity to try to correct the actions of, merely for having a penis? Like, sorry for not being a clairvoyant and not stopping something from happening to you before I met you.
Do people give you a ton of flak, or do they complain about things they've experienced exclusively at the hands of men and you're getting defensive about it?
If it were just venting to me, I wouldn't say I was getting flak. Its the venting but also the finger pointing, acting like I was there and egging it on, when I wasn't around it at all.
Maybe because you defend them. Or they see you not being a proactive force. It's not enough to stand by and wait for something horrendous to happen to try to stop. You need to be part of the culture of change which means changing how you joke and talk about things to actively pursuing to change even bad and minor habits of those you socialize with.
Anything less is condoning.
That’s not how assumptions work though. You might be “pleasantly surprised”, then the guy realizes “wow, I super hated being treated like that just for being male” and wisely stays the fuck away.
Ask any woman, they'll let you know that some guys take that "wow, I super hated being treated like that" and don't wisely stay the fuck away. Someone who cannot empathize with the caution women have to show around strangers is probably not the best partner anyway.
“Caution” alone is fine, it’s cute you think that’s the extent of what gets justified by that line of thinking.
I think when a man can't just listen to a woman (or anyone) say their bit without jamming in caveats, it's indicative of something.
Especially if someone is venting, do not expect everything they say to be carefully balanced and measured. These people are not secretly plotting to build a completely female utopia and blast all the men into space, they're just having some feelings like the rest of us. Let them have their feelings.
I think the general mentality is that when a person makes broad, generalized statements about a group while members of that group, who have committed no offense themselves, are part of the audience for that statement, it's tough to not feel that as a personal attack for something they were born as and have no control over.
Don't get me wrong, the "#notallmen" gets overused (e.g. if a woman is talking about violence carried out against women by men, that is not a generalization of all men, that's just pointing at specifically the men that are violent toward women, and saying #notallmen is just derailing the conversation).
But having very reasonable feelings and bad experiences doesn't grant carte blanche to be shitty toward people who have committed no offense. If you're doing it in a close group of other women, then fine, whatever. But doing it in an audience with men (who have committed no offense) tells those men they have no place here, that they belong to the out group. We're not talking about violent men, or misogynistic men, we're talking about men, of which you are a part.
What I think other people have touched on is that in no other circumstance is it okay to generalize a group for things they were born as and can't change (in humans, anyway), except apparently men. And you may call it just letting people have their feelings, but letting that idea go leads to things like the Duluth Model, assuming any violence between a man and women must be the man's fault, and prevents men from coming forward about their own instances of domestic violence against them.
And don't think I don't understand the argument! Pit bulls can be some of the most loving, caring dogs, but they can also be monsters that could end you in seconds. Is it reasonable to by wary of a pit bull you don't know well? Absolutely! Is it a well-trained pit bull's fault that it is physically capable if mass murder? No, of course not, it can't help what it was born as. It just wants loves. So is it reasonable to say pit bulls are scary? Yes. Is it reasonable to say pit bulls are awful, vicious monsters? No. But the difference is, even if you do, the good pit bull doesn't understand that you are calling it a monster. Men do.
Madness! How dare you speak logically with a well thought out response! All men are BAD! They're BAD! If you are defending men, you are clearly a piece of shit. Men must be ashamed of themselves! Women can do NO wrong, and they are perfect in every single way! We hate men! /s
Fun fact: I was in an abusive relationship with a woman from 2005 to 2008. She hit me, bit me, verbally abused me, would lie to me about doing things behind my back, just to upset me, and even hit me with her car when pulling out of my driveway. To this day, I'm told, "You were a guy. You could take it. Men can't be abused by woman."
That shit fucked me up and I'm still recovering from it to this day. So when I see generalized BULLSHIT statements about how all men are bad and abusive and that they can't be abused because they're men, it invalidates my traumas and deep down it makes me feel like I should be ashamed of myself for even thinking that what I went through was abuse, and that it was my fault. And then, when i take a fucking stand about it, I just get dogpiled on. Its top tier fucking gaslighting and I'm sick of it.
AS A RESULT:
I'm afraid to set healthy boundaries
I'm too afraid to say "no"
I've developed severe anxiety and have to get myself under control in my current relationship
I'm constantly fighting myself on if I'm even worth being with
I've developed HORRIBLE panic attacks if I get too emotional
I struggle to maintain eye contact
I take a lot of stupid shit way too personally, even though I know better.
Dude, I'm so sorry you went through all that, and that people you told weren't supportive. It's frustrating that domestic abuse support and discussion is so specifically gendered. I understand that the majority of domestic abuse issues have female victims, but that's no reason to dismiss the needs and experiences of male victims (or enby, or whatever).
I appreciate that. But I only brought it up because this blanket accusation culture we have against men is absolutely 100% bullshit.
The majority isn't as huge as most people assume. It's between 3/4 and 2/3 women as abuse victims, meaning 1/4 to a 1/3 are men. And that's only reported cases, so there's an argument that due to policing issues and social factors it could be more equal https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/domesticabusevictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2023#sex
Yeah, I very deliberately left out any modifier for "majority," as it is exceptionally difficult to quantify the others (for lack of reporting and other social reasons).
It's like the people who claim that sexual harassment/assault went up after programs were put in place, when obviously it's that reporting went up. If we can get better services and reduce the social stigma around domestic abuse against males, it will be interesting to see how those numbers change.
Especially considering that the group that experiences the most physical violence, stalking, and rape by intimate partners is lesbians (with the exclusion of bisexual women, where the statistics get super muddy because they don't do much to specify where the abuse is coming from) at 43.8% (having experienced it). Gay men have the least with 26%, and hetero men following with 29%, and hetero women sitting solidly in the middle at 35%.
I don't know what it is about bisexual people, but instead of getting an average of their same-sex and hetero counterparts, they jump up to 35% for bisexual men and 61% (!!!) For bisexual women. People, treat your bisexual partners better!
So basically, the numbers don't suggest women are the nearly exclusive victims of partner violence that seem to be projected, and men are not even remotely the exclusive perpetrators for partner violence.
Edit: Forgot to include my sources. Also, I was a Sexual Assault Victim's Advocate in the military, if that has any bearing.
Totally, I was just trying to add to your point. Even with the conservative 25% of victims are men, it still doesn't justify how heavily domestic violence is gendered in wider culture
Oh, I totally got that, we're on the same page.
I understand this, but I also think it's not reasonable to expect people to always stay silent when someone's venting/feelings leads them to make broad, declarative statements about the badness/problems of a large heterogenous group.
Like, I know I have a lot of personal baggage from growing up in a household where my accomplishments were overlooked and every problem with myself or my actions magnified. The longest streak of doing well could be brought down with a single minor screw up. I know I'm far more sensitive to this sort of shit than the average person.
That said, there is a difference between all and most, or all and enough that it's a problem. I don't think it's wrong to insist that difference is important, or at the very least that the difference exists. Insisting upon that distinction does not need to be a dismissal of the very real issues, it can simply be an insistance that the distinction exists.
Just as we should allow people to have their feelings that x group is bad, shouldn't we also have some room to allow people to feel something when they've been lumped in with an amorphous blob of "badness" that they don't actually belong to?
If you want to argue that "the bad feelings men experience by being lumped in with the bad elements of men are less important than the danger to women from those bad elements" then I'd agree with you fucking 100%. Actual danger trumps feelings, no fucking questions asked.
My issue is that usually the argument is instead that "If your feelings are hurt because someone said all men are abusive, that means that you must be an abusive man upset that you were called out", "see, you saying not all men just means that I was right", or just mocking the true statement of "not all men".
Again, the distinction is important. This post is the first time I have ever seen someone suggest that the response to "not all men" is "enough men". Fucking hell I'm behind that response all the way. I'm not about doubling down on insisting all men are shit.
Venting to your best friend or friend group is not the same as venting in a public forum. Or even to your male partner. Understanding the issue so that it can be solved in a systematic way is our default reaction, not "oh she just wants to vent let's hug her". We don't even have the same emotional response to that, source as of yet unknown. Going out on a limb: Probably not all nature, probably not all nurture.
That said, the proper answer still isn't "not all men" simply because it doesn't have the proper impact. "I don't understand why you're angry at me" is a much better way to stop an "all men" rant mid-sentence because now you're not opening an abstract discussion about the nature of the universe but telling her about the direct emotional turmoil and therefore labour she's causing, leading her to re-evaluate the relative importance of both. YMMV when it comes to online but in-person I can definitely recommend it.
Sexism is bad.
Hyperbole is a reasonable conversational flourish. Not every statement has to be overqualified and watered down into lukewarm correctness
Conversely, in this day and age speaking hyperbolically and without qualifiers opens a person up to being shouted down for being bigoted.
Not sure why this particular topic gets a pass.
When such hyperbole becomes commonplace, some people start actually believing that.
And then all sorts of problems begin to arise
This is a good take. Shitheads exist, but making a statement like that is just someone trying to start a fire. I mean, haha yeah, all men are bad!
I bet you win every argument once you're taking a shower.
That's why I only argue while showering!