Oh, good, I see we’re already starting another round of ‘men only become alt-right misogynists because feminists on the internet are such bitches’. Right on fucking schedule.
More coherent thoughts: we have had this discussion a million times and the things that always come out of it are:
- It’s entirely normal for people to need a soft intro to allyship, because literally nobody is attracted to a cause by being yelled at and told they’re evil
- The people most responsible for providing that soft intro are other allies, not the people who are being directly harmed.
- No amount of gentle 101-ing will work on people who are already primed to accept bigoted views and are mostly looking for an excuse to say them out loud.
- The amount of actual yelling and accusations of evil towards innocent neutral parties just asking questions that actually takes place is always about 1% of the amount people who are not innocent neutral parties claim it is.
- Nevertheless, it is also incumbent upon all of us, when we are in the position of supporting a group we’re not part of, to learn to de-centre ourselves and our feelings. People who are either not willing to do this or not capable of it are not, in general, persuadable targets.
-while many feminists love and support the men in their lives, they don’t revere masculinity, which disturbs a lot of guys
-this need a lot of guys have, to be respected as a superior rather than respected as an equal, and the violent revulsion they feel for women who won’t do that, is one of the things feminists are right to criticize
…all very good points.
also
people will often focus on the worst aspects of something that they have experienced. Even if it’s rare.
So if most of the people you’ve seen expressing viewpoint X are pretty reasonable, but one or two have said things that are totally unhinged and scary to you, it’s easy to get drawn into the assumption that those unhinged and scary beliefs are also common or even universal for people who espouse viewpoint X
(And in internet discourse it is very hard to know for sure just how common or how rare an extreme opinion actually IS, because the most unhinged and scary statements tend to get spread around in reblogs and screenshots probably more than they should be)
This happens on different sides of every conflict… but is especially noticeable when viewpoint X is something like “patriarchy is a problem” and the scary extreme belief is something like “everyone born with a penis is inherently evil” and the person hearing that is a guy who’s been so privileged up to now that he’s never even experienced being demonized for his physical traits before
(As someone who belongs to some marginalized groups but also some privileged groups, and has been lucky enough to get very little outright hatred for any of that…. I try to put myself in the “ally offering a soft intro to allyship” position as much as I can, to help take some of that stress off the people suffering most of the harm)