Oh good. I don’t follow this com, another comment tipped me off.
While I do enjoy a little bit of chaos and schadenfreude, it would be nice to block out user names. Call out the mistake, not the person.
Most people here are lovely, but it only takes one match to start a fire. Might as well address some bullshit in these comments since I’m gonna get trolled by incels anyway…
side note: I’m not a mod there.
The women’s com is trans and non-binary inclusive. Anyone who feels at home there (and is respectful) is welcome.
It’s not all bitching about men. Looking at the last twenty posts, one was about men and two were related to men. We talk about pads and health and essays and positivity memes and do fun activities on fridays.
I support men making their own support groups. Although the internet itself often feels like a menfolk support group(to me,) I’m sure there are plenty of things an easy to find, curated space, could offer men who want to be just a little more vulnerable, knowing they would be supported by the mods if any toxic women came in to devalue their opinions and experience.
I support men making their own support groups. Although the internet itself often feels like a menfolk support group(to me,) I’m sure there are plenty of things an easy to find, curated space, could offer men who want to be just a little more vulnerable, knowing they would be supported by the mods if any toxic women came in to devalue their opinions and experience.
They should. the issue with this is they get branded as hate-groups or for ‘losers’. more or less automatically irregalrdless of what kind of community they are.
the bigger issue is that generally people think men are evil by default, and women are good by default. and that’s not a cultural assumption most folks are willing to look past.
generally people think men are evil by default, and women are good by default
i think this is a misunderstanding of the dynamic
we see this play out pretty regularly with the “not all men” arguments and the like: men getting annoyed by women being careful, and taking “you could hurt me” behaviour as some kind of insult. the statement is true: not all men are evil to women, but any man could be evil to women and thus need to be treated as though it’s possible in order to protect themselves
So? Any women could be evil to men as well. Should we therefore insult them by claiming they ‘could’ hurt us every time we encounter one?
It is a stereotype. I get being cautious. There are many awful men around. But keeping your distance from all of them until they have proven their innocence is not really a way to live.
If women are straight up not interacting with you because they think you could hurt them you need to reassess what kind of vibes you’re giving off. There’s nothing wrong with keeping people of either gender at arms length until you’re sure they’re trustworthy. It’s not an insult, they just don’t know you. Women generally have a lot more to worry about in that regard because men are typically bigger and stronger than they are. As a man on the smaller end of the spectrum I deal with some of those worries myself. It’d be great if we could all just trust each other by default but that’s not the world we live in. People are allowed to just go around being psychos until they do something really bad, and you don’t want to be the victim when that happens.
“You could hurt me” is an insult. The amount of men who hurt women, is low. Its really fucking low. But for some reason, we all have to carry the water for that low number.
Its sexist. Its no different than if I said I didnt want to be alone with a woman because she might claim I raped her. How likely is that? Not very. And I say that as someone that it did happen to. The idea that men are an inherent risk, is sexist. And Im just sick of pretending its not.
I you cross the street from someone because they are black, we call that racist. But when its man, all of sudden the excuses come thick and fucking fast.
There are support groups for men out there that are not generally charectirized as toxic. Toxic folks may attack men for going to them, but I can tell you before I transitioned I used to go to one, and no one ever verbally attacked me for it.
the bigger issue is that generally people think men are evil by default, and women are good by default. and that’s not a cultural assumption most folks are willing to look past.
I consider myself a feminist and I vehemently disagree with that take, nor does it reflect in any way the commonly held views in the relevant communities.
Women and men are people. All people hold the capacity for good and evil within them. The real differences are 1) our respective socialization, and 2) the way we are perceived and treated by society based on our gender. That’s not an individual issue, but a systemic one.
I’ve been part of a few support groups for men that regularly received appreciation from women specifically because they were aimed at helping men in recognition of this fact, and thus didn’t revolve into inceldom and gender war nonsense.
A lot of male-only spaces descend into places to hate on women rather than proactively dealing with issues within our own community. It takes active moderation for these support groups to not become hate groups. If it stays focused on healthy self improvement (not hawking supplements and talking about a person being high or low “value”) and providing emotional support for men, it can avoid the “hate group” moniker.
The “loser” thing is actually a symptom of why we need spaces like we’re talking about. There will likely always be people out there who judge people for needing help and emotional support, especially men(thank you toxic masculinity), but the goal should be an overall less toxic society and greater acceptance that everyone needs help at some point.
Your “bigger issue” is not something I think I have experienced, I don’t think I’ve ever had someone assume I’m evil because I’m male. That sounds like an internal belief that you’re projecting on society, something that should be looked at in detail and questioned thoroughly in a therapeutic setting. Looking at other comments you’ve made on similar subjects, you seem to be someone who needs a place where your views can be safely challenged by reality, which is another way of saying we need better support groups for men like you, not just incel groups where you reinforce each other’s toxic beliefs.
I understand that this may come off as insulting, I just want you to know that that’s not my intent. I think you are lacking in self worth and that is leading you to project toxicity into the world. I don’t think you’re hopeless, mostly because I used to be on a similar course as you. I got therapy and learned to better love and value myself and I started seeing a lot more positivity in my interactions with people of all genders. The first step is wanting to change things.
The other reply is kinda accurate but I just wanted to give lived experience that the way I get treated is as if I’m more dangerous and more aggressive by default (where obviously a woman will get taken less seriously and be more in danger by default), but it still feels pretty bad to have people feel less safe around me when I have done literally nothing to cause it. I’m not blaming someone for saying they feel less safe around men, I would even agree, but that means the reality is many men who have done literally nothing feel the distrust and unease. The outright hatred I think is an online only thing, I’ve never heard anyone say anything similar irl.
Also I might say if you really want to help them to not discount their experiences, that’s how we ended up with people like Andrew tate. The hatred does exist but almost always by a very loud very small minority online. And I’m sure the hatred does exist irl, from people who had really bad experiences with men, or they’re just jerks. That can be reality, and when you get blamed by those women it’s painful. Women are just people, and there are good and bad women because there are good and bad (or maybe just hurt) people.
I think the “men evil”, “woman good” is just worded to strongly but is generally true (not actually true, but people considered it to be true).
Its more “men dangerous”, “men threatening” and not “evil”. A man in a women’s bathroom is a threat. A women in a mans bathroom is there because there was a line for the woman’s bathroom. The actual reason for those scenarios does not matter, the man will be seen as an invasion and a perpetrator. I have personally experienced examples of neutral situations as well (going to the woman’s bathroom as a man without negative reactions) but the general discourse about the topic is pretty clear.
I don’t really know if I agree with your comment or the one you’re responding to. But here are my two cents: having good friendships with guys is difficult.
In middle-school (I’m European but using the American terms idk why) I had a number of good male friends but come highschool they all got addicted to drugs or video games and became a drag. I finally found friends in what one might call the “theater kids” group, which was exclusively female (there was a lot of stigma against these folks among guys and I burned a lot of bridges). The only close male friend I had left, I was only friends with through competitive sports and come 10th grade, it turns out he was a total toxic asshole (cheating on gf, racist, violent, etc; all developed over the course of maybe 4 months). So I end up having literally only female friends for the rest of highschool and much of college.
As a guy, that was kinda a bummer. It’s good to have some friends or really anyone close to you of the same gender, and I was a nerdy guy growing up with a single mother and no male friends or role models whatsoever. Luckily that turned me into a radical progressive and feminist, mostly due to my mother’s politics and hopefully common sense, and not a incel or neon-nazi.
This is just all to say that having a male support group is easier said then done. I don’t know if it’s because they really are losers—all the guys around me certainly felt like that—or because of social stigma against it. But teenage me definitely needed something like that when there wasn’t anything to be found.
Ultimately I turned out fine though, hopefully. I wonder, though, if some of the guys I knew in highschool would have been less icky if there had been less social pressure to basically be a toxic ass. I don’t know how to go about changing at least a century or social norms, but I think the people who got the worst of it were the guys I was friends with in middle-school, guys who were as smart and mature as my theater-group friends, but somehow pushed into toxic masculinity.
Ok, that’s a bit much for two cents. Hopefully I didn’t go on for two long… pretty bad pun, but I couldn’t help myself :P
Absolutely! I encourage support spaces for everyone. I’m calling out the irony that this user is up and down this thread arguing against the women’s community and spouting female priviledge ideology, while now complaining that men can’t have the same thing… or else people will complain and spout male priviledge ideology.
There are many ways that sexism hurts men, which is why I’m down with support spaces and actively discourage all men bullshit when I see it.
Claiming those spaces doomed from the start, because of people behaving exactly like Tittyfrog here, is bad faith as hell.
because that would be gay. part of the evil homosexual agenda we must stop!
it’s manly/womanly/hetero to beat up on other people and harass them for their issues and problems. or at least, to pretend that their problems are less than those of this more oppressed group. plus it feels really good to call people names rather than acknowledge their humanity and/or their fallibility.
but hey, we all know that billionaires are the most oppressed group on the planet. they are the true victims.
Thank you! I have mental health problems so even negative attention is fulfilling.
AND I don’t think rehashing someone’s minor mistake for public theater is cool without the user names removed. People were shitting all over him when he already got clapped back, so I said something.
While I do enjoy a little bit of chaos and schadenfreude, it would be nice to block out user names. Call out the mistake, not the person.
Showing public information isn’t immoral: we should be able to simply link to online content.
Gatekeeping public information & breaking accessibility to do it, however, is patronizing & wrong.
People overthink this: just linking the web as designed is not that hard & it doesn’t break everything like accessibility/usability, digging for context, etc.
Why links?
Images of text break much that text alternatives do not.
Losses due to image of text lacking alternative such as link:
usability
we can’t quote the text without pointless bullshit like retyping it or OCR
I can agree everyone should get to enjoy equal access to the web and still believe censoring user names is nice. There’s gotta be a balance between accessibility and preventing harassment.
Have you asked OP to link the comment in the post text?
How about a transcript for the image? That way user names could stay blocked.
Have you asked OP to link the comment in the post text?
Yes: that would certainly reveal the names.
There’s gotta be a balance between accessibility and preventing harassment.
Easy: don’t harass.
There are better controls on harassment by others than breaking accessibility & all the other considerations (usability, web connectivity, authenticity, searchability, fault tolerance) like reporting abuses.
Transcripts still break web connectivity (to explore context) & authenticity.
Your approach requests OP conduct/sustain definite harm[1] to speculatively prevent indefinite harm someone else won’t necessarily perform.
How is requesting definite harm to an uninvolved party nice or right?
Everyone has moral agency to do the right thing here, and respecting that would be just.
While women are allowed to keep men out of their groups, it doesn’t work the other way around. Even gay men’s groups have trouble keeping invasive women from changing the nature of their groups.
Oh good. I don’t follow this com, another comment tipped me off.
While I do enjoy a little bit of chaos and schadenfreude, it would be nice to block out user names. Call out the mistake, not the person.
Most people here are lovely, but it only takes one match to start a fire. Might as well address some bullshit in these comments since I’m gonna get trolled by incels anyway…
side note: I’m not a mod there.
The women’s com is trans and non-binary inclusive. Anyone who feels at home there (and is respectful) is welcome.
It’s not all bitching about men. Looking at the last twenty posts, one was about men and two were related to men. We talk about pads and health and essays and positivity memes and do fun activities on fridays.
I support men making their own support groups. Although the internet itself often feels like a menfolk support group(to me,) I’m sure there are plenty of things an easy to find, curated space, could offer men who want to be just a little more vulnerable, knowing they would be supported by the mods if any toxic women came in to devalue their opinions and experience.
They should. the issue with this is they get branded as hate-groups or for ‘losers’. more or less automatically irregalrdless of what kind of community they are.
the bigger issue is that generally people think men are evil by default, and women are good by default. and that’s not a cultural assumption most folks are willing to look past.
I mean, there’s stuff like dull men’s club where it’s just dudes talking about average life stuff like buying new tools
Is there a rule that women aren’t allowed to post there?
I do enjoy dull men’s club
i think this is a misunderstanding of the dynamic
we see this play out pretty regularly with the “not all men” arguments and the like: men getting annoyed by women being careful, and taking “you could hurt me” behaviour as some kind of insult. the statement is true: not all men are evil to women, but any man could be evil to women and thus need to be treated as though it’s possible in order to protect themselves
And any person could be a vile murderer paedo, but assuming everyone is and treating them that way would be unreasonable.
Oops, prejudice is still prejudice, even if it’s targeted at the “right” people.
So? Any women could be evil to men as well. Should we therefore insult them by claiming they ‘could’ hurt us every time we encounter one?
It is a stereotype. I get being cautious. There are many awful men around. But keeping your distance from all of them until they have proven their innocence is not really a way to live.
If women are straight up not interacting with you because they think you could hurt them you need to reassess what kind of vibes you’re giving off. There’s nothing wrong with keeping people of either gender at arms length until you’re sure they’re trustworthy. It’s not an insult, they just don’t know you. Women generally have a lot more to worry about in that regard because men are typically bigger and stronger than they are. As a man on the smaller end of the spectrum I deal with some of those worries myself. It’d be great if we could all just trust each other by default but that’s not the world we live in. People are allowed to just go around being psychos until they do something really bad, and you don’t want to be the victim when that happens.
“You could hurt me” is an insult. The amount of men who hurt women, is low. Its really fucking low. But for some reason, we all have to carry the water for that low number.
Its sexist. Its no different than if I said I didnt want to be alone with a woman because she might claim I raped her. How likely is that? Not very. And I say that as someone that it did happen to. The idea that men are an inherent risk, is sexist. And Im just sick of pretending its not.
I you cross the street from someone because they are black, we call that racist. But when its man, all of sudden the excuses come thick and fucking fast.
There are support groups for men out there that are not generally charectirized as toxic. Toxic folks may attack men for going to them, but I can tell you before I transitioned I used to go to one, and no one ever verbally attacked me for it.
I consider myself a feminist and I vehemently disagree with that take, nor does it reflect in any way the commonly held views in the relevant communities.
Women and men are people. All people hold the capacity for good and evil within them. The real differences are 1) our respective socialization, and 2) the way we are perceived and treated by society based on our gender. That’s not an individual issue, but a systemic one.
I’ve been part of a few support groups for men that regularly received appreciation from women specifically because they were aimed at helping men in recognition of this fact, and thus didn’t revolve into inceldom and gender war nonsense.
Can you name some of the groups?
A lot of male-only spaces descend into places to hate on women rather than proactively dealing with issues within our own community. It takes active moderation for these support groups to not become hate groups. If it stays focused on healthy self improvement (not hawking supplements and talking about a person being high or low “value”) and providing emotional support for men, it can avoid the “hate group” moniker.
The “loser” thing is actually a symptom of why we need spaces like we’re talking about. There will likely always be people out there who judge people for needing help and emotional support, especially men(thank you toxic masculinity), but the goal should be an overall less toxic society and greater acceptance that everyone needs help at some point.
Your “bigger issue” is not something I think I have experienced, I don’t think I’ve ever had someone assume I’m evil because I’m male. That sounds like an internal belief that you’re projecting on society, something that should be looked at in detail and questioned thoroughly in a therapeutic setting. Looking at other comments you’ve made on similar subjects, you seem to be someone who needs a place where your views can be safely challenged by reality, which is another way of saying we need better support groups for men like you, not just incel groups where you reinforce each other’s toxic beliefs.
I understand that this may come off as insulting, I just want you to know that that’s not my intent. I think you are lacking in self worth and that is leading you to project toxicity into the world. I don’t think you’re hopeless, mostly because I used to be on a similar course as you. I got therapy and learned to better love and value myself and I started seeing a lot more positivity in my interactions with people of all genders. The first step is wanting to change things.
The other reply is kinda accurate but I just wanted to give lived experience that the way I get treated is as if I’m more dangerous and more aggressive by default (where obviously a woman will get taken less seriously and be more in danger by default), but it still feels pretty bad to have people feel less safe around me when I have done literally nothing to cause it. I’m not blaming someone for saying they feel less safe around men, I would even agree, but that means the reality is many men who have done literally nothing feel the distrust and unease. The outright hatred I think is an online only thing, I’ve never heard anyone say anything similar irl.
Also I might say if you really want to help them to not discount their experiences, that’s how we ended up with people like Andrew tate. The hatred does exist but almost always by a very loud very small minority online. And I’m sure the hatred does exist irl, from people who had really bad experiences with men, or they’re just jerks. That can be reality, and when you get blamed by those women it’s painful. Women are just people, and there are good and bad women because there are good and bad (or maybe just hurt) people.
I think the “men evil”, “woman good” is just worded to strongly but is generally true (not actually true, but people considered it to be true).
Its more “men dangerous”, “men threatening” and not “evil”. A man in a women’s bathroom is a threat. A women in a mans bathroom is there because there was a line for the woman’s bathroom. The actual reason for those scenarios does not matter, the man will be seen as an invasion and a perpetrator. I have personally experienced examples of neutral situations as well (going to the woman’s bathroom as a man without negative reactions) but the general discourse about the topic is pretty clear.
Don’t make them a hate-group for losers, then? This speaks more about the places you’re hanging out at.
I don’t really know if I agree with your comment or the one you’re responding to. But here are my two cents: having good friendships with guys is difficult.
In middle-school (I’m European but using the American terms idk why) I had a number of good male friends but come highschool they all got addicted to drugs or video games and became a drag. I finally found friends in what one might call the “theater kids” group, which was exclusively female (there was a lot of stigma against these folks among guys and I burned a lot of bridges). The only close male friend I had left, I was only friends with through competitive sports and come 10th grade, it turns out he was a total toxic asshole (cheating on gf, racist, violent, etc; all developed over the course of maybe 4 months). So I end up having literally only female friends for the rest of highschool and much of college.
As a guy, that was kinda a bummer. It’s good to have some friends or really anyone close to you of the same gender, and I was a nerdy guy growing up with a single mother and no male friends or role models whatsoever. Luckily that turned me into a radical progressive and feminist, mostly due to my mother’s politics and hopefully common sense, and not a incel or neon-nazi.
This is just all to say that having a male support group is easier said then done. I don’t know if it’s because they really are losers—all the guys around me certainly felt like that—or because of social stigma against it. But teenage me definitely needed something like that when there wasn’t anything to be found.
Ultimately I turned out fine though, hopefully. I wonder, though, if some of the guys I knew in highschool would have been less icky if there had been less social pressure to basically be a toxic ass. I don’t know how to go about changing at least a century or social norms, but I think the people who got the worst of it were the guys I was friends with in middle-school, guys who were as smart and mature as my theater-group friends, but somehow pushed into toxic masculinity.
Ok, that’s a bit much for two cents. Hopefully I didn’t go on for two long… pretty bad pun, but I couldn’t help myself :P
Removed by mod
You could be more supportive. Men have issues specifically hurting them too, and not dismissing that fact won’t make women’s issues less relevant.
Could we just be more supportive to each other?
Absolutely! I encourage support spaces for everyone. I’m calling out the irony that this user is up and down this thread arguing against the women’s community and spouting female priviledge ideology, while now complaining that men can’t have the same thing… or else people will complain and spout male priviledge ideology.
There are many ways that sexism hurts men, which is why I’m down with support spaces and actively discourage all men bullshit when I see it.
Claiming those spaces doomed from the start, because of people behaving exactly like Tittyfrog here, is bad faith as hell.
because that would be gay. part of the evil homosexual agenda we must stop!
it’s manly/womanly/hetero to beat up on other people and harass them for their issues and problems. or at least, to pretend that their problems are less than those of this more oppressed group. plus it feels really good to call people names rather than acknowledge their humanity and/or their fallibility.
but hey, we all know that billionaires are the most oppressed group on the planet. they are the true victims.
That first sentence is not a good look homie. I say this as a cis-het dude
You’re the only one here harassing people for their issues and problems and pretending they are less than those of a more oppressed group.
Wow. That was rude
Calling out shitty people isn’t rude.
oh hey, it’s the person what from the op screen cap. Here doing an encore performance. Everyone clap.
Thank you! I have mental health problems so even negative attention is fulfilling.
AND I don’t think rehashing someone’s minor mistake for public theater is cool without the user names removed. People were shitting all over him when he already got clapped back, so I said something.
Showing public information isn’t immoral: we should be able to simply link to online content. Gatekeeping public information & breaking accessibility to do it, however, is patronizing & wrong.
Never said anything about morality. I said would be nice.
@Wren @lmmarsano I think I might use that as my email signature
Then it would still be not nice (ie, patronizing & wrong) for the reasons stated in the rest of the message.
I disagree.
The disabled disagree with you.
People overthink this: just linking the web as designed is not that hard & it doesn’t break everything like accessibility/usability, digging for context, etc.
Why links?
Images of text break much that text alternatives do not. Losses due to image of text lacking alternative such as link:
Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images.
I can agree everyone should get to enjoy equal access to the web and still believe censoring user names is nice. There’s gotta be a balance between accessibility and preventing harassment.
Have you asked OP to link the comment in the post text?
How about a transcript for the image? That way user names could stay blocked.
Yes: that would certainly reveal the names.
Easy: don’t harass. There are better controls on harassment by others than breaking accessibility & all the other considerations (usability, web connectivity, authenticity, searchability, fault tolerance) like reporting abuses.
Transcripts still break web connectivity (to explore context) & authenticity.
Your approach requests OP conduct/sustain definite harm[1] to speculatively prevent indefinite harm someone else won’t necessarily perform. How is requesting definite harm to an uninvolved party nice or right?
Everyone has moral agency to do the right thing here, and respecting that would be just.
impairing access ↩︎
If your goal is accessibility, you’re taking quite a long walk to get there.
While women are allowed to keep men out of their groups, it doesn’t work the other way around. Even gay men’s groups have trouble keeping invasive women from changing the nature of their groups.
As you can see, women have trouble keeping men out, too.
I’d like to see your data.
Just try finding a men’s opinion group that successfully bans women.
So you don’t have data.
Whataboutism is a non-sequitor that disrupts and discourages productive discussion.
I haven’t noticed anything like this online. I only one time saw a woman post in a MSM community and it was to ask a question, which was fine.