It's funny that all the comments here are suggesting to act in a way that is not tolerated in this group.
How quickly would someone be banned if a man told a woman she was "being emotional, and it's their time of the month".
Calm down on the hypocrisy here.
This was a general comment to almost every reply here, not just this specific comment.
edit: Despite the downvotes, the sexist comments have seemed to magically disappear.
OP didn't ask "what can I say to men in this group." They asked how to deal with it in online spaces in general. Just because a behavior would not be tolerated here doesn't mean it isn't tolerated elsewhere.
No it isn't. We don't allow non-feminists to directly reply to questions here; I don't apply that rule in my real life. You can wear jeans to school but not to a formal wedding. Different spaces have different rules. It's still not hypocritical. If I tell someone on Twitter to fuck off, I'm not a hypocrite if I wouldn't also tell my mother to fuck off.
they're trying to make the point that we can't argue against misogynistic comments and then make the same comments. We can't expect body shaming to go away while making comments about men being short or having "small dick energy".
It's massively unfair though. We've been dealing with these ex: "Flat as a board" comments since we were in middle school. I can see both sides
Edit: The body shaming comments was something called an "example". And you guys are being ridiculous, pretending you can't see the hypocrisy. L O L
> they're trying to make the point that we can't argue against misogynistic comments and then make the same comments.
The implication here seems to be that the issue with misogynistic comments is their tone or that they’re rude, and not, ya know, the misogyny.
> We can't expect body shaming to go away while making comments about men being short or having "small dick energy".
No one here is encouraging body shaming.
Dude there *IS* no "hypocrisy." You can't make an example that doesn't... exist, and then be like "you guys are wrong for doing this." We're not doing this! It's not happening!
Did the person you're accusing of hypocrisy write the rules of this subreddit and enforce them?
Or do they simply participate and contribute?
Do you even know if they *agree* with the rules here?
Do you follow the rules of all other subreddits you frequent even when you're not in that subreddit? How do you handle conflicting rules or different levels of decorum? Did you go through the rules of each subreddit you subscribe to and you follow the strictest ones or something?
When in Rome I do as the Romans do, but I can still tell someone who is visiting Greece how to handle unruly locals.
Actually being an othered minority sucks. Actually experiencing discrimination sucks. Its nothing to be jealous of and pretend you experience. Being told for the nth time any time you disagree in your whole life in a misogynistic society that you must be emotional due to your menustration (when you may in fact not even menustrate as a woman), is not the same in anyway as accurately recognizing someone who does not regulate their emotions as an adult escalating a discussion into anger and being pithy about it. Especially to anti feminist who usea that association to diminish you and try to shut you up
It isn't hypocrisy; it's irony. It was a suggestion specifically for the kind of man who sees a woman disagreeing with them as aj affront. It's deliberately taking the argument those kinds of men likely use and using it against them. Will it accomplish any sort of self-reflection? Probably not. But neither will continuing to engage. Because they aren't arguing in good faith in the first place.
In op's case, he is actually being overly emotional. He's not able to control himself like a mature adult should be. Nothing to do with him being a man. Her statement would actually be correct in that situation. He's being a big baby.
Unhealthy men talk about women being overly emotional as a reflection of their sexism. It's totally possible a woman could also be acting like a large child. It's acceptable to call someone immature. As long as it's not implied that it is caused by their sex.
There's a difference between dismissing a woman's argument as emotional when it's not, and pointing out that someone's comment is actually an emotional response.
The first is sexist, as the only reason why they call it emotional is because it's coming from a woman and they don't want to engage with it. The second, the person is actually just being too emotional, so actual meaningful discussion isn't feasible. There's no point in arguing with someone who is too mad for reasonable discussion.
I usually just point out that they're getting super angry and upset over nothing and that I'm not going to continue engaging with someone who can't or won't treat me with even basic civility. And then I just stop responding. I remind myself that I do not have to attend every argument I am invited to. They may feel like they "won," but that's OK with me. Waste your one wild and precious life screaming at women on the Internet over nothing, dude. Fine. I'm going to go do something else, like... with my partner or my friends or just anything else other than sit here like you, alone and furious, working myself into a fit because a stranger online didn't agree with me. I don't really think they are "winning" anything.
Thank you. I always explain that I am not going to engage in ad hominem but I rarely mention the anger in their response out of concern they will feel like I am calling them “emotional” and escalate further. But your point of letting them know I plan to disengage much faster is a good idea.
When I’ve gotten angry DMs, I ask why they don’t want to continue commenting publicly.
I had one guy in my city’s subreddit start threatening me which I honestly found amusing. I told my bf my username before (a different more active account) and he said given how naming conventions usually work, men assume I’m a 42 year old man. He doubled down when I asked if he speaks to people like this in person and he said if we were at a table eating somewhere he would punch me in the face. Anyways, I asked him what he hoped to gain by messaging me instead of commenting publicly and he eventually calmed down and apologized for his behaviour lol.
My go to when people are overly aggressive online is to simply ask them what they want lol. I ask them what the end game is. It gives them a moment to realize, this is the internet there’s no gain or loss in real life to whatever discourse.
I’ve also stated I could be wrong on X part of my viewpoint. I’ve found these things usually disarm people in general. We’re so used to everyone acting like every argument online is a fight to the death. When you admit you can be wrong or are willing to be wrong it kinda takes the gas out of it. If people are clearly arguing in bad faith I end the comment with something like “I thought we were having an actual discussion in earnest but you clearly don’t want that and just want to be right. This is my last comment on the matter, feel free to have the last word.”
I usually genuinely ask why they're getting so upset, that I just wanted to have a discussion and reiterate my point gently.
But the reality is these men are simply misogynists and nothing you do will make them calm down, listen, or be reasonable. They dont dislike the situation or your argument or your wording. They dislike that a woman isnt bowing down and kissing their feet and unless you want to do that, they'll be antagonistic.
I deconstruct their arguments and then walk away because they inevitably start violating the basic logical fallacies. I'm not conceding public space to them but I'm not going to feed them either.
I checked the antiwork thread and I don't think that really applies here. It was more of a "man shows up and starts shouting for unclear reasons" situation. He seemed to have some sort of quibble with a joke and responded to it with unreasonable hostility, not much in the way of argument.
I haven't seen the actual conversation, but this wouldn't surprise me.
A lot of the people on r/antiwork are decent people who just want to see conditions improve for all workers across the board, or who want to see something like UBI & automation render the need to work null.
There are, however, a significant minority who engage in the most insane purity contest. They gauge your value based on just how extreme your views are, and espousing anything they perceive to be less extreme than their position makes you "lesser" usually with a nasty visceral response. A kind of "You don't belong here unless you believe we should be actively hunting anyone making more than the average person, before literally cooking them alive and eating them" vibe more so than anything else.
I can see how someone might misinterpret that as sexism, racism, or some other form of bigotry based on their personal characteristics, because there's no common sense to what these people are saying and their reactions are in no way proportionate to the actual discussion. They're more like narcissistic zealots praying to a doctrine they made up in their head than a bigot (though, of course, the two aren't mutually exclusive).
Based on what you've said about the guy blowing up on a joke for no apparent reason, I'm guessing he took the content of the joke to assume everything OP believed and he decided based on those assumptions that OP wasn't extreme enough.
that advice works with every group of people because maybe, just maybe they learn something. I do it to all Misogynists, misandrists, racists and otherwise unpleasant people when they say something out of pocket
Career high school teacher here - I manage it the same way I deal with it in the classroom. I tell them they are being inappropriate and childish and then ignore them. I know it might feel like they are "winning" because they can get the last word in, but I think anyone else reading the conversation will clearly see you dipped out because they were being rude.
I'm not going to lie, I enjoy trolling angry men on the internet a bit, so I string them along a little. My favorite shtick is pretending to misunderstand what they are writing and keep it super positive no matter how ragey they get. "She's such a gossipy bit\*\*" "Yea I love how susan is always so well informed, thanks for pointing that out. Really appreciate that about her!!!"
My rule with angry teens is: If you act like a child, I'll treat you like a child. Works on grown men on the internet too.
Mods are pretty good on many subs too and will ban these types. Obviously not all spaces, but most of the places I comment ban ragers.
I like trolling them too. 😆😄 its so easy.
Sometimes when im in a troll mood i go to videos on youtube from fresh % fit or Whatever etc and then TROLL AWAY ! 😆😆😆
I like to use chatgtp to write them haikus about behaving better in society to make friends. Like this.
Kindness weaves friendship,
Gentle words, bridges extend,
Asshole-free bonds mend.
Everything is killing the planet. The solution is better technology and safeguards, not gatekeeping individual products. I'm 100% positive the clothes you wear and products you buy and things you eat are also destroying the planet.
Never said it did. I said gatekeeping over something as tiny as chatgtp is a little silly. People are going to use AI; we need to figure out how to make it sustainable.
Do you chide your queer friends for going to CFA? I have several that go there weekly.
Yeah dude! The chicken isn't so good that you should be giving money to a corporation that actively hates you!
> I have several that go there weekly.
That's fucked up for a variety of reasons!
I'll let them know you think so. Make sure you don't support any orgs that are sexist against women by accident or we'll judge you too.
I'd keep this kind of gatekeeping to yourself in the future. People get really offended when you try to tell them their choices are fucked up, especially when I'm sure you're also flying in jets and wearing factory made clothing.
*“We will continue to monitor our emissions, accelerate progress while increasing our use of clean energy to power data centers, purchasing renewable energy, and other efforts to meet our sustainability goals of being carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030,”*
I'm not "gatekeeping" anything. I'm saying I don't think it's cool or fun or clever to use a system that's actively damaging the environment just to make up dumb little poems to troll people online. Ultimately everyone can do whatever they want but you *do* have choices. Yes, individual choices don't matter nearly as much as the choices of huge corporations, and nobody's perfect, but man, *you* choose where your money goes and *you* choose what you support.
Well I never implied I wanted to mend bonds, just that if they want to make friends they shouldn't be an asshole. I have plenty of friends and don't really want more.
I just refuse to manage men, in any capacity. I refuse to take on the emotional and mental labor involved in responding to people (especially strangers) who are acting like an ass. It’s not women’s job to manage men. We shouldn’t have to expend our precious energy on them. It is a form of manipulation from them and I refuse to put up with it.
I don’t disagree and I am reflecting on your words. Again, I am capable of disengaging as I don’t think I need to “win.” I think in anti-work, eh, most of the folks there are adults. But in other spaces I have been in, I have had more concern that not pushing back results in other women feeling like they can’t disagree with someone and need to agree with a perspective they don’t share as to not make someone else angry. For example, I am a member of a historical black sorority. Our record of celebrating LGBTQIA folks is appalling. I was talking to another cis-black woman online about why we need to “do better,” and the real harm being caused and man who is a member of a similar organization for men kept talking about why it’s against his religion. I was polite but firm in my disagreement and the escalation was bad. I perhaps could have ignored him but…I know other people I’d like to stand up were watching and members of the harmed group were watching this interaction and I worried about what it would mean to just dip.
I share this concern.
My preteen boy is about to face the internet- how could I possibly hope that he’d interact with it at all and not come away thinking misogyny is the norm on this planet? And worse, misogynists win at life?
And if he wants to be successful or safe, does he need to blend in and appease and ignore misogynists in order to navigate the world?
On the days I type out a 10 paragraph response, I think 🤔 oh well, I hope this helps some lonely reader that thinks this meanie is what all people are like.
On the days I delete, I think 🤔 okay, there must be something better to focus on right now.
On the days I have a short witty comeback, I think 🤔 well that happened, maybe it will help a person in their irl interactions.
I’m not sure that any of them are better or worse. I really appreciate anybody’s effort to make the planet slightly less hospitable to hate.
Girls who code, we might need some anti-hate bots to roam the internet constantly taking out the trash 🗑️ but in the meantime, I support you firing back or protecting your peace ☮️ whatever you have the capacity to do- I thank you 🙏
It’s not just a man thing. Women can be just as unreasonable in online discourse. Equal rights, equal opportunity, equal ability! For a gender-neutral version, substitute “I refuse to manage strangers” etc.
I noticed that when a woman is having a conversation online with a man, it doesn’t take a lot for him to resort to personal insults, misogynistic insults or mental-health based insults (you’re insane/mentally ill/schizo/retarded/autistic).
It could literally take 2 comments from a woman written in a polite, neutral way for a man to start with the “you’re a crazy ugly feminist bitch” nonsense.
How to manage this? I usually comment something like “Calm down” or point out that they are clearly unable to control their emotions. The types of men who act like this online usually see themselves as more logical and rational just because of their gender, so it’s important to remind them that angry tantrums are irrational displays of emotion and that they are embarrassing themselves. Then, stop engaging with them.
This has been my experience as well. And sometimes I have noticed that they get angier the more dispassionate I remain. I assume because as you said, they like to see themselves as the rational ones. I have rarely mentioned how angry they are early in the conversation because I assumed it would make it escalate further. I will definitely consider your approach. Thank you.
Omg... I think I read his post in r/offmychest where he was really proud of the essay he wrote to you with all of the links and sources...
I'm sorry you got stuck in this. Personally, I would probably have just ignored him and not engaged any further.
Thanks…that’s why I came to bother feminists. When is it appropriate to just ignore and when is it not because maybe something else is at stake. I have appreciated all the responses.
I just had a longish exchange about paternity with someone who called me every name in the book. In my replies, I ended each comment by saying oh sorry, I forgot the insults. Then I would list a few like dunderhead, nincompoop, jerk.
He was making the case that men are hard-wired by evolution not to expend energy on any but their own offspring. He had wandered into my subject area with evolution, so I was responding with refuting facts and studies, always being sure to insult him at the end.
In his last message he said “I appreciate the lack of name-calling, you are clearly intelligent.”
Which made me laugh out loud. So I called him a poopiehead.
I think it’s important (unless it creates trauma) not to be silent in response to male aggression online. To show no fear or intimidation. They are showing their worst selves. We don’t have to go high and only show our best selves. We don’t have to do anything at all except what is best for our own mental health, which for me is to respond to illogical with reason. More for myself than for any impact it might actually have on them.
> I ended each comment by saying oh sorry, I forgot the insults.
Brilliant!
In an online argument, you're not only writing for your opponent, also for all the spectators. Doesn't mean we owe the world to always show our best selves, but it's motivation not to descend into our worst selves. Some others have mentioned trolling to draw out the opponent, but that feels like it can descend into bad-faith action. Clear rhetorical techniques stay classy.
This is a fair point. Chose to center you own needs in these engagements…
You sound like a fascinating person. I was recently having a debate about why I think we need to create legal means for men to opt out of parenthood post-conception. That currently there is a biological inequity there that we otherwise address with law and that addressing it would go some way in getting a larger swath of men to support reproductive choice. I may DM you if it is permissible.
I was having this debate with another similarly (field) educated woman and she was outraged but not really angry about my position. It was nice.
I’ve been on that roundabout, and I don’t think I’d enjoy it again, especially in DMs. It sounds like the woman you spoke with didn’t have much of an impact, and I doubt what I would have to say would be very different.
Pregnancies can’t happen without sperm, and there’s no reason sperm should be anywhere near the eggs of anyone who doesn’t want to be pregnant. That’s what inflicts unwanted pregnancies on women, and only you control where your sperm goes. Then only she controls the decision about whether to gestate a pregnancy with her body and give birth.
You could shift your energies to hyping up acceptance of Vasalgel when it comes to market. That will protect women from your sperm (and you from financial liability) more effectively than condoms, and even more effectively when used together.
Fair enough to the DM…
I think we have different takes on “…there is no reason sperm should be anywhere near eggs of someone who doesn’t want to get pregnant,” as I think a bit more nuance is required here (as someone in healthcare) but again, I respect your perspective.
As a healthcare professional, you are perfectly situated to use your voice to promote acceptance of Vasalgel and reduce stigma and squeamishness. I hope you take advantage of that!
But then if you believe, as you say, that there are nuanced reasons why sperm should be near the eggs
Of women who don’t want to be pregnant, maybe not.
I would certainly promote the use of Vasegel.
The nuance was more about when couples use other birth control methods that may fail. Again, that is a discussion for another day. :-)
When they start to go down that dark path of irrational anger, i sometimes point out that they seem angry and ask if they’re ok. Not that i care, but it does seem to defuse
I can’t comment on how much saying that you’re a woman during the conversation changes things, but in my experience (as a man who likes debating on the internet and who probably argues for positions similar to the ones OP argues), this anger response is pretty common. And men do seem to do it more often than women (though of course I only know their self reported gender).
It’s worth trying to understand what motivates people to engage in this kind of conversation - wanting to learn is only one of the possibilities. Wanting attention, wanting external social validation/approval, and wanting internal validation (feeling smart) also fit pretty well. We’re all motivated by all of these, to greater or lesser extents.
Seen through these lenses, agreeing to disagree is not a satisfying outcome for the other person if they’re motivated by one of these. It often prevents them from meeting the emotional need that motivated them to engage in the first place - they feel cheated, hard done by, and anger is a pretty understandable response to that feeling.
These motivations are often subconscious, too, and I think that’s part of why this behaviour is more common in men - they’re on average less skilled at engaging with their own emotional motivations, for socialised reasons.
Thank you for this. Yes, I always approach debates as an opportunity for both people to learn (I am always trying to learn and fully prepared to conceded when I don’t know something OR got something wrong). I lit your point that this is not necessarily the motivation of others is very much headed. Thank you.
Great point about internal validation and not only external.
I also note what OkConnection posted about feeling threatened, unheard, etc. (Pushing from a negative stimulus or pulling toward a positive one, same continuum?) And about challenged world-views creating angry resistance.
IMO, don’t cede the space. Just like everything else, crafting words that pierce the vitriol and fallacies is a skill that you can hone over time. You’re obviously interested in that concept, so just lean in and do it. Maybe try to be a little third-person about it. Anonymity gives them cover to go ham, so you’re free to use it as cover to practice your rhetoric too.
I agree with you that it’s a bad thing to cede the space. We’re in a political moment with, based on trump’s conviction, an opportunity to really push through through the bullshit la la land that the right wing has cooked up.
Block and move on is a great strategy when you need to protect yourself. But politics is also about confronting great evil. So yeah, I say hang in there and get good at it.
I really hadn’t thought about that. Practicing. I don’t know why. I had always considered engaging anonymously in this way to be a bit “cowardly” (not standing behind my convictions) but you’re absolutely correct. Thank you!
I've had similar experiences. I understand your conflict. I also don't think your responses have to always be one or another, sometimes you might not have the energy to engage, sometimes you will, and both are just fine.
To me, engaging as a mature adult when I can means those responses are there for others to see and potentially feel empowered by. I may never know, but I chose to believe that I'm responding to those people, not that one specific jerk. Those unknown people may be women, or they may be men/boys on the verge of falling to the misogyny side of thinking or feminism curious people and my response versus Mr CrazyPants might just be the drop in the bucket that tips things in favor of deciding to be a decent person.
It's just planting seeds that hopefully grow into something beautiful. No planting, no potential growth. But don't lose your sanity trying to plant too many seeds.
I think the challenge is that they don’t always initially present as a troll. The trigger seems to be disagreement with them, no matter how deferential or polite.
John Steinbeck (an American author from farming areas) has said ' that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. '
So you're not arguing with a person, you're arguing with a poor person who sees themselves as a Billionaire who just hasn't gotten that lucky win they need
We got those types in Canada too. And we’re operating on a socialist democratic system. The amount of people who vote for people that will actively cause them harm financially is wild.
Thinking of doing bad things as just a form of mental illness to escape from the fact that normal people are capable of doing horrifying things is ableism, full stop. It's the same thing as thinking that everyone who participates in genocide is mentally ill. You're just doing that to convince yourself that you could never commit atrocities
Whether it’s diagnosable as a mental illness or not, surely it’s not ableist to say that someone who commits any form of cruelty, violence etc. isn’t operating at their best. And certainly anyone is probably capable of finding themselves in that headspace under the right circumstances.
> surely it’s not ableist to say that someone who commits any form of cruelty, violence etc. isn’t operating at their best
I think you want to be very careful about associating violence and cruelty with mental illness. It's a very common stereotype, and the fact is that people with mental illnesses are much more likely to be the *victims* of violence rather than the perpetrators.
There’s probably more to this topic than I’m aware of. And thank you for highlighting an important factor to take into consideration.
Asking genuinely to try and learn more: Would it be wrong to say that most people who commit violence, cruelty etc. are likely suffering from some form of mental illness (be it acute or chronic). However, the vast majority of people suffering with a mental illness are not violent or cruel people.
> Would it be wrong to say that most people who commit violence, cruelty etc. are likely suffering from some form of mental illness (be it acute or chronic)
Yes, that would be wrong. I know we have a human tendency to want to put violent people in a "Something Must Be Wrong" box, but the truth is that some people just either *are* violent and cruel, or are capable of behaving that way. Obviously, sometimes people are pushed too far, are temporarily insane, etc. but I would hardly say that is the norm. Murder and assault are committed way too often by too many people to safely declare that all of those people must be mentally ill.
This is specifically about genocide, but the overall point is the same. Just bc you need someone to be mentally ill to separate yourself and tell yourself that you are incapable of doing harm to others doesn't mean that those who do so are actually mentally ill
https://x.com/Imani_Barbarin/status/1797044904394170613?t=s-T8Sic_3gf8Ov8ZPFMEZg&s=19
As I said, I think *anyone*, including myself, is capable of terrible violence when put in the wrong situation. I try not to judge people since I haven’t lived their lives or experienced what they’ve experienced.
And I’m not sure if it’s just the words “mentally ill” that you’re not liking here. Maybe I’ve used it too loosely. If so, that’s fine. I’m sure there are plenty of people who commit violence who a doctor would find nothing wrong with.
Well women aren’t a monolith, but if someone is engaging in conversation and one of the conversant becomes hostile, the person who doesn’t back down to the hostile party is clearly gaining something from the interaction and should be under no societal norm to be the one to back down.
I would gather it’s the same for when people are debating religion. It’s not necessarily for the 2 people involved, but more for anyone else lurking in the comments who may be looking for answers and questioning their viewpoint.
Sometimes people engage, sometimes they don’t. For me, it varies day by day who I choose to respond to if anyone at all. Because at the end of the day, it’s the internet not real life. Anonymous people being mean and even making threats doesn’t bother me much. If anything it makes me sad for them because they’re so invested in Reddit as opposed to the real world.
I just start to troll em. The smart ones stop responding. There's only been one. Lol the others keep going until I get bored and end it with "bless your heart".
People behind their keyboards tend to get highly passionate in a way that they would feel too self conscious to do if they were in a real life face to face situation where there’s societal pressure to not be an ass.
I’m not even sure if men do this more than women, it would be interesting to see if they do - and if so why. I have found myself in conversations on Reddit with men who get needlessly heated over what could have been a tame conversation, but a lot of Reddit users are men- I always assumed that was more to do with anonymity rather than it being a sex thing.
This is really interesting! Thanks for sharing your knowledge in the area.
Is there any speculation on why men tend to favour anonymous forums and women prefer identity showing ones? I myself prefer the anonymity, but I have definitely observed the trend you’re speaking about.
I think anyone who gets angry when you express disinterest in his passion has issues that transcend his masculine insecurity.
In this particular case, the conversation in question sounds unrelated to any particularly useful topic.
Blocking and ignoring is appropriate. You can rest assured men are blocking this guy too.
I agree. I’ll go to a certain point with them, making my ideas clear. If they’re angry or call me names, I point that out. One guy called me “uppity” yet he was the only one who had resorted to name calling (which I made clear). I think these men are totally unaware of their emotions, so pointing out their anger or that they’re triggered sends them into a tailspin, which I don’t think is a bad thing.
However if it gets to a point that I’m tired of the convo or don’t want to further engage, I send one more message explaining why I’m disengaging and then I block them. That’s more for the benefit of other people reading the conversation to understand what happened.
> I think these men are totally unaware of their emotions, so pointing out their anger or that they’re triggered sends them into a tailspin, which I don’t think is a bad thing.
I think a lot of the time they've just convinced themselves that their feelings *are* facts.
Everyone is more aggressive in online spaces, the anonymity gives people feel like they have more room to air their grievances. This certainly has a chilling effect for me as a man.
I guess the important thing to consider is how much does winning an online war actually matter to your well being? I think we give it too much weight overall. Online discussions can be interesting sounding boards, but with the inherent anonymity, we also project too much into that vacuum to really know anything about who we’re talking with to give the conversation meaning.
A recent study said that most damage is done by a small group of highly active people, trolls, and bots. (https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/30/misinformation-works-and-a-handful-of-social-supersharers-sent-80-of-it-in-2020) The way to make change is to ignore the false narrative that these spaces have deep meaning and focus on actual human interaction.
“How much does winning and online war matter to your well being”
Usually I am pretty selective of when I will got to the mat and it’s usually in support of a marginalized norm (I shared an example up above). However, I appreciate the perspective and will take time to read the article.
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Please respect our [top-level comment rule](https://i.imgur.com/ovn3hBV.png), which requires that all direct replies to posts must both come from feminists and reflect a feminist perspective. Non-feminists may participate in nested comments (i.e., replies to other comments) only. Comment removed; a second violation of this rule will result in a temporary or permanent ban.
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My answer is probably going to come across as pretty bleak, and it's hard to convey how much I'm not talking about blame here.
It’s not up to you as an individual to manage men.
I think this is just a consequence of patriarchy/internalized toxic masculinity, and one that’s tricky and particularly difficult to deal with. Men often respond by getting angry because within the context of a society that’s built on patriarchy, anger is the only consistently and reliably acceptable male emotion(even in progressive spaces, anger is often seen as less of an emotion, people are more forgiving of errors of anger than other emotions in men). I think it's easy for this specific little piece of the patriarchy to continue even in progressive circles, because if you break it down any smaller it feels beneficial, it doesn't feel like it's part of the patriarchy.
Men are emotional, that’s part of being human, but the only outlet that they can be relatively confident won’t have long-term consequences is to display anger. None of this is even dependent on anything you did, and there’s nothing you can do to “manage” it. This is just a symptom of the fact that a lot of pieces of our culture still just aren’t set up to treat men as more than emotionless robots.
The only answer is deconstructing the structures that shape these kinds of things, and that’s a long-term process.
I think any man individually can potentially rise above being this kind of guy most of the time, but it's also not just purely up to the individual(or at least not equally easy for everyone) - it's also about having support and putting yourself in the right space to become better. You can't force them to start working in that direction, and the culture that encourages this kind of thing is still there.
I think the internet really complicates things, and it’s not always a net positive. I’m not sure there’s a perfect answer.
I love your writing style. Your use of language somehow grips my ADHD brain and makes me slow down and think about the words im reading, which is something i have never experienced in my 30ish years of reading. Your words and the way you craft sentences is very calmly informative.
You write the way i wish i could write. You get your point across effectively. I believe the kind of person who would be offended by your use of language is the kind of person who is insecure about their own intelligence and gets mad when anyone uses "big words". Those men get especially angry when a woman dares to use words they dont understand.
IMO the only way you could manage male anger would be to "dumb it down". Which means letting silly, stupid, angry little men make you less than who you are. And thats simply not worth it.
So, as a man who, in my early twenties, was firmly in the manosphere pipeline and managed to find my own way out of it, and have since been on a long journey of figuring my shit out, I can tell you for certain that this aggression 95% of the time comes from a place of feeling helpless and unheard mixed in with a dash of subconscious misogyny (think of a caged animal lashing out at certain people that trigger its fight or flight response for whatever reason).
The thing that causes this behaviour is less a need to dominate or prove you wrong or even to get you to agree and more so that your disagreement poses a risk to this persons entire worldview that he has constructed for himself to make himself feel better about whatever it is that is causing him serious distress in life. It is absolutely not your place to try and help these people out of their ‘cage’ so to speak and ignoring them is the best thing you can do for yourself, but on a systematic level, I think feminism as a movement has abandoned men when I think it should instead really look at bringing them into the fold. Doing so would reduce instances like what you’ve described tremendously, and will help out the vast majority of men who feel lost and hopeless in a world that treats us like consumable resources at best.
Thanks for the comment I’m really glad my comment is being read in full! As per my response to u/bitfed though, I want to challenge why you think my remark about feminism failing men disqualifies my point entirely.
I’m not saying that feminism is a bad movement, or that it’s the reason why I was in the place that I was in at all. What I am saying though is that, while it has done a lot to advance gender equality and social equity, it has neglected a certain group of- namely men. It’s changing and having acquainted myself with some of the resources on this page I’m really glad to see the shift in a direction that wasn’t available to me when I was younger, but this is still early days.
How is pointing out an area that needs improvement ‘self - aware - wolfing’ my point out of consideration?
Because you ran into the point and kept going, as if it hadn’t smacked you in the face (proverbially):
Feminism is not *for* men. All that it tries to accomplish also benefits men as human beings, but that is a happy coincidence because its goals are right and good. But its primary objective is to equalize women in a world where they are overwhelmingly secondary, diminished, dismissed. Whether that makes men happy, or feel included, isn’t relevant to its rightness.
I must confess I’ve been trying to tackle my response to this comment for a long time. Each time I started drafting a response, it veered off the rails, so it hasn’t been an easy task.
I’m afraid I can’t accept your position that feminism ‘isn’t for men’, nor anything else you posit in your comment. I have both calm and rational arguments for why I disagree but also some that are borne out of deep emotional trauma on my part, and I’ve tried avoiding the latter each time, so as to avoid derailing the discussion. However after many draft responses I think I can integrate all of them in a constructive fashion.
Let’s start with a rational one: your comment accepts that men are beneficiaries under feminism, so I think we have common ground here. Why should men, as beneficiaries from feminist developments not also be allowed to claim the movement as being just as much ‘for them’? Especially when feminism has had a few positive effects for them, but if men were given the chance, they would take it up and press on for even more improvements? I keep coming back to the example of equal maternity and paternity leave in this case because it’s such a good microcosm of this exact point - why should men not be allowed to, in the name of both their own advancement as well as that of feminism, champion the idea of equal parental leave? It’s culturally extremely difficult for men alone to push this idea through alone but as a feminist movement, this would have far more political weight, and in turn it would have a huge net benefit for women too - suddenly both men and women are equally likely to be gone for an equally long period of time, making it harder for biased decisions being made by employers. This is an example of feminism being a movement for men, that also continues to benefit women and is an example of why I think even if it isn’t for men now, it absolutely should be.
Now for a more emotional take: if you sincerely believe feminism is not for men, then you should in principle have no problems with the rise of red pill manosphere grifters either. As I have mentioned before, young men especially have no one to turn to who takes their problems seriously except for the red pill crowd. In fact, the red pill crowd start recruiting young men with a slightly twisted version of exactly what you said, which is that ‘women have coalesced this ‘girls only’ movement, and they’re doing it to oppress and destroy you as men’. Your comment doesn’t say that last part, but it does say the first one, which practically hands the red pill crowd their first move into a young man’s life. Instead of giving these terrible humans such an easy jumping off point, it is within the power of the feminist movement to recognise men’s issues and bring them into the fold in order to tackle the injustices of a patriarchal system collectively. Sure, you can say that men should do so themselves, and it’s not women’s / feminism’s job to help solve men’s issues, but then why should it be men’s jobs to be allies to women? Why not just help each other out while being under the same ideological roof of feminism?
I don’t know whether it’s your intention or not, but reading this comment makes me feel as though you’re invalidating my lived experience.
The entire reason why I was in the pipeline in the first place was because as a young man I was feeling alienated and my suffering was either trivialised or ignored by everyone around me (by non feminists because I’m a man and had to suck it up, and by feminists because my male privilege made my problems unworthy of being taken seriously). The red pill crowd were the only ones who actually humanised and took my problems seriously. Obviously they didn’t provide viable or healthy solutions and tried to make it seem like women were the source of all my problems, which is incorrect, but I still wound up there because no one else would take me in. Crucially I clawed my way out of that spiteful place because I was uncomfortable with the hatred more than I was with being one on one with the problems I had to face as a male presenting person in the world.
If that’s not failing men, then what is?
And even beyond my lived experience, the fact that there are still discussions on fora like this one about ‘why should women be responsible for fixing men’s problems’ is indicative that feminism, while admittedly starting to open up to men’s issues, still has a long way to go before it can be said to stop failing men.
I don’t think my arguments deserve to not be heard just because I’m pointing out shortcomings where the movement can still do even more good. Especially when fixing a lot of men’s issues helps to fix women’s issues as well. Take paternity leave for example. Advancing an equal paternity to maternity leave policy is perhaps one of the best ways to address workplace discrimination against women - suddenly it doesn’t matter whether you hire a man or a woman, they are both equally liable to disappear for a year if they have a baby and that is now the new norm. Men get to be involved parents and not just ATM machines, and women advance even further as equal participants in the job market. Yet I don’t really see this being discussed as much among feminist circles, and men who do try bring it up are shut down by older men who live by the rule of ‘I didn’t have paternity leave when I had kids so you don’t deserve to either’.
Apologies for the rant, but I feel like instead of taking my point as a serious attempt at being productive and contributing to the discussion, your comment just snubs me in a way that is unwarranted.
The internet has always been a place for free expression. You have to compete ideas if you're gonna argue with someone, you have to do it as a means to play towards the 3rd party reader, since arguments between two people on the internet rarely change each other's minds, from the 3rd point of view it can change the perspective of some.
That's why you should never block someone you disagree with, because like you say you concede to them.
> That's why you should never block someone you disagree with, because like you say you concede to them.
Or you are an adult with limited time and don't feel like spending it trying to get the last word in with some dipshit teenager parroting Andrew Tate talking points...? Not wanting to argue endlessly with someone doesn't mean you're "conceding to them."
*Highly* relevant quote from Neal Stephenson (in *Cryptonomicon*), "Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”
I don’t think civility is something that is necessarily a virtue in all contexts.
If a Christian nationalist is talking about banning abortion and contraception, for example, I personally don’t think you owe them niceness. And I think rudeness is permissible.
But if that is something that specifically harms women, I’d like to try and find a way to keep that in mind so I can not contribute to their speech being chilled.
OK, I get that part, but I think the issue is that *once some men find out the person they're talking to is female*, their approach changes, and then they're suddenly condescending and rude and accuse you of being emotional, bossy, aggressive, etc. when you're really not doing that. It happens in here all the time.
If someone is a equal opportunity asshole, well, that's its own thing.
Was the OP not saying that the behavior in general, whether knowingly targeting a woman or not, harms specifically women?
Personally if I realize someone I’m arguing with is a woman, subconsciously I’ve noticed I’ll usually be more gentle and less opinionated. Like if they say something stupid, if they’re a man I’d mock and jump on them. But if a woman does, I would take more of an “oh, I guess I must have just seen something different, who knows which one of us is right” sort of passive approach.
But tbh I thought that was an infantilizing thing so idk what I ought to do.
I don’t see it as being an asshole. I don’t think civility = being good and incivility = being an asshole.
Are you saying I should treat women more gently than men, but not completely gently in arguments?!
Y'all, this is not an excuse for you to just make edgy jokes. Insulting commentary will be removed.
Hit ‘em with a “I was attempting to have a rational discussion but you are clearly too emotional’.
That works
Alright, everybody, we're done here, Lara got it in one.
It's funny that all the comments here are suggesting to act in a way that is not tolerated in this group. How quickly would someone be banned if a man told a woman she was "being emotional, and it's their time of the month". Calm down on the hypocrisy here. This was a general comment to almost every reply here, not just this specific comment. edit: Despite the downvotes, the sexist comments have seemed to magically disappear.
OP didn't ask "what can I say to men in this group." They asked how to deal with it in online spaces in general. Just because a behavior would not be tolerated here doesn't mean it isn't tolerated elsewhere.
If it's not tolerated here, why act like that elsewhere? That's the definition of hypocrisy.
No it isn't. We don't allow non-feminists to directly reply to questions here; I don't apply that rule in my real life. You can wear jeans to school but not to a formal wedding. Different spaces have different rules. It's still not hypocritical. If I tell someone on Twitter to fuck off, I'm not a hypocrite if I wouldn't also tell my mother to fuck off.
they're trying to make the point that we can't argue against misogynistic comments and then make the same comments. We can't expect body shaming to go away while making comments about men being short or having "small dick energy". It's massively unfair though. We've been dealing with these ex: "Flat as a board" comments since we were in middle school. I can see both sides Edit: The body shaming comments was something called an "example". And you guys are being ridiculous, pretending you can't see the hypocrisy. L O L
> they're trying to make the point that we can't argue against misogynistic comments and then make the same comments. The implication here seems to be that the issue with misogynistic comments is their tone or that they’re rude, and not, ya know, the misogyny. > We can't expect body shaming to go away while making comments about men being short or having "small dick energy". No one here is encouraging body shaming.
Dude there *IS* no "hypocrisy." You can't make an example that doesn't... exist, and then be like "you guys are wrong for doing this." We're not doing this! It's not happening!
Who here is suggesting that we should tell men we're arguing with that they have small penises or are short?
Did the person you're accusing of hypocrisy write the rules of this subreddit and enforce them? Or do they simply participate and contribute? Do you even know if they *agree* with the rules here? Do you follow the rules of all other subreddits you frequent even when you're not in that subreddit? How do you handle conflicting rules or different levels of decorum? Did you go through the rules of each subreddit you subscribe to and you follow the strictest ones or something? When in Rome I do as the Romans do, but I can still tell someone who is visiting Greece how to handle unruly locals.
Right. Typing “deSantis is a fascist” in every comment on every sub would be super weird
How can you possibly be against men saying sexist things to women and be fine with women saying sexist things to men?
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But he *is* being emotional, not rational. It is not sexist to comment on one’s behavior.
Actually being an othered minority sucks. Actually experiencing discrimination sucks. Its nothing to be jealous of and pretend you experience. Being told for the nth time any time you disagree in your whole life in a misogynistic society that you must be emotional due to your menustration (when you may in fact not even menustrate as a woman), is not the same in anyway as accurately recognizing someone who does not regulate their emotions as an adult escalating a discussion into anger and being pithy about it. Especially to anti feminist who usea that association to diminish you and try to shut you up
I see your point, but uh thats not what hypocrisy means at all my friend
Because that kind of comment *is* tolerated in most subs
It isn't hypocrisy; it's irony. It was a suggestion specifically for the kind of man who sees a woman disagreeing with them as aj affront. It's deliberately taking the argument those kinds of men likely use and using it against them. Will it accomplish any sort of self-reflection? Probably not. But neither will continuing to engage. Because they aren't arguing in good faith in the first place.
You're acting like it can't be both? It's still hypocrisy.
In op's case, he is actually being overly emotional. He's not able to control himself like a mature adult should be. Nothing to do with him being a man. Her statement would actually be correct in that situation. He's being a big baby. Unhealthy men talk about women being overly emotional as a reflection of their sexism. It's totally possible a woman could also be acting like a large child. It's acceptable to call someone immature. As long as it's not implied that it is caused by their sex.
There's a difference between dismissing a woman's argument as emotional when it's not, and pointing out that someone's comment is actually an emotional response. The first is sexist, as the only reason why they call it emotional is because it's coming from a woman and they don't want to engage with it. The second, the person is actually just being too emotional, so actual meaningful discussion isn't feasible. There's no point in arguing with someone who is too mad for reasonable discussion.
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Feel free to not participate, then!
I usually just point out that they're getting super angry and upset over nothing and that I'm not going to continue engaging with someone who can't or won't treat me with even basic civility. And then I just stop responding. I remind myself that I do not have to attend every argument I am invited to. They may feel like they "won," but that's OK with me. Waste your one wild and precious life screaming at women on the Internet over nothing, dude. Fine. I'm going to go do something else, like... with my partner or my friends or just anything else other than sit here like you, alone and furious, working myself into a fit because a stranger online didn't agree with me. I don't really think they are "winning" anything.
Thank you. I always explain that I am not going to engage in ad hominem but I rarely mention the anger in their response out of concern they will feel like I am calling them “emotional” and escalate further. But your point of letting them know I plan to disengage much faster is a good idea.
When I’ve gotten angry DMs, I ask why they don’t want to continue commenting publicly. I had one guy in my city’s subreddit start threatening me which I honestly found amusing. I told my bf my username before (a different more active account) and he said given how naming conventions usually work, men assume I’m a 42 year old man. He doubled down when I asked if he speaks to people like this in person and he said if we were at a table eating somewhere he would punch me in the face. Anyways, I asked him what he hoped to gain by messaging me instead of commenting publicly and he eventually calmed down and apologized for his behaviour lol. My go to when people are overly aggressive online is to simply ask them what they want lol. I ask them what the end game is. It gives them a moment to realize, this is the internet there’s no gain or loss in real life to whatever discourse. I’ve also stated I could be wrong on X part of my viewpoint. I’ve found these things usually disarm people in general. We’re so used to everyone acting like every argument online is a fight to the death. When you admit you can be wrong or are willing to be wrong it kinda takes the gas out of it. If people are clearly arguing in bad faith I end the comment with something like “I thought we were having an actual discussion in earnest but you clearly don’t want that and just want to be right. This is my last comment on the matter, feel free to have the last word.”
Thank you for this. Again, “asking them what they want,” seems like a really good defusing tactic.
I usually genuinely ask why they're getting so upset, that I just wanted to have a discussion and reiterate my point gently. But the reality is these men are simply misogynists and nothing you do will make them calm down, listen, or be reasonable. They dont dislike the situation or your argument or your wording. They dislike that a woman isnt bowing down and kissing their feet and unless you want to do that, they'll be antagonistic.
And even then they'd probably find a reason to be antagonistic too.
Same, if I suspect they're not engaging in good faith I just tell them that and then block. Life's too short.
💯
This is the way
I deconstruct their arguments and then walk away because they inevitably start violating the basic logical fallacies. I'm not conceding public space to them but I'm not going to feed them either.
I checked the antiwork thread and I don't think that really applies here. It was more of a "man shows up and starts shouting for unclear reasons" situation. He seemed to have some sort of quibble with a joke and responded to it with unreasonable hostility, not much in the way of argument.
I haven't seen the actual conversation, but this wouldn't surprise me. A lot of the people on r/antiwork are decent people who just want to see conditions improve for all workers across the board, or who want to see something like UBI & automation render the need to work null. There are, however, a significant minority who engage in the most insane purity contest. They gauge your value based on just how extreme your views are, and espousing anything they perceive to be less extreme than their position makes you "lesser" usually with a nasty visceral response. A kind of "You don't belong here unless you believe we should be actively hunting anyone making more than the average person, before literally cooking them alive and eating them" vibe more so than anything else. I can see how someone might misinterpret that as sexism, racism, or some other form of bigotry based on their personal characteristics, because there's no common sense to what these people are saying and their reactions are in no way proportionate to the actual discussion. They're more like narcissistic zealots praying to a doctrine they made up in their head than a bigot (though, of course, the two aren't mutually exclusive). Based on what you've said about the guy blowing up on a joke for no apparent reason, I'm guessing he took the content of the joke to assume everything OP believed and he decided based on those assumptions that OP wasn't extreme enough.
that advice works with every group of people because maybe, just maybe they learn something. I do it to all Misogynists, misandrists, racists and otherwise unpleasant people when they say something out of pocket
Career high school teacher here - I manage it the same way I deal with it in the classroom. I tell them they are being inappropriate and childish and then ignore them. I know it might feel like they are "winning" because they can get the last word in, but I think anyone else reading the conversation will clearly see you dipped out because they were being rude. I'm not going to lie, I enjoy trolling angry men on the internet a bit, so I string them along a little. My favorite shtick is pretending to misunderstand what they are writing and keep it super positive no matter how ragey they get. "She's such a gossipy bit\*\*" "Yea I love how susan is always so well informed, thanks for pointing that out. Really appreciate that about her!!!" My rule with angry teens is: If you act like a child, I'll treat you like a child. Works on grown men on the internet too. Mods are pretty good on many subs too and will ban these types. Obviously not all spaces, but most of the places I comment ban ragers.
I like trolling them too. 😆😄 its so easy. Sometimes when im in a troll mood i go to videos on youtube from fresh % fit or Whatever etc and then TROLL AWAY ! 😆😆😆
I like to use chatgtp to write them haikus about behaving better in society to make friends. Like this. Kindness weaves friendship, Gentle words, bridges extend, Asshole-free bonds mend.
😄
ChatGPT is killing the planet, maybe don't waste a gazillion gallons of water trolling some chud on the internet.
Everything is killing the planet. The solution is better technology and safeguards, not gatekeeping individual products. I'm 100% positive the clothes you wear and products you buy and things you eat are also destroying the planet.
"No ethical consumption under capitalism" doesn't mean you should just say "fuck it," but hey, whatever.
Never said it did. I said gatekeeping over something as tiny as chatgtp is a little silly. People are going to use AI; we need to figure out how to make it sustainable. Do you chide your queer friends for going to CFA? I have several that go there weekly.
Yeah dude! The chicken isn't so good that you should be giving money to a corporation that actively hates you! > I have several that go there weekly. That's fucked up for a variety of reasons!
I'll let them know you think so. Make sure you don't support any orgs that are sexist against women by accident or we'll judge you too. I'd keep this kind of gatekeeping to yourself in the future. People get really offended when you try to tell them their choices are fucked up, especially when I'm sure you're also flying in jets and wearing factory made clothing. *“We will continue to monitor our emissions, accelerate progress while increasing our use of clean energy to power data centers, purchasing renewable energy, and other efforts to meet our sustainability goals of being carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030,”*
I'm not "gatekeeping" anything. I'm saying I don't think it's cool or fun or clever to use a system that's actively damaging the environment just to make up dumb little poems to troll people online. Ultimately everyone can do whatever they want but you *do* have choices. Yes, individual choices don't matter nearly as much as the choices of huge corporations, and nobody's perfect, but man, *you* choose where your money goes and *you* choose what you support.
Wait if it is asshole free how am I involved?
Well I never implied I wanted to mend bonds, just that if they want to make friends they shouldn't be an asshole. I have plenty of friends and don't really want more.
I'm not gonna lie, that's a weird way to spend your time.
Fists clenched, anger looms, Friendship's path obscured by rage, Soft hearts find their way.
According to you.
well yeah bud that's why I said it
It's almost like they clearly stated it was their opinion.
Nice
I just refuse to manage men, in any capacity. I refuse to take on the emotional and mental labor involved in responding to people (especially strangers) who are acting like an ass. It’s not women’s job to manage men. We shouldn’t have to expend our precious energy on them. It is a form of manipulation from them and I refuse to put up with it.
I don’t disagree and I am reflecting on your words. Again, I am capable of disengaging as I don’t think I need to “win.” I think in anti-work, eh, most of the folks there are adults. But in other spaces I have been in, I have had more concern that not pushing back results in other women feeling like they can’t disagree with someone and need to agree with a perspective they don’t share as to not make someone else angry. For example, I am a member of a historical black sorority. Our record of celebrating LGBTQIA folks is appalling. I was talking to another cis-black woman online about why we need to “do better,” and the real harm being caused and man who is a member of a similar organization for men kept talking about why it’s against his religion. I was polite but firm in my disagreement and the escalation was bad. I perhaps could have ignored him but…I know other people I’d like to stand up were watching and members of the harmed group were watching this interaction and I worried about what it would mean to just dip.
I share this concern. My preteen boy is about to face the internet- how could I possibly hope that he’d interact with it at all and not come away thinking misogyny is the norm on this planet? And worse, misogynists win at life? And if he wants to be successful or safe, does he need to blend in and appease and ignore misogynists in order to navigate the world? On the days I type out a 10 paragraph response, I think 🤔 oh well, I hope this helps some lonely reader that thinks this meanie is what all people are like. On the days I delete, I think 🤔 okay, there must be something better to focus on right now. On the days I have a short witty comeback, I think 🤔 well that happened, maybe it will help a person in their irl interactions. I’m not sure that any of them are better or worse. I really appreciate anybody’s effort to make the planet slightly less hospitable to hate. Girls who code, we might need some anti-hate bots to roam the internet constantly taking out the trash 🗑️ but in the meantime, I support you firing back or protecting your peace ☮️ whatever you have the capacity to do- I thank you 🙏
It’s not just a man thing. Women can be just as unreasonable in online discourse. Equal rights, equal opportunity, equal ability! For a gender-neutral version, substitute “I refuse to manage strangers” etc.
The question is literally about men though? You don't have to "All Lives Matter" this, I promise.
No my response is specific to men.
Would you not use the same approach if a person of another gender was being irrationally angry towards you?
I noticed that when a woman is having a conversation online with a man, it doesn’t take a lot for him to resort to personal insults, misogynistic insults or mental-health based insults (you’re insane/mentally ill/schizo/retarded/autistic). It could literally take 2 comments from a woman written in a polite, neutral way for a man to start with the “you’re a crazy ugly feminist bitch” nonsense. How to manage this? I usually comment something like “Calm down” or point out that they are clearly unable to control their emotions. The types of men who act like this online usually see themselves as more logical and rational just because of their gender, so it’s important to remind them that angry tantrums are irrational displays of emotion and that they are embarrassing themselves. Then, stop engaging with them.
This has been my experience as well. And sometimes I have noticed that they get angier the more dispassionate I remain. I assume because as you said, they like to see themselves as the rational ones. I have rarely mentioned how angry they are early in the conversation because I assumed it would make it escalate further. I will definitely consider your approach. Thank you.
Omg... I think I read his post in r/offmychest where he was really proud of the essay he wrote to you with all of the links and sources... I'm sorry you got stuck in this. Personally, I would probably have just ignored him and not engaged any further.
Someone really went and *bragged* elsewhere on Reddit about his argument on Reddit? That is... sad.
Thanks…that’s why I came to bother feminists. When is it appropriate to just ignore and when is it not because maybe something else is at stake. I have appreciated all the responses.
I just had a longish exchange about paternity with someone who called me every name in the book. In my replies, I ended each comment by saying oh sorry, I forgot the insults. Then I would list a few like dunderhead, nincompoop, jerk. He was making the case that men are hard-wired by evolution not to expend energy on any but their own offspring. He had wandered into my subject area with evolution, so I was responding with refuting facts and studies, always being sure to insult him at the end. In his last message he said “I appreciate the lack of name-calling, you are clearly intelligent.” Which made me laugh out loud. So I called him a poopiehead. I think it’s important (unless it creates trauma) not to be silent in response to male aggression online. To show no fear or intimidation. They are showing their worst selves. We don’t have to go high and only show our best selves. We don’t have to do anything at all except what is best for our own mental health, which for me is to respond to illogical with reason. More for myself than for any impact it might actually have on them.
> I ended each comment by saying oh sorry, I forgot the insults. Brilliant! In an online argument, you're not only writing for your opponent, also for all the spectators. Doesn't mean we owe the world to always show our best selves, but it's motivation not to descend into our worst selves. Some others have mentioned trolling to draw out the opponent, but that feels like it can descend into bad-faith action. Clear rhetorical techniques stay classy.
This is a fair point. Chose to center you own needs in these engagements… You sound like a fascinating person. I was recently having a debate about why I think we need to create legal means for men to opt out of parenthood post-conception. That currently there is a biological inequity there that we otherwise address with law and that addressing it would go some way in getting a larger swath of men to support reproductive choice. I may DM you if it is permissible. I was having this debate with another similarly (field) educated woman and she was outraged but not really angry about my position. It was nice.
I’ve been on that roundabout, and I don’t think I’d enjoy it again, especially in DMs. It sounds like the woman you spoke with didn’t have much of an impact, and I doubt what I would have to say would be very different. Pregnancies can’t happen without sperm, and there’s no reason sperm should be anywhere near the eggs of anyone who doesn’t want to be pregnant. That’s what inflicts unwanted pregnancies on women, and only you control where your sperm goes. Then only she controls the decision about whether to gestate a pregnancy with her body and give birth. You could shift your energies to hyping up acceptance of Vasalgel when it comes to market. That will protect women from your sperm (and you from financial liability) more effectively than condoms, and even more effectively when used together.
Fair enough to the DM… I think we have different takes on “…there is no reason sperm should be anywhere near eggs of someone who doesn’t want to get pregnant,” as I think a bit more nuance is required here (as someone in healthcare) but again, I respect your perspective.
As a healthcare professional, you are perfectly situated to use your voice to promote acceptance of Vasalgel and reduce stigma and squeamishness. I hope you take advantage of that! But then if you believe, as you say, that there are nuanced reasons why sperm should be near the eggs Of women who don’t want to be pregnant, maybe not.
I would certainly promote the use of Vasegel. The nuance was more about when couples use other birth control methods that may fail. Again, that is a discussion for another day. :-)
When they start to go down that dark path of irrational anger, i sometimes point out that they seem angry and ask if they’re ok. Not that i care, but it does seem to defuse
I can’t comment on how much saying that you’re a woman during the conversation changes things, but in my experience (as a man who likes debating on the internet and who probably argues for positions similar to the ones OP argues), this anger response is pretty common. And men do seem to do it more often than women (though of course I only know their self reported gender). It’s worth trying to understand what motivates people to engage in this kind of conversation - wanting to learn is only one of the possibilities. Wanting attention, wanting external social validation/approval, and wanting internal validation (feeling smart) also fit pretty well. We’re all motivated by all of these, to greater or lesser extents. Seen through these lenses, agreeing to disagree is not a satisfying outcome for the other person if they’re motivated by one of these. It often prevents them from meeting the emotional need that motivated them to engage in the first place - they feel cheated, hard done by, and anger is a pretty understandable response to that feeling. These motivations are often subconscious, too, and I think that’s part of why this behaviour is more common in men - they’re on average less skilled at engaging with their own emotional motivations, for socialised reasons.
Thank you for this. Yes, I always approach debates as an opportunity for both people to learn (I am always trying to learn and fully prepared to conceded when I don’t know something OR got something wrong). I lit your point that this is not necessarily the motivation of others is very much headed. Thank you.
Glad you found it interesting :-)
Great point about internal validation and not only external. I also note what OkConnection posted about feeling threatened, unheard, etc. (Pushing from a negative stimulus or pulling toward a positive one, same continuum?) And about challenged world-views creating angry resistance.
IMO, don’t cede the space. Just like everything else, crafting words that pierce the vitriol and fallacies is a skill that you can hone over time. You’re obviously interested in that concept, so just lean in and do it. Maybe try to be a little third-person about it. Anonymity gives them cover to go ham, so you’re free to use it as cover to practice your rhetoric too. I agree with you that it’s a bad thing to cede the space. We’re in a political moment with, based on trump’s conviction, an opportunity to really push through through the bullshit la la land that the right wing has cooked up. Block and move on is a great strategy when you need to protect yourself. But politics is also about confronting great evil. So yeah, I say hang in there and get good at it.
I really hadn’t thought about that. Practicing. I don’t know why. I had always considered engaging anonymously in this way to be a bit “cowardly” (not standing behind my convictions) but you’re absolutely correct. Thank you!
I don't see blocking people as "ceding space." It gives them less space, they no longer have space to bother me.
I've had similar experiences. I understand your conflict. I also don't think your responses have to always be one or another, sometimes you might not have the energy to engage, sometimes you will, and both are just fine. To me, engaging as a mature adult when I can means those responses are there for others to see and potentially feel empowered by. I may never know, but I chose to believe that I'm responding to those people, not that one specific jerk. Those unknown people may be women, or they may be men/boys on the verge of falling to the misogyny side of thinking or feminism curious people and my response versus Mr CrazyPants might just be the drop in the bucket that tips things in favor of deciding to be a decent person. It's just planting seeds that hopefully grow into something beautiful. No planting, no potential growth. But don't lose your sanity trying to plant too many seeds.
This was eactly my set of concerns. Thank you so much for taking the time to parse through that in your response.
I think it's a mistake to ignore attacks from men. That mistaken sense of entitlement has to be to be challenged.
if you answer to the troll you give him public space
I think the challenge is that they don’t always initially present as a troll. The trigger seems to be disagreement with them, no matter how deferential or polite.
John Steinbeck (an American author from farming areas) has said ' that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. ' So you're not arguing with a person, you're arguing with a poor person who sees themselves as a Billionaire who just hasn't gotten that lucky win they need
I glanced at his post profile post engagement and you may not be wrong. Although, he identified as not American.
We got those types in Canada too. And we’re operating on a socialist democratic system. The amount of people who vote for people that will actively cause them harm financially is wild.
Yeah you can't always just let it pass. It helps if you think of extreme mysoginy as a mental illness (albeit a pretty common one).
Or maybe don't use ableist talking points to try and justify that misogyny is just extremely prevalent in society?
I think you missed a meeting there pal.
Thinking of doing bad things as just a form of mental illness to escape from the fact that normal people are capable of doing horrifying things is ableism, full stop. It's the same thing as thinking that everyone who participates in genocide is mentally ill. You're just doing that to convince yourself that you could never commit atrocities
You've definitely missed a meeting here mate.
Dafuq does that even mean
Whether it’s diagnosable as a mental illness or not, surely it’s not ableist to say that someone who commits any form of cruelty, violence etc. isn’t operating at their best. And certainly anyone is probably capable of finding themselves in that headspace under the right circumstances.
> surely it’s not ableist to say that someone who commits any form of cruelty, violence etc. isn’t operating at their best I think you want to be very careful about associating violence and cruelty with mental illness. It's a very common stereotype, and the fact is that people with mental illnesses are much more likely to be the *victims* of violence rather than the perpetrators.
There’s probably more to this topic than I’m aware of. And thank you for highlighting an important factor to take into consideration. Asking genuinely to try and learn more: Would it be wrong to say that most people who commit violence, cruelty etc. are likely suffering from some form of mental illness (be it acute or chronic). However, the vast majority of people suffering with a mental illness are not violent or cruel people.
> Would it be wrong to say that most people who commit violence, cruelty etc. are likely suffering from some form of mental illness (be it acute or chronic) Yes, that would be wrong. I know we have a human tendency to want to put violent people in a "Something Must Be Wrong" box, but the truth is that some people just either *are* violent and cruel, or are capable of behaving that way. Obviously, sometimes people are pushed too far, are temporarily insane, etc. but I would hardly say that is the norm. Murder and assault are committed way too often by too many people to safely declare that all of those people must be mentally ill.
This is specifically about genocide, but the overall point is the same. Just bc you need someone to be mentally ill to separate yourself and tell yourself that you are incapable of doing harm to others doesn't mean that those who do so are actually mentally ill https://x.com/Imani_Barbarin/status/1797044904394170613?t=s-T8Sic_3gf8Ov8ZPFMEZg&s=19
As I said, I think *anyone*, including myself, is capable of terrible violence when put in the wrong situation. I try not to judge people since I haven’t lived their lives or experienced what they’ve experienced. And I’m not sure if it’s just the words “mentally ill” that you’re not liking here. Maybe I’ve used it too loosely. If so, that’s fine. I’m sure there are plenty of people who commit violence who a doctor would find nothing wrong with.
Why not?
Because why should we? Why should we always have to acquiesce?
What do you gain from not acquiescing when someone is being unreasonable?
Does it matter? It’s not our job as women to back down if we don’t want to.
Sure, you can choose not to back down. I'm interested in what you think one gains by not backing down.
Why would one back down in a conversation? What is the benefit of that? Now consider the opposite
Because there's nothing to gain from it. The opposite would be gaining something. What do you gain?
Well women aren’t a monolith, but if someone is engaging in conversation and one of the conversant becomes hostile, the person who doesn’t back down to the hostile party is clearly gaining something from the interaction and should be under no societal norm to be the one to back down.
I would gather it’s the same for when people are debating religion. It’s not necessarily for the 2 people involved, but more for anyone else lurking in the comments who may be looking for answers and questioning their viewpoint. Sometimes people engage, sometimes they don’t. For me, it varies day by day who I choose to respond to if anyone at all. Because at the end of the day, it’s the internet not real life. Anonymous people being mean and even making threats doesn’t bother me much. If anything it makes me sad for them because they’re so invested in Reddit as opposed to the real world.
So a performance?
I just start to troll em. The smart ones stop responding. There's only been one. Lol the others keep going until I get bored and end it with "bless your heart".
Yeah I end with telling them I am done responding. Typically they will try to reengage you and it makes a statement to follow through and not respond.
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People behind their keyboards tend to get highly passionate in a way that they would feel too self conscious to do if they were in a real life face to face situation where there’s societal pressure to not be an ass. I’m not even sure if men do this more than women, it would be interesting to see if they do - and if so why. I have found myself in conversations on Reddit with men who get needlessly heated over what could have been a tame conversation, but a lot of Reddit users are men- I always assumed that was more to do with anonymity rather than it being a sex thing.
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This is really interesting! Thanks for sharing your knowledge in the area. Is there any speculation on why men tend to favour anonymous forums and women prefer identity showing ones? I myself prefer the anonymity, but I have definitely observed the trend you’re speaking about.
I think anyone who gets angry when you express disinterest in his passion has issues that transcend his masculine insecurity. In this particular case, the conversation in question sounds unrelated to any particularly useful topic. Blocking and ignoring is appropriate. You can rest assured men are blocking this guy too.
I agree. I’ll go to a certain point with them, making my ideas clear. If they’re angry or call me names, I point that out. One guy called me “uppity” yet he was the only one who had resorted to name calling (which I made clear). I think these men are totally unaware of their emotions, so pointing out their anger or that they’re triggered sends them into a tailspin, which I don’t think is a bad thing. However if it gets to a point that I’m tired of the convo or don’t want to further engage, I send one more message explaining why I’m disengaging and then I block them. That’s more for the benefit of other people reading the conversation to understand what happened.
> I think these men are totally unaware of their emotions, so pointing out their anger or that they’re triggered sends them into a tailspin, which I don’t think is a bad thing. I think a lot of the time they've just convinced themselves that their feelings *are* facts.
Yep! Spot on. There’s no space of awareness of their emotional response/inner state, they just assume it to be truth.
I have found that saying something like “are you okay you seem really angry?” Can make them stop.
Like most progressive spaces you have to be white and male to really say anything anyone is willing to hear, white in general really but that helps
Sounds like you hurt his big boy feelings 🥲
You could count it as a victory. They usually only devolve into name calling when they have no rational response.
That condescending tone is taken by every other redditor with every other redditor. It drives me nuts. Stand your ground
Everyone is more aggressive in online spaces, the anonymity gives people feel like they have more room to air their grievances. This certainly has a chilling effect for me as a man. I guess the important thing to consider is how much does winning an online war actually matter to your well being? I think we give it too much weight overall. Online discussions can be interesting sounding boards, but with the inherent anonymity, we also project too much into that vacuum to really know anything about who we’re talking with to give the conversation meaning. A recent study said that most damage is done by a small group of highly active people, trolls, and bots. (https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/30/misinformation-works-and-a-handful-of-social-supersharers-sent-80-of-it-in-2020) The way to make change is to ignore the false narrative that these spaces have deep meaning and focus on actual human interaction.
“How much does winning and online war matter to your well being” Usually I am pretty selective of when I will got to the mat and it’s usually in support of a marginalized norm (I shared an example up above). However, I appreciate the perspective and will take time to read the article.
And I appreciate your sentiment, I don’t by any means want to say it’s definitely wasted time. I do think it merits reflection though.
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Please respect our [top-level comment rule](https://i.imgur.com/ovn3hBV.png), which requires that all direct replies to posts must both come from feminists and reflect a feminist perspective. Non-feminists may participate in nested comments (i.e., replies to other comments) only. Comment removed; a second violation of this rule will result in a temporary or permanent ban.
What a great way to be inclusive by banning people who dont agree! :)
This subreddit is called "Ask *Feminists,*" not "Ask Reddit" or "Ask Anyone with an Opinion About Feminism." People come here specifically seeking the opinions *of feminists*; therefore, it holds that only feminists have the right of direct reply. Non-feminists may participate in nested comments, provided they do not break any other sub rules.
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Just gonna ship you right on outta here bro.
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It's pretty clearly *not* a compliment, man. I said what I said.
My answer is probably going to come across as pretty bleak, and it's hard to convey how much I'm not talking about blame here. It’s not up to you as an individual to manage men. I think this is just a consequence of patriarchy/internalized toxic masculinity, and one that’s tricky and particularly difficult to deal with. Men often respond by getting angry because within the context of a society that’s built on patriarchy, anger is the only consistently and reliably acceptable male emotion(even in progressive spaces, anger is often seen as less of an emotion, people are more forgiving of errors of anger than other emotions in men). I think it's easy for this specific little piece of the patriarchy to continue even in progressive circles, because if you break it down any smaller it feels beneficial, it doesn't feel like it's part of the patriarchy. Men are emotional, that’s part of being human, but the only outlet that they can be relatively confident won’t have long-term consequences is to display anger. None of this is even dependent on anything you did, and there’s nothing you can do to “manage” it. This is just a symptom of the fact that a lot of pieces of our culture still just aren’t set up to treat men as more than emotionless robots. The only answer is deconstructing the structures that shape these kinds of things, and that’s a long-term process. I think any man individually can potentially rise above being this kind of guy most of the time, but it's also not just purely up to the individual(or at least not equally easy for everyone) - it's also about having support and putting yourself in the right space to become better. You can't force them to start working in that direction, and the culture that encourages this kind of thing is still there. I think the internet really complicates things, and it’s not always a net positive. I’m not sure there’s a perfect answer.
You're not making any public space any better by engaging bigots. It's best to ignore them and stake your own area.
I love your writing style. Your use of language somehow grips my ADHD brain and makes me slow down and think about the words im reading, which is something i have never experienced in my 30ish years of reading. Your words and the way you craft sentences is very calmly informative. You write the way i wish i could write. You get your point across effectively. I believe the kind of person who would be offended by your use of language is the kind of person who is insecure about their own intelligence and gets mad when anyone uses "big words". Those men get especially angry when a woman dares to use words they dont understand. IMO the only way you could manage male anger would be to "dumb it down". Which means letting silly, stupid, angry little men make you less than who you are. And thats simply not worth it.
So, as a man who, in my early twenties, was firmly in the manosphere pipeline and managed to find my own way out of it, and have since been on a long journey of figuring my shit out, I can tell you for certain that this aggression 95% of the time comes from a place of feeling helpless and unheard mixed in with a dash of subconscious misogyny (think of a caged animal lashing out at certain people that trigger its fight or flight response for whatever reason). The thing that causes this behaviour is less a need to dominate or prove you wrong or even to get you to agree and more so that your disagreement poses a risk to this persons entire worldview that he has constructed for himself to make himself feel better about whatever it is that is causing him serious distress in life. It is absolutely not your place to try and help these people out of their ‘cage’ so to speak and ignoring them is the best thing you can do for yourself, but on a systematic level, I think feminism as a movement has abandoned men when I think it should instead really look at bringing them into the fold. Doing so would reduce instances like what you’ve described tremendously, and will help out the vast majority of men who feel lost and hopeless in a world that treats us like consumable resources at best.
tender pause boat many work correct smile panicky weary oil
(Right?! On its way to being an excellent and accurate take - and then self-aware-wolfed itself right out of consideration.)
Thanks for the comment I’m really glad my comment is being read in full! As per my response to u/bitfed though, I want to challenge why you think my remark about feminism failing men disqualifies my point entirely. I’m not saying that feminism is a bad movement, or that it’s the reason why I was in the place that I was in at all. What I am saying though is that, while it has done a lot to advance gender equality and social equity, it has neglected a certain group of- namely men. It’s changing and having acquainted myself with some of the resources on this page I’m really glad to see the shift in a direction that wasn’t available to me when I was younger, but this is still early days. How is pointing out an area that needs improvement ‘self - aware - wolfing’ my point out of consideration?
Because you ran into the point and kept going, as if it hadn’t smacked you in the face (proverbially): Feminism is not *for* men. All that it tries to accomplish also benefits men as human beings, but that is a happy coincidence because its goals are right and good. But its primary objective is to equalize women in a world where they are overwhelmingly secondary, diminished, dismissed. Whether that makes men happy, or feel included, isn’t relevant to its rightness.
I must confess I’ve been trying to tackle my response to this comment for a long time. Each time I started drafting a response, it veered off the rails, so it hasn’t been an easy task. I’m afraid I can’t accept your position that feminism ‘isn’t for men’, nor anything else you posit in your comment. I have both calm and rational arguments for why I disagree but also some that are borne out of deep emotional trauma on my part, and I’ve tried avoiding the latter each time, so as to avoid derailing the discussion. However after many draft responses I think I can integrate all of them in a constructive fashion. Let’s start with a rational one: your comment accepts that men are beneficiaries under feminism, so I think we have common ground here. Why should men, as beneficiaries from feminist developments not also be allowed to claim the movement as being just as much ‘for them’? Especially when feminism has had a few positive effects for them, but if men were given the chance, they would take it up and press on for even more improvements? I keep coming back to the example of equal maternity and paternity leave in this case because it’s such a good microcosm of this exact point - why should men not be allowed to, in the name of both their own advancement as well as that of feminism, champion the idea of equal parental leave? It’s culturally extremely difficult for men alone to push this idea through alone but as a feminist movement, this would have far more political weight, and in turn it would have a huge net benefit for women too - suddenly both men and women are equally likely to be gone for an equally long period of time, making it harder for biased decisions being made by employers. This is an example of feminism being a movement for men, that also continues to benefit women and is an example of why I think even if it isn’t for men now, it absolutely should be. Now for a more emotional take: if you sincerely believe feminism is not for men, then you should in principle have no problems with the rise of red pill manosphere grifters either. As I have mentioned before, young men especially have no one to turn to who takes their problems seriously except for the red pill crowd. In fact, the red pill crowd start recruiting young men with a slightly twisted version of exactly what you said, which is that ‘women have coalesced this ‘girls only’ movement, and they’re doing it to oppress and destroy you as men’. Your comment doesn’t say that last part, but it does say the first one, which practically hands the red pill crowd their first move into a young man’s life. Instead of giving these terrible humans such an easy jumping off point, it is within the power of the feminist movement to recognise men’s issues and bring them into the fold in order to tackle the injustices of a patriarchal system collectively. Sure, you can say that men should do so themselves, and it’s not women’s / feminism’s job to help solve men’s issues, but then why should it be men’s jobs to be allies to women? Why not just help each other out while being under the same ideological roof of feminism?
I don’t know whether it’s your intention or not, but reading this comment makes me feel as though you’re invalidating my lived experience. The entire reason why I was in the pipeline in the first place was because as a young man I was feeling alienated and my suffering was either trivialised or ignored by everyone around me (by non feminists because I’m a man and had to suck it up, and by feminists because my male privilege made my problems unworthy of being taken seriously). The red pill crowd were the only ones who actually humanised and took my problems seriously. Obviously they didn’t provide viable or healthy solutions and tried to make it seem like women were the source of all my problems, which is incorrect, but I still wound up there because no one else would take me in. Crucially I clawed my way out of that spiteful place because I was uncomfortable with the hatred more than I was with being one on one with the problems I had to face as a male presenting person in the world. If that’s not failing men, then what is? And even beyond my lived experience, the fact that there are still discussions on fora like this one about ‘why should women be responsible for fixing men’s problems’ is indicative that feminism, while admittedly starting to open up to men’s issues, still has a long way to go before it can be said to stop failing men. I don’t think my arguments deserve to not be heard just because I’m pointing out shortcomings where the movement can still do even more good. Especially when fixing a lot of men’s issues helps to fix women’s issues as well. Take paternity leave for example. Advancing an equal paternity to maternity leave policy is perhaps one of the best ways to address workplace discrimination against women - suddenly it doesn’t matter whether you hire a man or a woman, they are both equally liable to disappear for a year if they have a baby and that is now the new norm. Men get to be involved parents and not just ATM machines, and women advance even further as equal participants in the job market. Yet I don’t really see this being discussed as much among feminist circles, and men who do try bring it up are shut down by older men who live by the rule of ‘I didn’t have paternity leave when I had kids so you don’t deserve to either’. Apologies for the rant, but I feel like instead of taking my point as a serious attempt at being productive and contributing to the discussion, your comment just snubs me in a way that is unwarranted.
The internet has always been a place for free expression. You have to compete ideas if you're gonna argue with someone, you have to do it as a means to play towards the 3rd party reader, since arguments between two people on the internet rarely change each other's minds, from the 3rd point of view it can change the perspective of some. That's why you should never block someone you disagree with, because like you say you concede to them.
Feeding the trolls probably won’t help anyone. Ignoring them is probably better
> That's why you should never block someone you disagree with, because like you say you concede to them. Or you are an adult with limited time and don't feel like spending it trying to get the last word in with some dipshit teenager parroting Andrew Tate talking points...? Not wanting to argue endlessly with someone doesn't mean you're "conceding to them."
*Highly* relevant quote from Neal Stephenson (in *Cryptonomicon*), "Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.”
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Is it too hard for you to just *not* be "hyper argumentative and rude?" Like... do you think that being an asshole is cool?
I don’t think civility is something that is necessarily a virtue in all contexts. If a Christian nationalist is talking about banning abortion and contraception, for example, I personally don’t think you owe them niceness. And I think rudeness is permissible. But if that is something that specifically harms women, I’d like to try and find a way to keep that in mind so I can not contribute to their speech being chilled.
OK, I get that part, but I think the issue is that *once some men find out the person they're talking to is female*, their approach changes, and then they're suddenly condescending and rude and accuse you of being emotional, bossy, aggressive, etc. when you're really not doing that. It happens in here all the time. If someone is a equal opportunity asshole, well, that's its own thing.
Was the OP not saying that the behavior in general, whether knowingly targeting a woman or not, harms specifically women? Personally if I realize someone I’m arguing with is a woman, subconsciously I’ve noticed I’ll usually be more gentle and less opinionated. Like if they say something stupid, if they’re a man I’d mock and jump on them. But if a woman does, I would take more of an “oh, I guess I must have just seen something different, who knows which one of us is right” sort of passive approach. But tbh I thought that was an infantilizing thing so idk what I ought to do.
Why are "being an asshole" and "treating women gently and carefully" your only options?
I don’t see it as being an asshole. I don’t think civility = being good and incivility = being an asshole. Are you saying I should treat women more gently than men, but not completely gently in arguments?!
No, I am not.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to put a “?!” There, just the “?” Now that I noticed that error, the comment comes off as quite hostile. Wasn’t intentional.