Yeah I see what you’re saying. Agree even! (Also autistic so tone, and missing points and stuff like that, I also struggle) I am also here primarily to learn, not preach.

The only thing I’m pondering is your point about guns being a tool, not doing the killing themselves. I think that’s interesting. Like it’s an application of the saying “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” So the metaphor breaks down when the “treat every gun like it’s loaded” is applied to men. The only twist I’ll maybe add is that men are the gun and patriarchal capitalism is the person wielding it? Like men have been so conditioned by the ruling class, but I’m not going to really dig into my personal politics here, just seeing if that helps blend the two approaches.

Like I do not think every individual man is responsible for the lack of safety women understandably feel around men. I think “the system” is responsible for that, but it’s going to take active work on the part of men to undo that, otherwise it just functions as them playing along with it.

The crossing the street thing is interesting. This gets brought up in trans masc circles semi regularly. Trans men talking about hitting a point in passing where women cross the street to avoid them, and the discussion often comes down to, “I’m sad about it, but I get it, men suck.” I think the amount of societal healing that needs to happen for things like that to shift is immense. Basically I’m not sure exactly what is different, if anything.

I don’t think I really took a particular stance in this post, just kind of dropped info I have that’s loosely related to what we were chatting about…

Idk if I’m still making sense. Words are hard.

We have time and energy for nuance with people we care for and people we can't avoid. Men are individuals with complex inner lives and nobody can appreciate that for 3 billion men on this planet or even, in my right now, the three strangers in the room with me.

We don't need to, I won't be talk to them and they won't talk to me.

Without the nuance, we make generalizations.

Thanks for the detailed response!

I agree with the need to be welcoming to the men willing to change. I guess I’ve really only got 2 more things I’m sort of musing on.

The first is the role, if any, shame plays in motivating change. This is a tough one for me, both as a trans femme, and witnessing my mother going through the process of accepting me and by extension all trans folk. Shame played a huge, though perhaps unfortunate, part of both those processes. It took large swaths of the rest of my family getting good at name and pronoun shifts for her to finally start putting in effort. It took the shame of being left behind to motivate change. I’m not going to open the can of worms that is discussion of the role shame plays in my own trans experience at this time lol. I don’t have a real answer to anything here, just curious about folks’ thoughts on shame as a motivator.

The second (and longer) musing kind of builds off that, but looks at the linguistic nature of memes. I won’t go find citations right now, but there’s definitely research into how memes can be used to tackle tough issues through humor and irony and exaggeration. I think of it almost like ‘Adventure Time’ or ‘ Steven Universe’ both shows about young impressionable boys being guided into adulthood by a cast of people set on making them a good person. To be clear, they’re kids shows, they have goofy animation, and fart jokes, and just plenty of general stupidity. They use the lack of seriousness of the show to coax in people that are actively being socialized away from healthy masculinity by society, and get them learning to be better people. I think memes can have a similar effect.

Let’s say this meme gets seen by every single cis, straight man. I struggle to believe all of them, let alone a majority, would think Pedro Pascal is truly the only man maintaining women’s faith. So the hyperbole of the meme then gets people thinking about what makes someone make the exaggeration in the first place. What does Pedro Pascal do that has someone praising him like this? This ties back into the shame as a motivator point a bit. Feeling like an out group can be a good reason to learn to empathize with the in group. This happens in bad ways too, look at the invasion of queer nightlife spaces by straight folks. Straight people aren’t learning to empathize with LGBTQ+ folks, they just want to feel a part of the in group because we know how to throw parties.

I’m almost done, but wanted to play with your point about an equivalent meme. I think, in the right space the gold-digger joke could absolutely hit (femcelmemes, and the various 196s are the obvious examples to me, just general queer, femme leaning spaces). I also think a gold digger meme equivalent would lack the positive educational layer this meme has I mentioned before. I feel it amounts to the difference in search results of “why do people love Pedro Pascal?” and “are all women gold diggers?” Those two searches lead to wildly different parts of the internet, one of which is intent of pushing men further into hating women.

It’s super messy. Thank you so much for talking, and I’m still all ears because I do agree on including men in the conversation. I’m mostly curious about how that process should or shouldn’t have a way to filter in men that are willing to change, and willing to acknowledge the harm hierarchical patriarchy has caused, and that includes being able to laugh about it.