This is gonna piss some people (men) off, I can already tell...

This is an excellent point and I think it demonstrates really well what people mean by "all men"

Even tho I love men as much as the next straight girl...bear for me, please

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[–] 14 points 2 hours ago (18 children)

There is a large number of men that stand by when something is happening, or are the perpetrators of violence. I think the reason that men are offended is because it also paints over the men who are trying to be allies. If transfolk started using the phrase "all cis" to describe who is inflicting violence, it would be overwhelming cis people causing violence towards them. It's factually correct. It also wouldn't help framing themselves as a culture war issue.

The issue isn't that its correct, it's the prevalent idea in online communities that "I ought to be right" without some sort of call to action or creation of community. If a person posting about any social issue, whether that be this or immigration rights, or black lives, is simply writing a post with no means for action behind it to simply drive home a point isn't benefitting their community, but stoking outrage to increase engagement on social media.

By using "all men" rhetoric, not only are you alienating men that are sympathetic for the cause, but you're actively driving away men that are teetering on the edge.

I understand how dire of an issue this is. If you really want to make change, stop posting culture war rhetoric and start promoting and volunteering locally. Start to make an actual change instead of getting random men angry online.

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  • [–] 0 points 17 minutes ago (1 child)

    Yeah, I worry that boys who are young enough to still have their brains developing and aren't really capable of delving into the nuance of it all, will hear "all men are/do x", and they'll erroneously understand it as "men should x" or "all men x, so I guess I'm not supposed to care or be surprised when I see other guys x?", or for the ones on the edge that you mentioned, "I'm a man who has had thoughts about doing x, but I guess it's pointless to resist acting on those thoughts in the future". All of those interpretations are obviously the exact opposite of what the intended message and goal is, and sadly lots of those boys won't have a good role model around to correct their thinking. So basically I worry that this kind of rhetoric is counter productive. At the same time I'm fine with ACAB, because being a cop is a choice whereas gender isn't.

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  • [–] 2 points 14 minutes ago

    “I’m a man who has had thoughts about doing x, but I guess it’s pointless to resist acting on those thoughts in the future”.

    Gender isn't a choice necessarily, but this is an active choice.

    If a man chooses to rape someone because their feelings were hurt by victims calling out rape culture, they were going to be rapists anyway.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 hours ago (13 children)

    I understand how dire of an issue this is. If you really want to make change, stop posting culture war rhetoric and start promoting and volunteering locally. Start to make an actual change instead of getting random men angry online.

    Those aren't mutually exclusive.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 hour ago (12 children)

    So you're pro stoking outrage online? I'm kind of confused by your comment.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 hour ago (11 children)

    I don't like people telling women they should be quieter about how often they're raped and by whom.

    We can talk about the rate of sexual violence and work to make change locally.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 hour ago (10 children)

    No one's saying anyone should be quieter about the rate of sexual violence. I'm specifically talking about culture war rhetoric used to create large divides. Do you think parroting a culture war talking point a) helps spread awareness of how horrible the rate of sexual violence for women is or b) alienates people who would potentially be allies because of the inherently alienating statement?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 hour ago (9 children)

    Considering there's quite a bit of constructive conversation happening in this thread alone, yes, I believe it does help spread awareness of how horrible the rate of sexual violence is for women.

    I find that a lot of men are ignorant to the real numbers and are often shocked at how high they really are.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 hour ago (8 children)

    If you look at the upvote/downvote ratio, you see another story. The vast majority of people aren't even interacting with this post. Just your comments on this post alone account for 20% of engagement.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 hour ago (7 children)

    This post has only been up for 2 hours. Upvotes and downvotes shift a lot over about 1-2 days on Lemmy. I wouldn't use it as an indicator on interaction quite yet.

    Oh no, I'm contributing to a forum that's designed for communication /s

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  • [–] 3 points 1 hour ago (6 children)

    That's fair. I still don't see how "all men" rhetoric is a better way to raise awareness than, say, just using the statistics themselves. There's plenty of campaigns that use just numbers. You circumvent the issue of alienating potential allies while grounding your statements in reality instead of putting more flame on the fire for a discussion where everyone wants to be right without actual involvement in the real world.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 hour ago (5 children)

    The meme is explaining why the phrase "all men" is sometimes used and the deeper meaning behind it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 hour ago (4 children)

    I'm more so talking about the rhetoric in general rather than this specific post. Rhetoric that needs an explanation off the bat really isn't good at getting its point across.

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  • [–] -1 points 58 minutes ago (3 children)

    Almost all shorthand rhetoric needs an explanation - see "Defund Police" as an example.

    You don't need to be offended on behalf of the men that don't do the work to dismantle our rape culture.

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  • [–] -2 points 49 minutes ago (2 children)

    That's literally a perfect demonstration of my point😂. It's not "No Police" it's "Defund Police" which carries the meaning of less funding but not abolishing funding. There's probably a better absolute slogan you could use to demonstrate your point, though!

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  • [–] 0 points 1 hour ago (1 child)

    Men who actually get the issue and are the select few who step in and tell others off for unacceptable behaviour don't get offended by the generalisation.

    Sure, I agree, "not all men". But women have no way of telling if you're one of the "good guys", or one of the good guys - therefore I fully get and support the sentiment of "all men".

    You know who DOES get offended by the generalisation? Either the perpetrators (because they don't like being called out), or the ones who stand by and do nothing (because they're ashamed of it, yet refuse to change).

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  • There's a separation between the rhetoric and basic safety. I'm talking about rhetoric. I never said, "not all men", in fact I said that its true that a large portion of men are complicit. For a woman, of course they should be worried about whether there's a man on the other side of the street vs a woman. That's not what I'm talking about.

    I'm talking about the perpetuation of culture war rhetoric, which this is one of many, where people argue in circles until they don't have the drive to actually go out and do something.

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