I see where you’re coming from, and not gonna debate it further.
Still, to me it looks this division is growing, and hostility is barely ever a good answer. There seemed to be more unity and more decisiveness to approach things together just a few years prior, and I’m not sure what ended it.
I’ll tell you from my own experience, all I can speak for is me (and I’m not the guy you were talking to btw).
When I was a kid growing up I called myself a feminist, I care(d) about women’s issues and the women children in my peer group were welcoming and cared about me too, “all men” and “men are trash” were relegated strictly to the internet. And then as I got older I started meeting more people who, while they’d be nice at face value, would regularly talk about how much they hate men and “men are trash” any time they had an opportunity. And then some of those women I know who used to not hold those values started to turn as we got older and expressed more and more hatred of men, and then I got raped, twice, by two different women within the space of a year, and then still have to see “not all men but always a man,” “men are trash,” etc, or under a comic in (either 196 or me_irl) right now about how men can be victims of abuse too “mens rights activist” (synonymous with incel to those who use it as an insult).
Now? I can’t call myself a feminist anymore. The culture at large actively rejects me and pretends that I, as a male rape victim of woman abusers (and that’s not even to mention the three different women that cheated on me, one of whom emotionally abused me for almost two years first, and technically raped me by threatening suicide if I was busy when she wanted it making me just give up and roll over more often than not, but I didn’t even include her in the “raped me” category, woohoo), don’t exist, am not important, and need to shut up and let women speak yadda yadda. If they don’t want to include me on their side because I don’t toe the line on the whole “calling me a rapist simply for having a penis” thing, fine, but I can’t not be on my goddamn side so I’ll still advocate for me.
In my personal experience, the divide grew because of that. The fact that women feel safer with a bear also isn’t helping, but that’s just because I now know that women are scared of me at all times and so I should avoid interacting with them as much as possible for their own comfort, so since I don’t talk to women that I don’t already know, that further increases the divide, but it’s better than them thinking I’m creepy or whatever.
I see where you’re coming from, and not gonna debate it further.
Still, to me it looks this division is growing, and hostility is barely ever a good answer. There seemed to be more unity and more decisiveness to approach things together just a few years prior, and I’m not sure what ended it.
I’ll tell you from my own experience, all I can speak for is me (and I’m not the guy you were talking to btw).
When I was a kid growing up I called myself a feminist, I care(d) about women’s issues and the women children in my peer group were welcoming and cared about me too, “all men” and “men are trash” were relegated strictly to the internet. And then as I got older I started meeting more people who, while they’d be nice at face value, would regularly talk about how much they hate men and “men are trash” any time they had an opportunity. And then some of those women I know who used to not hold those values started to turn as we got older and expressed more and more hatred of men, and then I got raped, twice, by two different women within the space of a year, and then still have to see “not all men but always a man,” “men are trash,” etc, or under a comic in (either 196 or me_irl) right now about how men can be victims of abuse too “mens rights activist” (synonymous with incel to those who use it as an insult).
Now? I can’t call myself a feminist anymore. The culture at large actively rejects me and pretends that I, as a male rape victim of woman abusers (and that’s not even to mention the three different women that cheated on me, one of whom emotionally abused me for almost two years first, and technically raped me by threatening suicide if I was busy when she wanted it making me just give up and roll over more often than not, but I didn’t even include her in the “raped me” category, woohoo), don’t exist, am not important, and need to shut up and let women speak yadda yadda. If they don’t want to include me on their side because I don’t toe the line on the whole “calling me a rapist simply for having a penis” thing, fine, but I can’t not be on my goddamn side so I’ll still advocate for me.
In my personal experience, the divide grew because of that. The fact that women feel safer with a bear also isn’t helping, but that’s just because I now know that women are scared of me at all times and so I should avoid interacting with them as much as possible for their own comfort, so since I don’t talk to women that I don’t already know, that further increases the divide, but it’s better than them thinking I’m creepy or whatever.