Are All Men Trash? Discussion

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Gideon wrote:Every act of violence I’ve ever been involuntarily involved in, every story I’ve heard in my entire life about friends or friends of friends who’ve been beaten for being in any way different (usually gay, sometimes because they were punks or goths), every girlfriend who’s ever had a story about being raped or assaulted, it always comes down to the same gooseberry fool - straight men with a very specific idea of what makes a man a man. gooseberry fool they were either taught or grew up seeing celebrated by other banana splits around them.

And you place more importance on that because those are the incidents you hear about. You don't hear about the vast, vast majority of people who just get on with their lives, go to work, go home, have dinner, go to bed, because why would you hear about that?

It's easy to assume that the world is gooseberry fool, when all you're made aware of is the gooseberry fool bits.

I heard about these things (the ones which didn’t happen to me or in front of me) because that’s the kind of things friends share over the course of decades of friendship. I’m not sure what you think the answer is here? That because I could respond with ‘Yeah but think about all the times you DIDN’T get your jaw broken for being gay!’ the next time this gooseberry fool happens to a friend, that maybe I shouldn’t look at the common thread to every identical story I hear or experience.

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Somebody Else's Problem wrote:Taf, what would your reaction be if I said what you said, but substituted the word "men" with literally any other group?

I'd say that's like asking what if purple was a smell. We're not talking about any other group, we're talking about men.

EDIT: Also, what equivalent group is there? Men are the dominant social and cultural group on the planet.

Vermilion wrote:

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:Taf, what would your reaction be if I said what you said, but substituted the word "men" with literally any other group?

I suspect he'd spontaneously combust, Taf's more PC than Scotland Yard.

I am, and proud of it

Tafdolphin wrote:[

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:Taf, what would your reaction be if I said what you said, but substituted the word "men" with literally any other group?

I'd say that's like asking what if purple was a smell. We're not talking about any other group, we're talking about men.

EDIT: Also, what equivalent group is there? Men are the dominant social and cultural group on the planet.

My point is, you can't make massive sweeping statements like that. If you do, you're a goddamned hypocrite, because if I'd said (for example) women as a group were gooseberry fool, you'd strawberry floating explode. And you'd be entirely right to do so.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:[

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:Taf, what would your reaction be if I said what you said, but substituted the word "men" with literally any other group?

I'd say that's like asking what if purple was a smell. We're not talking about any other group, we're talking about men.

EDIT: Also, what equivalent group is there? Men are the dominant social and cultural group on the planet.

My point is, you can't make massive sweeping statements like that. If you do, you're a goddamned hypocrite, because if I'd said (for example) women as a group were gooseberry fool, you'd strawberry floating explode. And you'd be entirely right to do so.

Because if you arbitrarily said women were gooseberry fool you'd be doing so erroneously. As I said, men as a social and cultural group have and continue to be the driving force behind a great deal of inequality and discrimination in the world. Women... don't because as a group they are not dominant, unlike men.

It's not hypocritical to say one group is bad and think another is not.

I actually kind of agree with men being bad. It’s getting better in general, only in the last few decades have the genders started to become more equal. And even then there’s still a long way to go.

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:Taf, what would your reaction be if I said what you said, but substituted the word "men" with literally any other group?

What if I said what you said, but changed it so I was actually saying something totally different?

The guillotine is a psychosexual dialectic.

PaperMacheMario wrote:I actually kind of agree with men being bad. It’s getting better in general, only in the last few decades have the genders started to become more equal. And even then there’s still a long way to go.

I mean, I certainly understand where the ResetEra hive mind, and Taf are coming from. I agree mostly even. I just find the self righteous and arrogant attitude (from ResetEra not Taf!) nauseating and the way in which they ban people for not falling in with the company line ridiculous.

It’s basically an echo chamber, and in a way they’re part of the problem because they’re killing any debate on discussion it and so no one is going to change their mindset.

Tomous wrote:

PaperMacheMario wrote:I actually kind of agree with men being bad. It’s getting better in general, only in the last few decades have the genders started to become more equal. And even then there’s still a long way to go.

I mean, I certainly understand where the ResetEra hive mind, and Taf are coming from. I agree mostly even. I just find the self righteous and arrogant attitude (from ResetEra not Taf!) nauseating and the way in which they ban people for not falling in with the company line ridiculous.

It’s basically an echo chamber, and in a way they’re part of the problem because they’re killing any debate on discussion it and so no one is going to change their mindset.

Oh I totally agree about ResetEra, I should have made a disclaimer saying so. I don’t visit the place but it seems like a lot of the forums are quite toxic and the moderation is handled insanely heavy-handed...ly. I was just making a passing comment about the topic of discussion!

Tafdolphin wrote:Is every singular man on the planet trash? No. Are men as a social group? Undoubtedly. Men have destroyed the planet's ecosystem, men perpetuate systems that discriminate and abuse, men are behind the vast majority of conflicts and (ha) man made catastrophies this world has seen.

This sounds more like general misanthropy to me, that individual men are responsible is a sampling bias due to the patriarchal power imbalance. I don't think that makes the patriarchy responsible, I think conflict and ecological damage would happen regardless. For example I can't rationalise how efforts to dismantle toxic masculinity would address issues like climate change. The root of the issue seems a much more fundamental human tendency towards reaction rather than pro-action, and that seems hardwired more than it is socially learnt.

A very valid lens on the issue that I couldn't disagree with more. Seperating the consequences of man's actions from those very actions and replacing them with a generalized critique of the human condition is, yeah, a way to look at it but... No. It's not an interpretation I can buy into.

Though I will say extrapolating out that environmental change was inevitable is a fatalistic and, I think, erroneous opinion.

We can only speculate as to what a genuinely post-patriarchal society would look like, but---given aggression and sociopathy are encouraged traits under toxic strands of masculinity, and those behaviours have a privileged role in the patriarchy---it's not unreasonable to speculate such a society might embody more peaceful and empathetic traits in general

It's probably correct that other violence-encouraging power structures would have taken the place of the patriarchy had it never developed, but that isn't the timeline we live in, so I don't think it invalidates analysis of the patriarchy as-we-experience-it as a violence-producing cultural element

I've always found Era's moderation towards piracy really weird and inconsistent. Movie and music piracy = instant ban but game piracy almost always gets given a free pass.

Tafdolphin wrote:Though I will say extrapolating out that environmental change was inevitable is a fatalistic and, I think, erroneous opinion.

I'd say environmental change was inevitable from industrialisation, the awareness of there being any issue at all on a climate scale came decades afterwards.

Of course now the evidence is as convincing as it is damning, and there are several interrelated reasons for the lack of necessary response - of which I'm sure toxic masculinity has played some not insignificant role through its close relation to modern capitalism.

But to say "climate change is the fault of men" I think is unfair. If it was men alone who were responsible for a lack of pro-activity in dealing with the climate, wouldn't we expect the other half of the population to be voting en masse for the Green Party, for example?

OrangeRKN wrote:But to say "climate change is the fault of men" I think is unfair. If it was men alone who were responsible for a lack of pro-activity in dealing with the climate, wouldn't we expect the other half of the population to be voting en masse for the Green Party, for example?

That's assuming that the patriarchy and toxic masculinity affects only those who drive it, which is untrue. The systems of western democracy and industry were created by men, for men but those systems affect everyone. If adherence to a system is ingrained in a society from birth, as capitalism largely has been for modern western society, everyone is bound by those rules to some extent. True they are malleable, and people can reject and dislike them, but this is not the default.

(Tenuous example: look at all the women who voted for Trump)

Tafdolphin wrote:That's assuming that the patriarchy and toxic masculinity affects only those who drive it, which is untrue.

Okay, so then it's not men who are trash, it's toxic masculinity?

OrangeRKN wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:That's assuming that the patriarchy and toxic masculinity affects only those who drive it, which is untrue.

Okay, so then it's not men who are trash, it's toxic masculinity?

Men are trash as men are the embodiment and drivers of toxic masculinity. You can't separate the two.

(again, tenuous Godwin baiting response: "So it wasn't the Nazis, it was national socialism?")

Tafdolphin wrote:Men are trash as men are the embodiment and drivers of toxic masculinity. You can't separate the two.

In my mind we've just separated the two in order to explain how toxic masculinity also causes women to not combat climate change, despite not being men.

Imagine thinking so little of yourself that because you're a man, and other men in the world have done bad stuff, by extension you lump yourself in with them and think of yourself like a piece of gooseberry fool.

OrangeRKN wrote:

Tafdolphin wrote:Men are trash as men are the embodiment and drivers of toxic masculinity. You can't separate the two.

In my mind we've just separated the two in order to explain how toxic masculinity also causes women to not combat climate change, despite not being men.

So I feel we're getting away from the main thrust here. Men are trash as, as a social and cultural force, they are the creators and perpetrators of a system of norms and practices that have created a great deal of discrimination and inequality. This is often termed toxic masculinity. If we're talking about one, and the effect it has on other demographics, we cannot do so without involving the other.

Ad7 wrote:Imagine thinking so little of yourself that because you're a man, and other men in the world have done bad stuff, by extension you lump yourself in with them and think of yourself like a piece of gooseberry fool.

Again, this isn't the point, nor is it what's happening here (and probably this is true for the Reset thread). Personally I don't particularly like myself but that's not because I'm a man it's because of various other mental health issues related to complex personality quirks. I don't think the situation you describe...exists? Really?

In my mind it's healthy to observe the groups you belong to in a critical light, lest you give way to an absolute social bias.