you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]endless_assfluff 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Thanks for asking this! I feel like this is something we don't talk about enough, because I see some commenters on this sub repeatedly bashing radfems as angry---we're on your side, my dudes---and wanted to look into that more.

So I think telling radical feminists not to be misandrist is the wrong battle to fight. In this case, if the posters above truly meant to say "Good, let [all men, every man in existence, every single one] rape each other" rather than "Good, let [the subset of men who happen to be rapists] rape each other," for example, that's a weak statement and they shouldn't have said that.

That being said, I'm white, and when my friends say "white people suck," my instinct isn't to lecture them about reverse racism. It's to say "yeah, they do," and let them vent. Other people have identified these kinds of statements as emotional responses to stuff the utterer shouldn't have had to deal with in the first place. I agree. It's not my place to tell my friends how they're allowed to respond to systemic racism. The real issue we're both up against isn't a person but a false belief system: end racial stereotyping and all the other baggage that comes with it, and "reverse racism" ends as well. Likewise, here, if we work together to end misogyny, misandry should die with it.

But instead, I often see radical feminists being blamed for things they have no control over. If I said that 90% of sexual-assault perpetrators are men, would you be angrier at me for being misandrist, or at the asshole rapists for making everyone else look bad? (Not you in particular. Anyone reading this.) Would you feel compelled to say men get sexually assaulted too/women can be the perps too, or would you say, yeah, we shouldn't let those jerks get away with that? Would you assume I'm erroneously using statistics to argue in favor of biological determinism, or assume that I understand statistics perfectly well and just want to strategize about preventing sexual assault because I'm on Team People-Should-Not-Be-Assaulted-Regardless-Of-Gender? If a woman is saying questionable things because she's a victim of assault, would you be angrier at the woman, or the man who terrorized her so thoroughly that she's now scared of all men? You know? I mean, I don't know what your answers would be, but these are all questions I asked myself at some point. I changed my behavior when I didn't like my answers.

My point is, it's true that saying things that could be construed as generalizations isn't productive, and neither is telling radfems to police their language in order to cater to men. You're right that men might stay away from these spaces because they're offended. What I'm disagreeing on is the culpability: I think radfems could do everything and say everything perfectly and people would still hate on them because the label "radical feminist" carries negative connotations. The bad apples are an excuse to justify that belief. As long as people keep trying to paint radfems as the problem, rather than misogyny, homophobia, or lies, there's going to be unnecessary infighting.

(For the sake of disclosure, I'm not particularly offended by this post, since I've done a crapton of epistemological soul-searching to ensure my beliefs in this area are well-founded and don't stem from hatred. You also seem reasonable and I thought this was a discussion worth having. I hope I haven't come off as combative here and I apologize if I have.)

[–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I'm white too and when people say, "white prople suck," I cut them out of my life the same way I cut anyone who says "black people suck." Racism as a form of venting is just racism.

[–]latuspodSuper Straight 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

This. Casual racism or sexism isnt ok just because it's against what we've arbitrarily labeled as the oppressor.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for the support. I feel sad even having to say that though. It's upsetting how easily people are ok with some forms of racism while not ok with others. It's part of the woke moviment and it's one of the main reasons we are in the situation we are in currently. Racism, bigotry and sexism have no place in equality. The second you start allowing any form of it there will be problems.