User blog comment:Cdc1998/Random Questions from Charles/@comment-1824274-20130804195943/@comment-4675595-20130808194505

Michael, you clearly don't understand the "feminist view on men" at all. Feminists as a whole don't honestly believe that all men are disrespectful, brutish, stupid, or anything like that - it's the fact that society as a whole condones some shitty behaviours from men that they try to speak out against. Shit like catcalling, sexist jokes, and sexual harrassment aren't disciplined as harshly as they should be. Hell, there are plenty of male feminists out there who recognize these things, and speak out because society's "boys will be boys" mentality when it comes to this stuff not only hurts women, but gives men a bad rap.

Link, I recognized that men can face sexual harrassment, but the scale is nowhere close to that of when women are harrassed. Please trust me on this. Women aren't "overly sensitive" because they feel afraid in a situation where a man might just feel awkward. Men are able to just shrug it off, because you haven't been taught to be wary of strange women who may want to molest you or beat you or worse. When a man shouts "nice tits" or leers at you on the bus or even follows you down a fucking city block, women have literally no way of knowing if he's just being impolite or if he seriously intends to hurt us. Society teaches women to be wary of strange men, because all men are potential rapists, and if we're hurt then it's our fault for not knowing better, because people believe that some men simply can't control themselves and that's a perfectly acceptable excuse for abusing a woman. Obviously, everything about this situation is total bullshit - "rape culture" is the term for it if you ever wanted to look into it further, and it hurts men and women alike.

For the record, sexual harrassment and abuse toward men is also something that feminists (at least, those who actually understand feminist issues) do care about because it is a problem. Just because men don't have to fear these things on the same systematic scale as women doesn't mean it isn't any less severe when it does happen. In fact, there are a lot of cases where men will be ridiculed or disregarded when they admit to having been sexually or physically abused by a woman, because of the assumption that all women are weak and men always want sex 100% of the time and don't care where they get it. If you ever meet a person who claims to be a feminist and laughs about a situation like this, they're not actually a feminist.

I'm really curious about the school issue in your town - could you possibly link me to some information on that? Because honestly it just sounds silly. But I do agree that there are definitely some self-proclaimed feminists who honestly dislike men, but don't automatically assume that a woman who identifies as a feminist hates you just for being a man. That's a hurtful stereotype and it leads many men to becoming automatically defensive when feminist topics come up, instead of listening and learning things from the other perspective. Just because you may not have to deal with a certain problem in your everyday life doesn't mean that it's a non-issue, so don't be so quick to brush someone off as "overly sensitive" or "easily offended" when they bring up something that effects them, be it sexism, racism, ableism (discrimination against the mentally or physically ill), classism, religious descrimination, or anything of the sort.

On a bit of a general side note, there are so many kinds of -isms ingrained into our society that you may be unknowingly contributing to some in some way, even if it's just subtley. So if you ever say something meant to be harmless and someone calls you out saying it's offensive, please try to understand where they're coming before you get defensive. It can definitely be uncomfortable to check yourself on something like that, but simply saying "I'm sorry you were offended" and then avoiding the topic altogether won't help you be more understanding of the situation. And on a lot of these things, being ignorant of discrimination can be just as bad as participating in discriminatory behaviour. Just something that's super important to keep in mind uwu