whenever i’ve felt like saying “not all men”, it’s in response to blanket statements about all men… and then usually includes a concession that indeed, a lot of men do and it’s a problem, but that framing things as “all men” is problematic as it doesn’t allow for improvement…
i mean um… haha, yeah all men are dumb!!I think when a man can’t just listen to a woman (or anyone) say their bit without jamming in caveats, it’s indicative of something.
Especially if someone is venting, do not expect everything they say to be carefully balanced and measured. These people are not secretly plotting to build a completely female utopia and blast all the men into space, they’re just having some feelings like the rest of us. Let them have their feelings.
I understand this, but I also think it’s not reasonable to expect people to always stay silent when someone’s venting/feelings leads them to make broad, declarative statements about the badness/problems of a large heterogenous group.
Like, I know I have a lot of personal baggage from growing up in a household where my accomplishments were overlooked and every problem with myself or my actions magnified. The longest streak of doing well could be brought down with a single minor screw up. I know I’m far more sensitive to this sort of shit than the average person.
That said, there is a difference between all and most, or all and enough that it’s a problem. I don’t think it’s wrong to insist that difference is important, or at the very least that the difference exists. Insisting upon that distinction does not need to be a dismissal of the very real issues, it can simply be an insistance that the distinction exists.
Just as we should allow people to have their feelings that x group is bad, shouldn’t we also have some room to allow people to feel something when they’ve been lumped in with an amorphous blob of “badness” that they don’t actually belong to?
If you want to argue that “the bad feelings men experience by being lumped in with the bad elements of men are less important than the danger to women from those bad elements” then I’d agree with you fucking 100%. Actual danger trumps feelings, no fucking questions asked.
My issue is that usually the argument is instead that “If your feelings are hurt because someone said all men are abusive, that means that you must be an abusive man upset that you were called out”, “see, you saying not all men just means that I was right”, or just mocking the true statement of “not all men”.
Again, the distinction is important. This post is the first time I have ever seen someone suggest that the response to “not all men” is “enough men”. Fucking hell I’m behind that response all the way. I’m not about doubling down on insisting all men are shit.
but I also think it’s not reasonable to expect people to always stay silent when someone’s venting/feelings leads them to make broad, declarative statements about the badness/problems of a large heterogenous group.
Venting to your best friend or friend group is not the same as venting in a public forum. Or even to your male partner. Understanding the issue so that it can be solved in a systematic way is our default reaction, not “oh she just wants to vent let’s hug her”. We don’t even have the same emotional response to that, source as of yet unknown. Going out on a limb: Probably not all nature, probably not all nurture.
That said, the proper answer still isn’t “not all men” simply because it doesn’t have the proper impact. “I don’t understand why you’re angry at me” is a much better way to stop an “all men” rant mid-sentence because now you’re not opening an abstract discussion about the nature of the universe but telling her about the direct emotional turmoil and therefore labour she’s causing, leading her to re-evaluate the relative importance of both. YMMV when it comes to online but in-person I can definitely recommend it.
