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this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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Feminism
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I guess that's my personal view coming through. I hate labels and prefer to use broader terms.
Usually when I use men with quotations, I'm refering to the type of men that consume hate content. The type of content that promotes the appearance of male dominance and excessive masculinity that looks extremely gay to the outside observer. The word men that is being forcefully twisted into matching this new and ugly meaning.
I've had to deal with these types of people in work settings my whole life and my patience ran out after the covid lockdowns. As a response, I've discarded as many labels as possible and have chosen to refer myself as something broader and less precise.
Unless I am speaking to a medical professional, I am no longer a male or man. I prefer to be known as a person. Simply a person. When I meet someone, I treated them as a person, free of labels so that they can show me who they are. I do that because that's how I want to be treated.
I've had a better experience posting comments using broader language in that I received a lot less hate filled backlash. The downside is that I feel the need include a lot of nuance which can make posting comments feel like writing an article.
Broadness and specificity in language has always been a challenge for me. I do try to be as inclusive as possible in my language but I'm not always going to get it right. I can keep it in mind the next time I use men in quotations.
You're literally doing the opposite of broadening, you're narrowing the term men down to those who you consider "are" and those who "aren't".
Now you not wanting to be considered or referred to as a man because you don't identify as a man is perfectly valid, but absolutely not the same as not wanting to be categorised as a man because "not all men". I'm not here to break down which of those you're doing, because honestly it doesn't matter to the point at hand - you not wanting to categorise yourself as a man for whatever reason, doesn't change the fact that the people you are talking about are men. If anything, they are probably those who claim to be the manliest men of them all.
Either way, you are drawing a line in the sand:
So again - the people you are talking about, those who mansplain, and talk down to or over women, and threaten, and harass, and rape, as well as all of those who laugh along with the rape jokes, or even just sit there quietly and never protest, are not "others", they are not "pretend men", they are not "monsters" or any other category it's easier to have them in - they are men. Refusing to acknowledge this is wilfully ignoring the problem and enabling it to continue.
Can you specify where I distinctly put men in to two groups? Where I stated who is and is not a man? Otherwise I am having difficult time understanding where your conclusions are coming from.
I feel like my words are being misrepresented but I do not know what I am doing wrong in this situation to understand if I should defend or change myself.
I do not know what line I am drawing in the sand when I was talking about a type of person, especially one I've had too much experience dealing with personally.
There are many types of people and people are not as simple as an on/off switch.
I'm not the person who you're discussing things with already, but to chime in in case it's useful.
When I read this, it reads to me as "these types of so-called men" or "these types of self-defined 'true men'" which may or may not be your intention.
I think there's a divide here on the perception of your phrasing, perhaps?
Yeah, I can see where that can be ambiguous. My intention was not to be divisive. That is definitely something I can keep in mind for the next time.
Thank you for pointing that out.