> they've consistently been told that everything is their fault because they have male privilege.
This is not me. This is not anyone I know. This is not anyone I've ever known. However, this is what I see people say online about other people who they've never met.
Did you grow up consistently being told that every single thing is your fault because you have male privilege, or are you repeating something you read online or in the media?
I grew up with the sentiment that forms of masculinity are some of the chief evils of society being the dominant narrative. I grew up learning that the US is patriarchal culture, and that it must continue to evolve and progress in order to truly provide equal opportunity to women. This narrative always seemed to view men as a kind of primordial oppressor. I remember in high school and college it was common for some people to say, "Kill All Men!" as a half joking slogan. I'm 24 for reference.
I confess, I'm not very bright and am having trouble decoding the subtleties of "Kill All Men!" as you have done. Could you explain how you got from "All" to "just the bad ones"? Would you interpret "Kill All Women" in the same manner?
Tangential question: do you advocate death for all bad people, a group which according to you includes the president?
I think GP is more in response to "view[ing] men as a kind of primordial oppressor", then the "Kill All Men" statement.
In any case - "Kill All Men" was always just a shibboleth. Treating it as an actual policy recommendation is prima facie risible. Throwing it out there to see who is oblivious enough to object is the point.
When I grew up, I was taught that if someone in your friend group makes a racist joke, you should stand up to them, and inform them that casual racism leads to normalizing racism.
Even if "Kill All Men" was just a shibboleth of a specific online culture, it seems like objecting to it would be a kind of moral duty (for the same reasons), as long we are in agreement that normalized misandry is bad. But again, in my generation I don't think there was any kind of consensus that misandry is wrong. That's why objecting to a shibboleth like this would be evidence of how "oblivious" and behind the times you are
Okay but "some people are racist and we should stand up to them" is different from "the sentiment that forms of masculinity are some of the chief evils of society was the dominant narrative."
Do you honestly believe these people are advocating for slaughtering half the human race and damning the rest of it to extinction? Or is there some hyperbole that is going over your head?
In your comment above, you said that the less-hyperbolic version is killing all "bad" men, including the president. If one is trying to get all non-"bad" men on board with this, why would you use an alienating slogan like "Kill All Men?" It's such a big messaging fail that I can't really credit them with any thought process.
This is why I asked how you managed to extract something other than "Kill All Men" from the phrase "Kill All Men".
I am not claiming my experience generalizes here. But my experience was absolutely saturated by a narrative that men are oppressors who are the cause of many/most of the ills of society. The nuance of only including men who are "evil" was not present in my experience. A conversation might go like:
A: "Kill All Men! They are disgusting"
B: "Well, surely not all men, some men are noble or allies to your cause"
A: "When I look at who the evil people are, they are almost all men, and they are supported by many men. Men are responsible for the evil and for failing to stop the evil. For every man that commits date rape, there's 5 men that hear about it and don't do anything. They are all responsible, and just as guilty."
I'm certainly not claiming that there is widespread oppression towards men, but at least in my generation (particularly in higher education) the overton window includes denigrating masculinity but doesn't include admiring it.
Who are the people you have these conversations with?
Another comment mentioned "ShitRedditSays" - is it possible you were saturated with a narrative that you went out and sought to saturate yourself with?
I don't know what exactly you're asking by "Who are the people I have these conversations with?" They were real-life in-person interactions, most often with young women I knew in college. It's interesting that even when I specifically say that I don't know whether my experience generalizes I still get subtly accused of having a preconceived narrative that I tried to confirm. I can only give you a n=1 sample size. But in my experience growing up in the US casual misandry is very normalized, in a way that contrasts to the stigma that surrounds casual misogyny.
I honestly think you're over-intellectualizing it.
The core contention is that he's a virginal loser with no friends. Men have insinuated this about each other, independently of political division, across the ages.
I do think it's helpful to understand when interactions are really just boiling down to this. Helps with the angst.
It feels like there's almost no engagement with the actual claims I'm making.
From the original claim of, "Nobody really thinks men are the cause of most of societies problems."
My response was, "While growing up I was taught and interacted with people who definitely thought men were the cause of most of societies problems."
The counter was, "You must be a terminally online virgin with no friends then."
From my perspective I have a rich social life that includes both genders and would consider myself a feminist. But it really is radicalizing that even mentioning experiences of casual misandry is met with accusations of social ineptitude
You ever hear anybody say "toxic femininity"? Yeah, me neither.
But, anyway, it's a confused conversation. It's helpful to zoom out a bit. The top-level comment is (partially) blaming feminist discourse for a social ill (increasing gambling addiction among young men). While politely stated, the claim is pretty inflammatory.
So part of what's going on here is that people are reacting to what they perceive as you defending that initial claim (which, again, is pretty inflammatory IMO) instead of just denouncing a bunch of people as incels and moving on.
Anyway, I will validate you. You are not taking crazy pills. You're just ... saying some things that are taboo to say. I would, uh, avoid ever using the word "misandry" in a setting where it can be associated with your real name.
I simply do not believe that people start interactions with you by saying "Kill All Men! They are disgusting"
That is simply so far out of the realm of believability. It is no different than if you said people started conversations with you by levitating and turning into flocks of bats.
I can believe that a conversation like that happened once. Maybe twice, if I want to be extra generous with the benefit of the doubt. It's missing context but I can have my imagination can fill in those gaps.
Yeah that wasn't meant to be an accurate transcript of a whole conversation, just wanted to sketch out the ideas involved. The "kill all men" bit would come after getting to know the other person and talking to them about how they see the world, they wouldn't say that to introduce themselves
"Kill all men" was certainly a Tumblrism (and SRSism) in the mid-20-teens, so if you hung out with young women into Tumblr in 2014 or so you might have heard someone drop it in real life. I did a couple times.
If I was a conservative activist and I wanted to persuade you to join me, something I would consider is trying to use social media to convince you that my political opponents or society at large are your enemy.
There's a nuance here: a lot of times, it's people hearing "male privilege is a problem" and immediately being told that this means "you personally are at fault!" So it's very understandable that people believe that they're being told "everything is their fault because they have male privilege" when they're not.
And I've watched my boy go from doing City Year and being very liberal to wanting to move to Texas to be with people he can be comfortable around because of this.
This sentiment seems to be especially common with white progressive women in urban metropolitan areas and their (so-called) "allies." It is the first setting in which I encountered these ideas being regularly and shamelessly circulated.
As a visible and ethnic minority I did not encounter such rhetoric growing up in predominantly immigrant socially conservative suburban environments.
There is a certain group of women who cannot accept that women can be at fault, for example that a woman can be an abuser, regardless of the facts.
> As a visible and ethnic minority I did not encounter such rhetoric growing up in predominantly immigrant socially conservative suburban environments.
Not even social liberal ethnic members of minorities seem to be as inclined to do it was affluent white women.
I think some people who are actually privileged play up being women (or being gay, or ethnic minority, or whatever) in order to play at belonging to an oppressed group. Its a bit like people claiming to be working class because they were as children, even if they are now living in a mansion.
I am visible ethnic minority but did not grow up in a predominately immigrant or socially conservative area in the UK. I have lived elsewhere though.
I've not seen anyone express this sentiment, beyond a few internet trolls, either. I've only seen a certain kind of men claiming that it's always expressed towards them. It appears to be mostly imagined in their heads, though I'm open to seeing the evidence that every time you walk down the street you are heckled for not using your male privilege to solve climate change.
As DBT teaches, "Two things can be true at the same time."
My son's lived experience doesn't invalidate yours. Just as it also doesn't invalidate my half-brother Tom's, who lives on a native reservation, nor my nieces, who are members of that tribe.
You are wrong if you believe that I would not be willing to hear your experience. Remember, I'm the one saying, "Polarization is bad, we have to be willing to hear each other!" Sure, I'm sharing my son's experience. Which may be a hard experience for you to accept. But that really doesn't mean that I'm unwilling to hear your experience. Just as I have heard the experience of other family members with vastly different life stories.
"A lot of people say" all sorts of stupid things online. That doesn't mean it's some sort of societal movement.
I'd love to see actual concrete examples of "they have grown up in a world where they've consistently been told that everything is their fault." Not imaginary slights conjured up by people with a persecution complex. Actual social institutions actually telling men that everything is their fault. If they are growing up "in this world" then there must be plenty of examples of this somewhere.
Any concrete example can be dismissed as imaginary slights conjured up by people with a persecution complex. You just indicated your willingness to do so. Doing so creates a version of a No True Scotsman fallacy. You demand examples, but any example you are provided with, you will dismiss.
In this discussion you've had the opportunity to hear several concrete examples. For example my description of my son's experience, and JulianChastain's in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918197. If you're opening to listening, there are plenty of young men out there who are willing to share their stories. Granted, the men doing so are generally hurt. And hurt people overgeneralize. So you need to listen, with empathy, for the hurt. And not dismiss because of the overgeneralization.
I look at that thread and I see "some people" (who?) and "a conversation" (with whom??). This stuff doesn't generalize to something that's happening in the world at large, and the OP even admits that himself. When I went to high school there were a handful of bullies and I could tell you I have personal experience with bullies, but that doesn't mean that in general, people are growing up in "a world of bullying" or that there is some kind of institutional push to increase bullying.
What's more likely? The entire world is actually persecuting young men, or: people are having a handful of bad personal experiences, extrapolating them to the whole world, going online to find validation of this world view, and then finally finding the exact SubReddit dedicated to that world view endlessly pumping out examples of it?
It is very like women not going into certain jobs or making certain educational choices because they are perceived as men's jobs. In general this is seen as a bad thing and efforts are made to do something about it.
There is plenty of evidence that young men have a hard time. In many countries (such as the UK) men are lonelier, and young men have a very high suicide rate. There is nothing like the same pressure to do something about this.
In some professions, especially at entry grades (there are more women than men in medical school in the UK), and in some geographic areas young women earn more than young men. When men earn more than women or are the majority in a profession this is regarded as a problem. When women do it its fine.
There are lots of signs its hard being a man, from incels to trans maxing. They are not typical, but they are not just outliers either, but an indication of problems men in general face.
Its pretty obvious that men are regarded as morally worse than women, and that men are expected to solve problems for themselves as individuals, whereas women are seen as deserving of support from society for there problems.
There are plenty of other examples. Criminal justice is full of it. The US is the only country that is known (I am sure there are a few others, but not the sort of places you can get accurate stats from) where there is a higher rate of rapes of men than women. Which do you here more about? Women in the UK average shorter sentences for the same offence, but there are nonetheless people campaigning for women to get still lighter sentences. Abuse is classified as violence against women and girls by the Crown Prosecution Service, with a little footnote in their handbook noting it can happen to men too (40% of known victims of violent abuse are men, and I would bet a higher proportion for emotional abuse)..
Its not difficult to treat people as individuals in many cases. My older daughter is an electronic engineer. This is still unusual for women. It was because of how I educated her and brought her up, without even making a conscious effort, just treating her as an individual human being.
Most of the people who say so online have a business model of farming the very outrage and polarization people are talking about. Most of the rest are just following a trend.
This is a strawman argument, which is already answered in my comment.
My impression is not based on something I read online or in the media. Nor is it based on my experiences back when I was growing up in the 1980s.
My impression is based on the lived experience of my children, as consistently described by them. And particularly of the opinion of my son, who has become radicalized against it.
His radicalization started with outrage that when he applied to college, his excellent SAT scores were not allowed to be submitted to most of the colleges that he wanted to go to. "Because the tests are racist and sexist." Luckily he managed to get into UC San Diego. But there he found a requirement for taking a series of courses that he saw as straight up DEI indoctrination. The content of which often outraged him.
It didn't help that his very real struggles were often dismissed by the very same people who were lecturing him about his privilege. He learned that he will never be heard, and he is mad about it.
Do you have any more takes demonstrating your unwillingness to hear the lived experiences of people you disagree with? Demonstrating the dismissiveness that my son is overreacting against?
> But there he found a requirement for taking a series of courses that he saw as straight up DEI indoctrination. The content of which often outraged him.
Oh no, having to take courses he didn't like. And content of which we just have to take his word for is enough to be outraged about.
Is college not a place to go to open yourself to other ideas?
My son who did volutered for a year for City Year to help inner city youth, whose best friend was trans, went through the same thing. It drives me crazy too that people just want to deny/dismiss lived experience of these youth, but it ads to the reality of it.
Your son is correct to be radicalized against DEI programs and the poltical agenda behind them, because those programs unfairly harm him personally because of his perceived race and gender. The commenters in this thread mocking you for saying this are among those your son ought to consider his enemies, and try to fight against poltically.
There has long been a narrative that persistent gaps on standardized tests are due to racism. This narrative has been strengthened by the fact that actual racists have seized on these gaps to argue that various minorities really are stupid. See The Bell Curve. As a result, simply arguing for standardized tests being effective has long been seen by some as a sign that you are a racist.
This did not stop universities from using standardized testing for admissions. But during COVID, they couldn't do testing. So universities had to drop the tests. Administration quickly noticed that it is a lot easier to achieve diversity goals (that's the D in DEI) if you stop including data that makes disadvantaged minorities look worse.
Coming out of COVID, testing started again. Some universities, like MIT, immediately began requiring tests again. Others, like Harvard and Yale, became test optional - you could report it, but didn't have to. But the entire University of California system took the extreme of saying that you can't report your tests at all.
Test optional universities were forced to face the reality that the students who chose to report test results performed significantly better in class than those who didn't. Countering that, the lawsuit SFFA v. Harvard created pressure against race based admissions to achieve diversity goals. (Harvard lost that in 2023.) This strengthened the conflict between testing and diversity goals. And for those on the diversity side, made existing narratives about the tests being racist more appealing.
Universities have had different responses. For example Harvard reinstated test requirements in 2024. Yale still hasn't. And the UC system has doubled down on no tests allowed.
This is a frustration for my son because he scored in the top 1% on the SATs. He believes that he would have gotten into a better university if he was allowed to use his SAT score. When he arrived, upperclassmen were admitted due to tests, and his class wasn't. My son saw the difference in quality.
And so, surrounded by the narrative that the tests were racist, my son doubled down on, "The tests are fair, and the world in general would be better off if people like me received opportunity based on our actual potential to make good use of it."
"Grow up", no. In college 2006-2010 none of this was in the zeitgeist. In middle school in the 90s and aughts we (I included) casually used slurs that would get your business boycotted if you used them today.
I first became of it online (through ShitRedditSays, for anyone who remembers that) ~2011. Studying Physics in graduate school 2012-2018 my female contemporaries used basically the same lexicon I'd become familiar with through lurking online gender wars ("patriarchy", "male privilege", "rape culture").
In parallel to this I was involved with a competitive card game community that was initially composed of standard gamer dude types unfamiliar with the above lexicon but that eventually became very proud (in online spaces) of adopting it. This transition was sort of messy - old-guard gamer-dude types were often uncomfortable with their freshly-politicized gaming community and left for other communities. There was more ... jejune drama where guys liked their semi-horny anime-girl card-game accoutrements (playmats, card sleeves) and there was much bickering over the decision to ban this type of thing. And then, in-my-view more-serious drama over whether to ban MAGA attire from tournaments. Pre-Trump-victory people thought it was funny to do it ironically, afterwards there was again all kinds of bickering of how much MAGA stuff needed to be banned in order for the community to be sufficiently LGBT/minority-inclusive. "All of it" was the viewpoint that eventually won out. A lot of this was online but everybody had thoughts on it and talked about it at in-person tournaments, of which I attended a lot.
In general there was an implicit invitation for young men like myself to learn this lexicon and accompanying intellectual framework and distinguish ourselves from "incels" (this term was sort of late in the game, I guess its predecessor was "neckbeard"? who remembers) by using it frequently and taking the opportunity to declaim its importance to other young men who weren't yet on board. Public and vitriolic denunciation of the gaming community was expected. You can probably tell from my above recap that I engaged with all this enough to understand the main perspectives being voiced and restate them in a way that made me seem at least open-minded and thoughtful, if not fully convinced. I also believed at every point that this was pretty much necessary in order to be in good standing socially speaking.
This was pretty much orthogonal to getting laid, which occurred through other channels and with women who didn't seem particularly aware of any of this (or, in the case of my now-wife, just not all that bought-in).
I am 37 and now married with kids and the vibe has changed a lot. Women of my acquaintance use these terms a lot less but when they are used they are completely uncontroversial. Husbands now have more right to kind of push back on the whole intellectual superstructure in spots without being slapped down. Having young sons changes the texture of things, as does living in a city (Baltimore) where young (black) men are mistreated in ways that privileged women feel duty-bound to confront and discuss.
So. w/r/t your question.
That specific framing is hyperbolic.
But I do think that I viewed as necessary for me to publicly affirm my unconscious participation in Patriarchy and Rape Culture, and the importance of educating other young men on these topics, and the importance of participating in the ostracism of young men who didn't display openness to making the same kinds of affirmations, for a good decade or so of my life. I also think that the necessity I describe was something that came primarily from online spaces and bled over to interactions with hyper-online people (Physics grad students and competitive card game players). Make of that what you will.
This is not me. This is not anyone I know. This is not anyone I've ever known. However, this is what I see people say online about other people who they've never met.
Did you grow up consistently being told that every single thing is your fault because you have male privilege, or are you repeating something you read online or in the media?