Please help me to not hate men

[LastGirlOnTheLeft]

I have a wonderful dad and husband. I have sons, and I love them all to pieces. But I do believe that I am starting to hate men. When I read about their abuse of women and children and animals as well, I really feel HATE!!

I don't want to hate them. I don't want to be anything like those god awful woman haters, those soulless losers who obsess over women and who are lost, probably forever. I am NOT like them, because I do feel love and like for the men in my life. Just no other man.

Any advice?

So if a man were aware of his advantage and challenging that system in the same way you've described would you then accept immediately attributing negativity is wrong.

We challenge discrimination by educating those who are open to it, especially our children. Not by being angry they are part of the patriarchy when they could be part of addressing that

No, I wouldn't. I'd expect them to accept that I was justified in that attribution!

Sillage I would not be continuing with this topic had you not suggested that children who had been sexually abused by women should not be spoken up for. Which is disgusting.

Then you are okay with any negativity you will experience in life as a result of advantages you have?

I've got to say I've seen passionate defenses on here of MNetters who have advantages such as inheriting multiple properties and how that shouldn't be judged and yet apparently we are all socially aware and challenging those?

So by that theory any advantage you have had in life that was partly socially constructed you have handed back to challenge that institution?

I have been challenging discrimination all my life and got nowhere, in no small part due to all my fellow women who bleat "but my son/husband/brother isn't like that" as if it is of any relevance or consequence.

Then you are okay with any negativity you will experience in life as a result of advantages you have?

I'm white and middle class. Yes, I do.

How the fuck, pray tell, might I 'hand back' my white privilege? Or my class privilege?

693 posts to make things equal now.

You're a real hero to have sussed out my evil desire to focus on 99% of rapists.

I do not 'bleat' any such thing, interesting how women are such a large part of the disadvantages women face with their treatment of one another.

I completely accept men have an advantage. I accept most have used that in life and wouldn't view it as a problem. I think any who wish to be better must be able to recognise and challenge it.

I do not accept that they are guilty from birth of a social construct they did not create.

Rainbowrd I would assume you'd donate excessive wealth toward charities fighting such things, turn down a job you suspect your ethnicity was part of getting, etc

Tough isn't it? Thinking of challenging something you didn't create, however if you expect it of men then you damn well better have some idea of how it's done

Devi, are you saying that lone female abusers do not exist? If you worked for Childline and a child phoned up and told you they were being abused by their mother (as many do) would you choose not to believe them?
Clearly that isn't what I said. I said figures show about 5% of sex offenders and half of those co-offended with men. So 2.5% sex offenders were women.
So, similarly to your Muslim example, while women do commit offences the risk of a woman being a sex offender is so small that it's not rational to be wary of women as a result.

Oh ffs. Here we go again.
Rainbowrd I would assume you'd donate excessive wealth toward charities fighting such things, turn down a job you suspect your ethnicity was part of getting, etc
Why raise "excessive wealth"? Do you think a lot of men are donating to charities for women's issues? I'm willing to bet far more white women donate to charities benefitting other ethnicities than men supporting women's charities.
And why should anyone have to hand back a job? No one has suggested that.
Have some more straw for your men.

No Sillage! Please do not dare to turn this around onto me. I believe all children who have been abused - the majority abused by men and the minority abused by women - should receive equal care, love, focus and attention. Every. Last. One. It was YOU who suggested otherwise. It was you who suggested that there are abused children who should be effectively invisiblized because they pose an ideological problem for your 'feminism' - which is no feminism I or any decent people recognise.

Anyone who suggests there is so much as ONE ABUSED CHILD whose suffering does not matter as much as another's has no right to style themselves a champion of the oppressed.

I was watching a great game of tennis this morning, was federer vs nishikori great game as I say shame that they are both men and so therefore a pair of utter bastards.

Feminists get a bad rap for being crazy man haters who hate everyone with a penis. Feminists dismiss this criticism as lazy stereotyping. Thread appears where feminists then scramble to justify the rationality of hating every human being with a penis. You couldn't make it up.

Oh,and to add to the fact the op couldn't be arsed to come back, if she hates all men other than the ones she's related to. I assume she is ok for all other women to hate the ones she is related to. Because we all have a husband, a father, a brother, a son, right, and we are all good with women assuming they are

Did you read any of my posts Devi?

Rainbowrd asked how someone would address an advantage they had by default.

I have not said for one second men need hand holding or that patriarchial advantage doesn't exist.

What I said is education is the way we address this not swearing at one another and talking about hating a human being for something they are born with, without choice.

They are absuve,,sorry, posted to fast.

So, similarly to your Muslim example, while women do commit offences the risk of a woman being a sex offender is so small that it's not rational to be wary of women as a result.

I agree. Though I'm not sure this is what you said.

Feminists get a bad rap for being crazy man haters who hate everyone with a penis

Yes but that's the point isn't it. I said it once and I'll say it again. Women are oppressed by men. It is not unreasonable to feel fear, hatred and mistrust towards your oppressors.

Please point me in the direction of the charity that's going to dismantle socially constructed wealth disparity who said I had 'excessive wealth' anyway? I said I was middle class. Not the same thing.

Being white and middle class isn't a piece of clothing I wear. It's an intrinsic part of who I am. The reason I can even articulate my thoughts on this issue or any issue is mostly through circumstances of birth. I can't dismantle that system, but I can seek to understand it and understand my role in it as a privileged party. When you squeal 'oh well my lovely sons blah blah' you deny the oppression of women to our peril, not men's.

792 to go about the 99% of child rapists who are men, no bonuses for sanctimonious misdirection onto victims instead of centering rapists.

I don't hate every one with a penis but I am absolutely sick of everyone with a penis pretending that they don't play a part in the oppression of women, no matter how small.

I used to exclude the men in my family and give them a pass as the nice guys. But then I looked at the role my stepfather for example played in my mother's life and it is clear that he genuinely believes that he and other men occupy a role in life superior to that of women. He adores my mother but neither she, nor I are equal with him. He isn't even aware of it as it is so ingrained. He doesn't hit, he doesn't shout, he helps out with the housework but that's exactly the type of thing where he does harm. He genuinely believes that this is her role and he is going beyond by helping out. He draws back from the caring role, the nursing role etc. Every day he reinforces that her role is to tend to and that women are other. Women have been telling men for decades how it is so why are men not listening ?

And it's not just him. Every man I know thinks they genuinely see their female partners as equal whilst exhibiting behaviour that shows it simply isn't true. They all call out the obvious violence but still police, even subconsciously how the women in their lives act.

It's easy to look to the obvious villains who rape and assault but it's just so damn demoralising to realise that the nice guys are playing a huge part in perpetuating the notion that women are somehow less. I also tell myself that none of the men in my life, the ones I single out as respectful and kind, could ever be responsible for the filth and hatred as evidenced on the Invisible Man Project but that can't be true either. Someone's lovely son or husband is doing the hitting, the raping and the killing, the sex buying. They might be a minority but it's a significant minority and the majority are just doing a different kind of harm.

The concepts of masculinity and femininity may provide the foundations for patriarchy but women reject femininity all the time or at least question it. I don't think it's a big ask for men to do a little bit of critical thinking and realise that women have every right to fear and hate them. Maybe it's time for men to do some of the heavy lifting in ending the oppression of women and girls. Men have no right to be offended by women's hatred and fear of them if they're not actively taking steps to remove the grounds for that hatred and fear.

It is not unreasonable to feel fear, hatred and mistrust towards your oppressors.

If you think that every human being with a penis is oppressing you, then you are completely off your rocker. You are why feminism is an easy target and I wish you would disassociate yourself from it.

When you respond to my opinion with 'you squeal oh my lovely sons' rather than being able to respond logically you've perpetuated sexism right there.

You've reduced my completely calm discussion to an emotive standpoint with the personalising of my children and used 'squeal' the kind of derogatory term used when women express a standpoint

Women get tarred with this image of being overly emotional and their arguments lessened with it. Here though it's coming from another woman, nice

BTW your sex is also an intrinsic part of who you are, same as it is for everyone

Your last paragraph - that was my fucking point.

"Women get tarred with this image of being overly emotional and their arguments lessened with it. Here though it's coming from another woman, nice"

Oh sorry, should I as a woman give some credence to your argument it absolutely doesn't warrant?