General anger and resentment towards men

[BornAgainFem]

Over the last few years I have learnt alot on here (you're all fab by the way!), and have reflected a lot on my past and previous relationships with men (friends, family and romantic relationships).
I have developed a real underlying anger and seeping resentment towards men in general. I feel bad about this but can't help see how the patriarchy has moulded alot of the men in my lives. Even those who would claim they're feminists have an underlying tone of misogyny, I even see it in DH.
Has anyone else gone through this and how have you overcome the bitterness? It's eating me up.

Of my close friends none of us would bother with another man if our current ones left/ died. We’ve all got dc so would be single mothers and not all of us have high flying careers so would not find it easy to support our families on our own.

The men I know are not worth the effort. The good doesn’t outweigh the bad, dull and unthinking even if they are good fathers and hard working and in most cases well paid. The constant sexist jibes, lack of respect for women in general and the expectation we’ll do all the emotional labour doesn’t make up for running the hoover round once a week.

When you’re in your younger years and you believe that having a man is having it all you put up with it and if you’re lucky you find a man that grows with you and doesn’t see you as less of a person than him. I remember a clever but hopeless boyfriend and my fantasy was I’d support him through a glittering academic career by getting a dependable job at the council - luckily he left me for another woman!

Over the last few years I have learnt alot on here (you're all fab by the way!), and have reflected a lot on my past and previous relationships with men (friends, family and romantic relationships).
I have developed a real underlying anger and seeping resentment towards men in general. I feel bad about this but can't help see how the patriarchy has moulded alot of the men in my lives. Even those who would claim they're feminists have an underlying tone of misogyny, I even see it in DH.
Has anyone else gone through this and how have you overcome the bitterness? It's eating me up.

Hang out on some Men's Rights forums for a while and you'll develop a real underlying anger towards women. After the 43rd account of a man losing his children because of court bias or being physically beaten by his wife and unable to do anything about it or false allegations, you'll see the problems with women.

Hang out on some EDL or Identitarian forums and you'll develop a real underlying anger towards Islam. After the 100th account of a woman being forced to marry against her will or not allowed out of the home, a child having their genitals mutilated or someone being discrimated against because they're White, you'll see the problems with Muslims.

Hang out on some trans people forums and you'll develop a real underlying anger towards cis people. After the 100th account of someone being kicked out by their parents for being trans or having people follow them down the street laughing for wearing make-up or being called mentally ill, you'll see the problem see the problems with "TERFs".

Any group identity will develop a degree of judgement and hostility towards the outgroup. This is psychological fact. We are not as free from bias as we think. Not even close. We have a natural confirmation bias and a generally deplorable inability to understand statistics. Every group that is comprised by people in a way other than by behaviour, is going to contain bad elements. Define them as a particular group (race, sex, orientation, nationality) and your brain will start associating those bad elements with the group. We have a demonstrated cognitive bias to associate negatives with a group more than we do positives. Again, absolute psychological fact. We are neurologically wired to be risk averse. If you have two experiences with men, one positive one negative. Then every further man you meet who is bad will be "typical" and every man you meet who is good will be "he was better than most". Just as for someone else a woman who can't do something will be "well, she's a woman" and a woman who can do something will be "she was pretty good for a woman". I'm not being patronising here - this is how the human brain works.

Take that negative/positive reinforcement discrepancy and then add the issue of using other people's experiences to inform you as well, from a forum that is self-selected to be about negative experiences, and you're entering a death spiral of reinforcement.

It's good that you have recognized something has changed. You didn't think of men as an outgroup as much before you joined here. Now you do. Men have not changed. Nor have you become "more aware". You have become more focused on defining an outgroup and self-selected for negative views over positive, because that's what your brain has been fed. Nobody is without bias. Not unless they don't think of themselves as part of a group identity.

Good ole Cordelia Fine said:

when the going gets tough the smart do something else

There’s so much else to do in life apart from finding the perfect man in an imperfect world. If a lovely man plopped himself in my lap I wouldn’t say no but in the meantime I have a lot to be getting on with.

Check out the bloke telling us what we should be getting our knickers in a twist about

Oh it's great. Men aren't the problem, says @OldmanOfTheWeb3, it's the 'orrible feminists you've been hanging out with who've turned you against men!

Actually I realised an anger and resentment before the internet was invented! Books are dangerous too because they spread ideas and knowledge. Maybe we should burn them?

Oldman it’s interesting that the other “outgroups” you describe are minorities. So those who “other” them can manage to go through their lives without being impacted too much.
Men are literally in every aspect of our lives so if, like the OP, you do have a resentment towards them it’s going to be harder to handle because you have to keep renegotiating in your mind the line between men as a class and men as individuals. IYSWIM.

And I don’t think MRAs are wringing their hands over their dislike of women. Plus, that dislike of women manifests itself in actual physical ways, from standard DV, to serial killers preferring female victims, from family annihilation to Incels targeting women. The hatred some men have towards women is not merely an intellectual discussion on the Internet but a reality that affects women daily, whether they’re on a bus in New Delhi or being called “slut” as they walk down a London street.

When women feel the same towards men they don’t tend to target them, but just keep out of their way.

My mother was from an era well before feminism, but she remarked casually to me that 'very few women over forty like men', and I think that's true :(

oldman there’s so much silly about your post I don’t have the energy to unpack it all, but just to focus on one particularly glaring bit of foolishness - FGM and forced marriages are both about pleasing men so the problem there is not with Muslims but with men.

I do broadly agree actually that you can whip yourself up into a frenzy about any group if you spend a lot of time reading about them online. But in the case of men the stats really do back up the fact that they are at the root of a lot of problems that women, and society in general, otherwise wouldn’t face.

Get back to us with your everything-is-subjective nonsense when women are responsible for 90+ % of violent and sexual crime and are killing their male partners at a rate of two a week in England and Wales alone.

These men that sidle onto these threads inevitably show their agenda

We see you

Come on we don’t help ourselves, women in porn and sexy photos etc, making us look like available sex objects, stay at home trophy wives, with nothing to do all day, but to make themselves look glamorous, the woman who go for ugly man only because they are rich, the damsel in distress at the road side because she can’t change or know were the spare tyre is. The women that need help around the house because they can’t do diy or something is to heavy to lift, etc etc
Just remember nearly all men would have been raised by a women, we are not doing a very good job

If women had that much influence then our children would have our accent, not those of their peers.

I find not having men in my life makes it much easier. Sometimes I need one - plumber, taxi driver etc. I'm nice to them, they're paid, everyone's happy. I have no desire to have a man in my life other than that.

Oldman it’s interesting that the other “outgroups” you describe are minorities.

My very first example of three was women. Who are more than 50% of the population. My third example was non-Trans people who are 99.4% of the population.

Is that where you have headed over from then ?

A men's rights forum ?

Figures.

If you're worried about how you've started to see men, spend a month hanging out in predominantly male forums, instead.

I’m not sure that is going to ameliorate the OP’s view of men. The way men perceive us (see user’s post above) to be is part of the problem.

I used to get angry but these days not so much. For me, the experience of talking to other women about feminism, even if they don't agree with me, is really helpful.
And the more I see women working with/for other women, the more hopeful I feel. I also tend to ignore men talking about women or feminism because they almost never ask interesting or relevant questions.

So that's what works for me. But I think I'm particularly lucky because my personal circumstances allow for this approach.

I read oldman as making a sensible point, although perhaps not in a way people can relate to?

We do learn bad quicker than good. It's good for survival. In a community focussed on supporting a group, you will see the worst of another group. And you will then be alert and pick that up more in real life. We actually make poor judgements because we rely on our lazy quick brain not the thinking part.

Harvard university, unconscious bias is a great web site for helping you explore your own brain

Even though men are as a group more violent than women and as a group sterotype women, there are lots of good men out there. And those men have had to fight agaisnt their socialisation to become good.

Stereotyping men doesn't help even if the class characteristics are factual. We know that Women are weaker than men, but that doesn't mean that women should not be allowed to fight in the army,..if they are strong enough they should be allowed to do the same as men.

I do find a particular subset of women just as difficult as men

Those priveliged women that can't understand that not every woman is privy to the same choices as they were. Who blame women's behaviour, not men's, for the vulnerable position
they are in.

This to me is true handmaiden territory.

I just roll my eyes, honestly, and hope they don't dislocate something patting themselves on the back all the time. And I say this as a woman who's always been pretty much on the same level as her husband economically, and not his maid.

We know that Women are weaker than men, but that doesn't mean that women should not be allowed to fight in the army,..if they are strong enough they should be allowed to do the same as men.

Although obviously it would be preferable to not need an army in the first place. Which is kind of the point.

Get back to us with your everything-is-subjective nonsense when women are responsible for 90+ % of violent and sexual crime and are killing their male partners at a rate of two a week in England and Wales alone.

90% of violent crime sounds horrifying (it's also incorrect). But then when the perpetrators are less than 0.5% of the population and you find a more accurate way of saying it is 0.4% of men have committed a violent crime and 0.05% of women have, you have to ask yourself whether it is prejudicial to talk in such terms and tar 99.5% of men with it. Human beings, typically, are very bad at interpreting statistics. Throw a figure that sounds high like 90% and it will get flagged as meaningful. Which it might be - but only if you understand what contexts to use it in and which to not.

I could say you're 84% more likely to be a victim of violent crime if you're male (source:ONS). And the chance of it being violence with injury is about 50% higher, too. You say women "killed at two per week by male partners". Meanwhile over on a different forum, someone is pointing out that two men are murdered in this country for every woman. Our biases are informed by the information we are presented with. Hang out in just one place with a specific focus, your perceptions of the out group will change. Again - this is how our brains work. You can only counter it if you first acknowledge it. You need balanced input if you want balanced views. And logically it's undeniable that a sub-group made up overwhelmingly of women focused heavily on problems caused by men is not a place for balanced input. You surely aren't pretending otherwise therefore it's inescapable that you're going to get a biased impression.

This is true of any such group.

Sorry - there's no edit feature. I didn't mean to put "it's also incorrect" in there. That was related to something I edited out. Please disregard that.

Brickie then. Them pile stuff of bricks are heavy.

I’m not sure that is going to ameliorate the OP’s view of men. The way men perceive us (see user’s post above) to be is part of the problem.

The point is that the OP will come out with a different set of biases. Well, after a month, it will be more an adjustment than any kind of revolution. But the point is that the OP will be aware of how easily those we surround ourselves with can change how we view things. It's a valuable lesson.

I read oldman as making a sensible point, although perhaps not in a way people can relate to?

Thank you. Anyway, I'm exiting this thread completely now. I've made my point sufficiently. I know what counter-arguments are coming. I see nothing productive coming of it. To the OP, please consider what I've written. It's a terrible shame if you're starting to see nearly half the people in the world negatively, including your loved ones.