Yo I’m non-binary (genderfluid??? I think??? Idk???) and AMAB and I figured out that a lot of the negative posts about men have been kinda impacting my self esteem n stuff and I’m not saying this needs to stop or anything but can someone give me some kinda explanation as to why we need this type of negativity in our culture? Like I’ve heard a lot of stuff about how victims of abuse or oppression need this stuff but I haven’t seen anything fully laid out and idk maybe it’d just make me feel better if someone explained this to me? Obviously I’m not the victim here or anything like I’m just a person with a male body and low self esteem who needs help understanding their feelings and the culture on this website
In the immediate aftermath of trauma, some people find the strength to continue living their lives by being violent to others. A short of “prove that I can” reflex, which can keep you alive long enough to start working on processing your trauma and returning to a healthier mindset. The power rush aspect can be a huge befit when you’re feeling lost and powerless.
It has certain, limited short term uses. Edge cases, if you will excuse the jargon. It is valuable only in specific circumstances, for limited times.
Because there can be value in “fighting back,” many reactionary groups make the mistake of thinking there is always value in it.
To be frank, a lot of “anti male” crap on the internet is intended not to help women, as people like to claim, but to hurt men for the sake of entertainment and a sense of personal superiority.
There are plenty of awful men, and because of a male centered society, there are more awful men than there are awful women or nonbinaries, proportionately speaking.
But those kinds of “jokes” rarely ever actually target those men: they have much larger effects on anyone who is already aware of their privileges and potentially harmful behaviors, which is to say, mostly trans people mistaken for men when they aren’t men.
So yeah, while a certain amount of vicious mockery in private, personal settings can go a long way towards making a traumatized person feel empowered and safe to recover, the kind of aggressive public hatred of men you often see on here is purely performative.
It’s also almost always started or influenced by radical feminists using “men” as a code word for transfemmes.
Not every time, but the vast majority.
Tumblr, by virtue of being the kind of social media platform it is, rewards people who engage with the desire to be cruel while still being deniably “progressive.”
This mechanism is why you see many of the aggressive reactionary movements you do on tumblr, and other sites with similar audiences and interfaces, eg Twitter.
I received a couple of follow-up questions from people wishing to remain anonymous, asking if I have similar opinions on “white people” jokes.
In my personal experience, “white people jokes” (emphasis on jokes) tend to be made in a more entertainment-based fashion with an uplifting intent, than anti-male posts. So, I tend not to view them as harshly.
That said, the same aspect of people who have been denied power lashing out tends to be at play, albeit less severely.
I actually am of a similar mindset regarding jokes- genuine jokes intended to reveal truths but in a positive fashion- about men, as well. It’s just that these jokes are rarer than jokes “about white people.”
On the other hand, there is a huge current of people who use the guise of antiracism to engage in anything from misogyny and ableism to, amazingly, racism.
The most obvious example I can think of is a popular post circulating, which talks about how white people are pathetic and disgusting for not being able to eat spicy foods such as curries. It is not made in good humour, “ah, white cultural backgrounds tend to have less complex seasonings in their dishes, and as a result of white supremacy, complexly seasoned dishes are treated as foreign or inferior, what a silly belief system to hold.”
It is treated as a way to a) kind of touch upon that commentary but very poorly so that anyone who complains about the post can be labelled as supporting racism, b) delegitimize the opinions of any person who isn’t white who prefers simpler flavour profiles due to sensitivity, autism, allergy, what have you, or who otherwise disagrees with the premise, c) enjoy the power trip of being “better” than white people, d) delegitimize the very active class aspect to simplified cooking styles, which tend to be at least partially rooted in poverty and ease of access, or in disability and simplicity of preparation.
Now, as with the above post, there is a time and a place where that kind of violent empowerment is necessary and beneficial.
But most posts on the subject are not intended to be used as a life raft for someone drowning in panic.
I make jokes at the expense of white people (and of men, and of neurotypicals, and on and on), and I’m not likely to stop doing so. These jokes bring me comfort in that they remind me that the systems of oppression which affect me are, ultimately, just fucking ridiculous.
But the line between a joke intended for comfort and entertainment, and an attack of negativity intended to recreate systems of abuse with a different target, is not simply “blurred” on this website, but disregarded in its entirety.
Humour is a weapon, and negative humour can cause more harm than good.
I think there are more genuinely harmful jokes and comments against men than against white people because of differences in how patriarchy and white supremacy function.
A part of patriarchy is that maleness is a construct that can be weaponized against marginalized people, both men and non-men. Part of maleness in patriarchy is legitimating violence, both emotional and physical, against people perceived as male or masculine. For example, black men have to deal with the “scary black man” stereotype, and lesbians have to deal with the “predatory lesbian” stereotype.
White supremacy just doesn’t work in an analogous way, as far as I can tell.
At any rate, I’m also nb, I’m AFAB, and I find that the anti-male aspects of patriarchy have a significant unpleasant impact on my life, and I’m glad that other nbs are feeling comfortable enough to speak up about it.
I believe that I agree with you there.
That said, whiteness under white supremacy, while having less self damaging toxicity than maleness under patriarchy, does have a few harmful effects on white people.
This tends to intersect with classism, where white supremacy promises all white people a middle class lifestyle. That they are “worthy” of it because of their whiteness. This obviously isn’t true, but white supremacy teaches whites that their poverty and untreated illness and whatever else is to be blamed on people of color, not on the highest level oligarchs who rely on absolute support from poor white folks to act as a splintering and policing force to prevent anyone else from openly revolting..
This leads to a lot of unchecked and dangerous impulses in white folks that often tip over into violent action, when simply having access to mental wellness care would have left them fine. But white supremacy benefits from white people who might ally with people of color being completely insulated from outside perspectives, especially self actualizing perspectives that quality therapy provides.
There is a common phrase you’ll hear often in discussions of race. “White people are like children.”
The ones that mean well are learning, but they’re seeing the curriculum 20 years late. The rest of them want to live in childish fantasies where they really are the chosen ones.
Toxic whiteness, in as much as it exists, is far less self destructive than toxic masculinity, but it does still demand that white people stay ignorant and react with violence to that ignorance being questioned. These things are very draining on even the healthiest mind and will cause disorders eventually, and those disorders tend to go untreated and end with violence against the self or others.
There’s certainly self destructive tendencies in white supremacy and the class structure it built itself on the back of.
I pretty much agree with this, and wanted to add on a few thoughts I had as well:
I tend to dislike anti-male stuff on this site because a lot of it feels really ableist. I keep going back to the stuff people write about chores and emotional labour – so much if it feels like ‘women are so great and good because they do All of this work and are Amazing at it, whereas men are just pathetic lazy weaklings who can’t do anything!’ Which, as someone who is bad at a lot of things and has issues with executive dysfunction, makes me feel really bad. But even in a broader sense, the whole ‘male tears’ thing makes me really uncomfortable – I know that it’s meant to be complaining about men getting angry over sexist things rather than men who express emotion in general, but then why not complain about macho alpha males? I know the point is to turn an enemy’s insecurities back on them – ‘hah, you’re so worried about seeming weak and feminine, but those worries actually make YOU the weak one!’ – but just like with the ‘homophobic people are actually really gay’ line, it often feels like it bolsters the original view more than it challenges it. (Not to mention that, perhaps because of all of this and perhaps not, I’ve not been feeling all that much like a woman lately, so seeing all of this has made me…sad. I can’t imagine what it must be like for trans men and afab nbs, made to feel like they’re taking on a ‘bad’ identity.)
When it comes to anti-white stuff, like you, I don’t mind it really. But I have noticed that a lot of it seems to be rooted in a very specific idea of whiteness that seems highly associated with poverty. A lot of ‘haha, white people!’ things are actually just poor people things, or uneducated people things. (Or, as we see often with ‘haha, what an unnecessary gadget for lazy people!’ comments, disabled people.) It also often seems unaware of the wider world – e.g. I’ve seen comments about how cousin incest is a gross white people thing, but cousin relationships are actually super common throughout Asia.
These kinds of jokes have been bothering me a lot more lately, and I’ve been thinking about them a lot. Part of it is just that, when we turn to our mental repertoire of negative things with which to insult our enemies, a lot of them are influenced by other oppressions. So ‘white people’ are bad poor people, but ‘rich people’ are often derided as effeminate, useless, unmanly men. (Which may or may not be relevant to the common conservative image of queer people as rich city elites?) And, as noted above, these insults are unlikely to be hurtful to actually privileged people – instead, it’s the people dealing with intersectional identities that will feel the brunt of it. So a cis, abled, etc. etc. white man isn’t going to be too hurt by jokes about men being inherently violent. But a black man who feels nervous every time he walks by a white woman? Or a male sexual assault victim who was abused by a woman?
I know the typical answer to these thoughts is ‘okay, but you’re not oppressed for being a man’, but a) that gets a lot more complicated when we’re talking about how stereotypes about maleness interact with race, gender identity, etc., and b) I’m not so sure it’s always so easy for people to compartmentalise themselves like that. When I see people saying that aces should be oppressed, or comparing aces to fascists and murderers, it wouldn’t make me feel any better even if I did think aces weren’t systematically oppressed, and the people who made them really were only targetting hetero aces. When you hear things like that about yourself a lot, it hurts to hear it again, even if it’s for a different reason that time.
So many great thoughts in here.
I keep seeinng posts lately that villify ugliness. Stuff along the lines of “ya know all trans women are gorgeous and all TERFs are ugly” and like, that doesn’t hurt TERFs at all, but it does re-enforce the old ‘ugly is evil and beautiful is good’ thing that is already coming at us from every movies we’ve ever seen and is hurting a lot of people who don’t conform to societies beauty standards.
Another thing: these sort of jokes also tend to backfire and hurt the group doing the joking. “women are so loving and pure and so much better at loving women” jokes result in women not recognizing when they’re in an abusive relationship with a woman. “look at how terrible straight people are at relationships” results in lgbt people not
recognizing when they’re in an abusive relationship. And so on.
So yeah, teh things we do
in the aftermath of trauma are often not such great things and when we make space for such mechanisms it much be combined with acknowledging their dark sides.
QueerAnarchism 