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‘I don’t date at all now’: one woman’s journey into the darkest corners of the manosphere
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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As I read this, she just tries to tell people, both men and women, about her experience. It’s not an uncommon experience either unfortunately. Isn’t that how men will get to ”know it’s happening”?
I know the initial reaction of feeling a bit hurt when someone makes broad statements about men, I’ve been there. But the more posts like hers I read, the more I understand the problem.
There's 9 billion people and 80% of them are on the internet. Anything you want to imagine is happening in large numbers on the internet, and if you search hard enough you'll find it.
Confirmation bias is indeed a problem, but that's all this problem is. Don't go looking for rape roleplay if you don't want that.
Have you talked to women about their experiences? I challenge you to find a single woman that has not been sexually harassed by a man.
That's nice and all, but given most men don't sexually assault people it's a little like treating all women as cheaters because you got cheated on, or all black people as thieves because you had an unfortunate encounter.
Sexism is sexism regardless of how you frame it.
The difference here is the frequency with all of these things. It's easy to find a man that hasn't been cheated on by a woman. It's easy to find someone that hasn't been robbed (by anyone, let alone by a black man or woman). I am not joking that I don't think I could find a woman that hasn't, at minimum, been sexually harassed by a man, if not assaulted.
You say "if you search hard enough you’ll find it" except one doesn't have to search for this issue. It's simply everywhere. Men sexually harassing women is literally everywhere. You are dismissing their evidence by suggesting "of course you can find that somewhere" suggesting the evidence they gave was too specific. But yet most porn sites are FILLED with problematic content and ads, each more specific than the next. So it's not just about this specific "rape roleplay" scenario, it's about all of the countless scenarios widespread across the internet.
Recognizing a systematic issue is not sexism. Trying to minimize its prevalence by saying "not all men" is problematic. And not something I would expect with the username of "superniceperson"
Again, if we're going to include any single type of incident over the life of a person, and then start to discriminate on the common perpetrator, you end up with bigotry regardless of that incident Or intent.
Its not 'not all men' it's 'not even a third of men.' more black people as a percentage of total black people have assaulted someone than the percentage of men that have sexually assaulted someone, so we should look into profiling black people for violence and work to correct the systemic issues that causes black people to be violent, right?
There's a right way to go about solving the problems you're discussing, and they are very real problems, but becoming a pathetic bigot is not the way to go.
Victimization does not give you the right of discrimination based on immutable characteristics, and you are objectively a bad person if you think otherwise. There aren't any valid exceptions to this, and accepting this behavior leads to absolute pieces of shit like jk Rowling.
Your biggest problem is you are reading "not all men" as a literal. Not everything has to be taken literally. Language absolutely can work that way, and very often does. When a woman talks about the countless men that have harassed her, and she says "men disgust me" and your response to that is "not all men disgust you, right" then you have completely missed the point. She is conveying the hurt that has fell upon her by many men, and that is the part that should be addressed. Not the technicalities of who she is talking about exactly. And it is absolutely incorrect if your response to that was to call her a bigot or an objectively bad person.
Comparing the black race to sexist men is also a terrible comparison. Black people have historically been oppressed. There is countless literature on just the problems black men and women have faced in the last 50 years. The systematic issues with race are an entirely different beast, and not at all comparable to the issue with men.
Men have historically been the oppressors. There is no systematic oppression they're battling. They are the ones with the majority of the power. They are simply continuing to abuse those they either have power over, or feel they have power over.
So again, don't get hyperfixated on this "not all men" because even when people make a generalized statement, they are not talking about LITERALLY ALL MEN, they are talking about a problem they've experienced enough from one common group that they are able to widely complain about it. If you went day after day of constant cat calling, womanizing, discrimination, dick picks, mansplaining, and god knows what else women have to deal with, you might be saying things like that too. I don't know if it's a man thing, or if some people that take these things super literally have diagnosed or undiagnosed autism, or what ever else, but they (myself included at one point) seem to not be able to understand the fact that generalized statements aren't talking about everyone but a common issue they have.
I get it, you want them to say "Some men" or might even be fine with them saying "most men" but that isn't going to happen when someone is fed up with the treatment they've faced from men. They're fed up with the treatment they've faced their entire lives, and they're saying something about it. That is not bigotry. Period.
No, I want them to say rapists, or sexual assaulters. Not some men or most men or whatever bigoted excuse they have.
They have a problem with the actions, not the gender of the people that specifically victimized them.
Its not about the oppression dynamics of shit, it's about not prejudging people based on immutable characteristics. Period.
When an extreme majority of those rapists and abusers are men, how are men not the problem? Given the fact you are getting defensive when nobody is talking about you shows you're a part of the problem. You're ignoring the issue among men to get caught up in semantics. You are literally just responding by calling them bigotted. That is, once again, not a super nice thing to do. You really should use a different username.
You cannot simply ignore systematic oppression. That is a key detail when discussing societal issues.
NOBODY IS JUDGING YOU. Can you get that through your thick skull? I thought I said it time and time again in the last comment. THEY ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT EVERY SINGLE FUCKING MAN. THEY AREN'T TALKING ABOUT YOU. Stop taking shit literally and using it as an excuse to ignore their extremely real complaints.
Most murderers are black in the US, how are black people not the problem?
That's not even true
Black communities have faced generations of systemic racism, segregation, economic disenfranchisement, and over-policing, all of which contribute to crime statistics. That is not the case for men in general. So even if it were true (which it's not) it can still be explained by systemtic oppression and widespread racism.
Men are the oppressor, black people are the oppressed. It is punching up vs punching down. They are not comparable.
Oppression Olympics does not excuse racism nor sexism.
Men are not the problem, rapists are. Black people are not the problem, poverty is.
If you can understand one, you can understand the other. If you have a problem with one, you're a bigot, not a victim.
Stop defending bigotry and attack the actual problem, or get lumped in with the rest of the literal nazis saying the same thing you are, just with a different immutable characteristic in its place.
'mexicans are rapists' is the literally exact same rhetoric as 'men are rapists.' there is no difference whatsoever. It is as equally as disgusting. It is as equally wrong.
Men are not the oppressors, they are a gender like any other. Until you understand that you will never change a single thing and will just make the world worse.