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I legitimately don't understand how a man can be blind to this kind of treatment of women. Don't you just need to look at any treatment of women online for more than a nanosecond and you'll see this?
My hypothesis is it's two major parts:
- Protect one's ego at all costs. Anything that makes you feel bad, at all, is to be rejected.
- Join in-groups that do not value or respect women.
For most people, belief is more social than we'd like to admit. So if your in-groups are a bunch of jerks who think women "talk too much" or whatever, you'll probably adopt that. It'll be continually reinforced from your socializing. Then with point #1, any time contrary evidence that does manage to break through you'll reject it rather than doing any hard work or introspection.
Can you explain point 1 more? How do negative experiences online for women damage men's egos?
I am by no means an expert on this.
But just spitballing, let's imagine the victim (often but not always a woman) says something generalized like "Men are assholes online." The man hears this, and since they are a man, and since men were just called assholes, they feel like they were called an asshole. That hurts the sense of self, the ego, to accept.
I think it's the group identity thing, really? Like, the group they're a part of was insulted, so they feel personally insulted. Accepting that the group isn't great is hard for the brain. They don't want to be part of a group that's bad (men online) because that hurts their sense of self, the ego.
I'm a guy, but I don't, like, care. Not in a gender-queer or trans way, but it's just not a big deal to me. Maybe that's why if someone's like "Men are trash" I can just shrug. But if someone was like "People in New York City are pretentious, rude, assholes" I'd probably have an emotional response. But patriarchy is a much bigger and more wide spread issue, so it's not really the same.
That makes sense. Perhaps sweeping generalisations should be avoided out of concern such a response could be triggered. FWIW, there are loads of sweeping generalisations about women too. Even the ones that look innocuous bother me.
Maybe! I meant to write in my previous one but forgot: often when the person is making the sweeping generalization in this kind of context, they're upset. They're annoyed. They're not going to be their most kind, patient, self. You probably wouldn't be if some strangers just told you they were going to [threats and insults].
So while it's in a sense true that we should avoid broad generalizations, I think it's fair to cut someone slack in this kind of context. They are probably not looking to be nitpicked.
Think about times you're annoyed. Like, let's say FedEx just delivered you a smashed package for the third time in a row. You go "FedEx sucks they always ruin my packages". You probably don't need or want someone to go "actually, them deliver more than 99% of packages with no problems. Maybe you should [unsolicited advice]". It doesn't matter if that's true. That's not what you're looking for in that moment.
All of that aside, yeah, we should be mindful of speaking in absolutes.
Selfishness, ignorance, lack of empathy, inability to see more than one perspective, misogyny, the “Well, I’m alright, Jack.” mentality, and the ability to ignore all the evidence in order to maintain my own personal view are just some of the tactics I’m employing right now to openly disbelieve what you tell me is your own personal lived experience. Glad I could
mansplainexplain that for you. s/my theory is that it's just sort of universal across the internet. You have a wrong think in a group, and that group will delete you forever.
I think there's a more specific version of this that ends up targeting women directly though.
We see it all the time with internet justice, someone posts rage bait, fake or real, people doxx them, people harm them, whatever. Shit like this just kind of happens. I think.
I suppose some men are just so used to their own toxicity that they just look down on anyone who "can't take it". Women suffer even more because they are more easily targeted and "will never be as tough"