Recently someone helped me get over feminist slogan "kill all men"
Recently someone helped me get over feminist slogan "kill all men"
So I'm sure a fair number of men who were teenagers around 2015 went through that alt right pipeline. The gamergate crap, youtube "skeptic community", "mens right" and the like. I've been there, unfortunately.
I've gotten over the most of it in a year or two afterwards and come agree with the stuff I've dismissed since. (Mostly as a result of hate watching "the other side" and their arguments sticking) But I never really got over slogans like "kill all men", "abolish men" being said by women, always made me felt like I'm being unfairly included in the group and it's unhelpful campism. Hell I even ranted about it on Hexbear once. (cringe rambling alert).
Slogans like that isn't really seen anymore post ~2018, until recently someone randomly brought it up on a
thread. One person just repliedIt's basically the equivalent of "Another kkkrakkka down unlimited genocide on the first world".
And that ticked with me instantly. I'm no
. I'm not from the first world. I'm in "the other camp" and I post stuff like that. But I don't actually mean I celebrate people's death as long as they are white and want to genocide the first world, it's just a statement against imperialism, just like "kill all men" is a statement against the patriarchy.That's all the rambling I got today. Hopefully if there's anyone here with similar thoughts, this can help them get over it too.
Okay I bet someone is going to tell me the objective of feminism is to actually kill all men now.
I’m going to be real with you: this kind of statement, even though typically meant cathartically or not entirely seriously, doesn’t sit well with me.
It’s not because I’m coming from a reactionary place. In fact, it’s the opposite. When I hear "kill all men," my mind goes to the men who disproportionately suffer under systems of oppression and violence such as Black men, queer men, and trans men. It feels like there's a lack of intersectionality in that kind of blanket statement.
As a transfem person, I’ve encountered plenty of so-called feminist or leftist spaces where bioessentialist thinking still lingers, and that makes me uneasy. And being non-binary on top of that? People often reduce enbies to a "quirky version" of their assigned sex, even if they'd otherwise respect binary trans identities. That erasure cuts deep.
I’ve also faced outright bioessentialist hate from feminists who typically are not even mask-off TERFs. It has happened more in a liberal saying, "I don't like this transgender person who disagreed with me, so it is okay for me to misgender them" fashion. So when I see these kinds of statements, it reminds me of that, not liberation, but exclusion.
It kind of reminds me of how I feel about dog meat jokes in vegan circles. I get the intended point, but dogs are still victims of human supremacy. Just like with that, I understand the catharsis behind the “I hate all men” statement, but I can’t ignore who gets invisibilized in the process.
While I'm at it, let me explain: I took a long break from Hexbear one time where I refused to use any community except for c/mutual_aid. I did that after seeing a post trashing on people who have discomfort with the statement "kill all men," with pretty much every user commenting reducing it to being inherently "reactionary MRA 4chan nerds" seething and not a single one of them pointing out this nuance.
I didn't speak up on what the incident was until now, out of fear of misunderstanding and making myself uncomfortable in the process, but this time, I had to say something.
GOOD post. It's one thing to provide the #NotAllMen hotline to remind people that statements just including "men" by themselves are not actually referring to all men, and another thing to say it is all men.
The statement "another kkkrakkka down unlimited genocide on the first world" comes across as funny without a serious intent of literally committing genocide. Those statements do not.
Tysm
yeah I was hoping OP meant they got over the need to use the slogan rather than got over discomfort from it. imo we should be wary of any slogan with the form "Kill all [identity group]"
I'm white and if I found a group chanting "kill all whites" it would definitely cause me some discomfort. I'd probably be wary of their cause/intentions with rhetoric like that. I can't stop being white and I would prefer not to be killed for something I cannot change about myself!
Personal anecdote, knew a "feminist" girl from my country who still is from the "#killallmen" type and used to target some a mutual friend for whatever reason, then that friend came out as a trans woman and she bullied her and refused to use her correct pronouns and name even when corrected.I blocked her after this and yes, she was a proud liberal.
Checks out, NGL
Right. Maybe it's because my entire interaction with this slogan is on Youtube videos for a brief 1-2 years. I was able "get over it" because my discomfort with it was very tiny to begin with, that being seeing internet people in a video saying "kill all men".
I never had conversations with bioessentialists or TERFs(beyond "ewww TERF goodbye"), never faced any direct attacks, never got involved in an argument over it. I can see it would be much more traumatic for someone with your experience. Thanks for sharing this perspective.