Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks
&gt; The fact is that waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many men do suck... Rapey, dominating, violent, criminal, oligarchic, etc. People who have been harmed by such men have an absolute right to vent.<p>It&#x27;s true that some men are rapey, dominating, etc. Those men have deeply hurt many people. This is a real problem. The victims of those men have a right to vent about those things, and society needs to listen and hold the those bad men accountable.<p>But the vast majority of men are decent people who <i>aren&#x27;t</i> rapey, dominating, violent, criminal, or oligarchic. (Many men aren&#x27;t even particularly sexist! Every man internalizes some amount of sexism, but that&#x27;s true of every woman too.) So the victims of bad men <i>don&#x27;t</i> have a right to make generalizations like &quot;men suck&quot;. In fact, that&#x27;s misandrist hate speech.<p>Analogy: Many socially awkward nerds have been deeply hurt in their lives. They have a right to vent about the pain they&#x27;ve experienced, and society should listen, and should hold accountable the people who are hurting them. But that doesn&#x27;t give the victims a right to become hateful incels who make generalizations like &quot;women suck&quot;.<p>The key is to distinguish the good men from the bad men: treat the good men with respect and decency, while holding the bad men accountable.<p>And society <i>does</i> hold many of the bad men accountable. Every single day, society sends men to prison for rape, violence, and crime. And men regularly get censured or fired for sexism. It&#x27;s true that society doesn&#x27;t <i>always</i> hold bad men accountable, and this is a real problem; but society really does hold many of the bad men accountable.<p>&gt; One of the rules for good debate is to argue against the best possible version of your opponent&#x27;s argument. ... And yet, there are plenty of coherent and internally-consistent feminisms<p>I agree there are many good feminists out there, and I support them. But there are also many bad feminists out there, and they&#x27;ve hurt me deeply.<p>By analogy to above: Some feminists are misandrists. Those misandrists have deeply hurt many men (including me). Men like me have a right to vent about those misandrists, and society needs to listen and hold the misandrists accountable. At the same time, I know that most feminists are decent people, which is why I&#x27;m careful not to make generalizations like &quot;feminists suck&quot;.<p>The key is to distinguish the good feminists from the bad feminists: support the good feminists, while holding the bad feminists accountable.<p>Unfortunately, what I&#x27;ve seen is that most feminists make excuses for the bad feminists, rather than holding them accountable. For example, you just now made excuses for the feminists who say &quot;men suck&quot;! Throughout your post, you put the onus on me to tolerate being hurt, instead of putting the onus on the bad feminists to stop hurting me! And this is a pattern throughout the feminist movement: Most feminists, even otherwise-good feminists, are unwilling to acknowledge that the bad feminists are causing real harm, and that men have a right to be upset that the bad feminists are hurting them.<p>&gt; So if you feel like feminism isn&#x27;t focused on you, you are absolutely correct.<p>It&#x27;s fine that feminism isn&#x27;t focused on me. The problem is that bad feminists are <i>actively hurting</i> people like me; and the broader feminist movement is enabling that behavior.<p>Did you read the link I posted above? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scottaaronson.blog&#x2F;?p=2091#comment-326664" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;scottaaronson.blog&#x2F;?p=2091#comment-326664</a> Scott Aaronson wrote a very thoughtful and introspective post about the issues facing socially awkward men, while also being careful to respect women. His post resonated with me deeply; he put into words many of the things I had been struggling with. This is exactly the kind of thing we need more men to do. And yet, he received some <i>extremely</i> toxic responses from feminists -- e.g. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20150113081455&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rawstory.com&#x2F;rs&#x2F;2014&#x2F;12&#x2F;mit-professor-explains-the-real-oppression-is-having-to-learn-to-talk-to-women&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20150113081455&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rawsto...</a>. And in the end, the harassment was too much, so he stopped talking publicly about these issues, and nothing got better for me or other socially awkward men.<p>This kind of misandry needs to stop happening. I know most feminists aren&#x27;t personally saying horrible misandrist things. I&#x27;m not saying &quot;feminism sucks&quot;. Yet, the misandry needs to stop. Do you agree the misandry needs to stop? Will you stop making excuses for misandry?<p>(P.S. I know you touched on a lot of other issues, but this post was getting pretty long, so I wanted to focus on the core issue and leave the other issues for some other time.)