How I avoid spiraling into shame when hearing feminist critiques of men
“Deescalate all conflict that isn’t with the enemy.”
I want to expand on my recent post about how I avoid spiraling into shame when hearing feminist critiques of men, especially after a male college student commented:
“Hearing perspectives like this helps me a lot. [I’m] frequently in social settings dominated by women, many of whom have prejudices towards men that are framed as necessary to advance a feminist cause. It has been very difficult for me to navigate this kind of terrain, as I often find myself triggered but also feeling rather helpless to defend/stand up for myself.”
Don’t get me wrong, I feel shame when I read the Feminism subreddit and scroll through comments on TikTok videos about men gifting butter dishes to their partners and see popular Bluesky posts about men “deserving” to be lonely and hear women friends of mine crack jokes about men. Shame that I enjoy vegging out on the couch watching football and struggle to stay in touch with friends and too often act like I know something when I don’t. Stuff men have been socialized to do in this society.
But that’s a gut reaction. An automatic response. A reflex. After a second or two, I wake up and remember they aren’t talking about me. Not because I’m a “good” guy, unlike all those “bad” guys out there. Because they’re talking about men in general. A caricature. An amalgam of men who’ve done bad things, very likely including men who’ve hurt them.
In other words, it makes sense that many women have hate in their heart toward men. Nearly half of women have experienced sexual violence. Eighty-five percent of women experience street harassment before the age of 17. Men own most of the world’s wealth and dominate powerful positions in society, including the fascist, misogynist billionaire currently in the White House.
We’re men in a country (if you’re in the U.S.) where women had to fight for the right to vote for over a hundred years before winning it. We’re going to get shit sometimes.
“Deescalate all conflict that isn’t with the enemy.”
I also try to remember who my real enemies are. The fascists. The billionaires. The bloodthirsty warmongers. Defense contractors. Wall Street. The rich “manfluencers” grifting men into believing reactionary, hateful ideas that don’t serve us. The people hoarding immense amounts of political and economic power who want this unequal, violent society to stay just the way it is.
The woman who commented on a TikTok video that men suck isn’t my enemy. She’s very likely on my team, even if she doesn’t recognize it. She’s also being oppressed by the fascists and billionaires, but has to deal with an additional layer of bullshit because she’s a woman.
Pointing the finger at women or feminism (or trans people or immigrants) is punching down. It’s fighting over pie crumbs while our real enemies hoard the pie itself. Our real enemies stoke misogyny and white supremacy and anti-trans hate to keep us fighting over the crumbs rather than collectively punching up at them.
As the anarchist Margaret Killjoy writes, “Deescalate all conflict that isn’t with the enemy.”
This doesn’t mean that all women aren’t our enemy. Kristi Noem, who oversees Trump’s gestapo, is our enemy. Trump’s attorney general Pam Bondi is our enemy. Deepa Kumaraiah, Chief Operating Officer of the hospital chain NewYork-Presbyterian, is our enemy—not the chain’s nurses who are on strike right now. Sheryl Sandberg, of “lean in” feminism fame, is our enemy. Hillary Clinton is our enemy. Kamala Harris is our enemy. Margert Thatcher, if she were alive today, would be our enemy. They are members of the ruling class, elites, the 1 percent. They might pretend to be on our side, but they are, by definition, not.
You don’t have to roll over and take it.
It also doesn’t mean we should smile and nod and never challenge women about politics. But we don’t need to turn them into our enemy, even if they think we are theirs.
“I believe that we should be looking to find common ground with most people, most of the time, that we should deescalate conflicts most of the time,” writes Killjoy. “This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t confront people, or call people on their shit, or work to stop people from doing things we disagree with, just that we should be trying to, you know, keep our conflicts from escalating.”
We may feel shame. We may get angry. We’re humans living in an unnecessarily unequal, violent society. And far too many of us don’t have a ton of power, even if we have some relative privilege over others.
We may have to escape a situation, deescalate, or defend ourselves at times. But we must remember who’s on our team and who our real enemies are. Or we’ll keep losing and the fascists and billionaires will keep getting stronger by turning us against each other.
I’d love to hear what you think in the comments (or email me: jeremy@mohler.coach)—how do you feel when you read feminist critiques of men?
— Jeremy
I don't like hearing either gender put down the other. I just wish none of us would do that.
And, as a woman, I feel that the gender roles we've inherited are pretty toxic, and can make relationships difficult. Many women in romantic relationships with men are exhausted, since so much of what we do is invisibilized.
I hope we're able to get to a truly egalitarian society where no one shames anyone for their gender, and works out the wrinkles in these weird roles we inherit.
The "feminism" subreddit that you mention is moderated by men, just so you know. It's a fake.
The problem with people under 45 is that they spend too much time on social media and think memes and popular Tik Toks represent a majority opinion.