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 If you want to know how we set minimum standards (in Left Wing circles) about how people ought to talk about men, I will tell you

I think that it is worth reframing the context and attempting to gather up a consensus in Men’s Lib.

Firstly, I want to be clear in that we very much need womens’ perspectives on this topic. I am discussing the ways that “women” talk about “men”. This will mean cross-gender communication; everyone will feel differently about this.

Beginning from a very, very high perspective, Left wing spaces have a tendency to think systematically rather than individualistically. When fellow Leftists have conversations, we more oftentimes blend personal experiences with the systems that we understand.

This can hit weird when the topic is gender. I have seen examples of this personally, but I will borrow the an anecdote: “dogs are male gendered because they accept abuse and they love you anyway; cats are consent oriented creatures.”

Strange, right? But probably not true? It is sort of a critique of systems, but those systems may not even exist.

Social media has made such particular kinds of strange hot takes commonplace, even outside of women’s spaces, and Left Wing men have noticed this. Conservatives don’t give a damn and they will just say that you are a SJW; Left Wing guys have to navigate such spaces.

I think it’s vital to draw a shining line between two different conversations here: one conversation is about the systematic oppression of women by the patriarchy. 

The other conversation as happens very often, is a really particular sort of ugh-men ‘pseudointellectualism’ that masquerades itself as enlightened intellectualism. 

The former conversation is obviously very important to discuss, but there’s a deep incentive for practitioners of the latter conversation to pretend that their cats-and-dogs hot take is Doing Feminism.

(Which is a satisfactory reference point for this really excellent article about the intersection of performative ugh-men feminism and the fusion of “making posts on social media because you are passionate about something” and “making posts on social media becaz you wanna be an influencer”. 

Takes that are lukewarm do not help you achieve influencer status and individualizing a societal problem increases the “audience” you are speaking to. Fine piece.

To some extent, the average Left Wing-menslib-sorta-guy sees these types of takes normalized and then wonders if he is in the correct place. So we end up with this phenomenon where honest-to-goodness guys that support gender equality begin sentences with “I’m not a feminist, but”. Which is cringe.

As for me - this is my own take, by me - I believe it is reasonable to be annoyed by crappy, low-effort posts on social media about UGH MEN, and I do not begrudge someone who has that feeling. However it is also worth trying a concerted effort in order to separate these feelings from the (cyber)space that they are in reference to. In other words: Go back to the meatspace. It is better there.

For this discussion: Is this merely some feature of life as a Left Wing guy? How much can we even ask women to take those hot takes down a notch, or for a Left Wing space (that is not MensLib) to disallow them?