I didn’t mean for this post to cause a bunch of arguing in the comments =(
I thought this was just some gallows humor (e.g. “Everything’s lovely except that I have to fear for my safety all the time”) type of shitpost that sounded similar to comments I’ve heard from women irl a lot.
If the meme was clearly an assertion of fact that men in general love murdering women, yes
Personally I read it as “[some] men love murdering”
Statistically most people don’t get murdered, but air-travel is also very safe, and people are still afraid of flying. If a meme about wanting to travel said “shame that planes crash” people probably wouldn’t be all angry about it. Or perhaps they would, people* are weird
(* again [some] people)
Probably wouldn’t, but some might be a bit miffed if someone said “shame men love crashing planes”. Even though it’s true most commercial pilots are men, so most plane crashes are done by men.
If there were as many man and women pilots, and the vast majority of airline crashes were by men and intentional, that would certainly be worth discussing.
I bet it would still make some men angry though, as people often have an emotional knee-jerk reaction to defend what they see as their in-group. That reaction is not always helpful. Instinctively seeing “men” as your team and “women” as an opposing team leads to all kinds of BS we’d be better off without.
For fairness, it’s also not great when women see “women” as their team and “men” as the enemy. It doesn’t lead to quite as many rapes and murders though.
You speak about people reflexively picking their teams. But what about people that reflexively put everyone they meet on teams?
I hold no allegiance to Team Testosterone but, if everyone who sees me says, “oh, yeah, you’re Team Testosterone. And also I know everything I need to know about you now.” It gets a bit grating.
It is safer for vulnerable people to make those assumptions and I won’t begrudge them their safety. But I don’t have to like how it invalidates the lifetime of interactions I’ve had and I won’t feel compelled to laugh when a offhand joke necessarily implicates me because of the team I’ve been assigned to.
Yeah that sounds pretty fair honestly. Being cautions to feel safe is pretty understandable. Outright considering every man the same would be a bit harsh, and also obviously incorrect.
It is a shame that pilots love to commit plane crashes, though. Fuck pilots.
That’s an interesting point. I’m sure you’re right, it would not trigger anger fits on so many people, by a long shot.
It still irks me tough, because all planes fly (or they wouldn’t be a plane), that’s a defining characteristic. But planes in general don’t crash, and conflating the two just adds to the fear of planes and does very little for our overall safety.
I’m not arguing they’re not dangerous, because they certainly are. But I think the important discussion is why they can crash, and how we can prevent that.