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.
I’m sorry it bothers you like that.
I personally don’t feel alienated or attacked at all by the kinds of comments you are describing. When I see a comment like “men murder women”, I think of it in the same kind of way comments like “humans are horrible” or “Australians are racist” or “young people have no attention span”… That is to say it describes a trend or someone’s perception of a tendency but does not refer to any specific individual.
People aren’t saying these things to attack you. They are saying them to communicate their own feelings of being unsafe. And to be frank, feeling that you shouldn’t go for a walk at night because it is too dangerous is a pretty serious thing which has obvious negative effects - and the concern is based in reality. It isn’t just a perception problem. So we should take these comments seriously - not just complain about the people saying them.
How do you feel when someone says women are whores, Germans are Nazis or Africans are slaves? I feel offended and outraged. I don’t care if there are women who work as prostitutes, that most Nazis were Germans and that the trans-atlantic slave trade systematically enslaved a culture group. It’s irrelevant. You’re discriminating and dehumanising these people. But in these times it’s normal to hear men are trash, they’re rapists, they murder. So people are numb to it. They don’t care about it. They will justify it by insisting men are of a position of privilege. That all men intentionally built a patriarchal society to indulge themselves. The men I know are just people. They want change. They are being alienated and that alienation drives them towards those that actually are the thing people claim men are.
I think you said it well “we should take these comments seriously - not just complain about the people saying them.” I just wish people would say it about men.