Teachers describe a deterioration in behaviour and attitudes that has proved to be fertile terrain for misogynistic influencers
“As soon as I mention feminism, you can feel the shift in the room; they’re shuffling in their seats.” Mike Nicholson holds workshops with teenage boys about the challenges of impending manhood. Standing up for the sisterhood, it seems, is the last thing on their minds.
When Nicholson says he is a feminist himself, “I can see them look at me, like, ‘I used to like you.’”
Once Nicholson, whose programme is called Progressive Masculinity, unpacks the fact that feminism means equal rights and opportunities for women, many of the boys with whom he works are won over.
“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,” he says.
But he is battling against what he calls a “dominance-based model” of masculinity. “These old-fashioned, regressive ideas are having a renaissance, through your masculinity influencers – your grifters, like Andrew Tate.”
And how much of that is actually created to stoke anti-feminist attitudes?
Almost none of it is created to stoke anti-feminist attitudes, but it is certainly spread to do so.
There was this great tumblr post a couple years ago that I can’t seem to find anymore about how when feminists spread phrases like ‘all men are trash’, even if in context it doesn’t seem offensive or bigoted, people who dislike feminism will spread it to people offended by it without the additional context and say “look, see! Feminists hate all men! They hate you! Why would you as a man want to help people who hate you unconditionally?!”, and unfortunately the people most vulnerable to that type of manipulation are teenage boys, who aren’t exactly likely to seek out the context that’s been removed
Of course, we both understand how “all men are trash” could be said without bigotry within the right context, but for everyone else that doesn’t understand, would someone mind explaining or clarifying?
Gladly! I’ll use an example that I myself witnessed (and helped pull me out of the alt right pipeline, funnily enough) but unfortunately no longer have the link to corroborate my story, as it was deleted by the original post author some time afterwards, I’ll also include a timeline of how it gets into the right wing circles and gets spread around, bolded part for those who just want to know the context:
A young feminist makes a post on a personal blog that includes the text “all men are trash” as part of a larger critique on masculine culture and how it negatively everyone, including men. IIRC it was something like “all men are trash, they do bad things [other examples, leading paragraph type stuff]” and then continues in the next couple of lines “That’s what men are supposed to be and are lead to be under a patriarchy, but these values are harmful to everyone, them included, that’s why the men who don’t end up like this, and end up kind and nice, are demonized by those men who did end up evil and cruel, they disprove the need for a patriarchy, [the rest of the article]” (again, this is just what I remember, it may not be fully correct)
Effectively, the author was pointing out that a patriarchal masculine society demonizes men who are kind and help others, while rewarding men who are ruthless and cruel, with the statement “all men are trash” probably being used as an inflammatory statement to make the reader keep reading.*
At some point in the following year, someone in the alt right circle of twitter picks up on this blog and screenshots the paragraph with “all men are trash” and some other minor details that don’t include the part about how the feminist actually critiques the negative influences on men
This screenshot then spreads to right wing indoctrinators, who happily run with it and use to to paint a picture of how feminists hate all men and think they are trash, so as a man you shouldn’t be a feminist, and should hate feminists because they hate you!
Fringe right wing content creators see the indoctrinators takes on this and edit it together with similar examples, some of which are genuine ‘hate all men’ people, others are also taken out of context.
Right wing & right wing adjacent content creators release videos using the edited content to make videos with titles like “FEMINISTS think ALL MEN are trash?!”, where it eventually reaches me,
I find the original blog in order to try to understand why they could possibly think I’m trash and read the rest of the article, I question why the content creator left this out and then start questioning what else they lied to me about, I start watching left wing content creators for alternate perspectives and end up the way I am now: hard core left wing gay guy who cringes at the fact I was ever even right wing adjacent
Thanks for explaining! Let me explain why I disagree with this in general. I’ll share a personal anecdote, bear with me please.
So, a feminist friend shared with me a book on human trafficking for sexual exploitation written by a group of investigative journalists that she had helped translate to Serbian. It was thoroughly researched and well documented. Reading it left a mark on me and taught me things about the world that shatter the childish worldview (this was decades ago, I was a young teenager at the time).
Now, the Serbian translation was prefaced by my friend’s fellow activist who was clearly a misandrist. The preface was filled with slurs and general assumptions of complicity and guilt about exclusively men, despite the fact that even the very book the preface was for stated that men also get trafficked (though less), and that women themselves are not rarely involved in the illegal trafficking chains of operation (think Ghislane Maxwell).
Reading that preface made me feel unjustly attacked and I would have dropped the book and never got to the good, educational part, had it not been for my friend’s highest recommendation (I’m glad I stuck with it). It turns out the woman who wrote this had had bad experiences with men in her life, and used this otherwise well researched book as a vessel to vent her personal hate for men, which was borne out of her own trauma.
While it can be considered “justified” that she feels this way, this damaged greatly the overall message of the Serbian translation, which clearly took a lot of effort to research, document and write, and than translate and publish in my country. Its educational impact was greatly diminished by the editor’s choice (out of activist camaraderie, I’m assuming) to include the hateful text at the very beginning, which unjustly attacks the very audience who would most benefit by learning from the unbiased body of the book. It’s a tragically missed opportunity.
While social media exacerbates these issues (all this happened long before social media existed), and bad faith actors attempt to skew positive feminist messages, I think we shouldn’t excuse the feminist movement for some of its own failings.
To conclude, I’m a male feminist, but I think writing “all men are thrash” or “all cops are bastards”, or “all <broad group> are <slur>” in general in the public sphere is irresponsible.
Thank you for your response! I must apologize firstly for the late reply (I do my best to be on social media as little as possible lately) and secondly for giving off the impression that I am in favor of using terms like “all men are trash”, I am against them entirely, not only do they create situations that are easy to manipulate and spin, but they also tend to give power to genuinely awful groups within the feminist movement (TERFs, anti-masc homophobes, misandrist, etc)
My response was intended to give an example where the phrase could be taken out of context to be more negative than its original context.
Believe me, I know the hate all men type feminists exist, and it’s baffling to me that they aren’t called out more often by people who care about equality
I agree with most things you wrote, but one thing confuses me. You seem to suggest that writing ‘all men are thrash’ is ok in some contexts, but when spread without that context can radicalize boys?