(OK so @dubvictor let me know if you want me to delete this/are getting shit over the post and just want it gone. Also I’m sorry in advance, this turned into a bit of a novel.)
this. this is the reason that I say ‘casual man hate is bad, actually’; this is the reason I say “we really should not be making fun of people for things they can’t help, even if the things they can’t help are things that make them privileged”. it’s not because I’m a squishy moderate who thinks it would be nice if everyone was nice. it’s because this stuff directly hurts vulnerable people.
you ever notice how these ‘funny’, ‘relatable’ man-hate posts keep going around, right, and they get a thousand notes or so, and then someone notices, ‘hey, OP is a terf’. And everyone stops and goes oh because they realise, ‘hey, OP doesn’t actually mean men.’
…if you have a category of people that are Acceptable Targets- a group of people you can performatively hate, no matter what, to the point where you can advocate for their genocide and people will understand it’s ‘just’ a joke- asshats will go to whatever lengths they can to equate the people they hate with Acceptable Targets.
TERFs try to make trans women look like men, because for a lot of feminists, men are an Acceptable Target. ableist feminists try to write off their discomfort with ‘creepy’ autistic behaviour* by saying it’s ‘male-coded’ or ‘masculine’, because men are an Acceptable Target. racist feminists talk about thugs and racially-charged Stranger Danger stereotypes, and then they expect you not to call them on their shit because- you guessed it- men are an Acceptable Target.
and yes, trans women are women, trans women are not men, equating the two is wrong. but, like… just because they’re ‘not men’ in the abstract doesn’t mean they can’t get hurt by stuff that is directly aimed at them. on top of that, there are people who are men- who are also lgbt+, or disabled, or poc- who get hit with the splash damage. if you’re already told all day every day by the media and the people around you that you’re a terrible person who’s not to be trusted, how do you think it feels coming from a place that’s supposed to be ‘safe’?
when you say ‘it’s okay to make fun of this group of people for a thing they didn’t choose to be, because the thing they didn’t choose makes them privileged’, what you’re effectively saying is 'it’s okay if there’s Acceptable Targets, as long as they’re not people like me.’ whether or not you intend to, you’re giving carte blanche to the people who want an Acceptable Target so they can keep being bigoted in a socially acceptable fashion.
*I’m talking about, like, infodumping, not stalking. a lot of sexist creepy men will try to do the exact same thing in reverse and go “b-but i have a disability :( why are you being ableist :(”. and i’m not defending them, either.
