this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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The very beginning. "If white men are so afraid" is the antithesis of her latter point which is "white men aren't afraid" and insinuates they don't stop talking or are generally just more abundant. Even if it's not directly insulting, it's a generalization based on race (and sex) that pushes away people who happen to be white and male but also feel their voice doesn't matter.
I'm just trying to be helpful in pointing out that it's ineffective to become the monster you're fighting. I'd like racism, sexism, all of it to be extinguished and I think things even like the community rule of "only women can post" is severely detrimental to meaningful change. We must choose our responses more carefully so as not to grant the assumption that black and white are opposites no more than men and women are opposites.
There's far too much division online that doesn't exist nearly as much when we step away. We need to be reminded of that more often.
I don't disagree in principle, but how do we get to that point of ending racism and sexism without pointing out people who do sexist or racist things?
I think we have different barometers as to what constitutes a generalization. Was the OOP talking about white men in general or just the white men who do the thing she's criticizing? I'm leaning toward the latter.
Make the point that individuals are the ones who are racist, not the demographic. People aren't racist/sexist because they're white/male, so making a claim against white/male people is ineffective. However, individuals who identify as Nazis, are racist, because the group itself is racist.
It leaves less room for "oh they're just racist misandrists targeting us" by reframing what you're saying. The critique isn't the problem but the manner in dispensing it which gives the opposition fuel to "uno reverse" the situation.
She insinuated she hears a lot of white men and made no attempt to specify what kinds of white men, only that she hears them often. Generalizing isn't bad in itself, but targeting characteristics that can't be changed for the sake of a counterpoint, is. Someone can't choose to be a man or white, so rather than allow the opposition to make it about either, reframe it into what it is. Racism, sexism, etc.
It seems pedantic but you don't want to appear to be the enemy they paint you as. You don't want to use the language they'll benefit from, no matter how right you are.
But there is a systemic cause that predisposes some proportion of specifically white and male people to be racist and sexist through enculturation. I'm sorry, but that's just the reality: Not all white men, of course, but there are clear racial and gender lines in who voted for Donald Trump. The good ones who are not that way ended up that way by either resisting those societal pressures or being brought up away from bigoted people. I sure do appreciate those white men.
To claim it's just individual ignores the most nefarious cause of bigotry, that it's this societal phenenomon and a negative feedback loop.
If she insinuated she hears a lot of white men but didn't specify what kinds, that's because Twitter is a social media environment that by its own mechanics discourages people from being specific. I would argue that the bigger problem is Twitter/Bluesky/Mastodon. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
One would turn into the enemy they were fighting against if they said something like, "I hate all men" or "kill all men." There are situations where that might happen on social media, but I'm sorry we don't see eye to eye on this, but I just don't see that as being the case here. This particular tweet is ambiguous, but I'm not convinced it's targeting all men with its language.
I do agree that "patriarchy" and "men" are distinct terms that should not be mistaken for one another.