What sort of post or comment gets you downvoted the most? Especially if you don’t think it’s bad behavior in the first place, or don’t care. Does not have to be on Lemmy, but we are here…
One of the good things about Lemmy IMO is that it’s small enough to see the posts that are unpopular. If you do “Top Day” on most channels, you cash reach the bottom, see what people here don’t like.
As far as comments, attempting to rebut the person who is telling me my post sucks, is what gets me into negative numbers most often. The OP is going to voite it down, of course, and nobody else cares, usually.
I’m guilty of this because I genuinely don’t see why “not all men” is bad. As an example, I see a concerning amount of women who emotionally abuse their husbands or boyfriends publicly in subtle ways, but there isn’t a huge culture around avoiding all women. As a dude, saying that “not all men” is negative doesn’t seem that different from saying “I’m not racist, but…” or “I’m not sexist, but…” because the conversation never seems to be about men with red flags or the people in power who don’t do anything when SA is reported.
What am I missing or not getting?
Let’s leave aside the labels (sexist, racist, etc) for a moment, because these conversations tend toward applying/avoiding those and it just loses a lot of nuance.
Let’s metaphor this, because I think that helps. Is it possible for someone with millions of dollars to have a truly bad day? Of course it is. Is it possible for them to be hurt by someone with way less money than them? Obviously, yes. Positions of privilege never fully insulate anyone from hurt or harm, and those in worse positions can perpetuate harm. That’s fully understood and accepted.
I don’t think anyone with integrity would say that women are in a position of power relative to men. Women have been systemically and systematically oppressed for virtually all of human history. A woman even being able to talk back to a man without severe physical consequences is an insanely recent development at scale in our world. There are still dozens of countries that are not letting women wear what they choose, marry who they choose, go to school. Men (as a group) have never been subjected to anything remotely close to anything like this, and in fact have perpetuated it for all time.
Now, there are some whackos out there who hate all men because of that. They’re super, super rare, and they’re wrong. Most women are indeed wary about random men, especially if they have experienced assault or harassment, but that is a far cry from hating all men.
To boil it down, there’s a huge historical and modern difference in the way the genders/sexes are treated, and that cannot be ignored just so we can try to achieve the utopian world of no distinction. We have work to do as a society, as genders, and as individuals to repair this gap together. Good men belong right next to us, doing that work. And every good man I’ve ever met has willingly done so. Instead of asking “why are you avoiding me?”, they give us space and support. Instead of asking “why not men?”, they do the work to support fellow men instead of asking women to do it for them. Instead of saying “not all men”, they actively engage in not being those men and are content in that.
While I don’t think what you said is wrong (though I have some semantic disagreements; I don’t think men are privileged but do think that women are disprivileged), I don’t think it’s that relevant. Power dynamics are far more complex than what you’re describing. While you can conclude that women on average have less power than men on average, that doesn’t mean there aren’t a huge amount of men subordinate to other men, women subordinate to other women, or men subordinate to women. In all of those cases, some higher figure is abusing their power, whether it’s by SA, violence, manipulation, or especially not holding someone else accountable.
The way I see it is that by making blanket statements implying that men are the problem, you’re distracting yourself from the root problem while alienating a good chunk of people who would support your cause, including male SA victims. It (anecdotally) seems like the pool of vocal SA victims is in actuality limited to just women who have been assaulted by a man. That division seems unnecessary. It’s the same way of thinking that alienates women who have Autism or adults who have ADHD; people only talk about the biggest or most substantial sub-group rather than the group as a whole.
I’m with you. I spent a LOT of time in r/TwoXChromosomes before moving to lemmy to try and understand that commmunity, and their arguments for why “not all men” is bad basically boiled down to “we’re tired of having to include that at the bottom of every post, just let us rant.” Which like, okay… but you’re spreading information and culture by making a public rant post. If you refer to “men”, that by default means “men in general”, not “some men”. So yes, you really should specify which ones you’re talking about every time. The exception is if you do specify a subset of men or even singular man, in which case, yes, “not all men” comments are unnecessary at worst.
to kind of sum it up, I think “not all men” tends to be kind of a red flag in the same vein as “all lives matter”. Not quite as bad, and obviously it’s contextually different as “not all men” refers to feminism rather than race relations, but I think it kind of makes the point as a metaphor.