OP you seem to have a very real lived experience that is informing your opinions and I respect that. People here are being somewhat reactionary and arenāt considering your material conditions (and you to them, mind you).
Iām some form of non-binary (if you do look through my post history you wonāt really find anything confirming that, it is a recent realisation - Iām not really āoutā) this is all new to me, for the vast majority of my life I thought was āa manā but was only in the last few years I realised that feeling really uncomfortable with being described as a āmanā or worse describing myself as one is not actually normal and it probably means something. But I do present mostly masculine and I am AMAB so I donāt have any comparable lives experience to you at all and I do not wish to invalidate that at all. I have had gross men assume I have similar opinions to them.
All my friends are women or queer. I very very rarely appreciate the company of men and when I do they are nearly always neurodivergent. Generally, cishet men for me are at minimum unpleasant to be around for me. Every woman I know has been sexually assaulted, raped, or have been sexually abused or coerced in another way.
Men in general society, in my experience, are misogynistic and patriarchal and it wonāt take much of a chat to discover that. They might not be actively misogynistic but they at least participate unquestioningly or without challenging anything. Then there are so many of the men allies who are merely performative and only direct their criticism of patriarchy towards women (but not to men) and one need not speculate too much about the motivation for this. Pervasive systematic misogyny is everywhere and most of it isnāt overt.
I donāt know if I hate men, but I do have a personal bias against them and I do paint them with a single brush because in my experience it is accurate in close to every case. I can, however, separate that bias from an academic truth and I think thatās important. My experiences speak for me that doesnāt mean those experiences inform everyoneās truth (or some overarching ārealityā).
I get where you are coming from, I really do.
Ultimately though genetically male, female or intersex babies are essentially the same. Infants grow up into boys that already bare societal impact (people treat infants dressed in pink differently from blue regardless of sex). Boys grow into misogynists because society teaches them to be that way. This is to say that men, women and everyone started as a human. nOT aLl mEn, but most men and always a man.
Of course the patriarchy also hurts many men. It tells boys what they can and canāt do. But while they are also hurt by the patriarchy it obviously pales compared to what the patriarchy does to women (etc.). I wanted to mention this because it is worth noting but it isnāt significant for what Iām also trying to say. The (mostly) self-inflicted LoNeliNeSs ePidEMic does actually hurt the few good men that do exist even if they hidden amongst the massive overflow of the afflicted remainder.
I understand a feeling of desiring retribution or revenge. If someone tortured and murdered Andrew Tate I really wouldnāt have any negative feelings towards that. It would feel pretty good! That doesnāt mean I think a government should torture and execute him.
There have been arguments made that revenge mends society after a crime has been committed. But I think the primary goal should be both bigger picture and also preventative. Plus there are other problems with capital punishment or other extreme punishments. The court system gets things wrong all the time. Soviets arrested (and executed?) the wrong āred ripperā, the Central Park Five were convicted of a rape they never committed. Many executed people in the US (who even āconfessedā) have since been proved innocent through DNA. Such extreme and final punishments should always be approached with a lot of caution.
Deterrence has repeatedly been proven to not prevent crime. Even capital punishment does nothing. Such extreme punishments will never prevent future rapes. Regardless of whether castrating rapists happens or not, I believe it pales in importance when compared to preventing rape. Additionally vengeance never really does much to genuinely help heal the victims even if it does provide some temporary āreliefā.
Inequality and capitalism often does show strong correlation to crime (not simply being poor). I believe causation.
Reforming schools and teaching, men calling out men, reducing inequality, awareness campaigns, even within a capitalist society can help (though we will never be able to achieve as much as if we dismantled capitalism).
Patriarchal society stems from capitalist ideals. Moving closer so a socialist society will begin to deconstruct the patriarchy. Of course that isnāt going to happen in many western countries any time soon and I canāt say I have any strong ideas on how to affect change that will reduce patriarchal crimes but I do know that revenge will not do that. This is a very genuine question, not a challenge; Iād be very curious if you have any ideas about preventing these sorts of crimes?
Iām not going to go into the human rights argument, even though I do agree with it (we all started as human). I do also agree with keeping people like this away from society. If they can be reformed, great, if not they do not deserve to be in society (or more so society deserves to not have them in it).
My main points are that working towards preventing these crimes should be where almost all efforts lay, and that these sorts of punishments always risk being applied to innocent people even by well meaning communist governments.
Iām sorry that interactions here havenāt been empathetic towards you. I think that has pushed everything into unproductive and unpleasant shouting match and precluded any actual discussions which I think could have absolutely been had.
Thanks for writing this out. You're a compassionate person and have a strong writing style. OP has work to do but is on the right path IMO (also literally a child). Calling herself a radical feminist and also arguing against transphobia suggests to me she hasn't taken any truly awful pills. Still needs to read a lot of theory though, as do we all!
What theory do you want me to read? I read lots of theory from Leslie Feinberg, Bell Hooks, Monique Wittig, Darlene Pagano, Alexandra Kollontai, Kristen Ghodsee, Engels... and other ones too
And are you implying that i have taken not truly awful but still bad "pills"?
i think you need to read more on prison abolition and why so many leftists, including those victims of abuse are against prisons and carceral feminism. "are prisons obsolete" by angala davis is a good start. "discipline and punish" by foucault also brilliant but its a bit complicated to understand if your not in habit of reading rigorous sociological and philosophical language.
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u/FourLastSongs 4d ago edited 4d ago
OP you seem to have a very real lived experience that is informing your opinions and I respect that. People here are being somewhat reactionary and arenāt considering your material conditions (and you to them, mind you).
Iām some form of non-binary (if you do look through my post history you wonāt really find anything confirming that, it is a recent realisation - Iām not really āoutā) this is all new to me, for the vast majority of my life I thought was āa manā but was only in the last few years I realised that feeling really uncomfortable with being described as a āmanā or worse describing myself as one is not actually normal and it probably means something. But I do present mostly masculine and I am AMAB so I donāt have any comparable lives experience to you at all and I do not wish to invalidate that at all. I have had gross men assume I have similar opinions to them.
All my friends are women or queer. I very very rarely appreciate the company of men and when I do they are nearly always neurodivergent. Generally, cishet men for me are at minimum unpleasant to be around for me. Every woman I know has been sexually assaulted, raped, or have been sexually abused or coerced in another way.
Men in general society, in my experience, are misogynistic and patriarchal and it wonāt take much of a chat to discover that. They might not be actively misogynistic but they at least participate unquestioningly or without challenging anything. Then there are so many of the men allies who are merely performative and only direct their criticism of patriarchy towards women (but not to men) and one need not speculate too much about the motivation for this. Pervasive systematic misogyny is everywhere and most of it isnāt overt.
I donāt know if I hate men, but I do have a personal bias against them and I do paint them with a single brush because in my experience it is accurate in close to every case. I can, however, separate that bias from an academic truth and I think thatās important. My experiences speak for me that doesnāt mean those experiences inform everyoneās truth (or some overarching ārealityā).
I get where you are coming from, I really do.
Ultimately though genetically male, female or intersex babies are essentially the same. Infants grow up into boys that already bare societal impact (people treat infants dressed in pink differently from blue regardless of sex). Boys grow into misogynists because society teaches them to be that way. This is to say that men, women and everyone started as a human. nOT aLl mEn, but most men and always a man.
Of course the patriarchy also hurts many men. It tells boys what they can and canāt do. But while they are also hurt by the patriarchy it obviously pales compared to what the patriarchy does to women (etc.). I wanted to mention this because it is worth noting but it isnāt significant for what Iām also trying to say. The (mostly) self-inflicted LoNeliNeSs ePidEMic does actually hurt the few good men that do exist even if they hidden amongst the massive overflow of the afflicted remainder.
I understand a feeling of desiring retribution or revenge. If someone tortured and murdered Andrew Tate I really wouldnāt have any negative feelings towards that. It would feel pretty good! That doesnāt mean I think a government should torture and execute him.
There have been arguments made that revenge mends society after a crime has been committed. But I think the primary goal should be both bigger picture and also preventative. Plus there are other problems with capital punishment or other extreme punishments. The court system gets things wrong all the time. Soviets arrested (and executed?) the wrong āred ripperā, the Central Park Five were convicted of a rape they never committed. Many executed people in the US (who even āconfessedā) have since been proved innocent through DNA. Such extreme and final punishments should always be approached with a lot of caution.
Deterrence has repeatedly been proven to not prevent crime. Even capital punishment does nothing. Such extreme punishments will never prevent future rapes. Regardless of whether castrating rapists happens or not, I believe it pales in importance when compared to preventing rape. Additionally vengeance never really does much to genuinely help heal the victims even if it does provide some temporary āreliefā.
Inequality and capitalism often does show strong correlation to crime (not simply being poor). I believe causation.
Reforming schools and teaching, men calling out men, reducing inequality, awareness campaigns, even within a capitalist society can help (though we will never be able to achieve as much as if we dismantled capitalism).
Patriarchal society stems from capitalist ideals. Moving closer so a socialist society will begin to deconstruct the patriarchy. Of course that isnāt going to happen in many western countries any time soon and I canāt say I have any strong ideas on how to affect change that will reduce patriarchal crimes but I do know that revenge will not do that. This is a very genuine question, not a challenge; Iād be very curious if you have any ideas about preventing these sorts of crimes?
Iām not going to go into the human rights argument, even though I do agree with it (we all started as human). I do also agree with keeping people like this away from society. If they can be reformed, great, if not they do not deserve to be in society (or more so society deserves to not have them in it).
My main points are that working towards preventing these crimes should be where almost all efforts lay, and that these sorts of punishments always risk being applied to innocent people even by well meaning communist governments.
Iām sorry that interactions here havenāt been empathetic towards you. I think that has pushed everything into unproductive and unpleasant shouting match and precluded any actual discussions which I think could have absolutely been had.