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On 'punching up'... (self.MensLib)

Terraneaux が 投稿

Hey there, longtime poster on MR, came over here to see what all the hubbub is about. I've seen some things here I've agreed with, and others I've disagreed with. A good part of why I'm here is that I think it's good to engage with ideas that you yourself don't hold – hanging out in an echo chamber isn't good for literal brain health, in my opinion, and isn't so good for personal development, either.

The title of this post is about 'punching up' as it's used in terms of both criticism and vitriol directed towards groups, and towards which groups this is acceptable. I've seen it argued on this sub that 'ironic' misandry is acceptable because men are a privileged group, and I just don't think that that's the kind of attitude that is going to win hearts and minds, or really result in any sort of morally correct resolution.

While some of you may disagree, I believe that the evidence suggests that it's more acceptable to criticize men as a class then women as a class (“Women are Wonderful” effect) – and I'd posit that the acceptance that expressions like 'killallmen#' receive owes a lot to this idea.

In the face of a bias that can be verified to exist, I, myself, generally spend a lot of time checking my own behavior to make sure I'm not exhibiting it. As far as general callousness, lack of compassion, and lack of human regard for men (by men and women), I see more of a gleeful lack of self-restraint in this respect – arguing that it's not possible to hurt men with blanket discrimination in the same way that women can be hurt, with specious academic reasoning for doing so (the idea that sexism against men is impossible because men hold institutional power, for example). To me, that seems like post facto justifications for an existing bias.

For me, the fundamental issue is one of fairness – if it's wrong to disparage women, as a class, then it should be wrong to disparage men, also. Perhaps one group or another holds institutional power, in some respects, but that only means that the harm being done differs in a matter of magnitude, not kind. Saying that men can't be hurt, or don't suffer when discriminated against, cleaves so close to traditionalist ideas of masculine stoicism and disposability that I can't help but suspect that people promoting this sort of anti-male discrimination as harmless haven't gone 'too far' in terms of fighting traditionalist gender norms – but rather not far enough. (That I associate this with feminism as a whole is obviously a big part of what makes me an MRA and not a feminist.)

So I guess my question is to both the mod staff and the users: Is this a place where it's assumed that misandry, whether ironic or genuine, is harmless or a legitimate expression that men should endure? Should men suffer such expressions in good humor while not permitting the reverse?

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[–]murloclove 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

For me, the fundamental issue is one of fairness – if it's wrong to disparage women, as a class, then it should be wrong to disparage men, also.

Completely agree with you. We should be fair to one another. If you want to be treated a certain way, treat others the same way.

Perhaps one group or another holds institutional power, in some respects, but that only means that the harm being done differs in a matter of magnitude, not kind.

Seeing all men (or women in some cases) as a complete group is not helping. We are all individuals. Just because some people of one "group" have power/"privilege" doesn't mean all individuals of this group have it.

My opinion is, we should watch out for one another.

[–]theonewhowillbe 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

The whole "punching up" thing is pretty clearly used in many cases as a post hoc justification for some people to avoid the fact that they're being hypocrites who won't (or can't) practice what they preach.

[–]Unconfidence 9ポイント10ポイント  (0子コメント)

Why do we have to punch at all?

Isn't that need to be vicious problematic in and of itself?

[–]onyonn 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

There are a lot of problems with the whole concept of 'punching up'--and one of them is that it treats privilege as a binary, when it is anything but.

Different groups--including even some of the most marginal ones--have different privileges in different situations.

One privilege that women have is that their lives are considered far more precious than those of mens. I think that this could be said to be the ultimate privilege. Does that mean people should feel free to hate on women? Of course not!

Actually, it's a self-contradicting idea. The idea that some group is so privileged that everyone can heap abuse at their members with no consequences and a clear conscience... What?

Any group that everyone deems acceptable to abuse is clearly not privileged.

[–]jrkirby 9ポイント10ポイント  (11子コメント)

Sending hateful messages at a large group of people is bad. With such a large group, there's bound to be plenty of people who don't deserve it. In fact I'd argue that sending hateful messages to anyone is bad, because nobody deserves it.

Whether men or women or blacks or whites or straight or trans or gay or anything else are hurt more - whether any group is hurt more by hateful discriminatory language - is irrelevant. At least it's irrelevant when talking about acceptable behavior. Because it's not acceptable coming from, or directed at, any group.

It doesn't matter what group is "more acceptable" to criticize either. Every group is going to be criticized, and the acceptability of that criticism will always depend on who you're talking to, what aspect you're criticizing, how you frame it, and a million other different things. There's no way to determine, after accounting for all those things which group takes the most heat. And there's no point to it either.

The "ironic misandry" you read appears to be mostly a coping mechanism. Women, along with every other group on this planet, experience their own unique challenges and unfairnesses. They see all these negative actions done towards them because they're women. And they're not imagining them. Every woman (for the most part) has experienced some misogyny directed at them. As women, they personally experience no hate that men receive.

So they think, "Well, if the world were fair, men would receive this hate too. Maybe if men felt the receiving end of this hate, they would stop their own misogyny because they knew how it felt. And besides, I can't actually hurt them, I don't have the power to actually hurt them, unlike the persons who hurt me. And I'm not being serious. So no harm can come of this. It's actually going to be a good thing, and I'll feel good about it too."

Somewhere along the line, it can become more serious to other people too. As they're in a group of people who find it acceptable to joke about it, there's others who think it's more than a joke. They go on to hurl truly hateful words completely seriously, and with no remorse. They think they're making the world better by it.

To some extent they have a point, but in the end, I find none of this acceptable. Understandable, yes, but not acceptable.

Now with all that said, I don't think it matters. I think hateful speech is one of the less harmful things that can be done. It's not acceptable, but we can get over it. Not just we can get over it, we have to. You need to go on living your life, no matter what hurtful things someone has said. If there's anything I can do to help you get over it, well, that's part of why this sub is here. Hopefully we can all figure out how to get over it without slinging hateful words back. An eye for an eye fills up every message board with meaningless hateful messages.

[–][削除されました]  (1子コメント)

[deleted]

    [–]jrkirby 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

    I was never overlooking it. It just wasn't apart of the coping mechanism. Keep in mind, I explicitly stated that that coping mechanism is unacceptable.

    [–]Terraneaux[S] 7ポイント8ポイント  (8子コメント)

    As women, they personally experience no hate that men receive.

    I'd argue that the flipside is true, as well - and, moreover, there is a very real (measurable, even) compassion gap between men and women - people just feel less compassion for men's problems than women's. When men are in physical pain, the brains of onlookers register less activity in their sympathetic nervous system than when females are in pain. So I think there's a lot going on with the male experience that women don't see, and they assume they understand because they're receiving the cultural messaging that men are simple, small-minded, and unemotional.

    [–]Subclavian 3ポイント4ポイント  (2子コメント)

    I wouldn't go as far as to say there is more sympathy for women's problem and then use that example. A specific woman's problem maybe, but it really depends on the problem you are talking about. I usually find women's concerns are brushed off and we are told that we're just overreacting a lot of the time. I see it happen to other women a lot and it happens a lot to me in various ways.

    [–]Terraneaux[S] [スコア非表示]  (1子コメント)

    I wouldn't go as far as to say there is more sympathy for women's problem

    Why not? Do you think that there is more sympathy for mens' problems than women's? As a man, I certainly get told I'm overreacting quite a lot - there's someone downthread doing just that.

    [–]Subclavian [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

    I think it's a cultural problem at this point and not a man vs woman issue. As a culture(American), we are not community oriented so when we complain, people brush us off instead. Go deal with it were told.

    [–]jrkirby 8ポイント9ポイント  (4子コメント)

    You have a point about men receiving less sympathy. It's unfortunate.

    You could possibly put it as a list of one of the privileges that women get "As a woman I have the privilege of getting sympathy when I'm hurt." I'm not sure if feminists accept that they can have privileges as well. In either case, I don't think privilege is a healthy way of framing the differences between people, so maybe I shouldn't have brought it up.

    [–]Terraneaux[S] 11ポイント12ポイント  (2子コメント)

    Yeah, that's definitely something I've wrestled with as well - intersectionality is a thing, and makes sense to me, but the idea that 'privilege' is not unidirectional is something that it seems a lot of people don't accept. I think a complex back-and-forth is a better model for understanding the social dynamic between the sexes. For, say, race, with respect to whites and blacks in the US for an example, it's technically a back-and-forth, but the interplay is so one-sided it's easier just to treat it as unidirectional almost all of the time. For the sexes, not even...

    [–]Urdok 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

    Why would they? Privilege is such an effective rhetorical club in leftist circles, people have no reason to acknowledge that we do not live in a uni-polar world when it comes to power dynamics.

    [–]Terraneaux[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

    Well, I definitely think it's high time to start calling out that bullshit when you see it.

    [–]cindel 9ポイント10ポイント  (0子コメント)

    The inverse of this issue is that as a woman, people seem to think that you're saying you're hurt all the time.

    I can't tell you how many times I try to bring up issues with the purpose of discussing solutions, try to choose my words carefully and without emotion only for the conversation to be shut down on me because people accuse me of seeking attention and sympathy for myself.

    However I agree that men are not given the luxury of indulging in their feelings and you often won't see a flock of comforters as you will with women. Generally speaking, of course.

    [–]EvilPundit 9ポイント10ポイント  (9子コメント)

    I certainly find it alienating when such terms as mansplaining, male tears, manspreading and so on are tossed about.

    They are all sexist, explictly gendered and offensive to men in general.

    There has been considerable effort to eradicate terms which are offensive to women from common language, but it seems that such efforts are not considered needful when men are the targets.

    [–]Scarecowy 13ポイント14ポイント  (6子コメント)

    There has been considerable effort to eradicate term which are offensive to women from common language, but it seems that such efforts are not considered needful when men are the targets.

    Exactly. If terms like "police man" and "fire man" need to be changed to police officer and firefighter so that it doesn't imply that only men can do those jobs, terms like mansplaining and manspreading shouldn't be widely used because it implies that men are always and only the ones doing these shitty behaviors. It's not right to remove "man" whenever it's a positive phrase, but leave "man" when it's a negative phrase, "gunman, madman" or to make new phrases that are negative and contain "man", "mansplain, manspread."

    Also, from people that pay attention to how language affects how we view the status quo and insist on changing phrases like "police man" and "fire man", I have a hard time believing they don't know exactly what they are doing disseminating man-"negativefeature" type languages and phrases.

    [–]barsoap 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

    manspreading shouldn't be widely used because it implies that men are always and only the ones doing these shitty behaviors.

    Well to be devil's advocate: Women don't actually have dangly bits between their legs, as such less of a natural inclination to want to avoid squeezing them, thus less of an inclination to sit with spread legs. Thus, there is actually such a thing as male-specific spreading, and "manspreading" is not the worst word for it, if you insist that it should have a name (and why not?)

    When it comes to the part of the charge that can stand without relying on blaming men for the shape and position of our genitals, however, we get into the area of generalised shitty behaviour in public, exemplified by such things as "sitting on the bus and taking up two seats".

    Which only becomes shitty if you don't actually retreat to only one seat (or, in the case of elderly, stand up) when someone actually wants to sit down. In other situations, seating real estate is an abundant resource that can be justly and righteously used with wild abandon, be it for my legs or bag.

    [–]Terraneaux[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

    Thus, there is actually such a thing as male-specific spreading, and "manspreading" is not the worst word for it, if you insist that it should have a name (and why not?)

    The word was originally intended as an accusation (a la 'mansplaining'), not as something purely descriptive. That's the difference; 'manspreading,' via the people who use it unironically, is not purely descriptive, it is a sin, more or less.

    [–]JustOneVote 4ポイント5ポイント  (3子コメント)

    As stupid as the manspreading thing is, posters on the subway in New York, where this whole hubbub started, also call out women for using a purse or bag to occupy more than one seat. So yes it referenced manspreading but the transit authority didn't single out men.

    [–]Scarecowy 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

    But that's the whole point though. You have two activities, one is being employed as someone who puts out fires and responds to 911 calls, and the other one is taking up more than one seat on public transportation. Both men and women can do these activities, it's not a male exclusive thing. Fire man needs to be changed to fire fighter because it implies that only men can be firefighters, and we wouldn't want to discourage young women. Manspreading is perfectly fine for some reason, even though women can do it as well as men.

    Again, I find it highly unlikely that the people who say we need to say police officer instead of police man because of what that does in terms of implying the status quo and discouraging women, don't know exactly what they are doing when they are doing with single gendered negative terms, especially those recently coined such as manspreading.

    [–]BigDickedTurtle 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

    sure, but I bet those posters didn't say "Women, stop putting your bags on seats!"

    In regard to #manspreading, it's the contrived singling out of a single gender as inconsiderate that's innapropriate, not the calling out of inconsiderate behavior.

    [–]JustOneVote -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

    They totes said women don't but your bag on the seat.

    Sure people online, who are part of a certain non-monolith ideology, made a big deal about manspreading, how it signifies male power and the idea that men don't have to respect other people's space. And these are probably the same folks who think that air conditioning in offices is sexist.

    But these people are really just an online presence, how relevant are they?

    [–]kaboutermeisje -4ポイント-3ポイント  (1子コメント)

    I certainly find it alienating when such terms as mansplaining, male tears, manspreading and so on are tossed about.

    These terms are meant to alienate sexists. If you feel alienated by them, maybe you should look inward and fix your gender politics.

    [–]Terraneaux[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

    Then why are they 'male tears' and not 'misogynist tears'?

    [–]Cttam 6ポイント7ポイント  (11子コメント)

    'Punching up' simply means taking on oppressors. You can argue about what is and is not an oppressive system, but I can not see a single justification for opposing the concept of 'punching up'.

    [–]PostsWithFury 8ポイント9ポイント  (10子コメント)

    define all men as oppressors

    define punching up as anything negative done to oppressors

    justify any and all actions taking against individual men, however strongly allied to the feminist cause

    Isnt that the problem? Punching up works as a concept provided you are talking about individual instances of oppression. If you use a wider definition, it gives you a justification for objectively immoral actions against innocent individuals.

    [–]Cttam -2ポイント-1ポイント  (9子コメント)

    1. Not all men are 'direct oppressors', but we are all complicit in maintaining patriarchy unless actively fighting against it. (Something which is very good for men by the way).

    2. I would define 'punching up' as 'punching up against the system of oppression', not just doing random mean things to individuals of a certain type.

    3. No one does this.

    [–]PostsWithFury 6ポイント7ポイント  (8子コメント)

    Not all men are 'direct oppressors', but we are all complicit in maintaining patriarchy unless actively fighting against it.

    Are you personally an anti-ableism activist? If not are you complicit in ableism?

    What about anti-ginger-discrimination?

    Are you reasonably well off? Well doesnt that make you complicit in oppression of the poor?

    I just dont buy this line at all. "If you arent with us you are against us" is a line straight out of an extremist groups playbook.

    Besides, when I've seen "punching up" used in the general sense, its often a case of "fuck men, all men". This must include men who ARE actively working against the patriarchy.

    On 3. - what is support for the #killallmen hashtag if not an example of justifying action against all men because all men are oppressors?

    [–]Cttam -3ポイント-2ポイント  (7子コメント)

    Are you personally an anti-ableism activist? If not are you complicit in ableism?

    Fighting against =! activism, though activism and organizing is the best way to fight oppressive structures. Simply challenging yourself, changing your behavior and showing solidarity can help. We can't all do everything all of the time! But to answer the essence of your question, yes - being silent or 'neutral' on ableism means your are complicit in ableism. This is true for all structures of oppression.

    What about anti-ginger-discrimination?

    uh

    wat?

    Bullying 'gingers' is obviously shitty, but there is no system built to institutionally discriminate against them. The only thing close would be general 'beauty standards', which of course should be challenged and yes we are all complicit in maintaining.

    Are you reasonably well off? Well doesnt that make you complicit in oppression of the poor?

    I am, but that in of itself does not make me complicit. I can't help what family I was born in to. Being neutral/silent/inactive on the issue of capitalism as an oppressive system would make me complicit however, yes.

    I just dont buy this line at all. "If you arent with us you are against us" is a line straight out of an extremist groups playbook.

    This implies there is something wrong with having an extreme position when it comes to an extreme problem. Norman Finklestein has a line where he says he is a radical because he views the world as 'radically unfair', which means it requires 'radical change'.

    Besides, when I've seen "punching up" used in the general sense, its often a case of "fuck men, all men". This must include men who ARE actively working against the patriarchy.

    These cases are either completely marginal, irrelevant and widely dismissed or are hyperbolic exaggerations by circlejerks like SRS.

    On 3. - what is support for the #killallmen hashtag if not an example of justifying action against all men because all men are oppressors?

    Are some dudes out there really still upset about a joke hashtag, that was actually supported by 4chan sockpuppets and other groups in order to de-legitimize feminism?

    It's so funny to me that the people who bring up killallmen (and they ALWAYS DO) are the same people who think feminists are too sensitive. I've never seen a group overreact more than MRAs.

    [–]PostsWithFury 3ポイント4ポイント  (6子コメント)

    I am, but that in of itself does not make me complicit. I can't help what family I was born in to. Being neutral/silent/inactive on the issue of capitalism as an oppressive system would make me complicit however, yes.

    If you have wealth and dont give it to charity you are complicit in capitalism. I dont know how anyone could honestly believe otherwise.

    Are some dudes out there really still upset about a joke hashtag

    This arrogant, dismissive attitude will prevent people taking you seriously. Is "joke" misogyny harmless? Well then.

    It's so funny to me that the people who bring up killallmen (and they ALWAYS DO) are the same people who think feminists are too sensitive. I've never seen a group overreact more than MRAs.

    You appear to be calling me an MRA and accusing me of calling feminists "too sensitive". Neither of which is remotely accurate (I'm a feminist!). I'm done with you and your name-calling, dismissive bullshit. People like you are the reason wankers like the MRA lot exist and you are just as bad, dishonest and dismissive as they are.

    [–]Cttam -5ポイント-4ポイント  (5子コメント)

    I do give to charity sometimes, but the effect of charity is ultimately marginal. Poverty is a symptom, capitalism is the disease. I focus on targeting the disease, not the symptom.

    I mean, I could give all my possessions away, move to the mountains and refuse to partake in the capitalist system, but that would be utterly pointless and change nothing.

    EDIT:

    This arrogant, dismissive attitude will prevent people taking you seriously. Is "joke" misogyny harmless? Well then.

    I have yet to see a reason to feel upset for men, most of who are MRAs, who were ever offended by that hashtag, and even less so for those who still are. If you think 'joke misogyny' and 'joke misandry' are comparable you just don't understand how the world works. One has institutional power and historical context behind it, the other doesn't. You may as well ask if anti-black jokes are the same as anti-white jokes.

    You appear to be calling me an MRA and accusing me of calling feminists "too sensitive". Neither of which is remotely accurate (I'm a feminist!).

    I had no idea where you were coming from your post, I'm merely saying these are all regular MRA/anti-feminist points.

    [–]PostsWithFury 3ポイント4ポイント  (3子コメント)

    I do give to charity sometimes, but the effect of charity is ultimately marginal. Poverty is a symptom, capitalism is the disease. I focus on targeting the disease, not the symptom.

    How convenient for you that your beliefs dont require you to make any substantive sacrifice.

    I mean, I could give all my possessions away, move to the mountains and refuse to partake in the capitalist system, but that would be utterly pointless and change nothing.

    It would change an awful lot for the people for whom your donation was the difference between starvation or disease and surviving. You could save an enormous number of african lives.

    [–]Cttam -5ポイント-4ポイント  (2子コメント)

    Are you literally suggesting I have to live in poverty myself or I'm not sufficiently working to help the poor?

    I spend time and energy organizing and participating in activism.

    What exactly are your beliefs and what sacrifice are you making to live up to them?

    It would change an awful lot for the people for whom your donation was the difference between starvation or disease and surviving. You could save an enormous number of african lives.

    It would momentarily alleviate their suffering by putting me in poverty for ultimately what amounts to a band-aid on a gaping wound. The privileged people in society, including me, can do far more by harnessing that privilege rather than tossing it aside, leaving the system which created the disparity intact.

    [–]PostsWithFury 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

    No, I'm saying your defining anyone "not actively working against something" as "being for it" is silly, because you arent actively working against poverty by giving away your wealth, but characterising you as pro-oppression of poor people would be a ridiculous leap.

    [–]Terraneaux[S] [スコア非表示]  (0子コメント)

    If you think 'joke misogyny' and 'joke misandry' are comparable you just don't understand how the world works. One has institutional power and historical context behind it, the other doesn't. You may as well ask if anti-black jokes are the same as anti-white jokes.

    This is where we're just completely not seeing eye to eye. If a child in a school, where almost all of his authority figures are women, keeps hearing messages about 'boys don't know how to behave,' 'boys just aren't as smart as girls,' that that doesn't amount to a milieu of institutional discrimination? Or does it not count because presidents and CEOs are not women? In Germany, where Angela Merckel runs the show, would it be different, like whites being the target of racist policies in Zimbabwe?

    Regardless of all that, blanket anti-male statements come from the same reciprocal lack of compassion that blanket misogyny comes from, and I can't take a movement that has a whole philosophy ('punching up') around a self-serving justification for this.

    [–]AbortusLuciferum 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

    I think this is off-topic and should be asked at /r/AskFeminists

    [–]maxgarzo -1ポイント0ポイント  (1子コメント)

    For me, the fundamental issue is one of fairness – if it's wrong to disparage women, as a class, then it should be wrong to disparage men, also.

    Relevant article on Medium talked about exactly this

    [–]Terraneaux[S] 10ポイント11ポイント  (0子コメント)

    That article seems to be making the case that it would be ok if it was limited to the critique of white men - which doesn't exactly dodge the problem. And, to be honest, it's making the case that men aren't subject to violence, as a class - which just isn't the case. Between the sexes, men are subjected to more violence; our culture is much more accepting of men as victims of violence (it's more accepting of ethnic minorities as victims of violence too, for example). And the gap between male and female violence at the hands of law enforcement is much stronger than the gap between, say, white and black folks.

    If someone goes through a shitty breakup and they go through an 'all women are whores/all men are pigs' phase, you just sort of roll with it and help them get back on their feet. It's normal, and understandable, though not rational, obviously. But when they make it part of their life from then on? It just comes off as hateful and the sign of a bad inner emotional state. And it seems to lead in to the dehumanization of the 'other' - which in this case is men. There seems to be a purposeful ignorance as to the emotional well-being of men being cultivated in this sort of 'ironic misandry' culture, with the justification that they're such a privileged class it's not necessary to care about them. I think that's evidence that this 'privilege' isn't as rampant as they claim.

    [–]mrsamsa -2ポイント-1ポイント  (2子コメント)

    "Punching up" is relevant because it's a tool used by the oppressed to gain some power back from the dominant class, whereas "punching down" is simply just more oppression and discrimination.

    I don't think there's anything within the concept of "punching up" that says that it's universally okay, can never be problematic, never harm anyone, and be beyond criticism. It can be, just as anything can - but the point is just to distinguish between a dominant group kicking someone while they're down, and an oppressed group trying to cling to whatever little power they might have in humour.

    To make it easier to understand, think of it in terms of class privilege as that's a concept many non-feminists seem happy to accept exists. Suppose you have a tyrannical government who starves half its population and mistreats them, and basically just runs them into the ground. The oppressed class draw comics portraying the leaders as baffoons, clowns, or just general idiots so that they can have a laugh at their situation of oppression. The government then releases a bunch of propaganda in the form of films and posters to make the oppressed class look unintelligent, savages, brutes, etc, and has a laugh at them.

    The two situations without context look similar but I'm sure most people would agree that they are profoundly different.

    However, as the only person in this feminist sub presenting a feminist perspective on this issue, I expect downvotes.

    [–]barsoap 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

    You assume that there's such thing as "up" in a situation that is not whole-society analysis, but an individual experience.

    Privilege is situational.

    [–]limewire360 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

    This is a false comparison. In your analogy, all of the "tyrannical government" are personally responsible for the oppression, and so deserve the hate. In our society, some men are actively trying to prevent themselves from engaging in sexist behavior, and many are sexist as they have been brought up in a sexist society and have never been exposed to proper discourse on gender egalitarianism. These groups (especially the former) are not personally responsible, so they do not deserve the hate speech.

    [–]trichomania93 -3ポイント-2ポイント  (3子コメント)

    I hear what you're saying about privilege not being one directional, theoretically these jokes might be punching down, but the thing is, when you look at it, these jokes nearly always occur in situations where privilege is going towards men.

    Take 'male tears', I literally can't think of somebody using that one who hasn't just been insulted, harassed, called a feminazi C-slur etc etc. Like idk, Bahar Mustafa did that joke after being the centre of a media storm, with loads of abuse and vitriol directed at her didn't she? It was literally a response to her tormentors online and in the press, and fair enough, you can't begrudge her for that whatever you think of what she did.

    So when you look at how it actually works in actual contexts, it's nearly always directed at specific men who are being abusive.

    [–]limewire360 3ポイント4ポイント  (2子コメント)

    You obviously can't categorically say that's always true.

    [–]trichomania93 -1ポイント0ポイント  (1子コメント)

    No, but it's mostly true and it's important for understanding what function these jokes perform for the people who use them.

    Do feminists sit around going 'hahaha, male tears! kill all men!"? For the most part no, and I only say 'for the most part' because it's conceivable that some of them do, even though I've never seen it in all my years as a feminist, they say those things in response to being harassed and abused by men.

    [–]limewire360 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

    But it's not explicitly addressed at the people who do the harassing, and so all it really does is damage the feminist movement's public profile.

    [–]karlthepagan -3ポイント-2ポイント  (0子コメント)

    The basics of "punching up" is much much more broad than this question. So the subject line is a bit of a clickbait. I also believe that objecting to "misandry" which regularly represents other biases quickly becomes a more reprehensible version of "#AllLivesMatter".

    For misandry the fact is not disputed: the dignity of all people should be preserved, but objecting to the microaggressions of class and race as if they were about the male gender is explicitly damaging to intersectionality and actively disrupts more valid claims of misogyny.

    On one hand I can agree that in progressive movements there are lines you should not cross no matter who your target is.

    On the other hand I don't think any person or philosophical group should be immune from criticism.

    Where does that leave us with regard to "punching"? If we are careful, we can criticize Bill Cosby (rapist) and Oprah (quack) without exhibiting prejudice against the groups to which they belong. We can more easily go at Trump without harming one of his social groups. This is the essence of the "punching" part of "punching down" -- it is how voracious the attack in our criticism and how delicate we should be in our comments.

    If you perceive the misandry on the internet without the lens of intersectionality and find it humorless and you think that any significant number of people will put #killallmen into the first planning stages then I'd like to tell you about a wonderful opportunity to option a fractional ownership of a bridge built of ethics in games journalism.