The Fourth Wave Feminists

First off, happy I found this sub literally made a whole new ugly Reddit.com account just to participate here. Old account got brigaded.

Anyways I want to talk about men who desire to be our allies but are still doing a bunch of shit wrong. I think I finally found a feminist group to talk about this with because while we all obviously want men around us to wake up and fight for what's right, it's hard to tread the line of being inclusive to men without them doing what men do.

I've been really bummed out about what I hear coming from male feminists and their discussions, and it seems to me like a lot of them completely lack any hint of introspection or skepticism of their own views. And to me, if you can't at the very least recognize ones privilege and be skeptical of your own interpretations on behalf of that privilege, then you fail at the first step of being an ally.

As a white woman I would say I'm an ally myself, or at the very least I try to be, to WOC and POC around me. I don't have ultimate knowledge of perfect allyship in that manner, but at the very least I know what being an ally as a privileged person entails. When white privilege was first made known to me in my youth it prompted me to take a critical look at myself and my upbringing and just question my surroundings at the very least. Admittedly, I initially felt attacked and "excluded" (like how men describe), but I was able to overcome that and know better just by being yeilding and receptive to what POC were saying because I still knew and accepted that I had privilege. That was the baseline. And I'm wondering why our male "allies" can't do the same.

It seems like their allyship is still rooted in denial of privilege. They'll say they're allies for basic moral stances like "raping women is bad" but they don't have ally mentalities. Many of them will complain about how they feel "unwelcome" in feminist discussions, but instead of sticking around to possibly understand, they just give ultimatums like "I can't support feminism if it hurts my feelings". Which is bull crap because if you only support human rights on a conditional basis, then you are not an ally.

Even when I got offended over my whiteness being called out I never withdrew my desire to stick up for what's right, so I chose to understand. And it's because of this experience that I'm majorly critical of male allies and the opinions that they're spreading to other mend.

And I'm just wondering wtf can we do to reform those who, at the very least desire to be women's allies, without allowing them to just enforce more blind patriarchal bullcrap. What do the women of this sub think? (Because everywhere else has zero tolerance for criticizing men that put their 'ally' hats on).

Thank you for reading.