To be honest, when I was younger I would have said that I wasn’t a feminist for the reason that I found such generalized criticism to be hypocritical. Since then I’ve kind of grown to be pretty numb to such statements, since I think I understand the intention behind such generalizations (I think being important here, when it comes from strangers I never feel certain whether they’re being hyperbolic or not when they’re generalizing things). There’s additionally the whole punching up vs. punching down argument and, personally for me, such generalized statements do make me reflect and reconsider my behaviour.

But this article is seriously making me think again whether I should be numb to these things. Does such comments, no matter how well intentioned, contribute to making young men vulnerable to getting influenced by people like Andrew Tate? I can see how folk could become more drawn to someone who seems to care for them above a group of people who appear to hate them.

I’m going to have to reflect on this some more, certainly.

Edit: I’m sure there’s many in the 16% of 16 to 29 year olds quoted in the article who are just… nasty folks where it would be incredibly difficult to convince them that women deserve rights in the first place. But if even a small number of these men were otherwise reasonable folks but have grown up to be nasty due to being turned off of feminism in their formative years, then that’s just… well. It makes me feel like I’ve failed them and humanity as a whole.

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If you believe men are having a hard time, then feminism is right up your alley, isn’t it?

Yes, this should be the case from what my understanding of feminism is.

That said, I think there’s an increasing confusion as to what feminism is. There isn’t really one “feminism”. Not all people who call themselves feminists have the same set of ideals. There are lots of different types of feminists (of which some I would say are absolutely not feminists e.g. TERFs).

So when someone says they think feminism is harmful, such as in this survey, I don’t really have a clear idea as to what exactly it is that they’re opposing.

My understanding of feminism is, to put it briefly “we need to destroy the current status quo that certain genders should fulfil certain roles or exhibit certain behaviours, which is something that negatively impacts everyone regardless of gender”. I can’t imagine any reasonable person would think this is a harmful goal.

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I’m a vegetarian.

I was, and still am, surprised by how often people will go into a long rant justifying why they eat meat to me as soon as they find out I’m vegetarian. All the while I’m just sat there, not saying anything, because I literally do not care whether or not they eat meat.

Me being a vegetarian is a personal choice for me and myself only. You do you. I don’t care. You don’t need to explain yourself to me. It makes me feel so awkward.

People will often ask me why I’m a vegetarian too. But it feels like a very personal and heavy question to ask someone immediately after finding out they’re vegetarian… I don’t especially want to talk about animals dying all the time and how it makes me sad especially to strangers.

Edit/Addition: It feels like a lot of focus is brought on how vegetarians/vegans force their views onto other people but my experience personally is non-vegetarians/vegans trying to force me into conversations about this topic.