I see a lot of people male bashing, like making hostile or sweeping negative generalizations about cis men, here on Tumblr and elsewhere, in “feminist” circles. I don’t think this is okay, I care about all people, including cis males. And I would hope people care about cis males too, but I want to explain why even if you don’t care at all about cis males, bashing them is likely to hurt trans and non-binary people far more than cis males.

In our society, where transphobia, binarism, and strict enforcement of gender roles can still be common, there are a large number of people who do not realize that they are trans or nonbinary until much later in life. These people live much of their life accepting their assigned birth sex without questioning. They may struggle intensely with social relationships, depression, and all sorts of other problems, which might be caused in large part by their gender identity and mismatch to the gender roles forced on them, yet they may not realize this because the society around them continually tells them that they’re “just men” or “just women” and “that’s just the way it is”.

When you bash men with hateful comments or negative generalizations, your comments are likely to reach some of these closeted trans and nonbinary people who are in the earliest stages of exploring their gender identity. These people may identify fully as male, and they may feel attacked (and unfairly/wrongly characterized) by your statements.

They may internalize some of the negative statements you make about them, like if you say “men are horrible” or “men are creepy” or things like that. Trans and especially nonbinary people are at higher risk of depression, social exclusion, and other mental illnesses and social problems. They are especially more likely to internalize insults like being “creepy” because they’re being told indirectly that they are creepy by the transphobic culture around them. Like, transphobic culture often attacks trans women and transfemme nonbinary people by telling them that they’re not actually women or they’re “actually just men” and their desires and identity is “just a fetish” and is thus “creepy”. So like, many of these people are already being inundated by the message that they’re men and they’re creepy…so when you have some bad experience with men and then you go launch into this global tirade about how “men are creepy”, you’re mainly going to target and harm trans women.

By attacking these people you may also drive them away from progressive spaces, subcultures, and social groups, that may be the only places where they will be able to get the knowledge and support necessary to explore their gender identity.

So please don’t male bash. Don’t make negative generalizations about men.

If men engage in a specific behavior, then target the behavior. “ Ugh, men are so creepy / horrible. ” –> “Ugh, it is so creepy / horrible when men do this thing.”

This allows you to discuss and target the specific behavior or practice as creepy or horrible, but while presenting it in a way that specific people who do not engage in the behavior are unlikely to hear it as an attack and internalize negativity. This protects trans and nonbinary people, and it also has other benefits of being more likely to get through to cis men about stopping harmful behaviors, because they’ll be less likely to feel defensive and more likely to examine their own behavior in a critical yet constructive way.

Everyone benefits from this sort of change in rhetoric and I want this to become the norm in feminist discourse and social justice discourse.