We Won't Solve Bigotry by Insulting Each Other

Against vengeful generalising

As time goes on, I become more disappointed with my fellow lefties. We have a bad habit of excusing unnecessary cruelty. For example, it’s become socially acceptable for us, even celebrated, to make disparaging remarks about privileged demographics. Most commonly, men.

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Aww, thanks!

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I can feel the eyes rolling already. Here comes another straight white guy who’s had everything handed to him on a silver platter complaining about some off the cuff remark. Meanwhile there are people out there with real problems! Go back to Reddit, incel, and take your Blu-Ray of Joker with you!

I get it, I do - but I’m also still right. The fact that other demographics have more serious struggles doesn’t change the fact you can shit on men as much as you want now - and that seems antithetical to the whole egalitarian project. My point is not that men have it harder than anyone else, it’s that being lazy with our disrespect towards an entire gender undermines the very values we claim to hold. It makes a hypocrite of anyone who claims that protected characteristics should hold no bearing on how we treat someone.

I’m not talking about jokes between friends, or the odd meme. When my mate says I’m “such a man” because I briefly used a campchair for furniture - that’s funny! I’m not suggesting we need to walk on eggshells around each other. I do, however, think we should drop the habit of sincere generalising, and stop pretending we can justify it.

Once I was out to dinner with a friend, and she told a story of a woman she didn’t like. At one point, she said “The only way she could’ve been worse was if she were a man”. I don’t really know how to read that as anything other than asserting being male is a negative character trait. It’s pretty wild that she felt she could say that to a man and think she wouldn’t get called out - but you know what, she was right to feel that! I didn’t say anything, because I knew she wouldn’t take it well, and it would put a dampener on the dinner. The problem is, if you speak out about this sort of bigotry, you’re labelled as “fragile”. This is a handy way of gaslighting people into thinking that calling out bad behaviour is a character flaw. It isn’t. Keeping quiet in face of prejudice is, and I should’ve spoken up.

Another example. I was once part of a large group chat that received a message from a woman who had been harassed on a night out by a man. She told the story and finished it with “I hate men”. One person objected (while extending sympathy about her ordeal, to be clear), said it’s wrong to generalise, and she shouldn’t insult all men like that. What followed was frankly, chaos. You would think, in our enlightened society, that we’d go “Yes, you’re right, it’s lazy and wrong to generalise like that. What I mean is I hate that man - or men like him”. You might even go as far to say something like “This is a problem men have disproportionately , and they should get their shit together”. Both, I think, are fine and reasonable responses.

Instead, they kicked him from the chat, and dug their heels in. They defended their right to throw hatred at men in general (in other words, be sexist) on the grounds that men have historically oppressed women. They also said something along the lines of “If you’re not that type of man, it shouldn’t bother you. You should be able to understand that I’m just using ‘men’ to mean bad men”.

We’ve probably all seen this sort of response from the left at some point. In fact the phrase “Not all men” is mocked by just about everyone on this side of the aisle. You don’t really need a counter argument to it, because if a view is sufficiently laughed at by the left, it convinces every other leftie to abandon it out of fear of “not getting it”. The objections are met with scoffs, and we’re treated as if we’re naïve to think that them saying insulting generalisations about a demographic means they believe insulting generalisations about them. What simple minded idiots we are! I’m sure they’d explain why that’s the case, but unfortunately, it’s “not their job to educate us”.

It goes without saying, I don’t think this sort of rationale works very well.

Can we freely insult people who are privileged?

One argument is that men have it good in every other domain, so this is a sort of “tax”. We get feeling safe outside and not being mansplained to, and in exchange we have to take an insult every now and then. It’s a small price to pay, right?

Well, first it’s worth pointing out that it’s not that obvious men have it loads better. I can see why we take it on faith, as the ways women are discriminated against are readily apparent, and historically the sexism women have faced has been nothing short of catastrophic. Saying that, we do also die younger, are less likely to go to university, and less likely to get custody of our kids (to name a few). My point isn’t that being a man is harder than being a woman, but rather that we have some reason to doubt that men are playing life on super easy mode.

Let’s say for sake of argument though, that society really is structured in such a way that men net benefit because of their gender, and women net lose. What does that have to do with our right to insult men again? Why does someone being privileged give us permission to call them trash? I don’t really see what the connection is. Like, at all.

Let’s say you have a friend, Frank, who comes from a rich family. He hasn’t personally done anything bad to you, but has benefitted from his circumstances enormously. He doesn’t have to work, he goes on nice holidays, and he’s even handsome to boot. Does this mean that it’s now morally permissible to insult him? If he protested, would it be appropriate to say “Well, you’re rich, so I get to call you a fuckhead if I want”. This just strikes me as silly, juvenile, and totally irrelevant. The link between someone’s privilege and the permissibility of insulting them is invisible to me.

Okay, maybe you can’t insult Frank directly, but maybe you can make generalisations about the group he’s from, especially if that group does immoral things disproportionately. Let’s say that Frank has a creepy uncle - hell, let’s say that half of his family are creepy uncles. Would you feel it was totally unproblematic to say “People from Frank’s family are trash” to his face, and to other people? Would he be stupid for saying “Hey, I’m from my family. My lovely sister who gives all her money to charity is from my family. We’re not all trash. Please don’t generalise”? I don’t think so. I think it’s fair for him to ask not be spoken about that way, even if half of the people from that group are creepy uncles.

What’s particularly worrying about that rationale is that is can be used to justify the very sorts of prejudice the left despises. Here’s a worrying statistic: about half of British Muslims think homosexuality should be illegal. That’s obviously morally reprehensible. Does that mean we can make blanket statements like “Muslims are trash”, or even “Muslims are homophobic” now? No! It’s a harmful generalization, and we should be more nuanced when we speak. Why is it absurd to extend this same sort of respect to men when we talk about social issues?

You should know what I mean

The other objection you see is that when people make bigoted remarks about men, we should just know that the remark is aimed at problematic men, and that it’s safe to assume well behaved men are excluded. This is an insane thing to expect people to understand. Firstly, it’s not unreasonable to ask people to say what they actually mean. We have a complex language for a reason. The whole point of knowing more than 3 words is so you communicate nuanced views. You can’t speak like a toddler, and expect other people to decipher a mature viewpoint from you.

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The main reason to reject this view though, is that it makes it impossible to distinguish between people who are frustrated with bad men, and people who are genuinely misandristic! It blends you in with prejudiced people, and ill equips the rest of us to push back on sexist thinking. When you say things bigots say, how can you expect anyone to think you’re anything other than a bigot? How is it unreasonable for us to conclude that you hate men when you literally say “I hate men”? Why do we have to waste mental energy translating you when you could just be specific?

You can’t be sexist to men

As we live in a patriarchy, you can’t be sexist to men. This is because sexism doesn’t actually mean “prejudice based on sex”, it means something like “prejudice based on sex against a systemically disadvantaged group”. This is something people say, but I have no idea where it came from. The left just decided that’s how the word works one day, and expected everyone to get on board. I don’t think most of us are. Words are defined by how they’re used, and most people use it to just mean “prejudice based on sex”.

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No mention of systemic disadvantages here. Weird.

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The dumb thing is, it doesn’t even really matter. Objecting to someone’s criticism of your behaviour by nitpicking a word choice is a waste of time and distracts from the issue. When someone calls you sexist for making insulting generalisations about men, their point is that you were doing something wrong, and you should correct the behaviour.

Imagine the word “stealing” strictly meant taking something from someone else illegally. I take your shoes, and you say “Hey you stole those from me, give them back!”. However, we happen to live in a country that has a special law that says I can take things from you without consent. The “You can’t be sexist to men” response is like saying “Actually, I can’t steal from you. That only applies to unlawful taking”.

I’m sure you’d agree that doesn’t make taking stuff from you any better. It’s just a lame and boring semantic point that aims to distract the conversation and absolve me of my immoral behaviour. Even if we can’t be sexist to men (which, again, I don’t think is true) that still doesn’t make that form of prejudice any less bad. Stop citing a fake dictionary entry that no one else uses to get out of taking responsibility.

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Here’s, I think, a much more progressive way to think. It was once common sense, but sometimes it feels like it needs reiterating. Gender, race, sexuality, age, etc., are not morally relevant traits. This means it’s wrong to discriminate based on them, and insult the demographics as a whole. We should judge people, case by case, based on their character, and not based on whatever form their body happens to take. Pretty out there, right? Someone should write a speech about that some time.

The question I want to ask the left is - what’s the goal here? What’s all the fighting for social justice for anyway? I think most people would say something like “We want a world where no one is discriminated against because of gender, race, sexuality, etc”. A sensible goal, but we’re probably not going to achieve that if we’re, y’know, discriminating against people based on gender, race, or sexuality. If you have some genuine criticisms that you want to voice, fine! Men probably are disproportionately guilty of a lot of things, and it’s worth calling bad behaviour out. What’s not worth doing is using that as a excuse to insult them and alienate the very people you’re trying to get through to. Is it hard to keep our frustrations in check sometimes? Sure. Does it take effort to voice our ideas with important caveats and specificity? Absolutely! However, I’m afraid it sometimes takes effort to improve society. If we’re as serious about fighting bigotry as we say we are, we should quit the lazy generalising - It hurts the very progress we’re trying to achieve, and steers us further away from the finish line.