[watwut]

> See Andrew Tate as an example, who has captured the ears of millions of teenage boys around the world. At first it's hard to comprehend why his ideology speaks to them,

It is super easy to understand. He tells them they are superior and that feels good. He tells them they are entitled to dominate others and that makes them feel powerful. People LOVE to hear they are superior over others.

And all your complains about progressives boils them to them acknowledging that Tate adjacent people exist, that philosophy runs in top levels of the government and the rest of us have to react to it. Like, all your complains about progressives are super mild compared to what conservative people say and think about the rest of us.

> And now the question is what should society actually do so that both young men and young women can find a harmonious place in it?

There is no harmony possible when the woman is degraded or subjugated. There is only fake harmony possible when it is not allowed to speak about threat of Tate like conservatives, because someones feelings might be hurt.

> I think we should still strive to achieve some sort of balance, but sadly I don't really see an easy answer to this.

There is no balance with "I think women are inferior and should be mistreated".

> Every time I read another woman saying that she's afraid of every man on the street walking in proximity to her, and every time it's dark out and I hear a man behind me and I get physically afraid, I think, what if I was a man and she was afraid for her life because of me? Just because I exist in the space next to her?

In the context of male gendered violence literally promoted by conservative thinkers, it is women talking about the impact it has on them who is causing the unfair harm to men. This is absurd.

This is, frankly, a thing feminists books claim and I did not believed is a real thing. Except here you are, writing exactly those words.

[Melonai]

I'm sorry if my use of words like "balance" implied that I want a balance between real violence against women and some people being mean to men, one of those is obviously a lot way WAY worse than the other and I did not want to imply that at all. I just suck at writing down my thoughts. :)

I'll also concede that I used a lot more hyperbole to exaggerate how bad men must feel when faced with some (very non-violent) push-back in a progressive environment, and I was a lot less descriptive with the actual assault, rape, murder and violence that women face under the patriarchy, represented by the other side with my example of Andrew Tate. I did not mean to equate those two and be "pick-me"-ish, but I see how you can come to the conclusion from my comment.

Mostly I wanted to say that although societal misogyny is a whole lot worse than any hate aimed at men (and again, I want to emphasize that women suffer a LOT more under patriarchy than men do when women are slightly mean to them because of said patriarchy, I really do NOT want to equate the impact of those two!), I still think the proper response is to try to reach an understanding that every human in front of you is unique and isn't defined by their gender, skin color, race any more than they are defined by their hair color or the tone of their voice. This is pretty idealistic and I will not fault any woman who feels unsafe being alone at night with an unknown man around, after all I feel that myself, too, plenty of men have been shitty to me... This is also in regard to assumption, if the man you are talking with chants "Your body, My choice!" then that's not an assumption anymore, he's made the choice to be actively horrible, the nice peaceful approach is actually not possible with this man, and this counts for many men who are possibly less overt than that, whether they're mostly nice in person but actually support politicians who erode women's rights, trying to explain it away with some argument about taxes or whatever, or whether he laughs when his friends make shitty misogynistic jokes. But plenty of men don't. And I kind of feel bad for them, that's it. Really all my hyperbole was only to be read from the perspective of a man who ACTUALLY does not deserve the hate, because I do know some as my friends.

Anyway, I have to admit your response has been really painful to read since that was the exact way I did not want my comment to be read as, but it's fair enough, I just hope I was able to clarify some points, because I believe we actually agree on most issues, even if my comment can easily be read as shitty misogynist apologia. Like I said, I'm really not good at communicating.

[zahlman]

> It is super easy to understand. He tells them they are superior and that feels good. He tells them they are entitled to dominate others and that makes them feel powerful. People LOVE to hear they are superior over others.

By the same token, it feels bad to be told that one is inferior and deserves to be subordinate to others. Which is messaging that, as a man in contemporary society, I receive constantly, and have been noticing for decades. Despite knowing on some level that it is BS.

But there was a period (this specific thing seems to have improved) when everyone would have been subjected to this narrative in any advertising break on any TV channel in the US or Canada.

> And all your complains about progressives boils them to them acknowledging that Tate adjacent people exist, that philosophy runs in top levels of the government and the rest of us have to react to it. Like, all your complains about progressives are super mild compared to what conservative people say and think about the rest of us.

First off, feminism vis-a-vis the issues of men has nothing to do with progressivism vs conservatism, except in the minds of American political tribalists.

But my own primary complaint about progressives is of the exact form that you describe (except perhaps substitute "academia" and "bureaucracy" for "government").

And in my own experience, it's not common for "conservatives" to say anything actually objectionable about "progressives" (and it's frankly inappropriate to assert what they think outside of what they say or otherwise overtly indicate), even in the US. On HN for example those comments are quite rare and almost universally flagged and killed. Whereas live, upvoted comments decrying the supposed current "fascist regime" are all over the place and the large majority of political submissions are clearly only there because they could be used as an excuse to fulminate about Trump, Musk, Thiel etc.

> There is no harmony possible when the woman is degraded or subjugated.

But this by and large is not actually happening. People like Tate are ultimately irrelevant grifters. I can't even name any "Tate-adjacent people". In my circles, Warren Farrell has way more name-brand recognition. I would never even know about Tate but for people complaining about him. Even other critics of feminism and progressivism rarely bring him up, and then only because of the specific manner in which he is attacked.

And, again, framing this as a two-party conflict is entirely inappropriate reductionism. "Conservatives" by any reasonable definition have no common cause with someone like Tate. The lifestyle he promotes is utterly opposed to "traditional family values".

> In the context of male gendered violence literally promoted by conservative thinkers, it is women talking about the impact it has on them who is causing the unfair harm to men. This is absurd.

This is a bizarre misrepresentation of what you're quoting.

First, it's unreasonable to present the quote as if it denied harm to women. It does not.

That said, the statistics make it clear that the fear is largely unreasonable; men do not report feeling fear in situations that are objectively much more dangerous to them.

But most importantly: you are repeating the conflation of Tate with "conservative thinkers", and conflating a very specific approach to conduct in sexual relationships (and the attempt to form them) with random assaults (physical and/or sexual) on the street by strangers. That is the absurd thing here.

> This is, frankly, a thing feminists books claim and I did not believed is a real thing. Except here you are, writing exactly those words.

I don't know why you'd have to read feminist literature to find the claim that men are afraid of being falsely perceived as sexual threats just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You could just ask men.

Women are constantly told that a man in that place at that time would be a sexual threat in ways that men can obviously hear. Men are told it, too. Feminists even resist well-meaning education about personal safety, calling it "victim-blaming" and then turning it around to describe ways that entirely innocent men ought to go out of their way instead.

I have nearly had anxiety attacks when I walked into a nominally unisex bathroom and saw a feminine hygiene disposal unit and no urinal. Or when the men's bathroom was out of order at a shop and the clerk said to use the women's instead.

(And all of this happens against a backdrop of refusal to acknowledge that men can also be raped, including by women. Even the language used to describe female teachers sexually assaulting their male students is different from that used for male teachers and female students. I've heard women say those male students should consider themselves lucky. It's disgusting.)

I'm sorry that people like Andrew Tate still exist, in some number, who will say the kinds of things that validate your narrative. But in my experience, there are way more people who are willing to say the mirror image of it.