[_bfhp]

More like "men as a political class." I'm male, and I knew I was inviting this comment. To me saying "some men" is like giving the "good men" a cookie, when really all men should be concerned about these kinds of things, by virtue of being human.

[mcantelon]

>To me saying "some men" is like giving the "good men" a cookie

To me, saying "some men" is being precise with language and not falling into generalization. "Men", in common usage, refers to individuals that are male, not a "political class".

[hythloday]

English does not discriminate well between the universal quantification (∀; all men are) and existential quantification (∃; some men are) when quantification is indefinite (men are). It's often unambiguous; saying "men are well-represented in the boardrooms of US companies" would not be taken as implying that a number of men close to 165 million (or 3.5 billion) crammed into American boardrooms. Where it's not, it's far better to assume that the speaker is using the existential qualifier, as universal quantification is usually spelt out as a rhetorical feature ("ALL MEN benefit from the patriarchy" is far stronger than "MEN benefit from the patriarchy").

[mcantelon]

That's a very good breakdown of usage of the word and I'd forgotten about the indefinite usage. In this particular usage, it included the word "always" ("men always"). If someone states "men always love sports" then I'd interpret that to be equivalent in meaning to "all men love sports".

[aiiane]

"some" people always seem to jump up to make this pedantic argument when men are generalized about, and yet somehow talking about women as a general group never seems to invoke the same.

[mcantelon]

Ah. Criticizing the intentional use of sloppy generalizations is "pedantic" and sloppy generalizations are sometimes used against women so this justifies the use of sloppy generalizations against men. Got it.