“Women are speaking badly about men online. How is that ok?”
Answer to a man who hates seeing angry women online criticize men when he himself feels he hasn’t done any of those things and doesn’t witness or acknowledge it in the men around him, so he thinks it’s bad to criticize men:
Women speaking badly about men results in men not getting access to women.
Men speaking badly about women results in women getting raped, tortured, and murdered.
There is no equivalency.
Most of the things the “mean ladies online” say is actually based in their personal experience and the data support them that men do these things (obviously not all men but no one ever said “all men”). Just because you don’t or wouldn’t do those things doesn’t mean that these women haven’t experienced over and over exactly the kind of behavior about men that they’re warning other women against. Women speaking their true experiences about men is lifesaving for other women in many ways.
I’m sorry it hurts to see men described in unfavorable ways, but the problem is not the description of the behavior but the behavior being described. If you don’t want ash, then put out fires. The fire here is men’s treatment of women. If what women say about men really disturbs you (as it should), then your best reaction is not to get personally offended and defensive and instead recognize the gross injustices and atrocities being normalized and committed against women and fight that.
Hope that helps. I know it’s hard to hear your identity group being criticized. It’s important to remember that you, personally, are not your identity group, and you don’t need accept the accusations against it as accusation against yourself, and you don’t need to protect your identity group as if you are protecting yourself. True humanity lies in allegiance to truth, love, and justice beyond identity groups. You are human as much as you are a man, and women are human, too. If you can see women as human, like you, and be offended because atrocities are being committed against them as if it were happening to you (as men being criticized feels very personal to you even though no one is criticizing you), then you could be an active and important part in creating a world where women don’t have a need to criticize men’s behavior, because unlike women’s individual actions towards men (which can indeed be atrocious), the problem of men’s behavior toward women is systemic and coded into our political, economic, justice, and social systems. A man can escape a horrible woman. Women cannot escape horrible male supremacist behavior.
