Anonymous #1 13h

Male

10

Anonymous #2 13h

It's more complex than that. Patriarchy's roots are in controlling women's sexuality, and men get rewarded with status when they exercise that control. That only works if sex is treated as a prize to win instead of something two people agree to share. Dating inherits that script: she's the gatekeeper, he's the conqueror, and a no feels like a verdict on his worth. And it isn't only romantic. Men's close friendships have collapsed too, because closeness without conquest was never taught.

1

Anonymous #3 13h

Well put, thanks for saying this. I understand the feeling of wanting to have some sort of revenge on men in general for the harms of patriarchy but cheering on an issue that hurts all of us isn’t productive

4

Anonymous #3 13h

Ok so we agree that the term is irrelevant to a rape case

1

Anonymous #1 13h

"Terrible men" is a metaphysical claim. It treats harm as something a man is instead of something he does, and that essentialism is the same logic patriarchy runs on. Women raising their standards is a good thing. But if shitty is a fixed identity, there is nothing to change and no reason to try, which is exactly the despair the manosphere sells back to these guys. Name the behavior, hold people to it, and leave the door open to becoming someone else.

-10

What? It’s not entitlement to say that men should have fulfilling relationships/friendships. Men are lonely because of the system built by men but that doesn’t mean that the goals of ending the male loneliness epidemic aren’t valid, it’s not entitlement to wish to not be lonely

6

No, that’s called patriarchy. The male loneliness epidemic is a different facet.

1

Anonymous #2 12h

No, because they grow from the same root. The narrative that makes a no feel like a verdict on a man's worth is the same one that makes sex something you take and prove to other men. Seven guys together isn't loneliness, it's belonging bought through domination, which is how a lot of frat culture bonds. Loneliness doesn't cause rape or excuse it. But both come from teaching men that worth is won through conquest instead of connection.

1

Anonymous #3 12h

I disagree, but I do think you’re a good person

1

Anonymous #2 12h

Appreciate that, but "I disagree" isn't an argument. Which part? That frat culture bonds through domination is documented research? That conquest-based masculinity drives both entitlement and isolation is too? If you think the connection breaks somewhere, I’d like to know where.

1

Anonymous #3 12h

I think we just don’t put the same things under the umbrella of “male loneliness epidemic,” our definitions of what it is don’t match

1

Anonymous #2 12h

That’s fair, but definitions aren't neutral. Where you draw the line decides what gets looked at. If "male loneliness" only means dating, the masculinity script behind both the isolation and the entitlement stays out of frame, and so does the question of why seven men found belonging in hurting someone. That's what I'm pointing at. Narrowing a term isn't wrong on its own, but it shouldn't become a reason to stop looking.

6

Anonymous #3 12h

“Terrible”: Adjective- describes the subject. “Men”: Noun- is the subject. This didn’t say all men are terrible. It simply addressed that the terrible men will not get any woman to love them willingly and they are slowly realizing that

29

Anonymous #3 12h

If a guy doesn’t want to be described as terrible it’s actually very easy. I know this because nobody has ever described me as a terrible man. Because it’s really fucking easy to not be a terrible man.

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Anonymous #3 12h

Any man who is genuinely worried about being “falsely accused” of rape. Any man who thought Charlie Kirk was a worthwhile talking head. Any man who thinks woman working jobs is DEI. Those are terrible men

14

Anonymous #6 12h

“Terrible" is a VALUE JUDGEMENT, not just an adjective. What makes it metaphysical is the "is." Saying a man did something terrible describes an act. Saying he is a terrible man makes a claim about his nature, fixed and permanent. That's essentialism, and it's the same move patriarchy makes about men and women. Judge the beliefs and the actions as harshly as you want. Just don't pretend a person is only the worst thing they think.

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Anonymous #1 12h

It's "easy" the way it's easy not to be racist if you never look at how you were raised. Patriarchy isn't a choice each man makes fresh. It's centuries of conditioning built into families, religion, law, and money, taught to boys before they can read: don't cry, don't need anyone, prove yourself. Most men absorb it without noticing. That doesn't excuse anyone because people are still responsible for what they do, but you can't dismantle a system by pretending it's just bad individuals.

-5

Anonymous #1 12h

Historians studied exactly this. In Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning followed a unit of middle-aged German police who weren't fanatics or psychopaths. Most of them still took part in mass shootings, through conformity, deference to authority, and not wanting to break from the group. Arendt called it the banality of evil. A few refused, so choice still matters. But atrocity runs on ordinary people inside a system, not just monsters. Same with patriarchy.

-4

Anonymous #1 12h

Look at what you've done in this thread. You sorted men into worthy and worthless. You proved your own status by pointing at men beneath you ("nobody's called me terrible"). You treated loneliness as something men deserve for failing. You called it all individual choice. That's patriarchy's playbook: a ranking of men, shame as the enforcer, vulnerability as weakness, and no system to blame. You're not fighting the hierarchy, just running it from a different seat.

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Anonymous #3 11h

Then the men who sincerely want a relationship and not have some submissive wife should actually speak up cause a majority of the “lonely men” i see are just psychos who got cheated on or broken up with cause they were possessive sex addicts

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Anonymous OP 11h

What do you think I'm doing right now? I was born in a male body and rejected the gender assigned to me. I'm already in a loving relationship, so I'm not speaking up to win one. Notice what you just did: you made a relationship the reward men earn for saying the right things. That's the conquest script with better manners. Men shouldn't oppose patriarchy to get a partner, they should do it because it's right. Treating love as a prize is the infrastructure. Stop rebuilding it.

-1

Anonymous #3 11h

I’m not doing that. Men themselves are doing that. Why are you taking accountability away from the individual that’s asinine. The patriarchy for sure exists and influences these men but it’s up to the individual. Stop taking accountability away.

16

Anonymous #3 11h

Individual people buy into the patriarchy it’s not the other way around. The patriarchy exists because these men want and need it to exist for them to feel okay about themselves. The patriarchy is built on these men. The men aren’t built on the patriarchy

14

Anonymous #1 11h

It runs both ways, but men are born into it first. Gerda Lerner traced patriarchy back thousands of years, it predates every man alive. bell hooks wrote that the first violence patriarchy demands of boys isn't against women, it's psychic self-mutilation: killing off their own feelings. Men do uphold it, and hooks held men responsible for changing it. But you can't buy into a system before you can talk. It's taught first, then chosen.

-8

Anonymous #1 11h

You're describing men like p-zombies: behavior with no inner world, no upbringing, no conditioning, just a switch marked "choose." Real people don't work on single-cause logic. Family, culture, class, peers, temperament, and choice all feed into what someone becomes, and each loops back on the others. Choice is in there, so accountability stays. But if your model of a human has one variable, it isn't men who lack an inner life here.

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Anonymous #1 10h

Do you really feel like it is sufficient to flatten such a complex problem into such a sweeping statement? You really think it’s true that every man who is impacted by loneliness is simply a shitty man? I doubt you even believe that’s true, I just don’t get what these bombastic generalizations achieve

2

Anonymous fuuuckyikyak 10h

I mean think about what you’re saying. You’re telling men that if they are lonely it is entirely because they’re a bad person. What do you think that will achieve?

0

Anonymous #3 9h

But it is up to the individual do get out of the system. It’s easy to be a part of the system because it’s the system. Good people can fall for the system but I would no longer classify them as good people. Good people challenge the system not fall in line because it’s easy. That’s laziness and is not a personality trait that leads to a good person

10

Anonymous #1 9h

Read it again. I never said men just "fall for" a system, I said they're raised inside it before they can talk. And "laziness" is patriarchy's own yardstick: rank people by effort, shame the ones who fall short, cut them off as unworthy. That's literally what you're doing. You can't dismantle a hierarchy by building a new one with you on top. You've agreed good people challenge the system. So challenge the part of it running your argument.

2

Anonymous #7 7h

It means that people have this tribalistic urge to just defend the guys because they so far haven’t proved that they’re these Junko Furuta style rapists even though their group chat gives off the biggest red flags known to man

1

Anonymous OP 7h

Pushing back against you is not the same thing as defending them. Humans are social creatures. It’s in our evolutionary biology to desire connection. There’s a reason the UN classifies solitary confinement as human torture.

1