Pay attention to the syntax, it's not an attack on all men. It's quite specifically an attack on "unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men."
These men do exist, and these men have historically used societal norms to trap women in marriages or work that was unfair. It's great that we are working toward a society which recognizes that this is harmful and allows these women to seek better opportunity for themselves!
The syntax looks like just wailed hatred, just like all other wailed hatred.
People are not against immigrants, just the illegal ones that murder, rape and steal. People are also not against Muslims, just the extremists.
If we follow syntax there are no racists in the world and we can simply accuse people of not paying attention. I think that is wrong way to view it. If we talk about "unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate immigrants" then what people will read is that all immigrants are bad. That just how that kind of language get interpreted, and the assumption is that the speaker is aware of it and thus intended it.
I have a simple test. When in doubt I do a word for word replacement and replace the word "men" with "immigrants" and "women" with "natively born". If that make a sentence or article sound like a racist, then it is wailed hate. If it sounds perfectly fine regardless who is targeted then it is not.
But in this case the original author proposed that the liberation of women and feminism was contributing to loneliness and that was the reply. So i.e. feminism makes women less dependent on unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men so that is not the cause of loneliness.
Let us say someone would say that the increased loneliness instead came from the rise of online gaming/porn/communities and that men in larger degree become less interested in meeting women and making an effort.
If someone then answered that "Men avoiding unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate women by online gaming is not a problem" you would probably see that statement as misogynistic. Even if that description does match some women.
(I fully agree with the liberation of women (and men) from many of the traditional gender roles.)
I can kind of understand people having such a knee-jerk reaction to the original article. The first part reads like someone like Jordan Peterson preaching the return to a family lifestyle according to "Judeo-Christian values" while ignoring all the reasons society changed. I nearly dropped the article there as well. The remaining part got a lot better, though it still feels like only describing problems and leaving the task of imagining solutions up to the reader, with an implied direction.
Agreed about the beginning of the article. It started to feel like the author’s value judgements were slipped in there, but later when they acknowledged “some might not see this as all bad” I felt a little better about it.
I'm with you on the syntax and I'll point out (as people may forget) that the "compulsory reliance" part is the real stickler. It's only in 1974 that the US passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act; before that, a man was required to cosign for any loan or credit a woman applied for (if you were unmarried for any reason, including widowed, you'd have to find a guy somewhere). Before the 1960s, in the US women could be required to have a male attached to any bank account they opened, or could be denied the opportunity to open a bank account.
It's not that men are terrible. It's that if you have to find a man to avoid homelessness, sometimes you are stuck with terrible men, as polygamy is illegal.
> before that, a man was required to cosign for any loan or credit a woman applied for (if you were unmarried for any reason, including widowed, you'd have to find a guy somewhere
Guess what, there was a reason for that (sort of): namely, back then it was the women who were commonly - indeed, almost universally - stereotyped as "unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate", and thus as bad credit risks. Again, it just goes to prove that character smears are wrong in the first place. It's not a convincing defense of parent's attitude, at all.
No, it was not about character, it was about not having an income because women were not a large part of the formally paid labor force. It was quite legal and in fact the norm to pay women less than men, and it was in general required that women leave their jobs once they got married or once they got pregnant.
> It's quite specifically an attack on "unreliable, selfish, and inconsiderate men."
That's one very generous way to read it. The other is that men are unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate, which is pretty much what I've heard over the past 5 years from most people that identify as feminist.
... and the principal of charity suggest that, instead of automatically engaging outrage mode, you should try to interpret it in the most charitable way possible.
Sure, there are certainly some women who say things like this who are also misandrists, but the majority of them are not, and just want to call out the men who are actually a problem. If you're not a problem, then you're not being called out. That's been my experience. Either you've somehow managed to speak only to the most cynical and hateful of feminists, or -- more likely -- you're getting defensive over something for no good reason.
The ironic bit is that you're falling into the same trap: you're accusing "every" feminist of believing that all men are evil, based on your interactions with a few.
> ... and the principal of charity suggest that, instead of automatically engaging outrage mode, you should try to interpret it in the most charitable way possible.
I didn't engage "outrage mode", I pointed out that you were missing/leaving out an alternative way to parse that message, one that I consider likely to be correct.
> Sure, there are certainly some women who say things like this
Let me make that clear: I explicitly wrote feminist, not women. Sex/Gender isn't involved, it's ideology, and many of the most atrocious things I've heard came from male feminists (coincidentally, those I found very reasonable among them were exclusively women). Please don't put words into my mouth by implying I talked about women in general.
> If you're not a problem, then you're not being called out.
That sounds like "I'm with them, so I don't mind that". Sure, cool for you, I'm not. "Men are scum" doesn't sit right with me, and I don't believe that I'm overly defensive for no good reason or should just "listen more carefully to the complaints".
> you're accusing "every" feminist of believing that all men are evil
No, I'm not (again with the words). I'm stating what I've heard & read from feminists. I haven't talked to most or all feminists on the planet, obviously. But of the ones I did talk to, most went right down that path. As soon as I've gotten around to talking to those that I haven't yet, I'm going to update my comment and extend it to inform about my experiences with all feminists.
Ah, but what about "unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate" women? Are we "allowed" to attack them or is that 'sexist'? Everyone agrees that being unreliable, selfish and inconsiderate is not great, but using this as a character smear directed towards one single gender is just wrong, whether it's "men" or "women".
These men do exist, and these men have historically used societal norms to trap women in marriages or work that was unfair. It's great that we are working toward a society which recognizes that this is harmful and allows these women to seek better opportunity for themselves!