Ah, ok, I was having a hard time imagining how it could be just taken out of context without just being entirely misquoted. I was making the mistake of trying to imagine the author saying that themselves rather than saying it as a hypothetical quote to then criticize. And perhaps it’s even possible the other way, too.

I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate. At times, I haven’t been too sure what any given “ism” most generally means when different people might misunderstand or even deliberately skew the meaning, and, at least for me, this helped me see a really good example of how that’s done in the context of misrepresenting feminism, in particular. Even without referencing an original source, it’s helpful to see examples to learn how to recognize that when it does happen.

Yes, imho it’s in the exact same area as All Cops Are Bastards, where it’s a critique of a system (in this case the patriarchy) that corrupts every willing and even unwilling participant through privilege and toxic expectations.

Not every cop is literally a bad person, not every man is figuratively trash. But every cop participates in an unjust and toxic system and every man benefits from certain privileges while having toxic societal expectations many suffer under placed on them.

It’s an expression for a need to change the system not a condemnation of all who fall under it’s umbrella, but it is presented as the latter by removing the context for propagandistic purposes or simply through an intellectual lazyness that wants to feed their own biases.

Thanks for explaining! Let me explain why I disagree with this in general. I’ll share a personal anecdote, bear with me please.

So, a feminist friend shared with me a book on human trafficking for sexual exploitation written by a group of investigative journalists that she had helped translate to Serbian. It was thoroughly researched and well documented. Reading it left a mark on me and taught me things about the world that shatter the childish worldview (this was decades ago, I was a young teenager at the time).

Now, the Serbian translation was prefaced by my friend’s fellow activist who was clearly a misandrist. It was filled with slurs and general statements about exclusively men, despite the fact that even the very book the preface was for stated that men also get trafficked (though less), and that women themselves are not rarely involved in the illegal trafficking chains of operation (think Ghislane Maxwell).

Reading that preface made me feel unjustly attacked and I would have dropped the book and never got to the good, educational part, had it not been for my friend’s highest recommendation (I’m glad I stuck with it). It turns out the woman who wrote this had had bad experiences with men in her life, and used this otherwise well researched book as a vessel to vent her personal hate for men, which was borne by her own trauma.

While it can be considered “justified” that she feels this way, this damaged greatly the overall message of the Serbian translation, which clearly took a lot of effort to research, document and write, and than translate and publish. Its educational impact was greatly diminished by the editor’s choice (out of activist camaraderie, I’m assuming) to include the hateful text at the very beginning, which unjustly attacks the very audience who would most benefit by learning from the unbiased body of the book. It’s a tragically missed opportunity.

While social media exacerbates these issues (my story happened before social media existed), and bad faith actors attempt to skew positive feminist messages, I think we shouldn’t excuse the feminist movement for some of its own failings.

To conclude, I’m a male feminist, but I think writing “all men are thrash” or “all cops are bastards”, or “all <broad group> are <slur>” in general in the public sphere is irresponsible.