Browbeating men is abusive

Post has been locked because comments broke down into the inevitable misogyny vs. misandry.

These topics are valid and would be a great conversation to be had.

Unfortunately, it seems whenever these conversations pop up the fighting and hate come out of the wood works.

Let me remind everyone: we are ALL severely traumatized in this sub. Which means we ALL have triggers and tend to get defensive. FAST. So when this topic inevitably comes back up, try to remember that. Take a breath before posting a comment.

I propose that this subreddit is not for soapboxes and that if we see inappropriate and hateful content, it should be responded to within that same thread so that context is maintained and so it does notspread out over the entire sub.

Hi, have you checked out the r/CPTSDmen sub? Obviously you can post about your experiences in this one, but since a lot of your trauma seems to be related to gender, that sub might be a better fit for your situation!

I've also heard good things about r/GuyCry and r/bropill, which also center men's mental health specifically 🌻

I propose that this sub not be a place for litigating which demographics of people are more or less responsible for inflicting trauma. The discourse on its own is important but is part of a larger conversation within expressly political and activist spaces.

I am a man, and I have been abusive to multiple women in my life. It is a part of my past that I deeply regret and have worked to overcome, but is nevertheless a byproduct of trauma I myself endured as a child. 

To stop my abusive behavior, I have had to hold unconditional compassion for myself, warts and all. We all heal by doing that for ourselves and for each other, and supporting rather than blaming each other while we metabolize our pain. That is what I want this sub to be.

Women’s pain is real. Men’s pain is real. We can acknowledge this while also acknowledging real power imbalances and injustices. I just think we should focus on the former here.

It's hard because the core skill that vulnerable/abused women/girls need to develop is to stand up for themselves so they dont have to rely on others to always be there and protect them, buts its also common for people who have been traumatised/abused to overcompensate with this because of hypervigilance.

Its also currently more socially acceptable to generalise men in a negative fashion, and that kind of social climate enables the trauma response of over-corrective sentiment.

It's a tough balance for women to both try and be aware of their own safety but also accept that there are many men that a wonderful and kind human beings, and working out how to differentiate between trustworthy men and men with predatory behaviour.

But yes, sexist generalisations are hurtful to any men who treat women well, especially men who have been abused by them.

As a woman with an abusive father and a shitty ex-spouse (who wasn't abusive, just uninterested in meeting my needs or pulling his own weight) I absolutely went through a man-hating period. Turns out I didn't have the right men around me, because I didn't know what healthy men looked like, it was never modeled to me. So I had a string of terrible romantic relationships because I'd miss all the red flags and just thought I could work harder and harder until they'd somehow recognize my worth. Nowadays, I have plenty of good men around me, and I don't hold these views anymore.

Ignoring how the patriarchy and misogyny contributes to abuse and CPTSD is stupid. Statistically, most abusers are men, it does not equal all men being abusers but it is just factual. Men are also perps of passive abuse, there’s running memes of women being “fatherless” because men neglect their children so much! If you need to heal yourself, stop taking things so personally and acknowledge how misogyny is more deep and insidious than man hating will ever be. Men are statistically more likely to be abusers and SA, and that is because of misogyny and there’s nothing wrong with addressing this without making generalisations

Not sure I get the point (not a native english speaker and my brain is not in its brightest shape) but I think any generalization is harmful. I also think if you are part of a category that has systemic privilege you have to acknowledge it, and understand what that meant in your life.

Humans inherently have a massive capacity to abuse. Men get away with it much more than women do, because of our patriarchal social structure.

Women are inherently equal to men. That's pretty blatantly obvious, not to mention, of course, the fact that unless you're a gender essentialist/gender critical moron, it's stupid to think of humans in terms of two binary genders.

Men aren't popularly being "browbeaten" here. Come on. But if you're a man, as I am and as many of us are, it's very very important to be able to point to all the awful stuff about the widely accepted behaviour of men in our society. And it's important to talk about the fact that the balance of power, gender-wise, is massively in the favour of cis men. (Just as it is with all majorities.)

It doesn't come from self-hatred, acknowledging this. It comes from self-love, self-acceptance. Realising that you are who you are. You are an individual, you matter as an individual, not that you need to conform to an idea of being a man and that that idea that society has pushed on you is all good. Because it isn't.

There’s a narrative here that while women can be abusers, the majority of abusers are men; I disagree.

You can disagree with statistics all you want. It doesn't make you right. It's your opinion, vs measurable statistics. Facts. Evidence. And it doesn't make men bad for being men. That's a ridiculous leap to make from seeing a problem with a group of people. When a car isn't functioning right, you don't immediately scrap it. You take it to a mechanic, you get it assessed, you look at what's broken and mend it.

You need to look at a problem in order to fix it. And if you look around the world and all the abusive things so many men do (and men do them to women so much more than women do to men), you're part of the problem. It's not about hatred. It's not about blame. It's about fucking fixing things, for a better fucking world. It's so reductive and shallow to view it as simply "browbeating".

It's funny because my mother was the actively abusive one and my father the passively abusive one. Everyone is capable of different sorts of abuse.

I don't think the men saying that men are bad hate themselves though. They hate specific men that abuse others. I also don't see men saying that men are bad anyways. I only see men saying the same as women, not that all men are bad but a specific kind of man is bad, which is abusers, which everyone agrees on is just as bad if done by a woman. If you've been abused by a woman then you'll find equal support on this sub as well since there's many of us that have been abused by women, such as myself. This is supposed to be a safe space, not a sub to rant about perceived misogyny or misandry in blanket statements that you took out of context or didn't see how a blanket statement always means a specific part of a demographic which people didn't bother to write out.

Anyways i don't see men hating themselves because they're perceived as abusers. What i see is some men being much more timid speaking to women out of fear of doing something controversial they didn't know was controversial. A lot of trauma victims tend to fear they might one day become exactly like their abusers, and with men often being seen as the threat this only enhances this sentiment. I understand blanket statements trigger you as a survivor/victim but be aware that blanket statements are just that.

Also no woman needs to hate men while healing. No woman profits off of it. Speaking for myself and my experience with a terrible situationship in hindsight, i don't hate men, i don't even necessarily hate the abuser, but instead I'm just pretty scared of them and have trouble functioning talking to a man of my age range outside of work since i constantly fear they might try to manipulate me into things i don't want. Saying "men are like this" might be a way to cope for some women to completely distance themselves/build themselves a massive shell to avoid said fear or it might just be said in a humorous context ("men will literally do [xy] instead of accepting a no").

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Honestly don’t let people on cptsd bully you. This sub can be filled with shitty sad people projecting.