Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnnyB
You read me incorrectly, which suggests you should be less confident in assertions of what is or isn't worthy of dismissal.
Anyways, I'll express my view for others who may read without taking the same approach as you.
I believe that emotional issues can be used to divide as well as to unite. When people choose to take a point of common ground expressed in good will and turn it into something divisive instead of treating it as shared experience upon which to form bonds, I think they're not acting to solve the issue. Common ground, shared experience and allegiances are what realise improvements for the marginalised. If a guy has had a #metoo moment and shares it in good will, that's an opportunity to bond, or an opportunity to be divisive. I'm not moralising. I'm just saying that whatever is right or wrong, meeting a well-intentioned expression of shared experience with a rejection is no way to find common ground, make friends and reach a point of mutual compassion.
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This is a false binary. It's also an opportunity to learn, and an opportunity to pracitce listening and empathy. Maybe you would group this under the category of "bonding."
Think of it similarly to making someone else's Mother's funeral about the loss of your own Mother. Yes, you're coming from a well-intentioned place. Yes your feeling and grief are valid. Yes there is quite obviously a place where you can come together and bond and through shared experience.
However, there is very clearly a line which can be crossed where you're taking someone else's "thing" and making it about yourself and that's not appropriate and is - in and of itself - divisive.
Considering the amount of discourse that has already taken place the challenges that women have had carving out spaces for themselves, and those spaces subsequently being appropriated by men, it is not at all suprising, nor should it be upsetting, that women are defensive of their space. They are deserving of their space and it is an opportunity for men to listen and learn when women declare a space 'theirs.'
The "Me Too" campagin is quite clearly a space for women. That men empathise and have shared experience is - tragically - good. You are right, it IS a way to bond. But the way to bond is not for men to try to enter the space on the same terms or in the same way women do, and it is right to call out men who do try to enter the space on those terms as being inappropriate.