Why All Men
You’ve never heard any “not all men” nonsense from me in these pages. Since the earliest days of the “Me Too” movement, I have understood that the collective noun “men” should not be understood as a categorical accusation. If the shoe makes you uncomfortable, man, you need to wear it anyway; and if it doesn’t? Congrats to you! But we live in a world where it is known that a hit dog hollers. Saying “not all men” is hollering, and thus it’s an automatic way to align yourself with all the problematic men out there.
That said, before today I had never encountered the brilliant analogy in the video below. The analogy drives home the point that even if “not all men” is literally true, it’s not usefully true for women; in fact, it’s anti-useful, perhaps even dangerous:
Found here. Transcript follows:
00:00 Nah, nah.
00:00 You say you don’t understand why women say all men,
00:02 but really you do.
00:03 You understand that logic because you like guns, right?
00:06 True. And what’s one of the first safety tips they give you about guns
00:09 is treat every gun like it’s loaded.
00:11 Like it’s loaded, right? Exact.
00:13 Even if you know it’s not loaded,
00:15 all guns are loaded. Right?
00:17 That’s how you have this.
00:18 That’s how you look at every gun.
00:19 Because you can’t look at somebody’s gun
00:21 and tell if it’s loaded or not, right?
00:23 Women are doing the exact same thing.
00:25 Cause any man could be her assailant.
00:27 She can’t look at a man and be like, oh,
00:28 that’s the good one.
00:29 So she treats all men like they’re potentially, the same way we do guns.
00:34 It’s the same.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=32531
I’m gonna keep this argument in my pocket for when the topic inevitably comes up.
Maybe we should substitute people for men and snakes for guns. Because with a gun you can make it safe, and it’ll stay that way till you make it unsafe. But you never know when a snake might turn on you, and I think that’s a far better analogy based on my experiences with guns and other people of all gender identities.
Robert Heinlein used to tell a story of keeping what he thought was a milksnake he found as a child. Said snake was biddable and friendly and easy to handle, till he showed it to a visiting herpetologist who correctly identified it as a copperhead. I think those were the species involved, I’m not an expert on American snakes, but he thought it was not dangerously venomous, and it turned out to be very. The trust relationship was broken at that point and the snake had to go because he could no longer handle it as confidently. The story may have been apocryphal, but I think I have it in his biography upstairs.
Personally speaking, I’m a big guy, and I’ve been met with that fear and suspicion from people who assume I’m a loaded gun. When we were talking about dogs a while back (can’t remember the post, it was about meeting people in covid) I mentioned an example of a local woman with 3 dogs who is very scared of meeting men in the woods. My experience of her was that she verbally attacked me at first sight, and the next week she called the police on another friend of mine who was sitting drinking a tea on a log. She now has a police record as a nuisance.
The key is respect. Treat a gun with respect, as though it were loaded, treat a snake with respect as if it were venomous, and treat people with respect, lest they turn out to be a snake. And to hell with the gender stereotyping please.
I am so glad you shared this. This is such a good analogy and I will definitely be using it!
Molly
The same guys who think “not all men” is some kind of refutation are the same ones who think all Muslims are terrorists, all immigrants are criminals, etc.
Pernicious memes do tend to travel in flocks!