I don’t want to get all repetitive here, but I typed ‘why shouldn’t i call women ugly’ into google and literally the first result addressed almost all the points a lot of men on this thread have been making. Over and over.
Like, instead of making women here explain stuff to you, you could literally type your question into google and find the answers written down by someone who was paid to do it.
We’re all trained into misogyny (more or less) from birth. It’s in how we watched adults interacting. It’s in books, TV, movies. It saturates our culture and nobody escapes internalising that. Which makes it really hard for us blokes to realise we’re doing it. Because it feels extremely natural. Which means trying to stop is really hard.
What I’ve found is that if somebody points out I’m being unintentionally sexist, I don’t like how it feels, but they’re doing me a favour. Obviously I didn’t know I was doing it or else I wouldn’t have. So they’re giving me useful feedback. So I try to swallow my annoyance, apologise if need be, and then think about how I ended up doing the thing and how I might recognise myself doing it next time and change course.
All the theory in the world doesn’t make up for practice. I can read a million books about playing the violin, but if I don’t pick up a bow, I’m not a violinist. Reading about feminism vs living it can be like that, with the additional baggage that one has been raised to believe that one has expertise over fiddlers. It’s hard to listen. It’s hard to change how we act.
So think of this as an opportunity to ask yourself: why you didn’t try google before commenting? Will you do something differently next time? How can you tell when this might next be an issue?
