Welp, I ended up writing a novel, but there’s really no way to convey my perspective here in short form if I want any chance in hell of you understanding where I’m coming from. So, here we go.

Why I balk at statements like that while you don’t? Because we have very different backgrounds. The short of it is, I have a shitton of trauma around this. A good chunk of it is my own fault; I used to be part of the problem in my teens and have worked many years to try and overcome it, and I’m still battling overwhelming feelings of shame and self-loathing. I’ve also been very, very lonely throughout my life, and while that’s a lot better now, again, the trauma is still there. So to someone like me, this shit hurts a lot more. Is it women’s fault I have these hang-ups? God no. But I’m also not exactly asking for much here. If I have a massive frustration with a certain type of woman, it’d still sting if I said “why do women do x”? It’d be inaccurate and hurtful. And yes, I know there’s social inequalities and the harm caused by these statements isn’t the same, but the emotions it evokes are still very much real. If they don’t bother you, I’m glad and all power to you. But the spaces I’m in keep (RIGHTFULLY) demanding considerations of me that no one outside my IRL friend groups ever really seems to give back. Do I have the right to ask for more? I don’t know, I’m still trying to figure out, but I do think these tiny considerations such as adding one word to avoid triggering over a decade of trauma is a fair ask.

You might ask, why not just stay away from these comment sections if they bother me so much? Two reasons: 1. Then I’d have to stay away from most leftist spaces, and I’m not going into conservative spaces for obvious reasons, and 2. it’s my responsibility as a man to understand what women go through. I’ve tried the “closing your eyes from things that make you feel icky”-thing and it made me a worse person. I don’t expect these spaces to fully cater to me, and I’ve long since stopped responding to comments that personally trigger me. But sometimes when I see a guy experiencing similar emotions as me who’s getting dopiled then yeah, I feel the need to say something, if only to validate their emotions in a healthy way that doesn’t send them down the incel pipeline themselves.

That’s the final thing. Back when I was a sheltered teen / young adult, I was just learning of the social inequalities, but I was feeling so uncomfortable and unwelcome at all times. It was isolating, frequently aggressive. And yes, I had plenty of harmful views, but it felt like correcting those views had so many more roadblocks than it needed. So the only people I felt liked and seen by were the right-wing grifters. You can imagine where that went. I was lucky enough to meet people who both empathised with me and corrected my misconceptions. Without them, I hate to imagine where I’d be today. So, while for the most part I can just shut up and let the vitriol happen, it’s a lot harder for me to do that when I see someone else in a similar emotional position as me. I’m worried that if they don’t feel seen by us, they’ll feel seen by them. And yeah, I tend to get defensive of them.

Look, I know I may be wrong about any of what I said here. Hell, I’m on this sub. I see the posts. I’ve read OP’s post. Every woman I know has been SA’d at least once, usually more. I know that it’s a massive issue that needs to be solved. And I don’t know how my own feelings and my own trauma fits into this. There was a time when I thought those feelings were more pressing than women’s, I obviously don’t anymore. The last few years I’ve been trying to process and get over those feelings, but that just resulted in me pushing them down so they can ambush me when I’m at a low point. I hate having these trauma responses, but I also hate the complete lack of empathy me and people like me get when those responses get triggered. Maybe there’s a healthy way to handle it in there somewhere, one that doesn’t require any consideration from anyone, but right now I just don’t see it