Post #2779835

2026-02-09 19:50 UTC

Not every men's group is a shitty stereotype. It does seem unacceptably common, though. Not every women's group is a safe space, and some are just as toxic and abusive as the far-too-common men's groups. Do we ban them? I don't think we can. Because women's shelters need to exist even if men are domestically abused too and never in my fucking life have I heard anyone suggest a battered men's shelter might even maybe be a good idea. Okay, fine, so violence and safety reasons … Except, shit, not everyone is hetero… A same sex partner can probably find out where women's shelters are. And men are abused to by their partners, men and women, in alarmingly higher rates than anybody seems to take note of. And what do you do with Trans folks? Because their rights are human rights too and why the fuck do we still need to explicitly say that anymore? *sigh* And that doesn't even begin to cover social groups. I guess if you're not an asshole, a bigot, an abuser, or whatever … best you can do when you encounter these things (and you will) is ask yourself whether something gendered is reasonable or not. The answer might be yes, or no, or conflicted either way. I'd like to say that it should be okay if we don't agree about the answers. I'd like to say that people should be able to accept that the other person is making a good faith effort to determine the relative "okayness" in an individual case with an individual perspective. Sadly, we humans seem not to be wired to do that. I'm just gonna continue thinking gendered stuff is pretty dumb on the whole with a couple of conflicted views on a couple of specific things because I know I don't live in a perfect world.

Replies (2)

@Atlas_@lemmy.world 2026-02-09 20:59

> Not every men's group is a shitty stereotype. > determine the relative "okayness" in an individual case Well, yeah? OP asked the question in general terms, I answered in general terms. With more specific information you can make a more specific judgement. That's why I said "stereotype, not rule" and separated is vs ought? I don't need to list out every possible reason someone might want a gendered group to show that there is a valid reason. Instead just give one. In fact I avoided talking about domestic abuse shelters exactly to avoid this sort of 'whataboutism'.

Open ##2779836
@Waldelfe@feddit.org 2026-02-10 08:12

> Because women's shelters need to exist even if men are domestically abused too and never in my fucking life have I heard anyone suggest a battered men's shelter might even maybe be a good idea. I don't know where you live but men's shelters are a thing. At least I know about them in Germany, the US has them, too. A large problem for men's shelters (and why there aren't as many as women's shelters) is that they want to have only male staff (just like women's shelters employ only women as staff), but there are less men going into social work. Also, men's shelters don't get the publicity women's shelters get, so that is definitely a thing that should change. Men talking about being abused by women should be made more normal and I think it would help if there were more stories in the media about men fleeing from abuse and going to a men's shelter. That would make the concept more widely known.

Open ##2779837