It's not about "you"
It is possible to be a member of a demographic group that is being criticized for the group’s typical behavior without taking that personally and getting angry.
As a man, I can hear “men are more violent on average and women have to take that into account”. I can hear it without responding, “Are you saying that Josh Slocum is a rapist?”
As a gay man, I can hear, “Gay people too, not just the interloper trans, are responsible for some very bad woke behavior, and they act like they’re oppressed.” I can hear it without shouting, “Why do you hate gay men and Josh Slocum personally?”
Here are some other demographic groups whose members, I am quite certain, are also capable of hearing these things. They don’t want to hear them. They pretend they “can’t” hear them without taking personal offense. This is not true. It’s self-centered behavior, and it’s a choice.
-Women. They are able to hear criticisms of female-typical behavior and traits without melting down. I will expect them to exercise this ability.
-Black people. They are able to hear criticisms of contemporary black behavior, including criminality, without melting down. I expect them to exercise this ability.
-”Trans” people. They are able to hear that large numbers of their demographic set are mentally unwell and predatory without melting down. I expect them to exercise this ability.
I could continue listing these out, but it would be repetitive.
The claimed “inability” to discern between generalized statements and personal insult or bigotry is nonsense. The claim of having one’s emotions hurt by hearing these statements is also manipulative and out of order.
This is difficult for me to understand. As anyone who reads me knows, I have a bucket-load of insecurities and neuroses. Yet as neurotic as I am, I really don’t feel personally targeted when women observe true things about male-typical behavior.* I truly don’t feel personally targeted when people make true observations about the bad political behavior of many homosexuals.
Why “can’t” so many other people do the same thing?
They can. It’s that they don’t want to, and they are socially supported in not having to hear these things and respond like a grownup. They are socially rewarded for claiming victimhood and aggrieved feelings.
There is no “can’t hear this.” There is only “I don’t want to have to, and I’m going to take full narcissistic advantage of the current society’s coddling of my ego grievances.”
Your thoughts?
*True things. Not made-up and over-egged accusations of “misogyny” and “inclination to rape whenever they can get away with it” that are frequently lobbed at men by feminists.
Hear hear! I'm so sick of this melting down over observations that, ironically, when the person hearing them melts down, actually proves to be true. Take what happened to James Damore at Google for example. Women ARE more neurotic. They didn't feel "safe" with A MEMO. Never mind how unsafe Damore was around THEM.
In the wake of the brutal murder of Social Justice Advocate Ryan Carson in Bedford-Stuyvesant in the wee hours of Monday morning, I revisited dinner with a friend wherein while relaying an anecdote from a faculty meeting where my white colleagues (all women) were decrying the "white supremacists" running around hunting black people, he clutched his pearls and denied my incredulity that white people are the problem.
Imagine defending the kind of person who'd stab you in the heart, betraying the person sitting across the table from you.
Now, I admit to melting down in that faculty meeting in response to this 'white people bad' crap. It was over concern that Asians were being "targeted." Yet every video of an anti-Asian hate crime was committed by an unhinged black person, apart from the brothel shooting, and they of course had ingested the distortions, and not the reality. So I told my dinner companion that what made this so awful was that it's just NOT TRUE. White people are not hunting down black people.
He turned a brilliant shade of red and, well, GAS LIT ME. I said: Read the data. Watch the videos. I live in Bed-Stuy. I've read the NYPD Gang Handbook. I see the murals to fallen gangsters on every street corner.
This made him even angrier. WHAT GANGSTERS? HE knows how to read DATA! He grew up in DETROIT!
(Talk about cognitive dissonance -- how could he have grown up in Detroit thinking that white people are the problem? His own brother slept in the family home with a RIFLE!)
Another favorite of mine is trying to discuss how feminism has gone wrong with women. The most vehement defenders of feminism are the women who are blatantly exploiting men. Case in point the friend who hasn't worked in 13 years and lives off CHILD SUPPORT. It's fitting that until recently, she boasted about buying clothes in the children's department.
And, speaking of the brutal murder of Ryan Carson -- watch the video -- there's so much to unpack there. He really believed his social justice credentials gave him the Jesus-like ability to talk down an unhinged black person with a knife. Stabbed in the bleeding heart.
Rest in Peace, Ryan. It's good to see the good in people. I can certainly get behind that. But it's also very dangerous to assume all people are good.
I defected from the left because some opinions are much more dangerous than others.
I think it’s more than that they don’t want to make the distinction between criticisms of group characteristics and personal attacks--they think they are virtuous for erasing the distinction. How many times have you heard something like:
“An attack on the transes is an attack me!!!!!!”
They think that the insistence of being emotionally deranged to the extent that everything is personal is what makes them the saints they perceive themselves to be.