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Comment by Ambrosia | Hacker News Reader

jeez what's with all of these MRAs coming out everywhere when somebody tries to do something for women? this shit happens every single time

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I think it's just an underlying insecurity and zero-sum-game thinking, basically "anything intended to help women must also hurt men".

A part of me feels pity for them, after all, they're fighting a doomed fight, but it doesn't excuse their behavior.

Men always become very nervous when women try to have their own spaces, talk amongst themselves, organize into groups, etc. It's like reality can't pass the Bechdel Test.

Some men!

More like "men as a political class." I'm male, and I knew I was inviting this comment. To me saying "some men" is like giving the "good men" a cookie, when really all men should be concerned about these kinds of things, by virtue of being human.

>To me saying "some men" is like giving the "good men" a cookie

To me, saying "some men" is being precise with language and not falling into generalization. "Men", in common usage, refers to individuals that are male, not a "political class".

"some" people always seem to jump up to make this pedantic argument when men are generalized about, and yet somehow talking about women as a general group never seems to invoke the same.

Ah. Criticizing the intentional use of sloppy generalizations is "pedantic" and sloppy generalizations are sometimes used against women so this justifies the use of sloppy generalizations against men. Got it.

English does not discriminate well between the universal quantification (∀; all men are) and existential quantification (∃; some men are) when quantification is indefinite (men are). It's often unambiguous; saying "men are well-represented in the boardrooms of US companies" would not be taken as implying that a number of men close to 165 million (or 3.5 billion) crammed into American boardrooms. Where it's not, it's far better to assume that the speaker is using the existential qualifier, as universal quantification is usually spelt out as a rhetorical feature ("ALL MEN benefit from the patriarchy" is far stronger than "MEN benefit from the patriarchy").

That's a very good breakdown of usage of the word and I'd forgotten about the indefinite usage. In this particular usage, it included the word "always" ("men always"). If someone states "men always love sports" then I'd interpret that to be equivalent in meaning to "all men love sports".

The opposite is also true.

Women (and some men) tend to be very suspicious of male-only spaces because they think that said men are plotting to reestablish the Patriarchy. Not really, though.

Sometimes it's nice to have a safe space where you don't have to police yourself for the opposite sex and risk being misunderstood by them. I don't begrudge women their own space, and I would hope that women, feminist and otherwise, would not begrudge men theirs.

"they think that said men are plotting to reestablish the Patriarchy"

hahahaha you have no idea what I'm talking about or what you're talking about

Try to establish a club, organization, or group for men only, and you'll face suspicion and criticism from women.

What's with people wanting to dismiss opinions they don't like with poorly thought out strawmen?

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