this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
383 points (76.0% liked)

Microblog Memes

11412 readers
2417 users here now

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

RULES:

  1. Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
  2. Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
  3. You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
  4. Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
  5. Doctored posts/images and AI are allowed, but discouraged. You MUST indicate this in your post (even if you didn't originally know). If an image is found to be fabricated or edited in any way and it is not properly labeled, it will be deleted.
  6. Absolutely no NSFL content.
  7. Be nice. Don't take anything personally. Take political debates to the appropriate communities. Take personal disagreements & arguments to private messages.
  8. No advertising, brand promotion, or guerrilla marketing.

RELATED COMMUNITIES:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TaterTot@piefed.social 26 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

There is a distinction between a prejudice born of bigotry, and a prejudice born of a real fear and trauma. And while I understand your point, the difference between these two directly affects how we can effectively address them societally.

To start addressing it, we can't just keep admonishing traumatized women. We have to understand where the prejudice comes from. The reality is that women need to be on guard constantly, not because of all men, but still specifically because of men.

They are continuously exposed to stories like the Rape Academy website, see sexual violence normalized in media, encounter rape threats online, and virtually all of them have either experienced sexual assault themselves or know someone who has.

And while this is not all men, or even most, the statistics are clear: perpetrators of violence and sexual assault against women (and against men) are overwhelmingly male. Since there is no reliable way to identify which men pose a threat until it is too late, it's unsurprising that many women develop a prejudice as a safety mechanism.

It's unfortunate that this can harden into bigotry, but it's even more unfortunate that the threat giving rise to it exists at all.

Your analogy of being robbed by a black man "once" actually highlights how widely the pervasiveness of this threat is misunderstood. For women, this isn't a single incident. It's a lifelong threat most acute during their formative years.

So by way of a counter analogy: would you admonish a black person who grew up in the American South during the Civil Rights era with "not all white people" or "not all cops"? Or would you recognize that their wariness was, prejudiced or not, a rational response to a very real danger?

I agree that we should strive toward a society where no one is judged on anything but the content of their character. But it's worth noting that countless men rush to admonish frustrated and traumatized women with "not all men," while far fewer show up when stories like the Rape Academy actually break. This imbalance is itself part of the problem.

And if we as men, and as human beings, want to see less of this prejudice in the world, perhaps the more productive question isn't whether the prejudice is fair, but why so few of us are doing anything to make it less necessary, and why so many of us are more interested in pushing back against women's reactions than addressing the cause of them. And this, for me, calls to mind MLK's observations about the white moderate...