“The Stacies got what they deserved!” Reddit Incels mock the victims in Manchester

@piceofshit

I do agree that these men (and boys, because many of them I think are very young) are clearly hurting. And there are a lot of men in the world who are hurting and don’t know what to do about it.

But ultimately, your pain and loneliness is not anybody else’s responsibility to fix. If you want people to talk to, you are the person in control of that. Is it difficult? Are there a lot of people in the world who are jerks, or who just won’t get along with you or be interested in having a meaningful relationship (of any kind) with you? Yes, and yes. But you don’t have to play any odds. You don’t get just one chance at making a friend ever, and you don’t lose anything when you meet someone and don’t make friends. You just don’t give up, and eventually you will find yourself surrounded by people who care for you.

To give you a grasp on my perspective, I am a trans man, and I grew up in an abusive household. I have a number of disorders that make me, I think, very trying or exhausting to have as a friend sometimes. I spent my youth in a haze of confusion and pain, assuming I was unloveable – my parents didn’t love me; the kids at school all hated me.

I didn’t get bitter, I didn’t give up, and I didn’t stop trying to see the good in people. I found things to do with my life that entertained me – hobbies and skills – and I worked on being the best me that I could be. And now I have a totally different problem, in that my number of close friends has already outgrown the relatively small number I was comfortable with.

It has not been easy. It will never be easy. And maybe it isn’t fair that some of us are not given affection and have to fight harder and wait longer to find the people who think we are worthwhile, and it’s fine to feel that that is unfair and to be frustrated and upset about it.

But nobody can wave a magic wand and fix this for you. It’s something you have to see through yourself. And it certainly isn’t the fault of feminists, nor is it exclusively a men’s problem. There are plenty of young women out there who feel like they have nobody to trust or open up to, nobody who cares about them.

@frenticferret,

That’s…from Vampire Hunter X? And who exactly is that guy, anyway? I’ve seen art of him, but I don’t think I’ve ever learned his name.

I think a certain passage from “Carpe Jugulem” by Terry Pratchett feels relevant here.

“And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.

“It’s a lot more complicated than that . . .”

“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”

“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes . . .”

“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”

@Dalillama,

Thank you. Shows you how many animes I’ve seen lately. :/ At least I got the supernatural part of that right.

@Lucrece

It’s an important data point. I try not to remember it myself most days, but it’s relevant when looking at the relationship between men and trans people.

Almost all of the “Trans panic” situations are ones where the murderer knew the victim was trans beforehand. They’ve simply seized on a convenient lie to escape the consequences for premeditated murder.

There’s almost certainly at least one instance in history where a trans person has surprised their partner and been killed, but to that I say: “Trans panic” is not a defense. It’s shifting the prosecution’s case from “This asshole is a murderer and deserves to suffer for it” to “This asshole is a murderer and has no ability to respond to situations without murder, so we have a civic duty to remove them from society forever.” In any reasonable world, this would help the prosecution.

Normal people don’t respond to being lied to, or deceived, or just assuming something was one way and finding out it’s not with murder.

But that’s me being reasonable. For the trans person, especially the trans woman, trying to date or hook up, it’s enough to know that if they’re murdered, the man drenched in their blood will get away scot-free almost all the time.

There’s also that about a fifth of all americans would refuse to date a trans person, and a slightly larger percentage would refuse to be friends with a trans person.

and some of us most certainly are radical feminists.

So noted! But, er…not in the way of wanting all men dead or enslaved in that kind of stereotype some anti-feminists believe all feminists want? I mean, I’m sure there are some people who do think that way, it just seems out of character here…

Not speaking for Dali or anyone else, but I identify as a radical feminist. I don’t want all men dead or enslaved. Radical feminism, like radical anything, sees the current structure of society as unfixable, and posits that the solution to social ills is not to tinker around the edges, but to completely re-structure it from first principles on up. There’s nothing intrinsically trans-exclusionary about that, and there’s nothing particularly trans-inclusionary about non-radical feminism, so equating radical feminism with TERF gets my personal hackles up. It implies that I cannot be both radical and trans-inclusionary, and it also implies that someone who isn’t radical is automatically pro-trans, and neither of those things is true.

However, I also want to address one of the premises of your question, which is that radical feminists, or at least some non-trivial number of them, literally want to kill or enslave men and that we must assure you that we are not in that number. It’s firstly educational to listen to the feminists who do say that they want to see an end of men, and hear their reasons and rationale even if one doesn’t agree with that sentiment at all. Secondly, these feminists are extremely few in number, and not all of them are radical, so asking me to shibboleth my love of men starts to feel super-weird. Like, they’re not unicorns and I’m not going to deny they exist, but they aren’t numerous or influential. Anti-feminists talk about them way more than feminists do, and that holds for radical feminists in my experience.

Since when does not wanting to date = considers trans persons hideous and/or freaks.

Shut up, Brycey.

@Lucrece

I’m not upset so don’t worry about that. I’m happy to hear whatever you want to share when you’re ready to do it.

@Axecalibur

You might as well say that sexual orientation itself ie. the preference for a ‘male’ or ‘female’ partner, is an entirely culturally conditioned choice then. This kind of debate has the potential to upset people so I’ll leave it there.

@Dalillama
Oh god. I got the numbers backwards. Fucking hell.

Yeah, they do consider us freaks. It’s nice to have numbers to match day to day life though.

@Bryce
Stop being transmisogynistic, take several seats, and listen to oppressed people when they talk about their lives.

@Francesca

In particular, a cis person who seems to think gender is more than “Cultural” has no business with an opinion of any sort of on trans people.

Hello.

I wonder if those persons have already look for jobs.
If they hate being rejected by other persons, they are going to hate looking for a job too. And i wonder if they would wish mass murdering or terror attacks on the compagnies which have reject them.
Weirdwood Treehuger has put the finger on it : they do not want help, just pity. They are a kind of modern vampires who are not feeding on blood but on pity. And as they pity on themselves each others on boards like reddi, they autofuel their hate. All in all, it is some kind of sect (in the bad meaning of the term), an extremist sect of selfcentered suckers, and the problem is exterior elements of a sect can hardly have effect on its members. Neither what we can say, or even professional persons, could really have an impact on their way of thinking. Look at scientology : the majority of the ones who have quit have done it by themselves. I fear that it is the same thing here. Either they are able to break free by themselves, either it is nigh impossible to help them.

Have a nice day.