It also gets tricky with things like… (Warning, this ramble is kind of long and veers off on a few tangents for the purpose of explaining what I’m building from and toward but even though some parts look like they’re getting critical they’re not meant to be destructive; please read to the end.)
Plenty of men (not all, of course, but enough to acknowledge this dilemma) hear about “male privilege”, but do not live what they consider “privileged” lives (maybe they’re poor, disabled, often belittled at a grueling job, etc). And given it’s hard to explain the absence of something one has never been without, they don’t believe or understand that this is a real thing. They hear “male privilege” as “you automatically live A Privileged Life” and they think “no I fucking don’t”, rather than understanding it as “you can still have problems but those problems would very likely be even worse if you were also not-male”.
So then people when people criticize toxic behaviors that to them seem harmless and normal, they feel attacked for “no good reason” or feel people are just “exaggerating the truth” or even “making up shit to be mad about”. Even if it’s not aimed at them. I said “Plenty of men, (not all, of course)” rather than just “Men” above because even though in context they would mean exactly the same thing, many would read the latter as “All men, including and especially you reading this” and immediately feel attacked.
If you say “Please don’t make comments like that, they come across as kind of sexist”, many people (not limited to men at all) will hear “You as a person are a consistently raging misogynist and I hate you” rather than “the thing you are currently saying has some issues, even though, assuming you aren’t a stranger I’ve just bumped into, I do care about you as a person”. If you say “Men tend to interrupt and talk over women a lot and it needs to stop”, many will hear “All men need to shut up forever because only women’s voices matter.” If you say “I want to hear more women’s voices”, plenty will hear the same as above.
And this is flawed logic born of arrogance and other negative traits, but the thing is, most of the time those aren’t conscious active decisions. People don’t wake up and think “I should be a self-absorbed asshole today, that sounds great!” What feels self-absorbed from the other side is generally a mixture of ignorance (it’s difficult to empathize with something when you’ve never experienced comparable situations or don’t understand that someone else’s situation actually is comparable to or worse than something you’ve experienced that they haven’t) and how people were raised.
This is, again, not at all limited to men. The same trends pop up with any majority group. White people, cis people, straight people, etc. There are definitely openly hateful murderous assholes in the world, but many if not most more casual transgressions are born of ignorance, misinformation, and societal ingraining. It does, I feel, get even more complicated in the case of “men (mostly but not solely cis men) vs women and everyone else including some insufficiently ‘manly’ men” firstly because the above statement tends to get oversimplified into “men vs women”, and second because once the smaller minorities are erased from the equation, “women” are not seen as “a minority” in the same way as other groups because “how could they be as half the world’s population?” + “women in other countries actually have it bad so the problems here must be petty or just made up”. It’s particularly difficult to break past that kind of logic when it “feels” solid and so many others provide validation by agreeing.
But that is, as much as people want to be angry, not any individual man’s fault.
Sure, he kind of “chooses” to buy into it, but why wouldn’t he? Can you genuinely realistically expect a handful of social awareness arguments to change a lifetime of conditioning? Unfortunately, no. Or not completely. There may be rare exceptions, sure. And some folks are raised differently than others! And some are easily convinced by some arguments and just not all arguments. This is, yet again, “not all men” and of those it does include it is not painting all with the same brush. Some have tiny flecks of internalized misogyny, entirely unnoticeable aside from a rare vibe their words get sometimes. Some have one prominent stroke on an otherwise blank canvas, never an issue until That One Topic comes up. Some are messy and gross, some are clean and organized, etc.
But all in all, the point is:
When men (or anyone, but for the purposes of this particular topic men) feel attacked by people who mean well– even if they’re genuinely in the wrong, even whether the man in question is just genuinely confused and coming across as patronizing in an effort to ask questions and educate himself or is grossly ignorant and spouting some incredibly harmful bullshit that he has no idea is hurting as many people as it is as much as it is– those feelings are still real.
And when you tell men they need to be open about their feelings, there is always the possibility that feelings like this will come up. I’ve semi-focused on “vs women and others” but if, for instance, the man is also straight, he may genuinely feel hurt and attacked by being excluded from gay spaces. He very likely does not understand why those spaces are needed, and/or may have been raised to value toxic masculine ideas that say safe spaces are for babies and if you don’t force yourself to deal with uncomfortable situations you’re inferior for it, etc.
When you tell them to be open about their feelings, you might find some of those feelings rooted in a societally ingrained sense of entitlement, misinformation, bandwagon bigotry, strawman arguments they’ve fallen for, etc, etc, etc.
But if a child is upset because their friend said Santa Claus was dumb and ugly, you don’t tell the child “get over it, Santa isn’t real anyway”. You acknowledge that they’re hurt even though the reason for that hurt is objectively absurd from a more informed standpoint. If a person is upset over misunderstanding something their spouse said, you might try to help explain what they meant, but if they’re still upset you still try to comfort them.
To be supportive is not always as simple as “don’t worry you’re valid and I’m here for you”. It is, very often, trying to ride a careful line between acknowledging the other person’s feelings and trying to stick to the truth and your own morals, too, even when those things clash. It’s trying to figure out how to dispel bad information and educate people without making them feel more attacked or stupid or belittled and it is incredibly fucking difficult no matter who you’re talking to and no matter what you’re talking about if conflicts of ideals get involved.
And I can sit back and acknowledge all the complexities at work in this effect, but as far as how to actually navigate them effectively, my life would be a lot easier if I knew. In my experience, a lot of it just boils down to trying your best, trying to ignore certain subjects you know will cause fights which admittedly is counterintuitive to the “be completely open” narrative but “be open about a lot of things but maybe not all things” is still an improvement at least, and just lucking into finding people who have a similar enough system of values and/or thought processes to you (not in that you already have the same feelings but in that you’re capable of processing information in similar or complementary ways as opposed to wildly clashing unproductive ways) to be able to have constructive conversations when needed.
As such, all I can really say is: do your best to be aware of and prepared for this sort of thing when inviting people to open up to you, and good luck.
