My main issue with feminism isn’t even just with problematic behaviour of individuals. My issue is with things that are at this point too tied in with ideology.
Like the “male privilege” concept. Despite the fact that there is a concept of “hegemonic masculinity” in feminism, which is about how “male privilege” is actually not an universal male experience that men benefit from equally (the male privilege of an Ideal Male that conforms to society is different from the male privilege of a male that does not conform to that Ideal), it seems to be largely ignored and simplified.
And of course there is no concept of “female privilege”, as things that benefit women and harm men are seen as “patriarchy backfiring”. The whole concept of Patriarchy seems to be basically about putting the blame on an entire group for the few members of the group that are “in control”, and framing it as a responsibility of the entire male gender. As if somehow half of the human race has no power whatsoever, because apparently women are only and will always only be “pawns of the Patriarchy” even when they are in a position of power.
And then there’s my main gripe, which is framing abuse as a gendered problem (because women apparently are always weaker than men, and apparently emotional/psychological abuse isn’t as bad as physical abuse). And it’s not even just about direct erasure (”men can’t be abused by women!”). It’s about centering the discourse on male-abusers-female-victims dynamic. It’s about “teaching men not to rape”, as if sexual assault is a male prerogative. It’s about using gendered terms and pronouns as a standard.
It’s about ignoring how this concept that “of course it’s mostly male abusers and female victims” harms male victims who have internalized harmful things and then get terrified about the idea of harming other themselves, because there is this idea that female victims will become frail wilting flowers but male victims will internalize bad things and go on to harm people (just look at how widespread the whole “Serial killer who has been harmed as a child” or “rapist who has been molested as a child” trope is in media). And no one wants to have understanding for a “potential abuser” even when that person desperately doesn’t want to become that.
And yes, it’s the duty of that person not to harm others, but it hurts to be seen as a potential threat as standard, just for your gender. It hurts to see that when I was socially a woman the fact that I’d been a victim made me someone to sympathize with, but now that I’m socially a man it makes me someone to be wary of.
I don’t know how much this stuff can be separated from ideology. I don’t know if it’s possible at this point. I find it very hard to support a movement, even the well-meaning parts of a movement, when there are such huge problems tied in with the very basic concepts.
And another thing that makes it hard for me, on a more personal level and more related to individual problematic behaviour, is that when I tell feminists that members of their movement or concepts in their movement or entire sects of their movement (cough cough radfems cough cough) have been harmful to me as an abuse victim, their first concern is not “shit someone is using my movement to harm vulnerable people”, it’s “how dare you judge my movement because of your personal experiences???”.
