Actually, my personal view on Tom and his attitudes toward women and heterosexual relationships are borne entirely of my beliefs as a radical feminist and the obvious fact that he leans far to the opposite side of the political spectrum to me.
As I mentioned, debates about patriarchal culture with those who either deny its existence and/or benefit from its perpetuation tend to devolve into false equivalencies and defensive whataboutism, which I gather is the case here. I glean from your posts that you and I are not politically aligned either, so I won’t go there, other than to say that there absolutely are ideologies that are deserving of scrutiny and judgement, particularly those that seek to maintain the status quo for a select few at the expense of other marginalised groups.
I understand that individual men come here having experienced tough times through the loss of their family unit and the financial difficulty of supporting a cheating or runaway wife. That is terribly sad. I feel for those men and often feel like telling them to enforce immediate and harsh consequences on their grossly entitled partners. As heartbreaking as it is, their experience is not equivalent to the systemic misogyny that all women experience in every aspect of their lives.
Thank you for your well-wishes, but I am complete without a man in my life. I know good men, many of them through this site. Their individual virtue doesn’t erase the existence of patriarchal frameworks built on oppression. I empathise with those who are made uncomfortable by the exposure of these frameworks, but not as much as I do with its victims.
I’ll assume that your suggestion for me to step away from radical feminist spaces is one of fatherly concern because... actually, it doesn’t make a lot of sense no matter how I look at it. Is it weird to you that a woman would seek out spaces that validate her lived experience? I’ve never felt the need to suggest that people who don't share my beliefs step away from their echo chambers, despite the fact that their beliefs contribute to the normalisation of policies which result in actual violence and death.
I’ll agree with you on one point, that actually is the exact point I’m making— believing in the goodness of individuals. I absolutely do, always have (sometimes to my detriment) and always will (through the hard-won wisdom of my lived experience). But I will never stop thinking critically about my place in society at large.
