I totally get that some feminists have given the movement a bad name. Some of that is the nature of anything made up of human beings, which will naturally be full of human foibles. And some of that is due to the sort of thing I was describing, where women are so beaten down, so disappointed, so hurt that they literally do not trust very many men at all - with good reason. Is that fair to good men? No, of course not, but is it fair to women that it has come to that place where sexism is still so entrenched (because we live in a dominance based hierarchy) that it really doesn't seem to have improved very much and just asking for basic humanity gets you screamed at and called names and threatened?

I've been reading a bit about how the way we use words frames the reality. For example, when we talk about how many women were raped, it turns it into a disembodied thing that only took place for women. It helps to shift the responsibility to women to be the ones to avoid this and try to prevent it when the real issue is not women - it's the men who do the raping and the men who turn a blind eye to the aspects of the society that foster a rape culture.

I personally don't say I identify as a feminist any longer because the term has been so poisoned, in the same way that "toxic masculinity" has been, that it essentially creates more problems than it solves to engage with anyone using those terms. I see a very clear need to shift the public focus from "these are the things that happen to women" to one that centers "these are the domination oriented aspects of how masculinity is constructed in our culture(s)" and the ways that men can take better responsibility for shifting that - for their benefit as well as that of everyone else.

And, that being said, when Gillette tried to do that in their ad a few years back, to really position men as leaders in creating a healthier, safer, less domination-oriented culture, a whole lot of men just completely lost their shit. I'm reading a book now on social dominance theories and trying to get a better understanding of some of the actual dynamics in play - hoping that will also be helpful to creating a strategy that men can actually hear without being so fucking fragile and defensive. But what is definitely clear to me is that we need to completely shift this away from "women's issues" and demonstrate how these are really mostly "men's issues" and how men need to lead the way in solving them.