This part does come through, which is the main reason I bothered to make a comment -because I think you are a decent guy and we can have a reasonable conversation.
First off blaming men doesn't mean blaming every single man as an individual for things they may not have done. It means blaming masculine culture - which is upheld by every single man - either through his actions or his inactions, his words or his silence. Women uphold that to some extent as well, but it really lies with men to take charge of shifting the aspects of American masculinity that equate manliness with having power over other people. That's the root of violence against women (and men) and it needs to stop. The same thing goes for racism dynamics. People in socially dominant demographics have a responsibility to challenge others from their group when they see unacceptable things taking place - otherwise they are complicit.
Most men don't want to do that (for a variety of reasons), but it needs to start taking place more often (and for whites as well).
"As a man, once you are aware of the degree to which women suffer from gender violence and all forms of sexism, you can’t simply go about your business and pretend everything is fine. You have to do something about it or else risk losing your self-respect. This is where denial comes in. Denial is a tried-and-true method of coping with disruptive, traumatic, or discomforting information; it is much less painful than facing the truth."
Katz, Jackson. The Macho Paradox (p. 41). Sourcebooks. Kindle Edition.
One of the ways that denial manifests is in shifting the focus away from the faults of the system that is being upheld and to look to the victims as the real source of the problems - something the manosphere has mastered. There's no doubt that vulnerable boys and men who have real wounds and concerns are looking for help and answers online - in part because it's so antithetical to American masculinity to actually turn to your friends or mental health professionals and it's easier and more anonymous to go there. Predators like Tate (and many others) lure them in -but not by actually helping them in any way, except to reinforce that it's not their fault, it's not the fault of late stage capitalism either - it's all the fault of women, and feminists in particular, for taking away their god-given right to be dominant.
Women pushing back against that is not the problem. Women wanting actual safety and equality is not the problem. They are not driving boys and men to the manosphere - patriarchy is. The social system that has constructed masculinity in such a narrow and competitive way so that it actually drives insecurity and alienation in men is to blame. Acting like it's somehow women's fault that these guys get sucked into what is essentially a hate cult is completely and totally blaming the victim. And it's unacceptable.
I've seen so much sympathy for incels in the past couple weeks that I really just want to scream. Yes, of course, all human beings deserve basic human empathy but unlike women, who apparently bear responsibility for not getting themselves raped, and for making sure they are being paid fairly and taken seriously, these men bear no responsibility for their own lives at all and it's totally understandable that they would hate women in a violent way .... At least that's the basic sentiment I keep coming across.
Pushing back against mysogyny is not out of line. It's not hateful or misandric and I really hate seeing guys who seem like decent people buying into this mindset. You are not just an individual (one, not you personally), you are a part of culture, and help to co-create it - in many cases by allowing it to continue as it is dysfunctionally without confronting the dysfunction - which is exactly what allows it to continue on. As Eli Wiesel famously said, "Silence always helps the oppressor, never the oppressed." So, "I haven't done anything" doesn't cut it. In fact, it's a huge part of the problem. Pervasive violence and ongoing blatant discrimination against women isn't being done by monsters or aliens, it's being done your friends, neighbors, co-workers, clergy, fathers, brothers, uncles, etc. And it's not out of line for women to point that out -because unless we actually talk about how a dynamic perpetuates, we don't have any hope of changing it.
As to how many men are fighting tooth and nail to maintain patriarchy - well the existence of the manosphere and how quickly its influence is spreading is one big indication. Most manosphere guys are middle class white men with homophobic and racist tendencies. They want to maintain the "pecking order" as it has been up until relatively recently and they are mad as hell to see that eroding.
A few years ago when #MeToo broke, and we all got a deeper look into just how pervasive sexual violence against women is, some men took that in with shock and sadness, but there was also a HUGE backlash where many, many men reacted by essentially saying, "Shut up bitch, stop lying and trying to make men look bad." That's a clear example of clinging to patriarchy.
I have been writing for several years about patriarchy from a social science (not a feminists) perspective, trying to educate people about how it means much more than gender dynamics and how patriarchy is a dominance hierarchy system based in the maintenance of traditional power. My writing nearly always includes many of the ways that women also uphold this system and the various ways that it harms men. Most men don't want to hear this - like not AT ALL. They want to continue demonizing women instead and to blame them for problems that are literally all caused by patriarchy.
So, blaming women for driving men to the manosphere is essentially like blaming Black people for driving whites to the Proud Boys or the KKK. There are no doubt individual women out there who really do hate men, but overwhelmingly women don't - they are just exhausted at being continually told that wanting to be treated fairly by an androcentric culture is a problem and that talking about the ways that an androcentric culture harms them is hateful to men. I'd really like to see more men challenging that instead of reinforcing it because it inadvertently dismisses the very real pervasive issues that women are still facing.
