You were doing so well until you got to this. There is no anti-male sentiment in society that hasn't been richly earned and well deserved. A mere 50 years ago women were second class citizens by law and overt custom (just like Black folks). Saying that talking about this and being angry about it is problematic is like going after Black people for talking about being fed up with racism. It's petty and fragile and distracts from the actual harm done to those who are complaining. Masculine culture and socialization in a patriarchal society preaches and indoctrinates men into harmful behaviors. Speaking up about that as well as the personal experiences of yourself and your friends and female relatives is not being anti-male, it's being anti THAT.
All men have benefited from the discrimination, marginalization, and objectification of women even if they don't want to and even if they haven't all actively participated in it - although nearly all men have to some extent, often without realizing it and all women have been harmed by that. There's a huge amount of male bonding that takes place around sexualizing and deriding women - as just one example. Where are the guys who recognize that as being a rampant anti-female paradigm?
Your heart is in the right place (which is why I say we need guys like you, because at least you are trying to learn and better understand) but this stuff is neither superficial nor sexist. A while back the American Psychological Association issued new guidelines for working with men and boys to try to better help them deal with the ways that "traditional" masculine socialization is harmful to them - and to everyone else. They spent 13 years pouring over 40 years of research and came to this conclusion;
"The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors.
Getting that message out to men—that they’re adaptable, emotional and capable of engaging fully outside of rigid norms—is what the new guidelines are designed to do. And if psychologists can focus on supporting men in breaking free of masculinity rules that don’t help them, the effects could spread beyond just mental health for men, McDermott says. “If we can change men,” he says, “we can change the world.”
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-corner
To say that maybe some women have been harmed by some guys is like saying maybe some Black people have been harmed by some whites. Yes, individuals are often at fault, but the greater issue is a culture where this stuff is built inside of it, and takes place insidiously and pervasively. Pretty much all women have had multiple bad experiences with men and boys since they were very young. 85% of American women started getting sexually harassed when they were children - often as young as 9 or 10 years old. Most have at least some experience with sexual violence of some kind, and many have a lot of experience. A lot of the physical and sexual violence that women experience takes place by partners and former partners as well as other family members. There are no clear “good guys” in this scenario.
And, we live in a culture where men not only turn a blind eye to that, they actively attack women who try to speak about it and demand better. Doing that is a form of actively being a part of the problem, even if you’ve never done any of the other stuff.
If men don't want to hear about all that, they need to become a part of the solution in ending the predation and victimization. They need to be instrumental in changing the culture and shifting the metrics of masculinity away from violence, domination, aggression, and control of women - something that would help men immeasurably as well as women.
If you want to be "a good guy" then listen to women without being defensive, educate yourself about the culture that we live in and how it harms women (and everyone else) and participate in challenging and shifting problematic norms. Don't watch misogynistic and violent porn, don't laugh at jokes made at women's expense, don't rate women's attractiveness as if they were cattle and not people and make it clear to the guys around you that shit isn't cool, for starters.
Read some of the books listed here as well as others and yes, don't take your sense of self from Instagram and the outside world. Cultivate yourself to be a person you are proud to be. All of that helps.
Women need to do their part as well, but we cannot shift harmful masculine norms and narratives. Men have to do that. “I didn’t do anything” is actually a huge part of the problem. Start doing something — because we’re never going to have a less violent, less predatory, less misogynistic, less harmful to men too culture unless more men get on board and become part of the solution.
