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I’m going to be real with you: this kind of statement, even though typically meant cathartically or not entirely seriously, doesn’t sit well with me.

It’s not because I’m coming from a reactionary place. In fact, it’s the opposite. When I hear "kill all men," my mind goes to the men who disproportionately suffer under systems of oppression and violence such as Black men, queer men, and trans men. It feels like there's a lack of intersectionality in that kind of blanket statement.

As a transfem person, I’ve encountered plenty of so-called feminist or leftist spaces where bioessentialist thinking still lingers, and that makes me uneasy. And being non-binary on top of that? People often reduce enbies to a "quirky version" of their assigned sex, even if they'd otherwise respect binary trans identities. That erasure cuts deep.

I’ve also faced outright bioessentialist hate from feminists who typically are not even mask-off TERFs. It has happened more in a liberal saying, "I don't like this transgender person who disagreed with me, so it is okay for me to misgender them" fashion. So when I see these kinds of statements, it reminds me of that, not liberation, but exclusion.

It kind of reminds me of how I feel about dog meat jokes in vegan circles. I get the intended point, but dogs are still victims of human supremacy. Just like with that, I understand the catharsis behind the “I hate all men” statement, but I can’t ignore who gets invisibilized in the process.

While I'm at it, let me explain: I took a long break from Hexbear one time where I refused to use any community except for c/mutual_aid. I did that after seeing a post trashing on people who have discomfort with the statement "kill all men," with pretty much every user commenting reducing it to being inherently "reactionary MRA 4chan nerds" seething and not a single one of them pointing out this nuance.

I didn't speak up on what the incident was until now, out of fear of misunderstanding and making myself uncomfortable in the process, but this time, I had to say something.

Metaphorically we could argue that we need to kill the "man" inside all cis men, meaning deleting all the internalised patriarchal education.

Typing my rant I realise I have a blind spot about trans men and how they express masculinity so if anyone is willing to provide their perspective that would be great!

Okay I bet someone is going to tell me the objective of feminism is to actually kill all men now.

edit

Its very lib fem lacking intersectionality and idealist. I understand why people might be compelled to say it. I mean there are cases like Emmet Till where the woman had more power than the male counterpart and used to get him killed, due to her race. Queen Victoria also had more agency and power than the millions of african, indian and irish men condemned under her reign, and most of the working class brits as well.

I prefer to kill all gender (from our minds).

I usually find liberal radfems to be one bad day from being full on genocidal transphobes

One of our family friends has a video somewhere of my mum back in the 80's demanding the killing of all firstborn males. Luckily she changed her mind on the issue before having me 10 years later.

Down with cis. I dream of a future where all people are assigned a special birth sex by law that must be publicly renounced by the age of 6

Kill 'the man' in your head

I think that's a better option

These days I really think it's just a total non issue. I haven't seen one of those comments in years. It was a 2010's liberal feminist slogan that ran in pretty equal balance/opposition to utterly rampant misogyny of the times.

If someone said it in front of me, if it was a friend I might discuss how I think it's needlessly antagonistic and makes an unnecessary/difficult hill that you're then forced to die on. If it was just some random, whatever, I probably don't care much for their opinion regardless.

"Don't worry teenage boy with no friends, the youtube algorithm has enough woman hating content to feed you for days"