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It’s irrefutable that men’s present anger is lacking in sufficient specificity and articulation. As a feminist movement, this should not be alien to us. There was a time, more than half a century ago, when women’s anger and frustration were equally inarticulate. In 1963, Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique in search of illuminating what she deemed to be “the problem that has no name,” the problem that “lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women … a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning.” Her words from the ’60s still ring true today: "It is no longer possible to ignore that voice, to dismiss the desperation of so many American women. This is not what being a woman means, no matter what the experts say. For human suffering there is a reason; perhaps the reason has not been found because the right questions have not been asked, or pressed far enough." Might we now, 60 years later, say the same thing of men? Without a movement to teach them or an analysis to guide them, their present anger lacks the sort of precision that could help us feel comfortable with it. It’s anger that stems from abstract knowledge, a gut feeling that injustice is being done: words on the tip of the tongue, but never quite spoken. Men don’t know exactly what the injustice is, but they perceive it nonetheless. Something is off. A stench without cause. An odor emanating from somewhere. Here’s the thing: paucity of specificity and inadequate articulation do not render men’s current frustration illegitimate; if anything, they bolster the case for further investigation and lay bare the urgency of this historical moment. It’s time we entertain the idea that men might be picking up on something real. There has been hypocrisy, and it is worth being angry about. Men look at the feminist movement and—subconsciously, I think—ask themselves: What is feminism doing to protect me? I need protection, too, you know. In general, we dismiss this feeling. Protect you? After what you’ve spent centuries doing to us? Protect yourself, asshole.  Though I understand where it comes from, I’m afraid this sort of terse reaction stops us from asking the important questions. Namely: If we say we abhor the violence of men and want it to cease, what are we doing to stop boys from being recruited into it? 

We have not embodied gender equality sufficiently. As a feminist movement, we have worked tirelessly to protect women and girls from the violence that is all too prevalent in their lives but have said next to nothing about the violence facing men and boys. We have fought tooth and nail against institutions that predominantly brutalize women but have done little to combat the institutions—institutions like military bases, prisons, and police training facilities—that so often brutalize men, too. I think that’s in part because men operate (and benefit from) these institutions, but that’s no reason to ignore them. Just because a man is in charge, that doesn’t mean the institution is safe for other men. Men and boys need protection from the violence of powerful men every bit as much as women and girls do. Powerful men—men who are used to enacting violence with impunity—are a threat to us all. What’s worse, we seem to have decried men’s anger wholesale. We have labeled angry men as bad men and, in so doing, have lost vital nuance. Because they cannot articulate it to us in sufficient language—because they have yet to locate the precise source of the stench—we have denied any possibility that the anger men feel might be righteous. Here’s the thing: men should be angry, and their anger is righteous, albeit misplaced. If the culture that raised you sees you as little more than a future agent of military, police, or corporate violence, it would be strange for you not to be angry. Men have been ignored. They have been brutalized. They have been told that it is their job to do the policing and soldiering and brutalizing on behalf of us all. They have endured grave gender-based violence, and rather than help them locate it, we’ve mostly told them they’re making the whole thing up. [...]

What if we encouraged men to trust their noses instead of instructing them to relinquish their frustration? What if, instead of spending energy denying that something is amiss, we dedicate our energy to affirming that something is off and join men as they search for the source of the stench? What if we say to men, “We agree. Something isn’t right. Your body and psyche are being exploited to nefarious ends. You were groomed unfairly,” and then rage and scream and investigate alongside them? This is where I am flummoxed and exhausted by contemporary popular feminism, if only because it is so obvious. We will volunteer for hours outside an abortion clinic, helping to protect women who are entering from being harassed. We do so because it is both vital and necessary. We do so because we believe in a world where people have agency over their own bodies. But we do next to nothing about military recruitment centers or police academies, institutions whose primary job is to instill violence in men—to take their bodies and their minds and exploit them for the violent ends of the ruling class. Can we stop scratching our heads and pretending we do not know how America became a nation of such violence? Can we stop acting surprised when, after raising our boys as child soldiers, their violence turns back against us? Can we own up to the truth: that we cannot ask boys to conceptualize ruthlessly killing faraway brown people, then reasonably expect them to turn it off when they come home? That we cannot raise boys to fantasize about guns and war throughout their childhood, then act surprised when they shoot up a school? That we cannot raise our boys to be fine with abusing Afghani prisoners, then expect them not to abuse us, too? As a feminist movement, it’s high time we pick a lane. It’s time we take a stand with veterans and against the military. It’s time we declare that we’re no longer OK living in a violent world. We must decide that the dignity and bodily autonomy of men and boys matter to us enough to fight for them. We must rage against the myriad institutions that insist on making murderers out of our little boys. As a feminist movement, we must categorically decry war, in all its forms.

This article is by Jacob Tobia (they/them), a genderqueer person, and is an excerpt from their book Before They Were Men.

I feel very similarly to Jacob. While people will bring up "feminism helps men too!" as a comeback when relevant, on a large scare (especially with regards to pop feminism, which is a loose and largely useless combination of cultural radical feminism and liberal capitalist feminism), feminism has failed to actually, materially prove this. We have a massive messaging issue, and the failures of feminism for men, all trans people, and women are all interconnected, as are the failures of feminism to be critical of white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism. It's not that people haven't been talking about these issues - we have for decades - but that hasn't solved anything.

We need to make men's issues feminist issues in the minds of every person who knows about feminism. Feminists need to be the loudest and most passionate on framing war as gendered-based violence for those classed as men, on the lack of awareness for perceived-male victims of sexual violence, particularly forced-to-penetrate rape, on how the patriarchal weaponizes stereotypes of men as having an innate inclination towards physical and sexual violence to dehumanize men of color and all trans and gender non-conforming people.

❌ False

✅ True

That was my wakeup call that I was laying with dogs and dangerously close to catching fleas.

I do not share this shit lightly. I'm using she/her here because that was what she was using last time I heard of her, but when this person was on T and surrounded by other trans people she was on several good clean streaks wrt both self harm and substances and was generally doing well. She was still struggling with her mental health but don't we all.

When she started hanging around radfems and detransitioned it triggered her suicidality so badly she tried to follow through for the first time in over a decade.

Access to gender-affirming care (GAC) varied across gender identity when comparing trans men to AFAB nonbinary individuals (Table 2.5). For example, both groups highly desired top surgery; however, trans men were significantly more likely to have already undergone the procedure (32%) compared to AFAB nonbinary individuals (10%). Both groups also showed interest in hysterectomies, though access again differed, as 10% of trans men had undergone a hysterectomy, while only 2% of AFAB nonbinary individuals had. Overall, this indicates that while transgender men and AFAB nonbinary individuals often seek similar forms of care, nonbinary individuals experience a larger gap between desiring a procedure and receiving it, possibly due to systemic barriers or variations in how medical providers approach nonbinary transition-related care.

When comparing across gender, some similarities exist between transgender women and AMAB nonbinary individuals in their desires for certain procedures (Table 2.7). For instance, both groups wanted laser hair removal at high prevalences (54% of trans women and 58% of AMAB nonbinary individuals). However, transgender women were far more likely to have undergone the procedure (40%) compared to AMAB nonbinary individuals (15%), suggesting a greater gap between desire and access. In contrast, desires for surgical procedures diverge between trans women and AMAB nonbinary respondents. Trans women wanted vaginoplasty at much higher prevalences than AMAB nonbinary individuals (48% vs. 17%), and a substantially larger percentage of trans women already had the procedure (11% vs. 1%). These findings highlight that gender-affirming needs are not uniform across gender identity.

^ also from the 2022 USTS. & from the 2015 USTS:

Seventy-eight percent (78%) of respondents wanted to receive hormone therapy at some point in their life, but only 49% of respondents have ever received it. Ninety-two percent (92%) of those who have ever received hormone therapy were currently still receiving it, representing 44% of all respondents. A large majority of transgender men and women (95%) have wanted hormone therapy, compared to 49% of non-binary respondents. Transgender men and women were about five times more likely to have ever had hormone therapy (71%) than non-binary respondents (13%)

And it would all be the more horrifying if we learned those parents not only have adequate resources to easily feed, educate, house, and provide healthcare, but they hoarded all those resources and didn't use them for what their kids need, reasonable people would object.

If they also unnecessarily exposed their kids to diseases, locked some of them up in dungeons, and outright killed others, reasonable people would be horrified.

If those clearly evil and corrupt parent/guardians were confronted with objections but they refused to address them and instead constantly talked about things like how much they need the bible to be read in schools, that they love guns, are afraid of hormones, or that they believe that fetuses are sacred, or that kids shouldn't read certain books, or that we should be bounty hunting women who have certain procedures done...most reasonable people would idk...melt down with rage...?

Here's what I need you to do:

If you see a post with a "mature content" label, and it's 2026, DM me a link to the post.

Yes, that's really it.

I am hoping to collect several thousand such posts, so that I have a decent sized dataset. I do not care what the post is about; if it's labeled as "mature content", I want to add it to my dataset.

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.