#phmt

they are told that:

fear is a weakness.

showing emotion makes you less of a man/feminine.

"man up."

men are emasculated if they are gay, or perceived as gay because of certain interests. if they are not gay or not perceived as gay, they are still emasculated for having "feminine" interests. this perpetuates violence.

violence, physical or sexual, against them is minimized.

they are less likely to receive custody of their children in divorce cases.

men are expected to do all the dangerous jobs, provide for their families (aren't "real men" if they aren't breadwinners), fight in war, etc.

and more.

I will never get the mentality that says, "HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT THIS WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT THIS." As though no speech should ever be made if it can't attest to every side of an argument. 

See: why we have free speech. By all means, add your opinions in comments and point out where things are left out and possibly having problems of erasure.

The annoying thing is assuming that, because it has as yet gone unsaid, that the speaker who left it out did so for the purpose of erasure (instead of perhaps in the interest of brevity and focus, since we can't all write treatises). 

Sometimes you can assume from tone an intent to erase. But I wish people would write more about what they think needs to be added to the dialogue, rather than what they assume the other person is trying to keep out of their dialogue. Sometimes I worry that direct accusations of someone speaking from a privileged viewpoint, or accusations of erasing, only serve to increase divides with seeming attempts to censor speech, when what is needed is more speech, not less. 

A while back, I saw a well known tumblrer get lambasted for "erasing" for making a tongue-in-cheek complaint about periods and how it's not fair that men don't get them and women do, because it was erasing to trans persons. It was clearly a joke (brevity being the soul of wit) but it seemed to me that the answer was not and should never be to send hateful messages assuming she's transphobic (or even just a comment saying "this is erasing" since the writer is the only one who necessarily sees such things so your response is basically de minimis) but to write a thoughtful post about how such comments stem from inherent assumptions about gender that may or may not be true. It may not be your duty to raise awareness when you see such things, but neither is it the duty of the writer who you've called out - the only way to engage them in a worthwhile fashion is to actually engage them, rather than prodding them in such a way that they can easily disengage because you seem like you're trolling. 

In the United States, under most First Amendment rhetoric, the answer to harmful speech is more speech. It's the public speech that hits hardest.

Please understand - I'm not trying to protect the original, possibly erasing speakers. I'm just trying to make a point about what types of responses are most likely to be taken seriously. Making yourself publicly accountable and considering your statements not just in the sphere of response but also as a public statement representative of your own view makes you more likely to be taken seriously.