Promethiel

So you feel whataboutism/dismissive responses are only used against men? Or do you agree that that is not a good way to respond to legitimate issues regardless of gender?

They’re agreeing with you it seems to me, and sharing their anecdotes that despite that reality which they agree with, let me re-emphasize that, despite that reality (that using one gender’s struggles to whatabout another’s is considered both ineffective and borders on conflict-seeking, inherently), that in their experience, they have seen the same the same whatabout tactics used to dismantle discussion when a “male centric” issue is the discussion catalyst, as when it’s a “female centric” issue originating the discourse.

I can’t speak for that other commenter to your follow up question though, so I’ll answer it for myself: I do not feel that whataboutism/dismissive responses are only used against men, no.

As a matter of fact, I feel that they’re employed more often to stiffle discussions on “woman centric” concerns precisely because of how little Men’s issues are discussed, and the reason for both is the same. That this is a side effect of the patriarchal systems in place doesn’t absolve either side from the requirement to be genuine if genuine discourse is sought, though.

I have seen what the commenter is mentioning and right here on Lemmy to boot. Because whether male or female, a whatabout is an easy rhetorical blanket to reach for, and many do.

I believe that both genders (including and specially men, who must own up to the fact that collectively we’re the gender with the greater frequency of offense against other genders if we’re ever going to get to addressing why it’s the same systemic patriarchal roots binding women’s rights that choke out the existence of men’s rights issues) have to be willing to communicate.

Women in aggregate are crying to be heard, but “TooManyMen” aren’t listening that they’re (women) speaking for them both too, and I feel those men who are able to hear some of that message need to help out in stopping the whataboutism wall in their brothers before they get going…

The same way that I believe there’s women who need to do the same for many of their sisters in the public square.

Divided is how we’ve gotten to this, unapologetically more viscerally dangerous for womanhood world that pretty much always has been, but I feel that it is united that we’ll reach any dreams of equity or widespread understanding between the genders, if we ever will.

In short, I agree “that that [whataboutism tainting discourse] is not a good way to respond to legitimate issues regardless of gender”, but the mere axiomatic observation falls short of the next step:

Both sides need to acknowledge and give each other the room to voice out their feelings, views, ideas, etc, genuinely (trolls and agitators need not be entertained) while still keeping an eye for the possibility that unity lies not in knowing the correct answer but in the shared questioning.

Fellas let’s do (and encourage our brothers to) better whether we think it’s fair or not, and ladies, understand (and share with the sisters who it’s safe to) that a hypocrite and someone whose barriers are breaking will appear briefly as the same before change is undergone.

Same, but (at least in my case) you can’t ever listen to that bastard brain and do more than a small amount. The margin is thin and the prize of folly is being up at 3AM, yawning sleepily, but awake.

Trivial, smart, and likely amongst the first operational considerations when “real” political advocacy organizations do it.

I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they had a BYOD policy and the “PAC” exists mainly in three forms: A hastily made app, Leon’s drug fueled rants, and the media’s overestimation.

While your point that sometimes people just have AI image associated traits is very salient, I worry you might not be considering the lengths these things will be used and why online discourse (in my worried opinion) is utterly fucked: The past ain’t safe either.

For now we still have archive.org but without a third party/external source validating that old content…you can’t be sure it’s actually old content.

It’s trivial to get LLMs to get image gen prompts done to “spice up those old news posts” at best (without remembering to tag the article edited/updated or bypassing that flag entirely)…and utterly fuck the very foundation of shared and accepted past reality not just presently but to anyone using the internet itself to look through the lens of the past at worst.

They uh, would need to remain capable of speech for that. Surely there’s official act way of stopping that.

There’s many answers but I genuinely fear they’re too lost in the weeds of abstraction.

The truth is still simple; Power is useless to the common* (read: average and averagely distributed) person. It doesn’t grow crops, shoe horses, or help your fellow man, inherently.

The common person has real concerns to worry about, leaving the search of the trappings of power for the uncommon.

Uncommonly good* (read: beneficial for the doer and the common person) is harder than uncommonly evil* (read: beneficial for the doer but detrimental to the common person); this is simply entropy, and it readily maps to humankind’s so called capacity for thought.

That it only takes a bit of shared effort to make lasting structures to help others and fight off sociological entropy is an uncommonly good realization:

The common man has labors to do, the uncommonly good servant a statistical rarity and the uncommonly evil servants and the structures they engender to keep them in support (entropy begets entropy) a hurdle that by the point of realization takes an uncommonly amount of uncommon good to overcome.

TL;DR: Human nature + time + compounding apathy in those in a position to nudge things when they were easier to nudge = a need for collective awakening to course correct. We’ve gilded the lily on our sociological underpinnings but have yet to truly revolutionize, only iterate.

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Unironically yes. All of that comes at less expense to humankind, too. Even accounting for you.

Case of not seeing the wit for the trees. In the topsy-turvy landscape of the last 8 years or so, the problem is that “dripping with” part. The weirdos do always go for the double-down after all, so adding more starts risking confusion with that tactic of theirs.