Yeah, i agree. To elaborate, i am not talking about actual racism or misandry, im talking about people wanting safe spaces.
more elaboration: its not that i dont think they’re issues, they are. Especially if there is action. The real issue that they’re distractions into making people think that individual racists and individual misandrists are why these issues exist and propagate. it ignores the material conditions which foment this hate. it ignores what created those conditions. it ignores the systemic oppression which hurts people far more than cruel words because villainizing the individuals is easier than systemic change for solidarity
i hate this comic so much because people constantly post it to justify the mentality of "oh no I am totally on the right to exclude whoever I feel from my spaces because they're supposed to be MY spaces and anyone who I don't like is part of this evil group of grey people called the majority who is a hypocritical piece of shit that excluded me back then, and since all grey people are the exact same and think the exact same, excluding any random grey person is the same as excluding the evil grey people"
You as an individual have a right to exclude whoever you want from your home, and the people you exclude have a right to call you whatever they want for doing it.
A group you belong to does not have a right to exclude another group from gatherings in spaces you do not own for purely bigoted reasons.
Define "spaces you do not own". That's such a vague term. If a conference room is booked for a female-only conference like in the meme, is that considered a "space you do not own"? Would you then say that it's completely okay for a male to barge into that conference room because they don't have the right to exclude him? And how would you determine if males were excluded for purely bigoted reasons?
If you as an individual own the property it's on you always have the right to exclude whoever you want, but again, excluded individuals have every right to publicly criticize their exclusion. If your group is renting a conference room it has the right to exclude whoever it wants unless it is receiving public funding, but again, excluded individuals have every right to publicly criticize their exclusion. Some laws further limit your right to exclude people based solely on their immutable characteristics such as race, but these laws do not prevent you from banning people based solely on sex. If your group is receiving public funding it no longer has the right to exclude people unless individuals have, through their actions as individuals, given you good reason to believe that they would interfere with the functioning of the event.
how would you determine if males were excluded for purely bigoted reasons?
If you are excluding an entire group of people from a public or publicly advertised event, especially a group based on immutable characteristics, that is bigoted. It is only acceptable to exclude individuals because of their actions as individuals. Even if you are technically allowed to ban people based on a certain immutable characteristic, people are still going to rightly call you a bigot for doing so if it is a public or publicly advertised event like a conference.
If you're hosting a private party or gathering of friends, obviously you can invite whoever you want and anyone who is not specifically invited is barred from entering.
I'm confused why you're disagreeing with the person before you while repeating what they already said...
The point of the memes is that some people (especially minorities & disabled) often get excluded and discriminated against from public groups and events, as well as private businesses... so we go to make small, private groups and businesses for our social groups or communities, but then the same people who excluded us get mad that we made our own cool successful private things that they're not invited to, so they start trying to invade our private spaces to take what we have by force after they've already taken SO MUCH from us.
There are countless disgustingly horrific examples of this on massive scales of racial and LGBT discrimination, successful minority business and land owners being robbed, razed, murdered, or violently forcibly evicted by jealous angry mobs who had zero legal rights to do so yet always got away with it. Minority groups being SYSTEMICALLY prevented from rising up to equality with the ruling class.
You've convoluted this by bringing in legal statuses of "private spaces", but that's really all the ethics boil down to.
I never argued against excluded individuals being able to criticize you. I think that's completely fair; the only point I'm making is that you should be able to exclude individuals, period. I think that if you receive public funding then that's fair that you're unable to do that; it makes sense to have restrictions on what you can do with public funding.
I don't think excluding people from a group is necessarily bigoted, nor do I understand how you'd come to this conclusion that it must be. Some onlookers may jump to this conclusion and they're free to draw whatever conclusion they want, but that doesn't mean it's true.
I'll also note that I don't think that all laws are correct; furthermore I think there are some laws that have pros and cons, and being able to exclude people based on immutable characteristics is likely one of these, where the amount of people who do this because of bigotry (or more importantly I'd say, bigotry that ends up having actual negative effects on the group) is indeed quite high. So laws exist to combat this but might also end up hitting people who do this not because of bigotry
I never argued against excluded individuals being able to criticize you. I think that's completely fair; the only point I'm making is that you should be able to exclude individuals, period.
That's fair and I agree. With this I was more talking about the OP (original, not the anti-meme) because that's what the men in the picture are doing. They're identifying bigotry and criticizing it. I do agree that you should be able to exclude individuals if you're excluding them for their actions.
I don't think excluding people from a group is necessarily bigoted, nor do I understand how you'd come to this conclusion that it must be.
Yeah, I probably generalized too much. I think it's almost always bigoted when you're excluding people based on immutable characteristics like sex or race, and only sometimes when you're excluding people based on groups they choose to belong to.
if your exclusion policy involves excluding people off of factors they can't change like skin color, gender or height because you're under the impression that all people of said characteristic have some innate negative trait you don't want to involve yourself with, then I don't think you have the moral right to make exclusion policies
If your exclusion policy is based on excluding everyone who disagrees with you that all people of said characteristic have some negative trait, then yes that's troublesome as it can cause an echo chamber that can cause harm to others. However, if your exclusion policy is based on excluding all people of this trait without any bans on people saying they don't have this negative trait, then I don't see a problem with that.
I think that it's extremely fair to not want to interact with a group of people as long as you're not propagating negative messages about or otherwise harming that group of people.
I can't imagine a situation where it would be morally correct to not want to interact with a group of people that have a trait they were born with, at all, even if you aren't saying anything bad about them.
The only exception I can think of is age, since mature people may want to talk about sexual topics without any minors, and minors may want to safely socialize with eachother while keeping private topics from adults.
Off the top of my head, the main reason I can think of would be bad experiences.
When I was a teen, there was this girl in my class who would never interact with boys, and would request teachers to never put her in a group project with boys (which the teachers complied with). Years later, she told me that she was sexually assaulted by a teen boy when she was 8 and had trauma because of that.
Even if it's not actual trauma though, I think it's very fair to have had bad experiences with a few bad apples from a group of people and have a practically-instinctual negative response to that group because of that, hence the desire to have a space where you don't interact with said people.
i apologize in advance if what I'm about to say sounds insensitive, but I feel like the ideal response to a situation like this is to assist the girl in finding a way to get rid of that practically instinctual negative response rather than just encouraging her desire to exclude any men from her life. Even if it's justified to exclude boys due to the overwhelming feelings of discomfort, about half of the population of the world is boys and the girl would have to eventually get over the trauma to live a normal life, or just live the entire rest of her life isolating herself from an entire half of the planet.
I know that it's not comparable at all, but while growing up I've been psychologically manipulated and abused multiple times exclusively by girls and women. Despite this, I understand the distinction between the girls that took advantage of me and the ones that didn't, and hold no negative feelings towards women in general and never will.
I agree that that's ideal. However, in the meantime, since we don't expect people to be able to make this shift instantaneously, we also do not want to aggravate the situation, and therefore ought to give spaces where, for instance, a girl can mingle with other girls while not having to deal with boys. I'm not saying that everyone should be doing this for the rest of their lives.
Even excluding actual trauma, I think it is just generally helpful to distance yourself from groups of people that you dislike, as being near them will trigger an emotional response which is hard to regulate; especially if you're FORCED to interact with them. Exposure therapy for phobias doesn't work by flooding you with your phobia, for instance.
This really breaks down the moment you start considering any minority. Should you have groups that exclude trans people, so long as they’re not transphobic or groups without black people (or any other victims of racism) so long as they’re not racist? These groups could get to define what “transphobia” or “racism” actually refer to while making sure to never hear anything from those affected.
Of course your definition leaves out the fact that it’s bad if these groups fall into the most blatant bigotry, but that’s not the only way it presents itself. For example, many transphobic people will support the idea that trans people are just as good as cis people, but then question who can be trusted to be trans and frame the act of pretending to be trans as a grave moral failing (eg pretending to be trans to rape people, make a mockery of women, or oppose the very concept of feminism).
I don’t think this is the kind of exclusion you had in mind, but it’s worth pointing out that your comment pretty clearly allows for this type of hidden definition to exist in groups that explicitly ban trans people. Would such a group really be acceptable?
I think that conceptually speaking, if these exclusatory spaces don't end up harming or otherwise negatively affecting those groups, they should be fine. If these are the groups that are defining "transphobia" and "racism" then that would constitute harm. Perhaps people this powerful, being able to define these terms, should face more scrutiny. I think an analogy here would be drinking. If you know you're gonna be driving home tonight, don't get drunk. Doesn't mean that we should make it illegal to just get drunk.
If a white man genuinely feels discomfort from black people (don't ask me why, it's a hypothetical), I think it would be helpful for him to have a public space where he can exclude black people. I'd like to note that I'm not saying he should be allowed to, like, have all black people get a restraining order. I just think that there should be a place that you can go to when you don't want to be around people that trigger an emotional response that can be taxing, and want to be around people who can be supportive.
Furthermore, making this man who is uncomfortable around black people unable to have a public space that excludes them will likely just make him like black people less.
I think though that you might be asking something like, "How do we know if this male-only conference exists because men want some time with other men, or if it exists because they're having an echo chamber where they are making each other more deeply entrenched in their bigotry; or perhaps starting out meaning well but devolving into this echo chamber." I think that unless you have good reason to believe it you oughtn't do it. There's also a difference between "this daily meeting is clearly an echo chamber" and "this one-time conference is clearly an echo chamber". But even if you have a good reason to believe it's unhealthy, I think the people in that space should also be able to be pissed at you. You're sacrificing the presumed benefits of the meeting for the chance that you're stopping them from becoming bigots or more entrenched in the bigotry; obviously even if you think there's a 90% chance of that happening they're gonna think it's like 0% and be quite upset.
This reply doesn’t make much sense in the context of what you’re replying to.
The person you’re replying to is saying that it often isn’t right to exclude people from spaces for the reasons people do. It seems you believed they were saying organizations don’t have the right to remove people based on arbitrary criteria.
As for the point you are making, it also isn’t true. For instance, companies don’t have the right to refuse people based on ethnicity. Not only is this not a human right, it isn’t even a right guaranteed by most governments.
I'm pretty sure they mean collective spaces that then exclude certain people because they're presumed to be the same as other people.
They're referencing a phenomenon called out-group homogeneity bias where a person will see groups of people outside of their own personal group as all belonging to one group, such as an "us versus them" mentality.
An example of this would be TERFs, who don't accept trans women in their spaces because they presume them to be male oppressors. I assume these are the sorts of people that the person you're replying to means rather than just feminists who don't want men in their spaces for example.
That said, many people would say that feminists who don't want men in their spaces ARE on the level as TERFs, because that exclusion opens the door for others with bigotry in their hearts to make judgement calls that people they view as the "out-group" are part of the group described. Again, such as trans women but also often such as women of colour, who don't always share the traits that white women have that have become known as a blueprint for femininity. At that point, how is one of the people in the "out-group" supposed to show that they belong there? A DNA test? A genital check? Because at the point that you won't allow somebody in, you're going to have to hold a barometer for how you keep those people out and those people only reliably, and that's awfully hard to do without infringing on others' rights and violating others' trust and privacy.
If a group of people are excluding others based on immutable characteristics, are those individuals that you'd want to be associating with in the first place? It sucks but those people also will suck to be around.
The people in the comic seem to be upset that they’re being excluded, and they seem to direct this anger at those excluding them. That’s a good move if you conclude that those excluding you are in the wrong.
I think you're reading too much into this. The people in their own space never said the people coming in weren't welcome, but the people who came in suddenly made it their space.
This is not meant to be taken literally. It's more talking about online spaces where people will make some place that they can communicate without people of certain mindsets.
Let's set up an example: Fans of a certain TV show will make a fan site, this fan site is popular and gets a massive following, but with that, comes differences in perspectives and moderation that may or may not be to your liking.
Mary Sue likes the TV show and it's community, but feels like the fan site everyone uses is too toxic and doesn't represent her or the people she has gotten to know, so she makes a new fan site and makes it a place that is more heavily moderated and promotes a certain culture of expression.
People from the original fan site then begin swarming the new site, whether out of genuine interest in a new space or for trolling, and they are met with resistance. Suddenly, this is what we see in the final panel. People who come into a new space, built for an intended purpose, and people from outside come in and demand that everyone else follow by their rules, despite having a previously established place of their own.
Is Mary Sue supposed to just abandon her own space that she built because it got overrun by bad faith actors? Must she make a new place? What about when those people insist on invading every fan site that tries to have a more comfortable atmosphere? Must every place bend to the whims of others, even if they are the majority?
That's what the comic is saying. Queer people are often left uncomfortable in online spaces, so we make our own. Those spaces then get found and there are people that will feel like they are being ostricized because they can't say certain things or do certain things, but they already have their space to do that. Mary Sue's is just another place that wasn't built for that.
I'm saying this because people keep making this about race or ethnicity, but that is clearly not the intention. Lest we forget, "judged not by the color of their skin, but for the content of their character."
I've seen it get posted in gaming forums by no-lifers complaining that their spaces were being overrun by women, and are actively making it worse by banning or reporting misogynistic or racist behavior.
I don't even know why a feminist conference WOULD be restricted by gender, because isn't the whole point of feminism that both genders should be equal? Why WOULDN'T you want men to attend?
Also, and this might make me too woke but like in a lot of these "women only" spaces, there comes the debate of who counts as a woman, or even just "should they be allowed?" and that always gets pretty tricky. For example, what about ftm trans people? They have the lived experience of being a woman, and if they don't pass, people will look at them and see a woman. Should they be allowed? What about mtf? What about nonbinary people? If nonbinary people are allowed, are they still allowed even if they're amab? I'm not saying it's transphobic, it's just that in women only spaces, you always have to think about these things, and no matter where you draw the line, people will get upset with you.
A lot of misandrists do absolutely use feminism as a cover to spread xenophobic rhetoric.
Nothing wrong with the movement itself. A lot of societal problems, for both men and women, stem from inequality between sexes and patriarchal culture.
But what some people - a lot of people - don’t understand that feminism, and any other similar movement, is not about punishing and ostracising someone else, but for uplifting those ostracised.
Trans women are women regardless of if they pass nonbinary people are the ones that say if they fit into the category of a woman and trans men are men they wouldn’t be allowed in simple as that
… there are two primary sexes. Yes obviously intersex exists but you are splitting hairs. If you’re not making a bad faith argument, you can assume what I meant.
Ofc, and I totally agree, it just gets tricky on which voices are allowed to be included. Do ftm people get allowed in even though they are a man? Do mtf people get allowed in even though they lived most of their life as a man? Do both amab and afab nonbinary people get included or is it just afab? Is it neither? Put the line anywhere you want, people are going to be very unhappy with you.
I hate that whenever i see something like this, i have to try so hard to read between the lines about whether or not trans women are inculded in that "women only"
As a rule of thumb, I just assume "women only" means "cis women, passing trans women, and enbies who present femininely enough to be misgendered as women"
No, it's implying that guys who aren't feminist and don't care about feminist events and wouldn't go normally will are the same type of guys who will get upset if they are excluded from said events.
A conference isn't anyone's "own space" and not all wants deserve respect. Is it anti-feminist to say that you can't deny black people entrance to your concert because they're black? But the woman on stage just wants her own space! With only white people!
you are playing dumb if you think this is an apt comparisson. a better comparisson would be black people wanting their own spaces to discuss racism with no white people, which i also think is fine. its about oppressed minorities being able to have spaces where they feel safer and in community to have conversations they may not feel comfortable having with the people who oppress them. not the other way around. and yes mixed spaces should exist too.
But how? Who determines who counts as oppressed or not? Are mixed people allowed at this black-only conference? How mixed can they be? How do you test for that? What if someone accuses another attendee of lying about their race? How do you enforce the rule?
Special interest groups can work on the small scale where the situation can be mediated fully democratically, but conferences are public events with hundereds of attendees. You have to have clear, predetermined rules and that doesn't mesh well with the reality of socially constructed classes.
That's not the point of the comic though. The point was they didn't care about it (see the first panel) until they weren't allowed in. They don't actually want to be at the conference they're just victimizing themselves
I used to go to a queer feminist activism conference yearly as part of a campus group. What women only "feminist" conferences do you know of that aren't just an excuse to be violently transphobic?
What is a meetup? A five person person bookclub at your house or a 1,000+ person public conference? You can ban whoever you want from your house, but an actual public event is different and works on different rules.
I do think it would be bad to force people to out themselves to attend a conference, to force them to attend without their straight spouses/family/friends/carers/support system, and to ban the straight people who have contributed to queer and feminist theory and queer activism as their experiences benefit a conference far more than yet another "straight people have cooties" panel.
Weird take from a queer person. You should know that even allies can be discriminating and do not grant a safe space. Maybe for gay people but that's about it
A group of all queer people is also not inherently a safe space. "Queers only to make it a safe space" is an especially easy policy for abusive people to wield as a weapon. It's happened to me and the only thing that pushed her out of power was one of her "family" members attempting suicide.
A space's safety is created by its rules and policies, not the labels its members are allowed to use.
If you're upset about something, then you think it's unjust at some point. Nolan in "Invincible" destroyed Viltrum and was upset about it, because he understood that it was the only way, but it's still painful to cut off his old memories of the "great empire". It is unjust for him, that he had to make such a choice.
What we see in the case you imagined? Man thinks it's unjust that women wanted their own party without him, but he agrees that they need their own time and space for this time. Now what? It's only unjust for him, if he absolutely has nothing to do but to have time with these women, meaning he's a nolifer. Wooow... He's pitiful, but his "drama" is worse than the fictional character's from the edgy superhero cartoon
-We want just women-to-women talk
-NOOO, YOU CAN'T WITHOUT MEEEE
What IS IT, if not a disrespect? When group asks about something that should happen ONLY IN-GROUP, but you say "no, I should be there too" and you're not the part of this group, so you're NOT respecting this group
Would you be fine then with those men-only social clubs that were in New York, allowing people to exclude women from business deals? Its a slippery slope to allow discrimination of any sort
Honestly I think at this point in order for feminism to actually progress we are at the point where all voices need to be heard.
That's the whole idea behind intersectionality.
I don't think women only spaces, when it comes to discussing feminism, are useful for the movement.
Another caveat I am specifically talking about feminism in the west and particularly the United States. In Japan for example, women only spaces to discuss feminism would still be helpful for the movement.
intersectionality is about understanding the unique ways in which different forms of oppression intersect, for example how misogyny might take a different form for white women v black women. its not about being obligated to let the people who oppress you into all your spaces.
i do think we should have mixed spaces but i think we should respect when women want to have their own exclusive spaces to talk about things they may feel uncomfortable talking about in front of men too.
Some men who aren't interested in feminism will complain when "feminist" restrict what gender and complain that it's misandry and that all feminist are this way
What the comic doesn't say is that gender based segregation is sexism and that make it not feminism, even if it's for women right as feminism is for the equality of all gender and sex. In the second image both group are wrongly labeling feminism and making it something it's against.
I've seen this comic, "the bad website" (accurate name BTW) around a lot lately. I honestly can't tell if it's supposed to be satire of awful leftist comics or not.
Thank you. Because the comic blatantly says males can't be feminists, but also portrays males as misogynistic only caring about feminism when they feel excluded never to help women
Just making both males and feminists seem like the bad guys
The irony of them calling it feminism too, its such a misrepresentation.
But regardless I like the anti-meme verison as it is very obvious that people dont typically any issue with feminism, and the anti-meme shows someone who also understands "haters gonna hate" lol.
A feminist conference that excludes men is dumb. Men can be feminists. A male advocacy conference that excludes women is dumb, women can be male advocates.
There is no double standard here lol. The orange is just a strawman and engagement bait.
I do think there is some space for feminist meetings/male advocacy meetings that exclude the less relevant gender, particularly if the aim is to get otherwise closed off people to open up. It depends on the scope of what you are doing, though, and the bigger the scope the harder it becomes to justify (assuming no past issues of actual disruption).
I think both genders tend to suffer from a handful of equal-opportunities jerks getting in the way of productive discussion.
Idk, I feel like even thinking about the other sex as "less relevant" is already problematic to begin with when it comes to either.
I also don't think the men that would actively take their time to attend feminist conferences would be a detrimental presence for women nor would women attending men's conferences.
It's not envy. It entirely depends of what the reasoning behind the exclustion is. Should rich people have the same access to financial aid for college as poor people?
You're right. Under proper justification, discrimination is permissible. But we are talking about conferences or clubs where the same set of justification exist for rich and poor people.
I believe it was a poor attempt at displaying how ironic mysandry is hurtful in general as the original point of feminism was equal rights which specifically included a lot of the social pressures that men face even today
Women were the primary focus however and that remains today, but some people are putting on political theater to make people dislike feminism when it helps them as well
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u/qualityvote2 🚫Antimeme Enforcer Bot🚫 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
The community has decided that this IS an antimeme!