Hiya sudosteph, thank you for this post.
This type of conversation needs to occur more. The 'Not All Men' rebuttal and counter-rebuttal offers absolutely no benefit to anyone but more often than not, on any medium I would have seen that posted here instead of your written piece.
I understand your perspective seattle_spring, truthfully I find myself in your place more often than not. But I find my self at ends with my own personal beliefs and alliances. For the purpose of discussing this topic at greater length I'll be focusing on why this conversation needs to occur in a similar thought process shown here.
I find your argument seattle_spring, to be similar in tone to the Not All Men rebuttal. Though your reasons, experiences and feelings for how you perceive this piece on Emotional Labour is not vilified, you have your reasons for feeling how you do. I also empathise the personal struggles you're going through (I've seen first hand the struggles of supporting those in the medical field). But I believe your argument is misplaced and steph above me articulates this well. Let me unpack this.
When the Not All Men brigade reared their heads on Reddit in response to the women only screenings of Wonder Woman (WW), there was a lack of conversation on both sides of the fence from both the brigade and the Feminist allies of the WW screenings.
I personally found the WW screenings distasteful and if I was asked my opinion on it, I'd discuss this. But I was neither inflamed nor agitated by the screenings. There's other topics that deserve our attention (as a feminist allied man) that deserved more of my energy than these female only viewings of WW.
What am I, as a men, really being deprived of by these WW screenings at a tangible level? It really has no direct consequence to me. Though from a perspective or trying to find and build unity between sexes I thought it was counter productive. Anyway, I digress.
However. The same men who were the most public around these discussions around why he was _so_ offended and vilified by these women only screenings. Where was their horror, disapproval, loud and defensive counter argument when the rights of his sisters, daughters or wives rights to sexual reproductive health, taken away from them by a group of older white men less than 6 months prior? Where was _their_ rage and hostility then? Why were they quiet?
Therein lies the meat of the conversation.
It's not _just_ that these Not All Men are defensive about protecting their image about what they perceive to be a gross generalisation. It's that the Not All Men brigade are ignorant and blind to their hypocritical contradiction, where they care _more_ about their offense to these WW screenings and it's triviality, and yet are so very quiet while America's women's sexual rights were taken from them.
I feel sudo_steph, you did well to both show empathy to seattle_spring and his own battles, whilst still offering him the perspective that as a man, we can still be disadvantaged by the same cultural and societal forces that disadvantage most women. So again, thank you.