I appreciate your thoughtful and heartfelt reply. I can relate so much to what you're saying. I too am depressed, deeply lonely, and struggling with poor self-e

I appreciate your thoughtful and heartfelt reply. I can relate so much to what you're saying. I too am depressed, deeply lonely, and struggling with poor self-esteem. I've dealt with chronic illness, PTSD from watching a few people die badly and one living death [worse], poverty, and frequent homelessness. On "Men suck!" I can understand how hurtful could be, but it never personally bothered me. Oppressed people let off steam in all sorts of ways and some of those ways are unfair. But compare "Men suck" to "Billionaires suck", "Cops suck", "White people suck" etc. Do all of those bother you equally? The fact is that waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many men do suck in so many ways while being perfectly lovely in so many other ways. Rapey, dominating, violent, criminal, oligarchic, etc. People who have been harmed by such men have an absolute right to vent. I've got friends who regularly bitch about White people in front of me. It does not bother me. White people do suck in so many ways. And even though I don't have an "All Lives Matter" sticker on my truck, I know that even I exhibit some racist thinking and behavior my self and that I benefit from a racist system. My only recommendation is to seek understand the hurt behind the speaker's statements. Empathy with their suffering may help explain why they are acting out. On Popular Feminism I would never suggest that popular feminism isn't feminism. We are what we do. And yet, not all who identify as feminists are particularly good at it. WitchesvsPatriarchy, for example, strikes me as a rather immature expression for young women who are just beginning to work out their relationship to the world. This is valuable for them and us. People need a playpen where they can develop. Just as we expect college students to express the dumbest, most strident, and self-defeating version of whatever political philosophy they have adopted, we must recognize that newbies are stupid in every discipline. There are, of course, terrible people who are feminists. There are those who simply use feminism as a cudgel to gain status. And there is a Imperial shit ton of anti-feminists who parody feminist positions in memes. I am ogen accused of supporting a "feminism" which I do not recognize. One of the rules for good debate is to argue against the best possible version of your opponent's argument. This is hard to do in the context of a well that has been poisoned by those who spew falsehood so hard and fast that it's difficult to sort the true from the false. And yet, there are plenty of coherent and internally-consistent feminisms to be found for those who can put the effort in to find them. I wish we were doing a better job to make things easier for those trying to make sense of things. On Negative Stereotypes The stereotypes are too often true. I have never raped or abducted a child, but when a parent gets nervous around me for being too close to a child, I just have to swallow my indignation and realize that the actions of others have ruined things for me. The men loudest about "Not all men!" are those who never made an effort to understand the critiques in the first place. And yet, these stereotypes are hurtful. Especially to men already struggling. The only advice I have is to do your part to build a world where these stereotypes have no basis in reality. In the mean time, thicken your skin. If you're not the creepy type, then realize that such unfair statements do not apply to you. On Navigating Relationships I'm gay and can't imagine how hard this must be. Straight people have such overwhelming and conflicting social expectations laid on them, that I don't know how they even function. We queers are used to making things up as we go along. There's a freedom to being a hated outsider. So I guess my advice would be to make things up as you go along. Ignore all the advice you've ever heard about what women want. And listen to the specific individual that you are interested in. The are few interpersonal problems that can't be resolved by prompt, honest, and empathetic communication, and there are few problems between people that can't be made MUCH worse by the lack thereof. Listen. Express. Compromise. Repeat. As a Christian, my faith tells me that we are each divine beings made in God's image. This informs how I treat my partner. Even when they are acting badly I try to remember that they have infinite Godlike potential within them and that my love for them can help them reconnect with their deeper nature. Indeed this is the point of a relationship. In bell hook's book "All About Love" (highly recommended} she suggest that romantic love is not about the pleasure of fucking or feelings of infatuation, but about a desire to see your partner realize their highest potential. When you start from that perspective, the specifics of the relationship become much easier to work out. The problem is when we see our partner as a fuck toy built for our pleasure and service. That is not a loving frame for a relationship, and only exploitation is possible from that position. Under patriarchy, women are seen as servants who clean, nurture, and cook for men. This attitude is the root of so much suffering for both genders. I knew a guy who never learned to cook, ate ramen and canned spaghetti daily, and was way too desperate and lame to find a woman to serve him. Patriarchal expectation left him unable to even care for himself. His only solution was to try to trick some poor soul into being his servant. Men and Feminism Feminism started with women and has been primarily focused on their needs and the harms to them under sexism. It took quite a while for people to realize that men also suffer from the system. But women who have been harmed are focused on their own resolution and are under no obligation to develop feminisms focused on men's needs. That's our job and we simply have not done enough of the work to present a comprehensive, well documented, easy-to-understand feminism that addresses men's needs. So if you feel like feminism isn't focused on you, you are absolutely correct. In an emergency, you put on your own mask first, even before your own child. The version of feminism we need isn't written yet. That's why it is important for men to introspect deeply over these issues, to take up the tools and clues previous feminists have left us, and to build what we need. Think of the project of creating a men-focused feminism in terms of programming. You've found a project on Github that looks close to what you needed, but whole chunks are missing for your use case. No logging, no authentication, no input sanitization, random open ports everywhere. These you will have to write yourself. But that is still much easier than starting from scratch. I hope this unpolished rant addresses the issues at least some of the issues you raised.