What Derailing is and is Not

So I posted the following link on FB, and it prompted a great discussion. I won't reproduce it here because people disclosed and shared and otherwise got personal and it'd be hugely skeevy to copy-paste it.

The link!

Men Get Raped Too--A Response

And as a feminist, let me say this: Guys, I understand that bad things happen to you. I understand that you experience rape, harassment, problems related to sexuality and your masculinity. I get that. When I talk about me? It’s not because I’m refusing to talk about you. You’re allowed in. Share your stories, but stop acting like there’s something wrong with me if I don’t talk about yours every single time I talk about mine. Tell us what happened to you and how it made you feel and why you feel that way. Sit down at the proverbial table with us, have a drink, and tell us what makes you sad about the world.

But don’t you dare fucking interrupt me while you do it. This is a conversation, and in a polite conversation you have to listen and wait for your turn.

There are a lot of people who don't quite grok the problem, though, and so I wanted to add to the proliferation of links to explanations just in case for whatever reason I put it in that special way that works for someone who read the others and thought, "WTF is this shit," and walked away still not getting it.

After all, not everybody is going to have the patience to sit down and type hundreds of words. A lot of people have had The Derailing Conversation too many times, and are so sick of it that now they may well just say "screw it" and give up on the whole thing. If you've ever brought up men's problems in a discussion about the problems women face and gotten this reaction...



...then you just met them after about the thousandth time this has come up. They are very tired. I am not (today), so here is a thing that I wrote that I thought might help.

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