Men's Group

This kind of thing out of the mens group, i.e. discussions about DU, DU members, or other groups on DU.

There will, hopefully, be some statements coming out of both groups in the near future regarding this and our mutual desire to find common ground.

I understand that one subtext of your message - "don't get sucked into silly fights" gels very well with the approach many of the members of this group are trying to take and will continue to try to take, to improve the tone on DU.

However, characterizing other members if the site as "man hating" is no more helpful than when broad brush characterizations are made about "misogynists in the mens group", etc.

I do not believe that many, if any, people on this site genuinely "hate men", any more than i believe there are secret enclaves of woman-hating. I *do* think, in no small measure, the strife and drama has been exacerbated by trolls who, for personal or political reasons, enjoy stirring the DU pot. That is not to say there aren't genuine people with genuine disagreements. But i think most of the genuine people have watched the drama of the past few weeks and, at this point, genuinely desire to ratchet down the fighting.

With that in mind, I'm going to ask those inclined to participate in these threads, here, to help start to move the focus of this group back towards "discuss issues of interest to men" and away from discussing DU.

I will reiterate what I said before about the GD rape threads- i did not like the tone of broad brushing or collective gender guilt which came across in some posts. I am skeptical of sociological narratives which involve terms like "the rape culture".

However, it became apparent to me that we do clearly have fellow DU members who have been victimized by sexual assault, and i was moved by their bravery in speaking out- i was also deeply impressed and inspired by the ability of some of these individuals to try - even in some fairly egregious circumstances - to empathize even with posters who probably didn't deserve that much understanding of their egregious behavior.

So personally i'm trying to muster as much empathy and understanding on that particular topic, as i can. That is my top priority.