How do I stop hating men?
Hi, I'm a teenage girl, and I'm trying to stop myselt trom hating men. Most of my traumatic experiences have involved them, and it's genuinely changed the way I see them. As young as 11, boys around me were already making rape jokes, incest jokes about their sisters or family members, racist comments, and degrading jokes about women like it was funny or completely normal. I'm not exaggerating or lying a lot of girls and women have heard the exact same things.
What bothers me most is how normalized it all feels. A lot of men excuse each other’s behavior, stay silent, or hide behind “dark humor” and “bros before hoes” culture instead of calling out disgusting behavior. It honestly feels like many men are taught that cruelty, misogyny, and dehumanizing people is funny or acceptable.
I know logically it’s “not all men,” but when most of your bad experiences come from the same group, it becomes hard not to generalize. I don’t think men are biologically evil, but I do think a lot of them are socially conditioned into toxic behavior and desperately need help unlearning it. I don’t want to become hateful or discriminatory, though. I want to learn how to judge people individually instead of automatically assuming the worst about every man I meet.