If you have Twitter or even simply have a friend who is on the platform, you have read some tweets labelling men as trash. By typing in "men are trash," thousands upon thousands of results and even more retweets and likes will pop up. The "men are trash" rhetoric that has been rapidly built on Twitter is growing old and it has now leaked into other platforms.
For one, I find these tweets unproductive. Throwing "men are trash" into the universe literally does nothing to help you or quite frankly anyone. Yes, it is important for users to be able to share their story, but it is also important for male users to share theirs as well. These tweets and their comments are a tad bit antagonistic and men are no necessarily encouraged to speak their piece. I understand women have been silenced, I mean I have several of my own examples, but shutting people out is not the way to start a conversation.
Hostility does not forge the way for equality. These tweets teeter more on the side of bashing men than it is on the side of trying to come to an agreement on how the actions of certain men were unjust or cruel.
Secondly, I laugh at pretty dark humor, but these tweets just seem to now be a cliché. The formula is usually some anecdote and then finished off with "men are trash." I feel like some users throw that line in there just to rack up retweets or favorites. It has grown to just take up feed space.
Lastly, the men who read these tweets are often overlooked. Some of my male friends have voiced that it feels like they are being unfairly targeted, especially since they do not believe they fall under the "men are trash" guise. Imagine leisurely scrolling through Twitter to just see constant bashing of your entire gender. Yes, I know firsthand that women can feel the same way because of sexist comments, but to turn around and make men feel that way too is not the way to combat this. Men's emotions must also be taken into consideration because even though he is behind an online profile, these tweets are still getting read by a person.
I am all for freedom of speech and voicing your own thoughts, but this rhetoric is tired and biased. Sure, some men can do things that make them worthy of being called trash, but so do women. This one-sided dialogue of women bashing on men just grew old to me. Fighting oppression does not really start through single tweets targeted at all of the male population.
