RE: Is it Possible to be Prejudiced Against Men?
Commenting on just the question and not the story that goes with it, of course it is possible to be prejudiced towards men. I have seen sexism directed towards both men and women in the workplace. I have definitely seen both at different times. I have worked in childcare and I have seen sexism directed towards the male workers which is quite horrible really because that's not fair to them and many are good at their job but it's also not good for the kids if it makes less guys consider the job as men and women are different and having a few male workers caring for the kids is good as on average, men tend to have a different way of looking at things dealing with issues to women etc. It's the same as how primary students often benefit from a male teacher but those aren't too common nowadays either (though I'd think still more common than the male childcare worker).
I have also seen prejudice towards men in other ways. Where I live people protested a documentary on Men's Issues which was about stuff like suicide rates etc (stuff that we really should be speaking about) because they didn't think we should have a documentary on Men's issues. The protesters won and the documentary was banned from screening in the whole country. This is essentially saying we can't talk about men's issues. I thought that was disgusting. I have both male and female friends, and I wouldn't be a good friend if I cared about the rights and issues of only my female or only my male friends. I cannot understand why women having issues translated to "we can't talk about men's issues" or even "men don't have issues". That makes no sense. Women can have issues and we can also have documentaries about issues facing men.
And I'm a woman saying this.
That's why as a man, I can concede women suffer at the hands of men more often than the reverse. Because you weren't a blinkered stubborn person digging in their heels, refusing to lay it all out and have an open, honest convo about it.
I do think I made a mistake in retrospect, namely not recognizing it was an emotionally charged topic before I opined on it. But even emotionally charged discussions don't need to immediately turn into combat.
True it is good to recognise if something is emotionally charged as you know what to expect. However, talking about emotionally charged topics isn't a mistake itself. Emotionally charged topics most of the time are topics we should talk about every now and then. I wouldn't say you made a mistake because we should talk about these things at times, though certainly it is helpful, at least for yourself, to be mindful of how conversations might go down by recognising how emotionally charged them may be. It seems to depend on the medium too. You probably would have got more angry responses to this if you tried this on facebook. Here and reddit seem more open to discussion and less likely to turn into arguments / combat than facebook from my experience (I have more experience with reddit than here but so far steemit seems on the more normal, keen to discuss side of things).