Thinking Men Were Trash Did Nothing To Heal My Trauma
The “men are trash” mentality is promoted on social media and in feminist circles and is often seen as a harmless joke, but I can testify that it’s not as harmless as it seems.
“Men are trash” is often marketed to survivors of abuse to cope with their trauma in a humorous way, but it only keeps women from facing their trauma, making it impossible to overcome it. In turning women into victims instead of survivors, the “men are trash” mentality turns them into bitter and man-hating narcissists.
What Is the “Men Are Trash” Mentality?
We’ve probably all heard the phrase “men are trash,” but where did it come from? Vicky Spratt of Refinery 29 looked into the history of the “men are trash” mentality, and she wrote, “In any garden-variety conversation between millennial women who date (or, indeed, don’t date) men, you can almost guarantee that the phrase ‘men are trash’ will come up. It’s an in-joke that women share, a pithy way of expressing the impact that hundreds of interactions with men – personal and professional – have had on them. In recent years, it feels like someone has posted the phrase somewhere on social media every few seconds.”