Hmmmm.
Chris Rock used to do a joke in his stand up about L'il John, the rapper. Now for those of you who don't know L'il John or his work, he's a rapper who likes to party and like to call women 'hos. In the joke, Chris asks a young woman at a club why she is dancing to a song by L'il John that is calling her a 'ho.
The young woman's answer:
"He ain't talkin' 'bout me."
That is a interesting answer, in that it doesn't challenge the statement made by L'il John, but at the same time it let's it be known that there exists in the world of real things people outside of his blanket statement.
NOT ALL MEN, although it may seem the same type of statement, isn't. And its intent is to challenge the validity of whatever statement it is in answer to.
If i were to say men pee standing up, you could then say "not all men" and you would be right. But odds say you wouldn't say that. You would probably say nothing and wait for me to say something that everybody didn't already know. If i were to say men make more money than women, that would more likely get a "not all men" response, even though men in the aggregate do make more money than women in the aggregate and everybody knows that too.
So what happens?
The first conversations about peeing positions gets to go on and talk about peeing positions, but the second conversation which way supposed to be about women being paid less than men becomes about who various sub groups of men are paid the same or even less than women, how women, by not conducting their work lives like men, cause their own paychecks to come up short, how the rules of the free market can not allow special dispensation for mothers because that would not be fair to men, and so on.
A discussion about a real problem that no one argues with get diverted into a dozen other discussions where women (in this case but it also applies to discussions of race, class, ableness, etc.) become oppressors or idiots and men are virtuous, wise or even pegged as the real victims.
This is a problem.
