I'm going to quote myself.

"My point with this isn't some sort of war where YOU and YOUR difficulties don't matter, or are not valid. They do matter..."

I actually do believe this. And I actually think the suicide rates you mention are connected to cultural pressures about how genders should act. Men are expected to be stoic, never cry, don't be a little bitch/sissy/whiner, to be the "man of the house" even if a full-grown woman is present in the family, to be a provider, but then you end up in situations where guys kill themselves because individual context can mean this builds up into too much pressure with no outlet. (Sort of like in Japan, you have professional suicides where dishonor is so great that a guy decides to off himself because there's no other way to save face...huge cultural issue). This isn't cool. It needs to change. Men not getting the help they need for rape isn't cool either, we need to support men who are raped by other men, and who are raped by women.

But here's the thing. I'm 32, female, white. I have some folks I've friended on Tumblr, who are black, and are very active at posting about things that matter to them, largely about black issues. This includes stuff like "drinking white tears".

Initially, my visceral reaction to that sort of content was to be offended. I've been abused before, and I can have a very difficult time when I feel I'm being mocked, since that was a part of the abuse that was dished out to me before--basically, constant joking about anything I did or said, with under the guise that "it was just a joke" and therefore me being upset about the hurtful things was "unreasonable".

I've also felt that weird, "Oh my god, I'm white, did I do something racist? Shit, this fucking PC stuff blows, I don't want to be this anxious all the time! Why the fuck are they on my case? It's not fair!" thing. White guilt, basically. Obviously I've not had the "male guilt" that men can run into, but I've had plenty of "white guilt" anxiety.

So yeah, that really teed me off at first. Seeing the "drinking white tears" photos.

But then I stopped to think. It's clear the image is offensive...but why is there so much anger in the black community? To the point that people make such images as a way to get frustration off their chests? I know I've never explicitly gone out of my way to hurt black people, I've never used the "n" word, or excluded someone from my friend group due to such things. So why am I, of all people, getting the anxiety and pain and mockery when I personally have not done anything (by my standards) to warrant it?

And the conclusion I slowly came to is that I was spending too much fucking time being insecure and anxious about myself. These people? They're hurting, and instead of sitting there writing rebuttals about why I was a nice white person, maybe I should be quiet and listen. Because black people supporting each other, and being mad at how society treats them, doesn't mean it's one big glob of people who wants to hurt me, or drag me down. I don't need to be defensive, and them talking about their woes DOES NOT INVALIDATE MINE.

So I started to listen. Because listening to their issues does not invalidate mine. Just like me talking about issues of my gender, and about issues of race, does not make issues affecting men vanish. Both sets of issues exist. The reason the "volume" has been turned up on the race and gender issues is because the internet allows those of us in those groups to finally make our experiences heard...experiences that were usually regulated to "chick lit" or "african american studies" or other categories.

And when you do this, start listening, you need to understand that the bad behavior of one or two people in a community doesn't invalidate legitimate complaints from the rest of the community. Everyone is young at one point...you're going to have teenagers who don't quite get the nuances of context. I honestly think my own brain didn't mature enough to fully grasp nuances and context until I was at least 26 or so. And you're also going to have the legitimate wingnuts--again, every population has genuinely disturbed people who just aren't rational, or are trolling, or rolling in drama. It's a well-known aspect of the internet...filter it out and move on. (And I entirely expect an adult to do this on the internet. The internet isn't new anymore--EVERYONE knows about trolls.)

So basically...it's entirely possible to listen and acknowledge issues that other people have without that invalidating your own issues.

And, obviously I can't speak for everyone--but this is what I want to see when the topics of race and gender are brought up. It's a demographic of people who are speaking up, and letting you know that they hurt.

In the end, my anxiety or insult about being "targeted" as a white person is such a non-issue compared to things like black folks being killed by police for "talking back" or other trivial non-issues. And I can't hold onto that distress. It just makes no sense to continue to be offended that other people are talking strongly about issues that affect them so deeply, and they happen to dislike something about the group I'm a part of as a whole. I'm mature enough to understand that for most of their complaints, I'm not actually the person they're referring to. And also mature enough to identify when I am the problem, and attempt to solve it.

Listening to people without trying to troubleshoot or problem-solve their issues according to your own criteria is a pretty nifty skill to develop, in my eyes.

But Reddit is very polarized in this type of thing.