Not angry, just disappointed.

[Tatsuya Ishida]

I don't hate men. I'm just disappointed in them.

[Dark Harlequin]

Well I got the author himself.
Would you elaborate on that?

Also that's not the vibe I'm getting from your comic since every male character is either:

Evil: Jhonbies, Devil, Pimp, Uncle Sam
Pointless: Slick, Pigley
Who dis?: Criminy, Seymour

Only Lil'E has some merit to him, but only because of the intrigue of his relation to the Devil.

If you were truly just "disappointed" in men, you would (I think) write the story so that one of the characters (Slick or Lil'E in my opinion) to be an example for how to be. How to not "disappoint".
Instead all the men are evil, MIA or clearly pointless since you don't do much with them.

[betterway]

I think it's possible to be disappointed in or even hate men as a class and treat individual people in a case by case way. But that's not to say there are exceptions to male privilege: every boy is raised to have goals for their own self worth that require objectifying women, and every woman is raised to be an object. This is what the words masculinity and femininity mean. Even if a kid's parents are both sympathetic to radical feminism, there is still other children, teachers, the media, relatives. Maybe we could say, Tatsuya is male-dominated-society-disappointed.

Most radical feminist writing I've read presents ideas in terms of group incentives and the implicit or explicit basis is that men could treat women like people not objects, we just choose not to en masse. There is no essentialism or fatalism for most radfems, but it's true some do think men can't change as a class; I can't really comment on that!

[pingupingu]

It's important to recognize that putting women on a pedestal is still objectifying them - even if it isn't necessarily degrading them. I was raised to respect women, before I fell into the grips of porn, but that respect was not for who they were but what they were.

[Dark Harlequin]

I think it's possible to be disappointed in or even hate men as a class and treat individual people in a case by case way.

No you can't, because you start of with "I hate this man, because he is a man". Hating men is the same as hating gays, blacks and everything else. You're hatred takes the front seat. If you would do case by case then you wouldn't say you hate men, you would say that you hate sexist, racists, abusers. And you would probably see what a minority of men those are.

But that's not to say there are exceptions to male privilege: every boy is raised to have goals for their own self worth that require objectifying women, and every woman is raised to be an object.

Where the hell do they raise children like that? I was raised to seek the best for myself, to provide happiness for myself and my SO. Because that's how a relationship works.
And that's how 99% of relationships I know of work.

This is what the words masculinity and femininity mean. Even if a kid's parents are both sympathetic to radical feminism, there is still other children, teachers, the media, relatives. Maybe we could say, Tatsuya is male-dominated-society-disappointed.

Pretty sure those words mean something else.
Disappointing by what? Niche cases of abusers? Ever heard of the saying "You are not a man if you hit a woman?"
Men care for women and they want to treat them good. It doesn't mean that men think that women can't take care of themselves.

[Z6IIAB]

Ugh, another troll? Please, gtfo with your bullshit. Men are an oppressive group, and the majority has shown no signs of willingness to dismantle the sex hierarchy their ancestors have imposed and mantained in order to exploit women on that axis. So yeah, women hating men is actually the same as jews hating nazis. It's the same as black people hating white people. It's the same as gay people hating straight people. Not the other way around. We're not stupid, just shut the fuck up and stop trolling this forum, Dark Harlequinn.

[betterway]

Interestingly I didn't say anything about looking to romantic relationships as the reason to be disappointed in men. We can look at men harassing women on the streets. We can look at how every popular religion in the world treats women-- only recently have certain non-orthodox traditions begun to treat women like people, a status men have had since the older ones began. Why do we think all religions treated and still treat women like this, even Buddhism? Could it be that they would not be popular otherwise, then and now? We can look at the toys marketed to boys vs to girls. We can look at which kind of messages in music makes money and which don't.

Heterosexual relationships are a great place to look for why a radical feminist might say "I hate men." But it's far from the only choice we've got!

[sulu]

My thanks to the management for letting me register here. I guess this is another long-time reader, first-and-last time poster comment. By my estimation there have been several of those lately, but I’ll try not to dwell overlong. I am, to nobody’s interest save my own, also disappointed.

I’ve been reading almost since the start. I thought the early strips were mostly funny, if sometimes crude, and I continued to drop by through the years and extended hiatuses. I agree with this topic's creator, the change in direction was a welcome one: I enjoyed seeing strident voices replace pithy ones and I liked the personal growth from patriarchal messages to social justice. I didn’t agree with everything* but I was broadly on board with the new tone. I didn’t join this forum when it launched since, despite broad agreement and considering myself a feminist, I didn’t think it would be productive. I’m a cissexual gay man, the patriarchy helps me as much as it hurts me and I didn’t feel I had anything pertinent to contribute to the discussion (I’m sure some will say that I was right, c’est la vie). Certainly not enough to justify my presence in what seemed and seems to be a hostile place.
*[For example, I am not strictly anti-pornography, though Sinfest did prompt me to alter my opinion somewhat. “Surely straight porn can’t be that bad” I thought as I went to look at it for the first time. Oh boy. It really was. Straight porn is a miserable affair and I’m frankly amazed that anyone derives any kind of arousal from it. The contrast with gay porn, where finding performers who appear to be genuinely enjoying themselves is as easy as falling over, is stark.]

But here I get to the point. The recent anti-trans slant is, to me, indigestible. It’s an ugly message, not out of place on the lips of the most vehement misogynists. I thought we as feminists were better than this – choosing a new underclass so that we can team up with our oppressors against a minority leaves a bad flavour in my mouth. It’s the classic Margaret Thatcher move, climbing the ladder and then setting fire to it at the top. Social justice for some, but not for all.

I’m not here to change anyone’s minds on trans issues. I’m aware that this forum was not set up for opinions like mine, and it’s abundantly clear that this is not my space. I respect that. What follows is less an attempt at persuasion than an expression of disappointment. TLDR: I thought we were better than this.
The argument goes that trans women are not women (and by corollary that trans men are not men, though they tend to be overlooked by those with an axe to grind. Curious double standard, reminiscent of boors who say that men like me are vile but lesbians are hot). This tends to lead to a lot of huffing about biology, sex and gender, but I’ve never found that a productive road to follow. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what the definition of womanhood is, because whether to accept that definition is a political decision. I see a parallel here in the treatment of sexuality: regardless of how many biologists say otherwise, there will always be those for whom homosexuality is a disease of the mind. Evidence is only important if one is open to possibility (as all good scientists are). In other words, there is no point turning to biology to support your argument: the opposition is quite prepared to ignore one definition in favour of one that more closely aligns with their political objectives. This is true of both sides of the argument. As a biological scientist myself I find this quite distressing, but it is what it is.

It seems to me that the ever-narrowing definition of womanhood is not being constructed to be accurate to biology (if it were it would be open to alternative perspectives), nor to quantify and assist those disadvantaged by the patriarchy, but to exclude those who make others uncomfortable.
What puzzles me is the question of why, when presented with a group of people whose goals broadly overlap with our own (breaking down biological determinism, emancipation from traditional societal/gender roles, destruction of those roles, destruction of the patriarchy), and whose support for our wellbeing is critical to their own, the reaction of many is to refuse them. Belittle and parody them, in the case of Sinfest’s recent panels.
Why reject allies? As discussed above, the reasons can’t be biological, biology is only ever called upon to justify pre-existing political biases. The reasons must be political, but I fail to see them.

Or else, I suppose, they must be personal. A reluctance to share. Defensiveness. An assumption that admitting outsiders dilutes the community, that the community must remain pure or be brought down. It’s precisely the modus operandi of the patriarchy, so I suppose it makes sense to model a successful system. Men who are reluctant to share power, defensive and suspicious towards “infiltrators” attempting to join their exclusive club, threatened by the (imagined) possibility that sharing a platform means losing their voice (read: power). I hope that merely by drawing that comparison I make plain my objection to that kind of restriction of privilege.
This argument is political, not personal. If one’s objection to trans folk is that they are all predators seeking to invade women’s spaces and do harm then I can only ask why one chooses to see the world that way. Certainly there is precedent for that, but precedent is not conclusive. Should we all be judged by the actions of Stalin or Wu Zetian? Judging a demographic by the worst stereotypes is how we end up with men who think that women are only useful as secretaries and mothers.
One might also ask what is stopping actual predators from doing that right now. Anyone sick enough to be a sex pest is hardly going to be put off by a sign on the door.

In short, I believe that the comic is now committing the same sins it (now) exists to criticize. Exclusivity, unwillingness to share, the perpetuation of a monoculture deliberately engineered to disadvantage a particular group of people, and perhaps most grievously, punching down.
It saddens me. One of my favourite Sinfest strips (besides the one wherein the dragon opines on a “true believer”) sees the creator address his old audience. “I was misguided.” The shift in tone and content from the old pimp-happy strips to the comic’s current form is indicative of a substantial intellectual shift, one that I think we can all agree was for the better. I remain hopeful that a similar shift will come, towards greater inclusivity and fairness, and perhaps walking back some of the hurt. But I regret to say I can’t stomach the comic now. Feminist messages side by side with transmisogyny is, I find, rank hypocrisy and indicative of a distasteful lack of compassion.

Thanks for your time, I’ll see myself out.