Hi Jaime.

A lady writes a piece, full of anger at the misconceptions taught to men by the system, that she has experienced. We live in a world that, argue what you will, has placed women on the defensive against stupidity and angst. She even put the #notallmen thing in the header.

I'll take your challenge, both to address your question about why your post felt disrespectful to me (and the other group of women who expressed their strong disagreement with you) as well as looking beyond my personal gender lens.

I found your post disrespectful not because it was actually inaccurate. Your points were well thought out, well written, and have absolute validity. I'm not arguing with WHAT you said. For me, the disrespect comes from the context.

Women have forever had their opinions denied to them by society. They have generally had to fight tooth and nail to have a voice in societal issues, with much derision, denial, and even violent response at expressing an opinion that contradicts what the male establishment has set out as fact.

So when you, a clearly thoughtful and intelligent human that happens to be male, comes in and writes a long response with a somewhat antagonistic tone, and detail by detail appear to try to CORRECT the wrongness of what the women initially wrote, the response is going to be predictable. I think you even mentioned it in the opening of your comment. You had trepidation at the backlash that was going to come.

This might not have been your intent, but you're working against the general expectation women have been groomed to expect wrt intent and men.

Yes, you read, and listened to her points. But your reaction felt less like a debate, and more like an attempted correction. In the context of the post you might realize that your words were like throwing the mentos into the diet coke.

It'd be like arguing the morality of the police to a family who just had a family member shot. Wrong place. Wrong tone. Wrong time.

Therein lies the perceived disrespect.

One way I have seen actual "debate" of this style on Medium is when people write original pieces in response to something they might read that they disagree with.

I don't think you are at all wrong in demanding that we learn how to debate. Civics is sorely missed these days as a class for kids. Hopefully we will get back to the point of being able to respectfully debate one another again someday.

For now, it's a minefield. Be careful out there.