I once again find myself flabbergasted by how hard people slam into a ‘not all' argument whenever someone uses a general statement that they feel targeted by.

Like, pretty much everyone left of center should understand by now that if I say “Urgh, men SUCK”, I am expressing frustration with enough men in my own vicinity that I don't feel like being more specific right now, and that I don't need to have it explained to me that “not _all_ men suck”.

But it seems it's still difficult to understand that same mechanic in other, smaller group, it seems, which makes me a sad panda.

It's a derailing tactic;

https://geekfeminism.fandom.com/wiki/Not_all_men

And no, if someone points out to you that it is a derailing tactic, they aren't accusing you of deliberately derailing the conversation out of malice or whatever. They are telling you that you are focusing too much on the words used, and that the message they are trying to convey is getting lost.

And if you are in an English-by-default community where a lot of people don't speak English as their first language, this tends to silence those people, because they are essentially being tone policed, and that tends to be toxic.

Assume that, unless they're specific and addressing you in particular, you are NOT under attack.

@sindarina Honestly I feel like a big part of the problem here is that you often *can't* actually assume that, particularly if you're not neurotypical, because of the issues around passive aggressive communication and how it can be hard to tell the difference between "<group> sucks" and "<group> sucks, I really am talking about you but it's rude to say so directly" (if you don't know the speaker and their usual style of communication, that is).

This most likely doesn't explain all such cases, but I've definitely seen a lot of cases where this is exactly what happened (confirmed with the people involved afterwards).