It’s almost comical how quickly conversations about gender inequality are derailed by “whataboutism.” Women are talking about the right to bodily autonomy? Someone has to remind them that men also face pressures. Women are speaking out about harassment? Well, men get harassed too.

It’s like watching someone run onto the scene of a house fire, waving a burnt piece of toast, screaming, “See? We all suffer!”

The irony is that many of the struggles men do face — mental health stigma, rigid gender roles, toxic masculinity — are products of the same patriarchal system feminists are trying to dismantle.

But instead of joining the fight against systemic oppression, some men would rather spend their time insisting that misandry is just as bad as misogyny.

At the end of the day, we need to be able to call things what they are. Yes, men experience hardship. Yes, some women say mean things about men. But one of those things is a personal grievance, and the other is a global, institutionalized system that has stripped women of rights, freedoms, and even their lives.

When we pretend these two things are equal, we don’t just miss the point, we actively make it harder to solve the real problem.