When to stay out of a topic

I came across something a friend of mine wrote recently where she described being angry when men share feminism articles. Getting the feeling that is an invasion of sorts, she goes on to talk about how she becomes uncomfortable herself when she considers talking about articles written by other groups, specifically those who aren't white, because she wonders if she is guilty of doing what she hates seeing from others.
This is paraphrasing and I may be missing some subtleties, she is, I assume, asleep at the moment and I don't feel comfortable quoting her in full or linking to the post without permission, I will update if needed once I have such, or not.


*Edit: I have permission, the full quote is as follows, you can read it in it's original form here.

This is going to be a bit rambly, but I want to work through it.
I feel angry when men share feminist articles.
My first instinct is to curl my lip and wonder, “what, do you want a cookie for being a decent human being?”  My heart starts to pound, and instead of feeling like I have gained an ally, instead it feels like a loss of sorts.  I have know too many men that yesterday would hit that share button, and tomorrow ogle that women running by in leggings.  It feels like an intrusion on an issue that belongs uniquely to my gender, and I am not willing to share it.
But this raises all sorts of questions when I turn the magnifying glass to myself.  I usually don’t share stories or articles written by women that are not white, because I feel that those issues and stories do not belong to me, and the last thing I want to do is trample in with my whiteness and be like, “Yeah, me too!”  Is this right or wrong?  I really don’t know.  I try to show my solidarity by staying silent.  My voice has been heard, I want to learn from others.  I want to be a good ally.  Maybe even by writing all of this I sound like an asshole, I don’t know.
I am beginning to wonder if my bitterness towards men in the situation described above is warranted, and it is scary to doubt myself like that.  That anger is the only weapon I have to keep men away.  A car slows down next to me and I sneer, showing my teeth.  I like that power, I don’t want to give it away.  But I also know that anger can consume a person and cloud a person’s judgment. 
So ultimately here is the question:
How do you feel when people chime in on issues that don’t “belong” to them?


That got me thinking about it, because my particular class of white, straight, male, and mostly neurotypical really narrows the stuff I can write about if I was to follow the above reasoning, but that doesn't necessarily make them invalid concerns, how do I justify writing about feminism, or race relations when I come from a place of privilege that means I literally cannot truly understand the real impact of the problems I talk about? What makes me less annoying than anyone else linking to an article on social media?

Possibly nothing, I must remain open to the possibility that I am an enormous douchebag on the internet, I suspect that not to be the case, but that is what I would say if I was right or wrong now wouldn't I?

An easy answer is that our culture doesn't really perceive a problem is real until it is something that straight white men talk about, and if we don't talk about it then it is pretty easy to ignore or downplay as a minor issue that nobody really cares about, regardless of how many millions of people are actually effected by it. So without me and people like me, issues don't really become mainstream and change doesn't happen.

The problem with that is that A: I sound like a pompous ass, and B: It isn't entirely true, while my posts are technically public, nobody sees them except people who either agree with me or don't care, I am not changing anyone's mind here nor am I really bringing problems to anyone's attention that they don't already know about, I have a maximum of 25 readers per post. I ain't exactly changing the world here. Now when some guy with a platform talks about it, such as a musician, actor, or other celebrity, then shit gets done, or at least a non-zero number of people actually have a chance at having their minds changed.

But I think it is still worth doing anyway, and this leads into me actually answering the question: How do you feel when people chime in on issues that don't "belong" to them?
It rather depends on how they do that, and why.
I know a few people who I suspect share certain feminism related articles in the hopes that a woman will see the article and decide that they should show their boobs to this pinnacle of modern man. As a tactic it is at best hypocritical, and at worst sleazy as all hell.

Simply sharing an article doesn't really accomplish a whole lot, it is about the same level as not saying anything at all and should be accompanied by at least a little bit of self reflection and hopefully some discussion. I can see how some would react to just a context-less share of an article with disdain, to me it shows a desire to be rewarded after putting in perhaps the least possible effort into anything, I mean, if you read the article don't you have thoughts on it? If you have no thoughts on it why did you link it? The answer appears to be simply because you wanted other people to know that you read it.
I realize that this conclusion does not apply to many, perhaps even most people's motivations, but one could be forgiven for it coming to mind I think.

You can do it wrong in the other way too though, when a member of a privileged class inserts themselves into a discussion about a class issue that doesn't directly effect them then they run the risk of turning the conversation into what they want to talk about rather than the actual issue, last year my friend Ash had that problem a lot, she would post some feminism related article, and some horrible tool would crawl out of the woodwork to declare "not all men!" and then provide evidence why she is wrong, and furthermore, how the problem discussed hurt men too, or more, and also could you please try to use more non-confrontational language? You don't make allies insulting men.

So chiming in should be generally avoided, these days if I have a personal take on an issue, I take it to this blog rather than shitting up someone's comment thread, especially if I am not sure if discussion was wanted or I don't know much about the issue at hand and the post is not one offering to teach somebody.

There are virtually no topics that I consider  "mine" and by that I mean unique to my own white maleness that would make other persons viewpoints threatening, I can just about understand that other people can be upset by outsiders intrusion and realize they have a valid viewpoint, but in general I think that the right kind of "chiming in" probably does more good than harm.