The thing is, it’s a hyperbole going out of control.
Many women hear stories of assault and rape and whatever, and many then face a male, or even several, who really act in a threatening way, and this confirms it even further, and before you know it, many women start to believe that the average male is a hungry violent rapist who’s after them.
You know what happens when you see a bear in the forest and the bear sees you? Depending on circumstances and your behavior, the bear either walks away or jumps at you.
And when there’s a man?
You can ask for directions and receive them, or be guided to wherever you wanna go, or - in some truly slim chance - actually get attacked in any way (most likely if the person is insane)
Men are people, with absolute majority of them being completely normal and respectful human beings with literally 0 intent to hurt you.
People who raise awareness about rapists, abusers, murderers or whatnot, are doing the good thing
People who are feeding into the culture of fear of men are doing society a disservice (and potentially even radicalize some of the actually bad men).
(Also, women can be rapists and murderers and abusers, especially domestic abusers - it’s not a male prerogative, even if it is somewhat more common among males)
IMO you’re missing the point. It’s less about whenever women are “right” to be afraid of men in general, and more about what their feelings on the matter actually are. If a lot of women would prefer to meet a bear rather than a stranger in a forest, then that’s because of their deep distrust of men. It’s not about whenever men are actually trustworthy and women are overreacting (though a lot of the responses are indicative that they’re not), but rather about what led to this distrust, and also about how unaware of the issue men are in general. Quick googling shows stats like 1 in 5/6 women was or will be a victim of rape, 1 in 3 of them as a child, 81% in general had been sexually harassed or assaulted. It’s not that many women just “hear stories of assault and rape and whatever”, many women are victims, and almost all know a victim personally.
Now, did you know that? Do you know a person who’s rape/SA/SH victim? Are you aware that’s actually a broad problem and not just some abstract culture of fear? Because I think this whole thing with a bear vs man in a forest shows mostly the difference between men and women when it comes to understanding this topic. I see it not as a “are men bad” question, but rather “is sexual violence common”, because you sure might be a righteous fella and most of your friends might be as well, but no women that know you can be sure you’re not the guy who’s keeping those stats up. It doesn’t take a majority of men to cause this fear, but it will take a majority of them to fix it, and understanding that there is a problem is at the very least the first step.
I totally get your point in the “it’s how women feel” part. The question is - how we got here, what goes into it and how to fix it.
I also agree that a small minority of men is enough to cause suffering on a larger share of women, because one man can abuse a lot of women, and I know the issue in general is big.
But what I fail to understand from your message is how the majority of regular, sane men is going to stop that minority. Sure, I’m all for initiatives to expose negative behavior, and I would stop an abuser if I see it. But I can’t bear responsibility for people who still commit something like that, and it’s hurtful and in some ways insulting to have to earn some special kind of trust where women have a pass from the start simply due to me being born male. This latter part is rarely pronounced, but it’s there, and it is a very real part of discomfort and alienation many males face. For some of them - rather ironically - this leads to more anger, anxiety, and ultimately spite. And from there, abusive behaviors grow like mushrooms after rain.
Think of incels, even. There is SO much wrong with them, and their alienation often comes directly from the abusive worldview that they form, but those very behaviors were formed under the pressure of said alienation, initially on other grounds. This alienation has a real price.
In my opinion, the current views on the situation are more reactionary than proactive. People are constantly obsessing over “rape is bad” (like, duh) and start to go further, often attributing it to men in general (and barely ever attributing anything to abusive women, which are more rare, but they do very much exist as well), and not helping the situation.
But barely anyone talks about spotting troubling behaviors and building a culture of therapy and professional help. For, like, everyone.
This ends up unintentionally sending a message: “if you have issues with aggression, you are a bad person”, and, more subtly through this attribution to men, “if you are a man, you are inherently bad”. Some women, particularly vocal radical feminists whose numbers seem to grow, say the latter part out loud.
All that while the message should be: “if you have anger issues, or issues with empathy leading to potentially dangerous behavior, it’s not your fault, but there is help and you are responsible for finding it when needed. You are not a monster, but you should know what to work on”.
This is the framework I’d like to see more in this world instead of comparing if men are scarier than bears.
The question was never about whenever men are scarier than bears, but rather whenever women are more afraid to be at mercy of man or a bear. Admitting that women have valid reasons to be afraid of men doesn’t equate to vilifying all men, however (some) men actively denying that they do and acting like their fears are baseless is quite valid reason to assume that those men are either clueless or the root of the problem.
I fail to see the misandry you describe as something common. No one is asking you to take responsibility for the actions of rapists, nor is anyone sane pretending that all men are violent. I do however see constant complaining about potential of this misandry becoming a reality and I think that’s a reactionary view, which leads to push back against women. Sure, there obviously are some women that do act like all men are violent rapists, because for every extreme opinion you’re going to find an extreme example somewhere on twitter. Dealing with women on daily basis I have yet to find one that actually acts that way. And sure, it could be that I live in a sheltered bubble and my anecdotal experience isn’t worth shit, but I do personally think that this view that “all men are bad” comes from the men misunderstanding of the issue of “all women are in danger because of some men”. I argue that the stats I mentioned in previous comment substantiate my opinion about the danger being there.
No one is asking you to bear responsibility for anything you didn’t do, but you can’t seriously blame women for being wary of strangers. Surely you can see how women would also prefer not to need to be afraid? Women aren’t much danger to you, so they don’t need to earn your trust as much, but the opposite simply isn’t true. And if you feel someone is dangerous (as in, has potential to cause you harm), it’s absolutely fine for you to require them to earn your trust, regardless of their gender.
As to what can be done by the majority, is to be informed and aware that the problem exists, and when silly question like “men or bear in forest” pops up, not to push back against women who are afraid of men and treat it like misandry.
Topic of men mental health is separate from this issue (imo), and sure, it’s valid and should be discussed broadly. I don’t believe that blaming women and their well founded fears for those issues is correct approach though. I don’t see anything inherently bad with needing to earn trust of someone, and I think that expectation that you shouldn’t need to do that is the problem. You might know you wont do anything crazy, but how should they? And it’s not like you need to sacrifice your firstborn to gain trust, just act like normal human being and don’t take it for granted.
Topic of anger issues is completely unrelated to women, unless we’re talking about them being potential victims there, but that’s not the point you’re touching on. In my opinion those issues stem partially from the fact that society glorified dominating men for a longest time, and this image also included taking whatever you want by force. Many people, mostly men but also some women, still see those as golden standards of masculinity. Being aggressive and overbearing is still presented as manly, especially on the right side of the political spectrum. Trying to deal with anger issues is thus seen as infantile and embarrassing. That’s obviously much more convoluted than just that, but if anything, it’s more of a source of a problem rather than the effect of women not trusting men.
Sure, women do have reasons to be afraid. That’s not what I’m arguing about.
I’m arguing against one-sided view of the issue and the vilifying and hostility that appears not necessarily in the posts themselves, but in the reactions coming from them, the views I see in the field, etc. etc.
Barely ever do I see calls for mutual understanding, questions on the motivations of male perpetrators and questions on how regular men see those people. Almost never do I see the matter of female abusers coming up outside of reactions to posts like this one.
At the same time, I see a lot of hate, misunderstanding, and generalization, not only by some radicals somewhere on the Internet, but IRL, too, often from women I wouldn’t expect to hold that rhetoric, when I hear more of them. This might be my personal experience same way as opposite is yours, and I’d love to see more data on the issue. Or we may have different sensitivity levels.
When it comes to trust, the issue is men and women are on different starting points, which makes it harder to form a friendly connection between genders, which might be crucial for communication and understanding, and coming up with solutions that benefit everyone. As such, one of the crucial pillars of ending this anxiety and sometimes hostility is harder to build.
As per women not being seen as danger, this is another side to this hyperfocus. I know a lot of examples of women being abusive partners or being creepy to strangers, males and females. I myself have been in abusive relationships with a woman. And I’ve seen some stats that suggest this can be much more prevalent than we normally think, in large part due to stigma related to males coming out as victims.
That’s not to argue women are more or equally dangerous - while the extent is hard to calculate, I don’t expect it to be true. But women are not “safe”, and some of them exploit this perception of safety to benefit their abusive behaviors, and we should keep that in mind.
What I wonder is whether there could be better easily distinguishable predictors of abusive behavior than gender. What are the traits that abusive men and women have in common, but the rest generally doesn’t?
Now, I don’t expect to come up with a litmus test here, and we should always build trust on case-by-case basis. But it seems to me like anger issues and lack of empathy are much better predictors of violent behavior than gender, and we should be on the lookout for those first. That’s why I referenced those.
Another great predictor, as you rightfully mentioned, can be someone’s dedication to traditional gender roles, as they mix badly with equality and respect. That’s not to say traditionalists are all abusers again, but there is a higher chance of someone mistaking abuse for some sort of wanted and expected assertive dominance. When your worldview dictates that males got weak and women expect males to be more dominant when they don’t, this can cause issues.
I’ve been trying to set my head in between these two opinions, the one being “as a man I’m saddened and unhappy to be included in the category where women feel safer with a bear than with me unjustly” and the other being “women have it so bad that this is the reality for them”.
In such a case I feel like we have a couple of issues to resolve. The first one being the fact that sexual assault of different levels (not everything is rape or not, there’s other ways to suffer it) is definitely a real issue that most women if not all suffer one way or another. The other issue is the fear of all men in consequence of it. This kind of bear/man discussion does two things in my opinion, bring the topic up to a point where it is talked about more openly (which is good) and also perpetuate the fear by generating this constant feel that unknown men equal danger (obviously bad, not only for men, but also removing any possibility of trust from women, one that might be lucky to not have had any sexual assault experience will be afraid of it by default).
This is a problem that we need to resolve together, both men and women of all kinds, the men saying “but I’m not worse than a bear, I would help you get out of the forest without expecting anything in return or attacking you”, would need to bring any sexual assault to attention if they notice it, discourage and negate other men (friends or whatever) from wrong behaviors and help women that would need it. Also women should encourage the kind of men that would do that kind of thing, should help bring the gap of trust closer by thanking the men they know and feel safe with. Making a discourse of them against us would only create a bigger division and more sexism and I feel this kind of discourse gets lost when generalizations like this one happen with the bear and the man, despite the fact that it brings up such important issues as the unsafeness women feel with unknown men.
This is not meant to put down the importance of how women feel unsafe, it is by far more important to tackle the sexual assault topics than it is to tackle the fact that I’m considered worse than a bear by women that don’t know me. And thinking of that is how I ended up siding more with the person that did the comparison, now, how could we do it in a better way, one that won’t automatically move the conversation to “but not all men are bad”?
Edit: I want to point out that I don’t mean now women should thank men for making them feel safe, that’s like the minimum any person should do with others around, but when it comes to this kind of discussion, acknowledging that there are men trying to do good and not all would jump at the chance of raping someone is a good thing to bring up to avoid losing the importance of the topic by going sideways and off topic.
Safety of victims (most commonly women) and tackling the assault behaviors in the moment has the highest priority, but blanket statements about men and general hostility doesn’t help the situation long-term.
Any sustainable solution requires interaction, mutual understanding, and support.
I agree with you on most points, except for that part where you put yourself in the place of “generic strange man” in a forest. It’s not a fear of someone specific, but rather of a stranger with unknown intentions in a place in which the woman is not protected by any authorities. I feel like that last part is being intentionally omitted in the “male side” of the discourse, since other people being around change the dynamic dramatically. I’m pretty sure most women would prefer to meet a man on a busy street than a bear, since bear wouldn’t care about social subtleties like not mauling people to death while people watch. I also find idea of woman not being able to find their way out of the forest on their own, an so random stranger met in woods being a boon to them kind of silly. I know you were making a hypothetical situation there, and sure, if woman was lost in the woods for past 6 months, was hungry, injured and desperate, then I believe she would be more receptive to meeting a person in a woods, but that’s adding more and more conditions to the situation, changing it from “chance meeting” to “struggle to survive”.
I also think that we should recognize that women are afraid of meeting a man in a forest because that man could be a rapist/murderer in a middle of nowhere, that hypothetical collapses at the moment we assign specific person to the unknown face. I think people struggle with this question because they put themselves in the boots of the “random stranger” and feel bad for being feared, despite them being kind and loving. It’s not about meeting “you” specifically. You’re not the hated “man in a woods”. At most you’re a stranger in a bar that women feel a bit awkward and unsure about at the start. Most women will feel completely fine meeting their dad or brother in a forest.
Most people literally will trust you if you’re helpful, open and outgoing, women included. No one owes you their trust even if you did your best, regardless of gender, though. And even once they somewhat trust you, I still don’t think it’s a great idea to give/accept open drinks and otherwise expose yourself to potential danger, unless that trust is really solid. I don’t think it takes much to accommodate that kind of wariness nor that it’s somehow insulting or degrading to men. Being aware that women are - or feel like they are, whichever you prefer - exposed to more danger than men, just in general acting in a ways that wouldn’t be taken as suspicious and not taking it as an insult if they don’t entirely trust you is enough to fit in and not feel like you’re being ostracized as a man.
It’s possible that many of those rapists are repeat offenders, and not just every dude is a rapist, fwiw.
Also fwiw, I’ve never raped a woman but I have been forced/coerced into sex by a few. Of course, I usually don’t tell people because literally nobody cares and they just make fun of you (I’m over it anyway, now it just annoys me that me, technically a victim of rape, gets treated as a rapist myself because I happen to have been born with a penis, that I’m a little fucking sick of considering “nope, I’m on the same side they are.”
Btw, if I said women are trash and I’d feel safer with a bear because of my experiences I’d be called an incel, that’s an interesting note I think.
If you said that all women are trash, then regardless of what you would feel safer with, you’d still be called (deservingly) an incel. Calling all men trash is also an insane take, but I think you’re shadowboxing here. All/most/significant number of men being trash is absolutely not a general consensus on the matter. All women needing to be wary of all men because of actions of some men is, however. I don’t know what do you think “being treated as a rapist” looks like, but I’m pretty sure you’re not complaining about going to jail for being a man, but rather women not being overly friendly with you by default.
I am sorry for the experiences you had with abusive women, and I agree the issue of sexual violence against men is often swept under the rug because of comparison with sexual violence against women simply because of the prevalence of later being much larger. Wish it wasn’t.
“And yet it is perfectly acceptable for women to call men trash based on their experiences,” is pretty much the interesting part of that note. It’s entirely possible that that generalized rhetoric is actually more harmful than helpful at the end of the day and more specificity is needed when discussing nuanced issues in a public forum.
“Being treated as a rapist” in this case means that they assume immediately that I’m dangerous simply because I have a penis. If I immediately assume anything based on possession of a vagina that makes me the bad guy (rightfully,) but I can be treated as a monster simply on the same principle and it’s fine. You have to see how that’ll wear on you after about 20yr, you end up getting a little tired of it especially when you know you’ve done nothing wrong.
Yes yes, “men get raped but fuck them women are more important” I’ve heard it a million times. It’s people like you that keep men from speaking out, like I said literally nobody cares, but thanks for minimizing my experiences in a nice way at least.
Well, I didn’t say it was less important but that it was less discussed, and that it’s regrettable. You’re the one pulling the “women are more important” from your ass.
“And yet it is perfectly acceptable for women to call men trash based on their experiences” I literally have no idea where you took that from. I wrote that it’s insane to call all men trash and that it’s not a general consensus.
Everyone is dangerous. Anyone can have a weapon or other means to cause harm. You having a penis being a cause of concern is only viable as long as you have intent to maliciously use it. If you think people are afraid of you specifically, and specifically because you, ArcaneSlime, have a penis, then I think you need to rethink the way you approach people. No one is treating you as a monster and treating you as one because you’re a man is not fine. And if someone is attacking you on that basis then I’m not extending my argument to them, that’s simply moronic, but also not the way broader society works, as far as I’m aware.
Eh idk that last paragraph came off to me as if “you’re really sorry buuuut since it happens more often to women it’s cool.” If you didn’t mean it like that I apologize, I am kinda used to it after all.
You say it’s insane, yet people constantly do the insane and receive praise for it. You may not be one of them and well that’s great, but quit pretending it isn’t leagues more socially acceptable than the opposite, usually complete with excuses as to why the double standard is good actually.
Again with minimizing my experiences, eh? “Nuh uh that isn’t happening to you and if it is it’s your fault.” Cool, tbh I don’t think we have much more to discuss here, have a nice day.
Many women experience sexual assault first hand, it’s not a small percentage.
According to RAINN, 1 in 6 American women have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime. Additionally, 1 in 3 women and about 1 in 9 men experienced sexual harassment in a public place.
Young women are especially at risk, with 82% of all juvenile victims being female, and 90% of adult rape victims being female. Females ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault. Women ages 18-24 who are college students are 3 times more likely than women in general to experience sexual violence.
Estimates of sexual assault vary based on definitions and methodology, but generally find that somewhere between 19–27% of college women and 6–8% of college men are sexually assaulted during their time in college.
Those numbers are disgusting. Take a highschool class of 30 15 girls there is a good chance 2 of them have been sexually assaulted or will be.
In 100 person college lecture there is a good chance that 13 women in the class have been/or will be sexually assaulted.
I guarantee a female relative of yours has been sexually assaulted, more than likely by a male relative or family friend.
We don’t need to hear the stories, unfortunately. Almost all of us have a SA story in the least. Most of it starts right around puberty. If you take the reaction to this thought experiment into consideration, you can imagine why many don’t share these things with their male relatives and friends openly.
Bears usually don’t attack unless they are startled or defend their cubs. Which is why you wear bells on hiking trails where bear encounters are likely, it makes them fuck off back into the woods. They don’t want to meet you, you’re too dangerous to be prey and a bear has to be seriously emaciated to even consider hunting you. Unless it’s a polar bear, those absolutely regard you as prey and they will hunt, kill and eat you (on the pro side you won’t see them coming until you as good as dead, they are excellent stalkers).
It’s so charming how women say “I am afraid” and the first thing men do is say “you’re delusional.”
Discounting women’s feelings is one of the reasons we are afraid. We have to daily interact with people who treat us as less than fully human, even when they aren’t raping us. Your daily behavior makes you more unpredictable than a bear.
At least with a bear, you know where you stand. And you won’t be actively hunted.
I’m not addressing the fear itself. I address the culture of fear, the fearmongering, and an attempt to overgeneralize.
This goes further than a mutual exchange of fears and goes into the territory of a cultural phenomenon, a hostile one.
The fear is real, and I understand how it feels due to getting a childhood trauma myself. I’ve been there.
But we should focus on the actual solutions to the very issues you’re afraid of, not on getting hostile to each other.
My daily behavior around women (and men, too) builds on mutual trust and respect, I admire and deeply respect many women in my life, and I never treat anyone as someone “less than a human”. Same is true for most males, for all I know.
It is dangerous and counterproductive to just assume all males have bad intentions. We don’t.
No one assumes all men have bad intentions. Dramatic, much?
Why is it so hard for men to understand that being cautious around all men is not the same thing as thinking all men are dangerous? It’s not that subtle of a difference.
Why is it so hard to understand that being cautious is the very opposite of “I’d pick a bear”? You have to assume all men, or rather a very large percentage (more than a chance of a wild grizzly mauling you) have bad intentions and are willing to act on them, but they only need an opportunity (i.e. be in a dark forest). The choice outlined here seems to be “would you face a murderer and a rapist or a wild animal” instead of “a man you don’t know or a wild animal”. That’s the problem “men” see with this hypothetical - there is a difference between validating feelings and outright misandry.
There really is quite some amount of women that assumes exactly that, and what troubles me is that their amount appears to be growing, cementing a large cultural divide and growing hostility. Which, in turn, doesn’t make men safer either.
I understand the caution, though, even though it saddens me as it means perfectly reasonable men often have harder time communicating with women on the same level other women do.
Communication is key, and this key is more often than before thrown away.
As a (gay) dude, here’s the piece of the math that’s missing: expected outcome. If a woman (generally, there are exceptions) decides they want to harm a man, that involves planning, a taser, drugs, etc. It can be done, but it’s gonna take effort to not end up on the wrong side of this felony. If a man wants to harm a woman, that often simply involves a dark alley and a drop of patience. Note: this is not to say there aren’t women than can’t harm men in the same manner, simply that they are less common than the opposite case.
So yeah, being cognizant of one’s vulnerabilities is not a bad thing, and when your biological sex predisposes you to certain vulnerabilities (size, musculature, presence of testicles), it isn’t wrong to acknowledge and mitigate them. And when people tell you that they take certain steps to prevent being taken advantage of, it shows a distinct lack of empathy to not realize that maybe they have a point.
I see where you’re going with that, and I agree to some extent. It might be scary to be surrounded by people who can force you into anything without all that much effort, that can just stronghand you.
I always wondered how average women navigate intimate relationships with men in that regard. Must involve a lot of trust.
But at the same time, there are more dimensions to abuse than pure physical assault. Psychological violence is a thing, domestic violence is very real and allows for all sorts of preparations, etc. It is possible to trap a male into a cycle of horror of psychological and physical abuse, it’s just less likely to successfully assault random man on the street.
And most of violence is done by males too through these channels, not just attacking a woman in the forest.
As per steps and fears, I just fail to see how propagating fear helps to combat the issue. We should address abuse, its reasons, make the cultural shift that would help prevent it, not compare males to bears and be done with it.
Bringing up psychological/domestic violence is a red herring, we’re talking about dealing with strangers for the moment. Lessons here can be applied there, but don’t get off the plot.
People’s fears need to be heard. You talk about communication, but you aren’t listening. You’re dismissing women’s real fears about being raped (1 in 6) because your feelings are hurt that they would rather take their chances with a dangerous wild animal than a random man. So now, you’re subverting a very good conversation to assuage your own ego that feels like it’s being attacked (should probably look into that closer…) instead of listening to them and hearing that they are scared. It’s not “might be scary”. It’s “any day, for no reason, I may be raped”.
When you dismiss them because you don’t like the language, it only makes the language more extreme because they aren’t being listened to. Shut the fuck up and listen. When there’s actually a conversation happening, we can get where we all want to go. But that start with putting your feelings aside and listening. Because between “my feelings are hurt you compared me to a wild animal” and “society at large won’t address how widespread rape is”, gotta say that the hurt fee-fees come in a distant second.
We can have a conversation about being polite to each other when politeness doesn’t get people raped.
This was never supposed to be a red herring - rather an expansion of the topic of violence and abuse. But we can always return to a more narrow discussion.
I listen a lot to those fears. This is far from the only thread in the Universe where it is being discussed, and I never hijack serious topics on the matter, or, God forbid, someone telling their story. In there, I’m a compassionate listener. Right now, we’re discussing it under a meme, which sets a different standard.
The reason I’m bringing this up is not just because I feel hurt by such attitude and I’m not alone in this (although this needs to be addressed as well, because to some people it actually causes a lot of mental damage; just shouldn’t be number 1 priority), but rather because, as I see it, such attitudes end up exacerbating the issue of male abusers.
As you just said, not being listened to makes people radicalized. And yet, when I bring the very shushed topic up from the swamp of stigma and neglect, I’m immediately told to “shut the fuck up” by the very person that teaches me to listen.
Alienation and gender stereotypes, the constant depiction of males as animals go a long way into forming mindsets that end up being hostile to women. And when acts of such hostility inevitably happen, the solution on everyone’s lips is “let’s double down on that strategy, it sure should work”.
Society cannot adequately address the very issues you bring up without there being a conversation. And shushing any voices that disagree with the methods you suggest isn’t called “conversation”. The solution is multifaceted and cannot be solved by yelling at each other. Unfortunately, the modern culture has formed a common expectation that there is plenty of trolls and malicious actors that are waiting to hijack the conversation, muddy the waters, and keep doing their bad things, which divided people and made a lot of conversations impossible as everyone seems to expect that from their opponent. Here, I must assure you, I am very genuine in my take.
Now, I’m not saying mutual understanding will lead us to the world of ponies and rainbows, but it sure as hell will help better prevent terrible outcomes. We need communication, and what I’m trying to establish is exactly that - because where else? It’s not that there’s plenty of avenues.
This is a well reasoned argument. I apologize for being over inflammatory and ill effective at making my point.
You’re right, a conversation can’t happen with people being shushed. The issue is that when these red herrings come flying out, it has the same effect. When we expand the topic, the core thread gets lost in the noise and the people that are harmed notice that everyone has run off with their herring and we’ve lost the plot again. And then extreme language pops out (such as my telling you to shut up and listen) because the important part was drowned out by perfectly valid and tangential things.
Yeah, it sucks that men are compared to animals (because women never have been, but I digress). But I personally think that we can suffer an unfavorable comparison while we deal with a much larger issue. We can recognize that people do see us that way and that, instead of getting hurt over it, we can listen to them, see what they are saying, and demand better from ourselves and other men so that the bad comparison goes away naturally instead of trying to force it down. Telling women that your feelings are hurt by their words tells them that you stopped listening to them.
And yeah, I recognize that there’s a thread of “suck it up” in here that also isn’t good and should be addressed as a society. But I think it can wait till after we’ve dealt with the rape.
It’s alright - I’m happy we’re on the same page again :)
If I understand your concept right, it goes as following: by fighting alongside women, we can not only help them tackle the issues they face, but also change their perception of men, winning feminists’ loyalty in the fight for equality, all while aiding to make a cultural shift that makes the problem go away. And then we can have a dialogue.
I don’t expect this to work so perfectly, however. My expectation is that abusive behavior will not get away until we improve communication, including communication with those who are at highest risk of offending; it is a vital part of fighting the very issue. We should understand the drivers of such behavior, refer to firsthand exprience, let people be heard instead of radicalized, and see what we can do to help them avoid falling for traps that lead them to abuse.
In a general picture, of course, we can and should remain attentive to the issues raised by women, but we should also promote the culture of mutual attention, as many problems around gender can only be solved on both sides. Feminists can benefit greatly from better understanding of the male side of the story, and masculists should listen closely to women as well. By interacting with the other side, we can better understand the core issues that lay the foundation of what’s happening.
Unfortunately, many people in the feminist movement do not see such communication as something necessary, and some even claim it’s harmful, either as a distraction or as an active intervention of men to hijack the conversation (in fairness, such attempts are also made, so we need to derive the honest positions and uncover lies and traps). Some masculists (and I mean actual masculists, not traditionalists) answer to that with return hostility, claiming that women rarely reciprocate by listening to men, even though in reality I’ve seen many women actually being sympathetic to the masculism movement. Both, I think, fail to acknowledge they play a tug of war instead of acting together on the issue that’s much more two-sided than they anticipate.
Behind every person we see as evil, bad, abusive, is a complicated story of misunderstanding, trauma, toxic upbringing. No one’s evil for the sake of it, everyone thinks they’re righteous. It’s the idea of good, the understanding of the intricacies of the world around that differs. And we can’t address this by blanket and deaf measures.
Bad actors capitalizing on real things is also a red herring. 1 in 6 women get raped and you’re gonna let a few people who use social engineering in awful ways excuse that?
You know what a man has to do to get his way in public? Wait till there aren’t many people around, cover her mouth and move her out of public.
You know what he has to do in private? Same thing with fewer steps.
None of these things are good, but we’re only talking about one of them at the moment. So again, no one is saying there aren’t other evils, but you’re prioritizing your own feelings over their real rapes by diverting this conversation.
but you’re prioritizing your own feelings over their real rapes by diverting this conversation
There’s a reason why multiple replies can be given to the same comment on this platform. It’s because this way, unlike talking, we can actually have multiple threads of conversations at the same time.
I am not diverting any conversation, just creating another one.
1 in 6 women get raped and you’re gonna let a few people who use social engineering in awful ways excuse that
You are attempting to create a feelings based response using this sentence.
You know what I have to do, before any of the other things mentioned, to take advantage of any such opportunity? ::
Be alert to notice such an opportunity
Somehow convince myself that the outcome of each and every step is desirable
A person who would willingly rape someone, won’t have the 2nd barrier. Similarly, a person who would willingly use the social power given to women (specifically to prevent rape), won’t have the same, 2nd barrier.
Those who would, won’t find find themselves doing so even given the easiest of opportunities.
The above post and the server it is on, is much more open ended and doesn’t mandate a certain specific type of violence. You seem to be having a problem with anyone responding to you with any other dimension of, what is essentially, a bandit - victim interaction.
Also, how many of those “1 in 6 women” managed to get away with lying?
I’m not claiming rape to not be a problem (as you might want to state), but statistics are not going to help win against it either. Specially considering how hard it is to determine the truth of it.
I’m focusing on a specific thing because the thought experiment that brought this whole thing up was about that specific thing. Creating a new conversation is diverting the larger conversation because you’re ignoring the things you don’t like (in before you accuse me of the same).
You are attempting to create a feelings based response using this sentence.
No, I’m implying that the real rapes of 1 in 6 women are more important than the impossible to quantify number of bad actors manipulating people for nefarious ends. Which also goes to your ‘women are lying’ point.
Also, how many of those “1 in 6 women” managed to get away with lying?
I’m not claiming rape to not be a problem (as you might want to state)
You are implicitly doing so by saying this in the first place. The issue of bad actors of all kinds (both liars and rapists) need addressed, but the conversation that the thought experiment has dredged up is focused on one of them. We can talk about those other things when they are a widespread societal problem that a significant proportion of the population decides to ignore because they don’t like the way the ignored are discussing it.
Let’s not try to insult every man who’d like to stand up for himself and fellows.
This doesn’t improve the quality of the conversation, nor does it form a constructive criticism; instead, it attempts to silence people you don’t like.
I’m no snowflake, not an incel, either. But I understand this approach is bad and harmful on a systemic level, and you can’t cover it with a joke anymore.
pfft lmao the fact that he replied with literally just a link to google shows how seriously these snowflakes take their own nonsense about “systemic misandry”
This meme isn’t about you (hopefully). Not everything is about you or your fellows. If this meme triggers you, there’s something seriously wrong with you. I hope you are just a snowflake, because the alternative is a lot worse.
Contributing to a conversation doesn’t make someone a snowflake. I can talk about rape and never have been raped. By your logic, you’re also a snowflake. Besides, labeling someone with a word with negative connotation isn’t a productive way to have a conversation. Its just insulting them. You can still have a conversation with ad homonyms. I personally haven’t seen it going anywhere, though.
The thing is, it’s a hyperbole going out of control.
Many women hear stories of assault and rape and whatever, and many then face a male, or even several, who really act in a threatening way, and this confirms it even further, and before you know it, many women start to believe that the average male is a hungry violent rapist who’s after them.
You know what happens when you see a bear in the forest and the bear sees you? Depending on circumstances and your behavior, the bear either walks away or jumps at you.
And when there’s a man?
You can ask for directions and receive them, or be guided to wherever you wanna go, or - in some truly slim chance - actually get attacked in any way (most likely if the person is insane)
Men are people, with absolute majority of them being completely normal and respectful human beings with literally 0 intent to hurt you.
People who raise awareness about rapists, abusers, murderers or whatnot, are doing the good thing
People who are feeding into the culture of fear of men are doing society a disservice (and potentially even radicalize some of the actually bad men).
(Also, women can be rapists and murderers and abusers, especially domestic abusers - it’s not a male prerogative, even if it is somewhat more common among males)
At least the bear won’t nag me to death /s
IMO you’re missing the point. It’s less about whenever women are “right” to be afraid of men in general, and more about what their feelings on the matter actually are. If a lot of women would prefer to meet a bear rather than a stranger in a forest, then that’s because of their deep distrust of men. It’s not about whenever men are actually trustworthy and women are overreacting (though a lot of the responses are indicative that they’re not), but rather about what led to this distrust, and also about how unaware of the issue men are in general. Quick googling shows stats like 1 in 5/6 women was or will be a victim of rape, 1 in 3 of them as a child, 81% in general had been sexually harassed or assaulted. It’s not that many women just “hear stories of assault and rape and whatever”, many women are victims, and almost all know a victim personally.
Now, did you know that? Do you know a person who’s rape/SA/SH victim? Are you aware that’s actually a broad problem and not just some abstract culture of fear? Because I think this whole thing with a bear vs man in a forest shows mostly the difference between men and women when it comes to understanding this topic. I see it not as a “are men bad” question, but rather “is sexual violence common”, because you sure might be a righteous fella and most of your friends might be as well, but no women that know you can be sure you’re not the guy who’s keeping those stats up. It doesn’t take a majority of men to cause this fear, but it will take a majority of them to fix it, and understanding that there is a problem is at the very least the first step.
I totally get your point in the “it’s how women feel” part. The question is - how we got here, what goes into it and how to fix it.
I also agree that a small minority of men is enough to cause suffering on a larger share of women, because one man can abuse a lot of women, and I know the issue in general is big.
But what I fail to understand from your message is how the majority of regular, sane men is going to stop that minority. Sure, I’m all for initiatives to expose negative behavior, and I would stop an abuser if I see it. But I can’t bear responsibility for people who still commit something like that, and it’s hurtful and in some ways insulting to have to earn some special kind of trust where women have a pass from the start simply due to me being born male. This latter part is rarely pronounced, but it’s there, and it is a very real part of discomfort and alienation many males face. For some of them - rather ironically - this leads to more anger, anxiety, and ultimately spite. And from there, abusive behaviors grow like mushrooms after rain.
Think of incels, even. There is SO much wrong with them, and their alienation often comes directly from the abusive worldview that they form, but those very behaviors were formed under the pressure of said alienation, initially on other grounds. This alienation has a real price.
In my opinion, the current views on the situation are more reactionary than proactive. People are constantly obsessing over “rape is bad” (like, duh) and start to go further, often attributing it to men in general (and barely ever attributing anything to abusive women, which are more rare, but they do very much exist as well), and not helping the situation.
But barely anyone talks about spotting troubling behaviors and building a culture of therapy and professional help. For, like, everyone.
This ends up unintentionally sending a message: “if you have issues with aggression, you are a bad person”, and, more subtly through this attribution to men, “if you are a man, you are inherently bad”. Some women, particularly vocal radical feminists whose numbers seem to grow, say the latter part out loud.
All that while the message should be: “if you have anger issues, or issues with empathy leading to potentially dangerous behavior, it’s not your fault, but there is help and you are responsible for finding it when needed. You are not a monster, but you should know what to work on”.
This is the framework I’d like to see more in this world instead of comparing if men are scarier than bears.
The question was never about whenever men are scarier than bears, but rather whenever women are more afraid to be at mercy of man or a bear. Admitting that women have valid reasons to be afraid of men doesn’t equate to vilifying all men, however (some) men actively denying that they do and acting like their fears are baseless is quite valid reason to assume that those men are either clueless or the root of the problem.
I fail to see the misandry you describe as something common. No one is asking you to take responsibility for the actions of rapists, nor is anyone sane pretending that all men are violent. I do however see constant complaining about potential of this misandry becoming a reality and I think that’s a reactionary view, which leads to push back against women. Sure, there obviously are some women that do act like all men are violent rapists, because for every extreme opinion you’re going to find an extreme example somewhere on twitter. Dealing with women on daily basis I have yet to find one that actually acts that way. And sure, it could be that I live in a sheltered bubble and my anecdotal experience isn’t worth shit, but I do personally think that this view that “all men are bad” comes from the men misunderstanding of the issue of “all women are in danger because of some men”. I argue that the stats I mentioned in previous comment substantiate my opinion about the danger being there.
No one is asking you to bear responsibility for anything you didn’t do, but you can’t seriously blame women for being wary of strangers. Surely you can see how women would also prefer not to need to be afraid? Women aren’t much danger to you, so they don’t need to earn your trust as much, but the opposite simply isn’t true. And if you feel someone is dangerous (as in, has potential to cause you harm), it’s absolutely fine for you to require them to earn your trust, regardless of their gender.
As to what can be done by the majority, is to be informed and aware that the problem exists, and when silly question like “men or bear in forest” pops up, not to push back against women who are afraid of men and treat it like misandry.
Topic of men mental health is separate from this issue (imo), and sure, it’s valid and should be discussed broadly. I don’t believe that blaming women and their well founded fears for those issues is correct approach though. I don’t see anything inherently bad with needing to earn trust of someone, and I think that expectation that you shouldn’t need to do that is the problem. You might know you wont do anything crazy, but how should they? And it’s not like you need to sacrifice your firstborn to gain trust, just act like normal human being and don’t take it for granted.
Topic of anger issues is completely unrelated to women, unless we’re talking about them being potential victims there, but that’s not the point you’re touching on. In my opinion those issues stem partially from the fact that society glorified dominating men for a longest time, and this image also included taking whatever you want by force. Many people, mostly men but also some women, still see those as golden standards of masculinity. Being aggressive and overbearing is still presented as manly, especially on the right side of the political spectrum. Trying to deal with anger issues is thus seen as infantile and embarrassing. That’s obviously much more convoluted than just that, but if anything, it’s more of a source of a problem rather than the effect of women not trusting men.
Sure, women do have reasons to be afraid. That’s not what I’m arguing about.
I’m arguing against one-sided view of the issue and the vilifying and hostility that appears not necessarily in the posts themselves, but in the reactions coming from them, the views I see in the field, etc. etc.
Barely ever do I see calls for mutual understanding, questions on the motivations of male perpetrators and questions on how regular men see those people. Almost never do I see the matter of female abusers coming up outside of reactions to posts like this one.
At the same time, I see a lot of hate, misunderstanding, and generalization, not only by some radicals somewhere on the Internet, but IRL, too, often from women I wouldn’t expect to hold that rhetoric, when I hear more of them. This might be my personal experience same way as opposite is yours, and I’d love to see more data on the issue. Or we may have different sensitivity levels.
When it comes to trust, the issue is men and women are on different starting points, which makes it harder to form a friendly connection between genders, which might be crucial for communication and understanding, and coming up with solutions that benefit everyone. As such, one of the crucial pillars of ending this anxiety and sometimes hostility is harder to build.
As per women not being seen as danger, this is another side to this hyperfocus. I know a lot of examples of women being abusive partners or being creepy to strangers, males and females. I myself have been in abusive relationships with a woman. And I’ve seen some stats that suggest this can be much more prevalent than we normally think, in large part due to stigma related to males coming out as victims.
That’s not to argue women are more or equally dangerous - while the extent is hard to calculate, I don’t expect it to be true. But women are not “safe”, and some of them exploit this perception of safety to benefit their abusive behaviors, and we should keep that in mind.
What I wonder is whether there could be better easily distinguishable predictors of abusive behavior than gender. What are the traits that abusive men and women have in common, but the rest generally doesn’t?
Now, I don’t expect to come up with a litmus test here, and we should always build trust on case-by-case basis. But it seems to me like anger issues and lack of empathy are much better predictors of violent behavior than gender, and we should be on the lookout for those first. That’s why I referenced those.
Another great predictor, as you rightfully mentioned, can be someone’s dedication to traditional gender roles, as they mix badly with equality and respect. That’s not to say traditionalists are all abusers again, but there is a higher chance of someone mistaking abuse for some sort of wanted and expected assertive dominance. When your worldview dictates that males got weak and women expect males to be more dominant when they don’t, this can cause issues.
What are you talking about, women say that all the time.
I’ve been trying to set my head in between these two opinions, the one being “as a man I’m saddened and unhappy to be included in the category where women feel safer with a bear than with me unjustly” and the other being “women have it so bad that this is the reality for them”.
In such a case I feel like we have a couple of issues to resolve. The first one being the fact that sexual assault of different levels (not everything is rape or not, there’s other ways to suffer it) is definitely a real issue that most women if not all suffer one way or another. The other issue is the fear of all men in consequence of it. This kind of bear/man discussion does two things in my opinion, bring the topic up to a point where it is talked about more openly (which is good) and also perpetuate the fear by generating this constant feel that unknown men equal danger (obviously bad, not only for men, but also removing any possibility of trust from women, one that might be lucky to not have had any sexual assault experience will be afraid of it by default).
This is a problem that we need to resolve together, both men and women of all kinds, the men saying “but I’m not worse than a bear, I would help you get out of the forest without expecting anything in return or attacking you”, would need to bring any sexual assault to attention if they notice it, discourage and negate other men (friends or whatever) from wrong behaviors and help women that would need it. Also women should encourage the kind of men that would do that kind of thing, should help bring the gap of trust closer by thanking the men they know and feel safe with. Making a discourse of them against us would only create a bigger division and more sexism and I feel this kind of discourse gets lost when generalizations like this one happen with the bear and the man, despite the fact that it brings up such important issues as the unsafeness women feel with unknown men.
This is not meant to put down the importance of how women feel unsafe, it is by far more important to tackle the sexual assault topics than it is to tackle the fact that I’m considered worse than a bear by women that don’t know me. And thinking of that is how I ended up siding more with the person that did the comparison, now, how could we do it in a better way, one that won’t automatically move the conversation to “but not all men are bad”?
Edit: I want to point out that I don’t mean now women should thank men for making them feel safe, that’s like the minimum any person should do with others around, but when it comes to this kind of discussion, acknowledging that there are men trying to do good and not all would jump at the chance of raping someone is a good thing to bring up to avoid losing the importance of the topic by going sideways and off topic.
On my side, I agree with what you come up with.
Thanks for shaping it well!
Safety of victims (most commonly women) and tackling the assault behaviors in the moment has the highest priority, but blanket statements about men and general hostility doesn’t help the situation long-term.
Any sustainable solution requires interaction, mutual understanding, and support.
I agree with you on most points, except for that part where you put yourself in the place of “generic strange man” in a forest. It’s not a fear of someone specific, but rather of a stranger with unknown intentions in a place in which the woman is not protected by any authorities. I feel like that last part is being intentionally omitted in the “male side” of the discourse, since other people being around change the dynamic dramatically. I’m pretty sure most women would prefer to meet a man on a busy street than a bear, since bear wouldn’t care about social subtleties like not mauling people to death while people watch. I also find idea of woman not being able to find their way out of the forest on their own, an so random stranger met in woods being a boon to them kind of silly. I know you were making a hypothetical situation there, and sure, if woman was lost in the woods for past 6 months, was hungry, injured and desperate, then I believe she would be more receptive to meeting a person in a woods, but that’s adding more and more conditions to the situation, changing it from “chance meeting” to “struggle to survive”.
I also think that we should recognize that women are afraid of meeting a man in a forest because that man could be a rapist/murderer in a middle of nowhere, that hypothetical collapses at the moment we assign specific person to the unknown face. I think people struggle with this question because they put themselves in the boots of the “random stranger” and feel bad for being feared, despite them being kind and loving. It’s not about meeting “you” specifically. You’re not the hated “man in a woods”. At most you’re a stranger in a bar that women feel a bit awkward and unsure about at the start. Most women will feel completely fine meeting their dad or brother in a forest.
Most people literally will trust you if you’re helpful, open and outgoing, women included. No one owes you their trust even if you did your best, regardless of gender, though. And even once they somewhat trust you, I still don’t think it’s a great idea to give/accept open drinks and otherwise expose yourself to potential danger, unless that trust is really solid. I don’t think it takes much to accommodate that kind of wariness nor that it’s somehow insulting or degrading to men. Being aware that women are - or feel like they are, whichever you prefer - exposed to more danger than men, just in general acting in a ways that wouldn’t be taken as suspicious and not taking it as an insult if they don’t entirely trust you is enough to fit in and not feel like you’re being ostracized as a man.
It’s possible that many of those rapists are repeat offenders, and not just every dude is a rapist, fwiw.
Also fwiw, I’ve never raped a woman but I have been forced/coerced into sex by a few. Of course, I usually don’t tell people because literally nobody cares and they just make fun of you (I’m over it anyway, now it just annoys me that me, technically a victim of rape, gets treated as a rapist myself because I happen to have been born with a penis, that I’m a little fucking sick of considering “nope, I’m on the same side they are.”
Btw, if I said women are trash and I’d feel safer with a bear because of my experiences I’d be called an incel, that’s an interesting note I think.
If you said that all women are trash, then regardless of what you would feel safer with, you’d still be called (deservingly) an incel. Calling all men trash is also an insane take, but I think you’re shadowboxing here. All/most/significant number of men being trash is absolutely not a general consensus on the matter. All women needing to be wary of all men because of actions of some men is, however. I don’t know what do you think “being treated as a rapist” looks like, but I’m pretty sure you’re not complaining about going to jail for being a man, but rather women not being overly friendly with you by default.
I am sorry for the experiences you had with abusive women, and I agree the issue of sexual violence against men is often swept under the rug because of comparison with sexual violence against women simply because of the prevalence of later being much larger. Wish it wasn’t.
“And yet it is perfectly acceptable for women to call men trash based on their experiences,” is pretty much the interesting part of that note. It’s entirely possible that that generalized rhetoric is actually more harmful than helpful at the end of the day and more specificity is needed when discussing nuanced issues in a public forum.
“Being treated as a rapist” in this case means that they assume immediately that I’m dangerous simply because I have a penis. If I immediately assume anything based on possession of a vagina that makes me the bad guy (rightfully,) but I can be treated as a monster simply on the same principle and it’s fine. You have to see how that’ll wear on you after about 20yr, you end up getting a little tired of it especially when you know you’ve done nothing wrong.
Yes yes, “men get raped but fuck them women are more important” I’ve heard it a million times. It’s people like you that keep men from speaking out, like I said literally nobody cares, but thanks for minimizing my experiences in a nice way at least.
Well, I didn’t say it was less important but that it was less discussed, and that it’s regrettable. You’re the one pulling the “women are more important” from your ass.
“And yet it is perfectly acceptable for women to call men trash based on their experiences” I literally have no idea where you took that from. I wrote that it’s insane to call all men trash and that it’s not a general consensus.
Everyone is dangerous. Anyone can have a weapon or other means to cause harm. You having a penis being a cause of concern is only viable as long as you have intent to maliciously use it. If you think people are afraid of you specifically, and specifically because you, ArcaneSlime, have a penis, then I think you need to rethink the way you approach people. No one is treating you as a monster and treating you as one because you’re a man is not fine. And if someone is attacking you on that basis then I’m not extending my argument to them, that’s simply moronic, but also not the way broader society works, as far as I’m aware.
Eh idk that last paragraph came off to me as if “you’re really sorry buuuut since it happens more often to women it’s cool.” If you didn’t mean it like that I apologize, I am kinda used to it after all.
You say it’s insane, yet people constantly do the insane and receive praise for it. You may not be one of them and well that’s great, but quit pretending it isn’t leagues more socially acceptable than the opposite, usually complete with excuses as to why the double standard is good actually.
Again with minimizing my experiences, eh? “Nuh uh that isn’t happening to you and if it is it’s your fault.” Cool, tbh I don’t think we have much more to discuss here, have a nice day.
The double standards on that are extreme.
We have to talk more about male victims. They very much exist and the society doesn’t treat people like you fairly.
Which is why I personally always try to include the fact that male victims are very real and it’s not actually a pure “males abuse females” situation.
I also think that abusive behavior is an intersectional issues, and wonder what are the better predictors of abusive behavior than gender.
Pretty solid take.
Many women experience sexual assault first hand, it’s not a small percentage.
Those numbers are disgusting. Take a highschool class of 30 15 girls there is a good chance 2 of them have been sexually assaulted or will be.
In 100 person college lecture there is a good chance that 13 women in the class have been/or will be sexually assaulted.
I guarantee a female relative of yours has been sexually assaulted, more than likely by a male relative or family friend.
I understand why a women might choose a bear.
We don’t need to hear the stories, unfortunately. Almost all of us have a SA story in the least. Most of it starts right around puberty. If you take the reaction to this thought experiment into consideration, you can imagine why many don’t share these things with their male relatives and friends openly.
Bears usually don’t attack unless they are startled or defend their cubs. Which is why you wear bells on hiking trails where bear encounters are likely, it makes them fuck off back into the woods. They don’t want to meet you, you’re too dangerous to be prey and a bear has to be seriously emaciated to even consider hunting you. Unless it’s a polar bear, those absolutely regard you as prey and they will hunt, kill and eat you (on the pro side you won’t see them coming until you as good as dead, they are excellent stalkers).
It’s so charming how women say “I am afraid” and the first thing men do is say “you’re delusional.”
Discounting women’s feelings is one of the reasons we are afraid. We have to daily interact with people who treat us as less than fully human, even when they aren’t raping us. Your daily behavior makes you more unpredictable than a bear.
At least with a bear, you know where you stand. And you won’t be actively hunted.
You need to step away from the Internet and stop indulging your victim hood fetish
I’m not addressing the fear itself. I address the culture of fear, the fearmongering, and an attempt to overgeneralize.
This goes further than a mutual exchange of fears and goes into the territory of a cultural phenomenon, a hostile one.
The fear is real, and I understand how it feels due to getting a childhood trauma myself. I’ve been there.
But we should focus on the actual solutions to the very issues you’re afraid of, not on getting hostile to each other.
My daily behavior around women (and men, too) builds on mutual trust and respect, I admire and deeply respect many women in my life, and I never treat anyone as someone “less than a human”. Same is true for most males, for all I know.
It is dangerous and counterproductive to just assume all males have bad intentions. We don’t.
No one assumes all men have bad intentions. Dramatic, much?
Why is it so hard for men to understand that being cautious around all men is not the same thing as thinking all men are dangerous? It’s not that subtle of a difference.
Why is it so hard to understand that being cautious is the very opposite of “I’d pick a bear”? You have to assume all men, or rather a very large percentage (more than a chance of a wild grizzly mauling you) have bad intentions and are willing to act on them, but they only need an opportunity (i.e. be in a dark forest). The choice outlined here seems to be “would you face a murderer and a rapist or a wild animal” instead of “a man you don’t know or a wild animal”. That’s the problem “men” see with this hypothetical - there is a difference between validating feelings and outright misandry.
Because men are stupid pieces of shit who don’t care about how or what women feel. The dude you’re replying to is a perfect example.
There really is quite some amount of women that assumes exactly that, and what troubles me is that their amount appears to be growing, cementing a large cultural divide and growing hostility. Which, in turn, doesn’t make men safer either.
I understand the caution, though, even though it saddens me as it means perfectly reasonable men often have harder time communicating with women on the same level other women do.
Communication is key, and this key is more often than before thrown away.
As a (gay) dude, here’s the piece of the math that’s missing: expected outcome. If a woman (generally, there are exceptions) decides they want to harm a man, that involves planning, a taser, drugs, etc. It can be done, but it’s gonna take effort to not end up on the wrong side of this felony. If a man wants to harm a woman, that often simply involves a dark alley and a drop of patience. Note: this is not to say there aren’t women than can’t harm men in the same manner, simply that they are less common than the opposite case.
So yeah, being cognizant of one’s vulnerabilities is not a bad thing, and when your biological sex predisposes you to certain vulnerabilities (size, musculature, presence of testicles), it isn’t wrong to acknowledge and mitigate them. And when people tell you that they take certain steps to prevent being taken advantage of, it shows a distinct lack of empathy to not realize that maybe they have a point.
I see where you’re going with that, and I agree to some extent. It might be scary to be surrounded by people who can force you into anything without all that much effort, that can just stronghand you.
I always wondered how average women navigate intimate relationships with men in that regard. Must involve a lot of trust.
But at the same time, there are more dimensions to abuse than pure physical assault. Psychological violence is a thing, domestic violence is very real and allows for all sorts of preparations, etc. It is possible to trap a male into a cycle of horror of psychological and physical abuse, it’s just less likely to successfully assault random man on the street.
And most of violence is done by males too through these channels, not just attacking a woman in the forest.
As per steps and fears, I just fail to see how propagating fear helps to combat the issue. We should address abuse, its reasons, make the cultural shift that would help prevent it, not compare males to bears and be done with it.
Bringing up psychological/domestic violence is a red herring, we’re talking about dealing with strangers for the moment. Lessons here can be applied there, but don’t get off the plot.
People’s fears need to be heard. You talk about communication, but you aren’t listening. You’re dismissing women’s real fears about being raped (1 in 6) because your feelings are hurt that they would rather take their chances with a dangerous wild animal than a random man. So now, you’re subverting a very good conversation to assuage your own ego that feels like it’s being attacked (should probably look into that closer…) instead of listening to them and hearing that they are scared. It’s not “might be scary”. It’s “any day, for no reason, I may be raped”.
When you dismiss them because you don’t like the language, it only makes the language more extreme because they aren’t being listened to. Shut the fuck up and listen. When there’s actually a conversation happening, we can get where we all want to go. But that start with putting your feelings aside and listening. Because between “my feelings are hurt you compared me to a wild animal” and “society at large won’t address how widespread rape is”, gotta say that the hurt fee-fees come in a distant second.
We can have a conversation about being polite to each other when politeness doesn’t get people raped.
This was never supposed to be a red herring - rather an expansion of the topic of violence and abuse. But we can always return to a more narrow discussion.
I listen a lot to those fears. This is far from the only thread in the Universe where it is being discussed, and I never hijack serious topics on the matter, or, God forbid, someone telling their story. In there, I’m a compassionate listener. Right now, we’re discussing it under a meme, which sets a different standard.
The reason I’m bringing this up is not just because I feel hurt by such attitude and I’m not alone in this (although this needs to be addressed as well, because to some people it actually causes a lot of mental damage; just shouldn’t be number 1 priority), but rather because, as I see it, such attitudes end up exacerbating the issue of male abusers.
As you just said, not being listened to makes people radicalized. And yet, when I bring the very shushed topic up from the swamp of stigma and neglect, I’m immediately told to “shut the fuck up” by the very person that teaches me to listen.
Alienation and gender stereotypes, the constant depiction of males as animals go a long way into forming mindsets that end up being hostile to women. And when acts of such hostility inevitably happen, the solution on everyone’s lips is “let’s double down on that strategy, it sure should work”.
Society cannot adequately address the very issues you bring up without there being a conversation. And shushing any voices that disagree with the methods you suggest isn’t called “conversation”. The solution is multifaceted and cannot be solved by yelling at each other. Unfortunately, the modern culture has formed a common expectation that there is plenty of trolls and malicious actors that are waiting to hijack the conversation, muddy the waters, and keep doing their bad things, which divided people and made a lot of conversations impossible as everyone seems to expect that from their opponent. Here, I must assure you, I am very genuine in my take.
Now, I’m not saying mutual understanding will lead us to the world of ponies and rainbows, but it sure as hell will help better prevent terrible outcomes. We need communication, and what I’m trying to establish is exactly that - because where else? It’s not that there’s plenty of avenues.
This is a well reasoned argument. I apologize for being over inflammatory and ill effective at making my point.
You’re right, a conversation can’t happen with people being shushed. The issue is that when these red herrings come flying out, it has the same effect. When we expand the topic, the core thread gets lost in the noise and the people that are harmed notice that everyone has run off with their herring and we’ve lost the plot again. And then extreme language pops out (such as my telling you to shut up and listen) because the important part was drowned out by perfectly valid and tangential things.
Yeah, it sucks that men are compared to animals (because women never have been, but I digress). But I personally think that we can suffer an unfavorable comparison while we deal with a much larger issue. We can recognize that people do see us that way and that, instead of getting hurt over it, we can listen to them, see what they are saying, and demand better from ourselves and other men so that the bad comparison goes away naturally instead of trying to force it down. Telling women that your feelings are hurt by their words tells them that you stopped listening to them.
And yeah, I recognize that there’s a thread of “suck it up” in here that also isn’t good and should be addressed as a society. But I think it can wait till after we’ve dealt with the rape.
It’s alright - I’m happy we’re on the same page again :)
If I understand your concept right, it goes as following: by fighting alongside women, we can not only help them tackle the issues they face, but also change their perception of men, winning feminists’ loyalty in the fight for equality, all while aiding to make a cultural shift that makes the problem go away. And then we can have a dialogue.
I don’t expect this to work so perfectly, however. My expectation is that abusive behavior will not get away until we improve communication, including communication with those who are at highest risk of offending; it is a vital part of fighting the very issue. We should understand the drivers of such behavior, refer to firsthand exprience, let people be heard instead of radicalized, and see what we can do to help them avoid falling for traps that lead them to abuse.
In a general picture, of course, we can and should remain attentive to the issues raised by women, but we should also promote the culture of mutual attention, as many problems around gender can only be solved on both sides. Feminists can benefit greatly from better understanding of the male side of the story, and masculists should listen closely to women as well. By interacting with the other side, we can better understand the core issues that lay the foundation of what’s happening.
Unfortunately, many people in the feminist movement do not see such communication as something necessary, and some even claim it’s harmful, either as a distraction or as an active intervention of men to hijack the conversation (in fairness, such attempts are also made, so we need to derive the honest positions and uncover lies and traps). Some masculists (and I mean actual masculists, not traditionalists) answer to that with return hostility, claiming that women rarely reciprocate by listening to men, even though in reality I’ve seen many women actually being sympathetic to the masculism movement. Both, I think, fail to acknowledge they play a tug of war instead of acting together on the issue that’s much more two-sided than they anticipate.
Behind every person we see as evil, bad, abusive, is a complicated story of misunderstanding, trauma, toxic upbringing. No one’s evil for the sake of it, everyone thinks they’re righteous. It’s the idea of good, the understanding of the intricacies of the world around that differs. And we can’t address this by blanket and deaf measures.
You’re forgetting something.
All a woman needs to do, is:
And there’s a good chance an angry mob will beat up the guy before even thinking to ask.
Even better if she wants to snatch something and run.
Bad actors capitalizing on real things is also a red herring. 1 in 6 women get raped and you’re gonna let a few people who use social engineering in awful ways excuse that?
You know what a man has to do to get his way in public? Wait till there aren’t many people around, cover her mouth and move her out of public.
You know what he has to do in private? Same thing with fewer steps.
None of these things are good, but we’re only talking about one of them at the moment. So again, no one is saying there aren’t other evils, but you’re prioritizing your own feelings over their real rapes by diverting this conversation.
There’s a reason why multiple replies can be given to the same comment on this platform. It’s because this way, unlike talking, we can actually have multiple threads of conversations at the same time. I am not diverting any conversation, just creating another one.
You are attempting to create a feelings based response using this sentence.
You know what I have to do, before any of the other things mentioned, to take advantage of any such opportunity? ::
A person who would willingly rape someone, won’t have the 2nd barrier. Similarly, a person who would willingly use the social power given to women (specifically to prevent rape), won’t have the same, 2nd barrier.
Those who would, won’t find find themselves doing so even given the easiest of opportunities.
The above post and the server it is on, is much more open ended and doesn’t mandate a certain specific type of violence. You seem to be having a problem with anyone responding to you with any other dimension of, what is essentially, a bandit - victim interaction.
Also, how many of those “1 in 6 women” managed to get away with lying?
I’m not claiming rape to not be a problem (as you might want to state), but statistics are not going to help win against it either. Specially considering how hard it is to determine the truth of it.
Anti Commercial-AI license
I’m focusing on a specific thing because the thought experiment that brought this whole thing up was about that specific thing. Creating a new conversation is diverting the larger conversation because you’re ignoring the things you don’t like (in before you accuse me of the same).
No, I’m implying that the real rapes of 1 in 6 women are more important than the impossible to quantify number of bad actors manipulating people for nefarious ends. Which also goes to your ‘women are lying’ point.
You are implicitly doing so by saying this in the first place. The issue of bad actors of all kinds (both liars and rapists) need addressed, but the conversation that the thought experiment has dredged up is focused on one of them. We can talk about those other things when they are a widespread societal problem that a significant proportion of the population decides to ignore because they don’t like the way the ignored are discussing it.
You are attempting to create a feelings based response using this phrase. Is that clear enough.
I’m not going to be a broken record here just to explain myself to someone who might try leading this conversation into accusing me of rape.
No, it’s a joke triggering snowflake incels.
Let’s not try to insult every man who’d like to stand up for himself and fellows.
This doesn’t improve the quality of the conversation, nor does it form a constructive criticism; instead, it attempts to silence people you don’t like.
I’m no snowflake, not an incel, either. But I understand this approach is bad and harmful on a systemic level, and you can’t cover it with a joke anymore.
I’m playing “serious” card here.
Lol, you better back up how that’s supposed to be a systemic issue, mister serious man who unironically called himself “no snowflake”. 😂
I’d be happy to share all the sources in the world should we have this conversation in another tone.
But since your main goal seems to be trolling, I’ll leave you at that - with a link to do your own research.
Not that you’d care to do so.
Wow, a “google yourself” comment. That’s new.
I’m genuinely interested how you think that misandry is a “systemic” issue. What system of our daily lives constantly produces misandry?
pfft lmao the fact that he replied with literally just a link to google shows how seriously these snowflakes take their own nonsense about “systemic misandry”
Found the snowflake.
This meme isn’t about you (hopefully). Not everything is about you or your fellows. If this meme triggers you, there’s something seriously wrong with you. I hope you are just a snowflake, because the alternative is a lot worse.
Contributing to a conversation doesn’t make someone a snowflake. I can talk about rape and never have been raped. By your logic, you’re also a snowflake. Besides, labeling someone with a word with negative connotation isn’t a productive way to have a conversation. Its just insulting them. You can still have a conversation with ad homonyms. I personally haven’t seen it going anywhere, though.