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.
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.