Turn him down and he yells, calls the woman names, maybe attacks her now or later, stalks her, rapes her, murders her, kills a kid, shoots up a mall, or mows down a crowd with a van, or...
When men hear "What's the worst that could happen?" they focus on the "could" and think about probable results and rank them by awfulness. This makes sense because the gender of "man" is sociologically defined in no small part by expendability,
When women hear "What's the worst that could happen?" they focus on the "worst" and think about awful results and rank them by probability. This makes sense because the gender of "woman" is sociologically defined in no small part by preciousness.
This line of reasoning doesn't have anything to do with the lofty ideals of what a gender role is in society or women thinking themselves "precious" or focusing on "could" vs "worst" or whatever you call that. It has to do with the fact that, statistically, women are in more danger than men. Full stop.
Please do enlighten me. Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you've blamed women considering the worst case scenario on some self-important role attached to their gender, and not the very basic and obvious line of reasoning that their safety is on the line.
I can see that. I neither blame anyone, nor ascribe self-importance. Men are encouraged to disregard threats, women encouraged to take them seriously. This is an observation, not a moral judgement.
Violence against men is statistically underreported, and they're still the majority of reported victims. Everyone's safety is on the line, men are just taught to disregard that risk and women are taught not to. Again, observation, not moral judgement.
of all the sexual assault that happens, more than 80% of the victims are women and more than 95% of the perpetrators are men.
This is demonstrably false. I followed your link and found that the original citation is "U.S. Dept. of Justice, Violence Against Women Report, 2002." I wasn't able to find this specific report to check the data, but the reference I usually use is the often-cited 2011 CDC Sexual Violence report, which is 10 years more recent, and which is also the origin of the "99% of rapists are men" myth (but more on that later), so I don't think you'd object to it too much.
Here are the statistics for sexual violence in the year 2011, according to the CDC:
an estimated 1.6% of women reported that they were raped in the 12 months preceding the survey. The case count for men reporting rape in the preceding 12 months was too small to produce a statistically reliable prevalence estimate.
And
The percentages of women and men who experienced these other forms of sexual violence victimization in the 12 months preceding the survey were an estimated 5.5% and 5.1%, respectively.
Added together, we see that 7.1% of women and 5.1% of men reported being victims of sexual violence in 2011. That is, 58% of victims of all sexual violence in 2011 were women, and 42% were men. For every 3 female victims, there were 2 male victims.
Now on to your second claim: that more than 95% of perpetrators are men. From the "Characteristics of Sexual Violence Perpetrators" section about a third of the way down, keeping in mind the percentages above:
For female rape victims, an estimated 99.0% had only male perpetrators (more on this later...). In addition, an estimated 94.7% of female victims of sexual violence other than rape had only male perpetrators.
And
For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced. The majority of male rape victims (an estimated 79.3%) had only male perpetrators. For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims had only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (an estimated 82.6%), sexual coercion (an estimated 80.0%), and unwanted sexual contact (an estimated 54.7%). For noncontact unwanted sexual experiences, nearly half of male victims (an estimated 46.0%) had only male perpetrators and an estimated 43.6% had only female perpetrators.
To help us with the breakdowns of these numbers, earlier in the report we find that:
1.7% of men were made to penetrate a perpetrator in the 12 months preceding the survey [and] an estimated 1.3% of men experienced sexual coercion in the 12 months before taking the survey [and] an estimated 1.6% of men having experienced unwanted sexual contact in the 12 months before taking the survey [and] an estimated 2.5% of men experienced this type of victimization (noncontact unwanted sexual experiences) in the previous 12 months
So, of the 1.7% of made to penetrate male victims, 82.6% of perpetrators were female. Of the 1.3% sexual coercion, 80% of perpetrators were female. Of the 1.6% unwanted sexual contact, 54.7% were female, and of the 2.5% noncontact, 43.6% were female.
So, 1.4% of the 1.7% made to penetrate, 1% of the 1.3% sexual coercion, .9% of the 1.6% unwanted sexual contact, and 1.1% of the 2.5% noncontact.
So, 4.4% of the 7.1% of men reporting sexual violence had female perpetrators. That is, 62% of sexual violence against men is committed by women (in 2011).
So, going back to our numbers above, we see that 62% of the 42% of sexual violence with men as victims was committed by women.
Our final numbers are: 74% of sexual violence in total is committed by men, and 26% is committed by women. Which ain't great, but that feels a lot more realistic, and it's a far cry from the intentionally misleading numbers you're citing.
BUT IT GETS WORSE...
What happens when we look at just rape? Note that first we have to figure out what the CDC means by "rape", because at first "99% of rape is committed by men" looks pretty damning.
Well, "rape" is defined by the CDC for the purposes of this study as "completed or attempted forced penetration or alcohol- or drug-facilitated penetration". That is, only being penetrated counts as rape.
Men, on the other hand, get the completely separate category "made to penetrate", that is, "being forced to have sex with someone, just doing the penetrating instead of being penetrated."
So, 99% of rapists are men because rape is intentionally defined as "being penetrated" to exclude male victims of rape from the statistics. I wonder why...
Well, what happens when we actually look at those numbers, counting "made to penetrate" as, y'know, rape, because it is rape?
an estimated 1.6% of women (or approximately 1.9 million women) were raped in the 12 months before taking the survey
And
The case count for men reporting rape in the preceding 12 months was too small to produce a statistically reliable prevalence estimate.
Which is, again, because male rape victims are effectively excluded from this definition. Also, we have this:
an estimated 1.7% of men were made to penetrate a perpetrator in the 12 months preceding the survey
And
Characteristics of Sexual Violence Perpetrators For female rape victims, an estimated 99.0% had only male perpetrators. In addition, an estimated 94.7% of female victims of sexual violence other than rape had only male perpetrators. For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced. The majority of male rape victims (an estimated 79.3%) had only male perpetrators. For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims had only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (an estimated 82.6%), sexual coercion (an estimated 80.0%),
Note that these numbers clearly show that made to penetrate happens just as much each year as "rape". This means that fully half of rape victims are men (in 2011 - the number fluctuates in the other years of the study, but not more than 5%).
Finally, if 99% of rapists are men and 83% of "made to penetrators" are women ... then an estimated 42% of the perpetrators of nonconsensual sex (that is, rape) in 2011 were women.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I think it's important to debunk this sort of misandrist misinformation.
Edit:Here's a Time article that confirms these numbers. They also mention that boys under 15 are more likely to be sexually assaulted than women over 40, and are more than twice as likely to be assaulted as girls under 15.
I'm just going to leave the cdc report on sexual assault from 2010-2012 that says the same thing as my initial claim, with the same statistics in detail, for you to draw your own conclusions from. Check the tables from page 18 onward.
My friend, statistics aren't sexist. They just are. I don't really have time to sit here and argue that women suffer more from sexual violence than men do. It's not really up for debate, and I've learned not to engage the people who think it is.
If you're going to accuse me of misandry because I'm defending a woman's prerogative to feel safe, I'm just not going to fire back. Have fun with that.
I think you'll want to check those numbers, actually, since they perfectly match everything I'm saying (since it's the published CDC report from the same time). But it is reassuring that even the source you cite has the same numbers I'm citing.
If you're so certain that your numbers are borne out by the data, could you please point out exactly where your claim that "more than 80% of the victims [of sexual assault] are women and more than 95% of the perpetrators are men" is borne out by the yearly data in this report?
My friend, statistics aren’t sexist. They just are.
I agree, which is why I took the time to cite the statistics exactly, instead of throwing out random numbers that aren't borne out by the data.
I don’t really have time to sit here and argue that women suffer more from sexual violence than men do. It’s not really up for debate, and I’ve learned not to engage the people who think it is.
I'm not arguing that women don't suffer more from sexual violence than men do. I'm just arguing that women suffer much less from sexual violence compared to men than is usually believed, that women commit sexual assault much more than is usually believed, and that men are raped as often as women are.
As you say, this is not up for debate, and whether you "debate me" or not, it won't change the facts, and I've made sure that this information is now available and organized for anyone who doesn't insist on closing their eyes to misandry.
Edit in response to your edit (the last line of your comment): That's not an accurate description of what's happening here, and playing the victim under the guise of "I'm just defending a woman's prerogative to feel safe" isn't going to work when all I've done is show that your misandrist claims about the perpetrators and victims of sexual violence are not correct.
I didn't claim that the statistics I made were on rape or penetration or any specific form of sexual violence. Just that incidences are much higher in women being the victims and men being the perpetrators.
Anyway, I'm not continuing this conversation further. It's completely ridiculous to look at these statistics and draw the conclusion that I must be misandrist for reading the numbers how they are, because your breakdown of the numbers don't exactly line up with mine but they still paint the same overall picture.
Thank you for taking the time to break down these numbers. That CDC report is extremely misleading and this is not the first time I've seen someone attempt to break down the numbers. But you've done an especially good job of explaining it.
The article seems mostly fine to me, though I admit that I did initially just scan it for the statistics. The only thing I saw that I really disagreed with was her assertion that "made to penetrate" victims shouldn't call themselves rape victims, and I absolutely believe that they should. I do fully agree with the author that getting drunk and then regretting your actions the night before should not constitute a crime of the same seriousness as forcible rape, and I also believe that the CDC's questionnaire is misleading and far less than perfect. What were your problems with the article?
As far as Cathy Young herself, I'd never heard of her before, but according to her Wikipedia page it seems like we might agree on quite a bit. The Wiki article is short, however, so I may not have the entire story. Is there some reason I should dislike her?
As far as Cathy Young herself, I’d never heard of her before, but according to her Wikipedia page it seems like we might agree on quite a bit. The Wiki article is short, however, so I may not have the entire story. Is there some reason I should dislike her?
I don't know much about her, but I do know that she's kind of consistently had shit takes about like, gamergate, and I think SA more generally, but sue me if I'm wrong, I don't really know too much. It's mostly like, old news shit takes that I can't remember the specific basis for. I associate her with bringing bad vibes to the function, and MGTOW shit. In any case, I think it would probably be better practice to just, cite the study that she's citing directly, if that's the actual like, statistical set that you want to have a citation of, right, that's probably better practice. Especially if you're using the same source she is for your analysis, that kind of makes her analysis a little bit, both redundant, and not really like, on topic. But I'm not your grandma, you can do whatever you want.
For the article itself, I think if I'm reading it correctly, and maybe also the study, then I kind of, disagree with her extrapolations about drunk sexual acts. Mostly in this-
" It is safe to assume that the vast majority of the CDC’s male respondents who were “made to penetrate” someone would not call themselves rape victims—and with good reason." -type of shit. It's a study that inherently relies on self-reporting, right, but the basis of the study's questions are to kind of get away from this blanket "Hey, were you raped?"
-type of shit. There are definitely cases in which people have been SA'd, and would accurately describe a SA experience if you were to question them, but wouldn't define the act as SA. I think this is probably the case for a lot of male SA, and I think this is legitimately the case for prison SA, in many instances, if I'm remembering correctly. So I don't really think that the person's testimony should be considered reliable, and more than that, I think the "appealing to the theoretical person's definition of a thing as being accurate to the thing" tactic is a little, weird. Gives me bad vibes.
For the study, right, I know I just said, sometimes people don't accurately self-report, right, but I think I'd also probably think that it's a mistake to kind of, prioritize the "last 12 months" stats, because they're "more accurate". They're not really more or less accurate, they're just kind of, more accurate to what they are specifically about. Which is questioning if SA happened in the last 12 months, among the polled peoples. We don't really know if there's kind of just a specific subset of the population of women, through some other factor or age range, that's experiencing SA at higher rates, which I would think is probably somewhat likely. But that's also, my dumb ass, so who knows. In any case, given that, I kinda find her-
"In other words, if being made to penetrate someone was counted as rape—and why shouldn’t it be?—then the headlines could have focused on a truly sensational CDC finding: that women rape men as often as men rape women."
-to be a kind of cherry picked and sensationalist, while also kind of treading a maybe more socially acceptable "centrist" libnuts kind of position. It's technically accurate, which oh yes, pog futurama reference that nobody gets the context to, but you can kind of see why it's like, stupid, right?
Probably, this kinda stuff is why I remember not liking her that much. Take this all with like, a mountain of salt, though, I am somewhat known to be a pretty good vector for misinfo, lies, and deceit. If I say that, then I'm free from the burden of proof, or like, holding reasonable positions, right? I can just say whatever I want? That sounds right, let's go with that.
Turn him down and he yells, calls the woman names, maybe attacks her now or later, stalks her, rapes her, murders her, kills a kid, shoots up a mall, or mows down a crowd with a van, or…
Definitely common everyday occurrences and not massively-cherry picked sensationalism.
women fear being killed
A completely irrational fear in the US at least, given that in a country of 340,000,000, less than 5,000 women are murdered a year. And that's even if you pretended every single murder was by a rejected man.
Stop letting ideological propaganda make you paranoid.
Both sexes yell and call people names. Arguably, women are more likely to do it when rejected, on average (being called a f-slur (I wouldn't censor it but I don't know if I'm allowed to frankly use words like that here) by a woman you just turned down is a popular play, I've noticed, over the years), simply because they're more likely to be less exposed to rejection (since they approach, and therefore put themselves in a position where they can be rejected, much less often), and exposure to rejection is generally how someone learns how to handle it maturely.
Also, you clearly have no idea what gaslighting is.
Excuse me but what the fuck are you going on about irrational fear? Do you live in unicorn sparkle land? I'm regularly followed by absolute creeps and people will yell and get physically aggravated at me if I turn them down wrong and personally I don't know a single femme person where this isn't just a known risk of going outside. I've literally had a gun pulled on me in broad daylight in the middle of town and they followed me in their car for several blocks. My partner had someone yell at them while taking out trash "One of these days I'm going to kill one of you fucking c*nts". I've been molested in a parking lot while there were people around. We don't even live in sketchy neighborhoods. The fear is not irrational and not unfounded and we never know which of these encounters could end in assault or death so we have to assume and act in a way to prep for the worst
Excuse me but what the fuck are you going on about irrational fear?
It is objectively irrational to actively fear something that happens to 0.0014% (that's 14% of 1% of 1%) of the population (and I was specifically talking about "being killed", which is what I quoted--you're not trying to move the goalposts by pretending I was talking about anything else, are you~?), whether you like it or not. You should be dozens of times more terrified to ever step in a car than to reject a man, if things were in proportion. But, because your fear is irrational, you're not.
Given that you indeed shoved those goalposts a large distance from what I was saying in the rest of your comment, and that I see from your comment history that you believe in the "patriarchy" conspiracy theory, it's clear to me it would serve no purpose to seriously discuss anything on this topic with you.
336,199,359 people, more or less. And that is both male and female. If we’re talking numbers of women murdered, how about you use the number of women in the USA, not the numbers of both women and men?
And while we’re at it, how about you include the number of women who are doxxed, beaten, and raped too? It isn’t just murder. 1 in 4 women in the US have dealt with harassment from a man, often times serious harassment. That it doesn’t always end in murder doesn’t make it less of a problem.
You’re right that it might not make sense to worry about being killed in particular, but the person you responded to described a series of genuinely scary situations, and it isn’t irrational to be fearful for your safety in those moments. But then you had to go and say,
Given that you indeed shoved those goalposts a large distance from what I was saying in the rest of your comment, and that I see from your comment history that you believe in the "patriarchy" conspiracy theory, it's clear to me it would serve no purpose to seriously discuss anything on this topic with you.
and oooooh, you really lost me there, not gonna lie. I’m curious of your understanding of “the patriarchy” is different than mine, but surely you recognize that we live in a male-dominated society, no?
the person you responded to described a series of genuinely scary situations, and it isn’t irrational to be fearful for your safety in those moments
Good thing my comment was under a quote only talking about being killed, making it obvious I was only talking about that one thing.
The grand irony in the phrase "women fear being killed", juxtaposed against men fearing something else, as if they have no reason to fear being killed by comparison, is that the other sex is killed far, far more often. Imagine someone saying "women fear chipped nails, men fear breast cancer", for an idea of how abhorrent and sexist "men fear rejection, women fear being killed" actually is.
I’m curious of your understanding of “the patriarchy” is different than mine, but surely you recognize that we live in a male-dominated society, no?
What feminists et al call "the patriarchy" is just the collective of social standards and expectations, which do obviously exist, but the 'conspiracy theory' part is in the deliberate anti-male name they use for it, attributing all of it to some sort of sinister male plot, within the equally-bullshit 'males are all predators, females are all victims' narrative, by giving this collective a name that places all of the agency and blame at the feet of men. This is done plenty of other times by the same group of ideologues; a couple of examples:
The act of assuming someone lacks knowledge because of a trait of theirs that has no actual relationship to having said knowledge is called "mansplaining", creating the false narrative that only men do it, they only do it to women, and that being a woman is the only 'irrelevant trait'. Fact is, both sexes do this, TO both sexes, for many reasons, including but not nearly limited to their sex.
When a fanny pack is marketed to men by using camouflage or gunmetal color schemes in the packaging, it's because of "male fragility" (i.e. men are so terrified of possessing a stereotypically-female thing that they won't buy it otherwise). When a set of tools is marketed to women by using floral or pink color schemes, it's magically no longer 'fragility', but an oppressive misogynist plot by the evil corporation.
The fact is that all of the commonly-complained about harmful elements of "the patriarchy" (e.g. the imposition of harmful sex stereotypes on individuals of both sexes), are things both put into place, and maintained perpetuated, by men AND women. Even topics like abortion are falsely characterized as being a strictly male (pro-life) vs. female (pro-choice) issue, when the fact is that the percentage of women who are pro-life, and of men who are pro-choice, are both in the 40s!
All of this "patriarchy" and adjacent crap is just bigoted ideologues creating division where it doesn't exist, down to giving things that do exist deliberately misleading names that absolve and remove all agency from the in group, in order to blame it all on the out group.
What feminists et al call “the patriarchy” is just the collective of social standards and expectations, which do obviously exist, but the ‘conspiracy theory’ part is in the deliberate anti-male name they use for it
Right? I feel like the person you replied to is one of the people I would avoid in public. Especially since they don’t show a shred of empathy for the real fear women in this country have of being assaulted or murdered by a man with anger issues.
And that’s not even getting into those who suffer from domestic violence.
Radical idea, how about you don't try and pull this on someone who has stated that they are in the cohort of people who has experienced this type of violence repeatedly with examples?
It is incredibly invalidating to have someone try and use percentages to tell you what you should and shouldn't be afraid of when you have already had legitimate cause to fear for your safety in the past. This person is not the audience for that and you are only going to make them more afraid because you have demonstrated that you place objective percentages based on wider population demographics over their personal lived experience... Which is a jerk thing to do because what it ACTUALLY does is make a previously victimized person relive experiences of other invalidations they experienced following the traumatic events and deepens their overall distrust of people to care and take what happened to them seriously.
You are trying to score points to prove you're right at the expense of someone's overall well being when you do this. Even if you are right it's a shitty thing to do to a person.
Rare bad things have happened to me, too. But recognizing that they are indeed rare is important, arguably even more so because I have faced it.
Fearing that something bad that's happened to you will happen again, is natural and understandable, it's how the human brain works.
Doesn't make it not irrational, though. Don't take as a personal insult the stating of that fact. It's also not "invalidation" to state that fact, as the fact is literally not a direct comment on anything you actually experienced in your actual individual life.
This is coming from someone who was molested by an older girl as a child. Should I fear and suspect all older women? Racists also use this logic to try and justify being 'wary' of all members of a race after having some bad experience with one or a few individuals of that race.
The irony of all this is that you're interpreting my words as a personal attack on you, when it's literally healthier to get yourself out of the mindset that 'bad men are everywhere and the next trauma is around every corner waiting to strike'. That's no way to live.
I want to see people not swallowed whole by their traumas.
I am not the person you originally spoke to and I do not feel myself personally attacked. I am also not someone who has experienced this particular trauma but I have experienced some fairly nasty trauma in other fields none-the-less.
Your method of healing your personal trauma does not mend theirs and you are not presenting it in an empathetic way. You are trying to shame them and humiliate them for seeming silly for their experiences by trying to treat them as hysterical. There are ways to de-escalate a fear reaponse in people but that isn't what you're doing. You are not listening when someone routinely is telling you they aren't ready and trying to force your framework on them to make yourself feel justified. Recognize your audience. If someone is going to de-escalate their fear response it is going to be a conscious process over time, not from a random stranger on the internet swaggering up and saying "I have numbers". Who knows where the person you are talking to might be coming from? They may be in a community that is suffering a disproportional problem where that fear might actually be logical.
Rather than YOU feeling attacked about where she's coming and trying to strike back maybe realize - if you've managed to deal with your traumas you have the advantage of an emotional distance they do not. Use that distance to display empathy to that situation or back off because you are not going to make anything better otherwise. Do you want to be right or do you want to do good because sometimes you have to choose.
Ever heard the saying "it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility"?
When someone's irrational/exaggerated fear becomes manifested as sexism, that manifestation absolutely deserves to get shut down, emphatically. If they don't like that, it's too damn bad, you are responsible for the statements you make, regardless of what traumas you've suffered.
I empathize with the trauma, not with the sexism. There is a difference, and no trauma excuses bigotry.
I stand by all I've said. No one would excuse a white person using the same logic to imply they're justified in constantly fearing violence from black people, no matter how many black people may have done something bad to them in their past.
Half the problem with a lot of these discussions is that they devolve into the "I've been wronged" kyriarchy Olympics where people are not content to simply be wronged but they must be the most wronged and everyone else must be smacked for even implying that they are also wronged . She was doing it AND you are doing it too. She's just reflecting your energy back at you Neither of you are going to get far until you can shelve your individually held needs long enough to recognize the other's. Yes you were hurt, so were they but they are never going to offer YOU empathy if you can't demonstrate you understand their fear is real to them.
Remember that women's indoctrination for all the things they need to watch for to keep themselves safe starts early and there are very rare places in the world where they actually venture out after dark alone without fear. They are taught from childhood that there be monsters, that they are helpless, that they have to be suspicious and wary. You don't treat fear that has been cultivated since childhood by the people training you to be an adult by dismissal. You don't treat any fear by dismissal.
You want to talk about owning your shit? This isn't a race to claim the most victimhood - that is toxic as shit. You want to change things for the better make people feel heard and ask what tools they need to feel safe. Make everyone feel safer and more supported rather than like they can't trust you to care about anything but your own shit because yeah their fear is your problem. But if you can't properly engage with it it is never going to go away.
The only reason I mentioned anything about what happened to me, was to make an example of the fact that if I had made a shitty sexist statement about women and tried to use that trauma to justify it, I would be, rightly, lambasted for it. I did not say a single thing to even begin to imply any sort of comparison of severity between us. Shame on you for that ridiculous accusation. The irony is that the entire second paragraph of your comment is, literally, actual 'oppression olympics' behavior--you mention all of that with no point other than 'we have it bad so shut up'.
Trauma does not justify sexism. Period. And the sexism is what I called out. Just like a white guy getting mugged by a black guy doesn't get to get away with implying he's justified in fearing all black people. I wonder if you'd jump to such a guy's defense, wagging your finger at anyone who calls out his racist statement, telling them they're 'dismissing his fear'. How ludicrous.
You are very tiring. Honestly it's very difficult to empathize with someone who keeps trying so god damn hard to borrow other forms of oppression to validate their own.
I am sympathetic to men and women in regards to the issues that plague both but for fuck sake. If you don't understand the mechanics of how to foster empathy you are just going to become bitter and angry. Yes, Talk about the things that make you feel oppressed but don't try and do so as with the intention to shut someone else down as a counter to someone else venting their issues. Create your own moment where you talk about how this stuff in isolation of other people's shit . That's how you make your issues known while not seeming like a raging narcissistic ass.
Your problem is only tangentially sexism related. In reality it's is not understanding basic social dynamics.
someone who keeps trying so god damn hard to borrow other forms of oppression to validate their own.
Literally just making things up at this point. You've created a very interesting alternate reality in your head about what's gone on in this comment chain. Enjoy it, I'll leave you to it. I'm sure that fleeting sensation of self-righteousness will fill the void for a little longer this time.
I will always call out and criticize a person of any immutable-characteristic-demographic saying their bad experience with a person or people of some other immutable-characteristic-demographic justifies fearing all of them. I will always do that because it is always the right thing to do.
That's the beginning and the end of it, no matter how many nonsensical accusations you try to stick to me for doing so. "Men fear being rejected, women fear being killed" is a deeply sexist statement, period. You will not dissuade me from calling it out for what it is, especially not with your 'spaghetti at the wall' attempt to stick some sort of accusation or ulterior motive onto me.
Sure. Whatever floats your boat. Have fun talking with unyielding walls that offer you neither refuge nor comfort because you are too stubborn to look for doors.
Rare bad things have happened to me, too. But recognizing that they are indeed rare is important, arguably even more so because I have faced it.
Survivorship bias. Women take far more considerations than men do. You believe I think twice about going out at night to the store? My wife was accosted twice in a month doing that, so she never did it again. And look, accosting is down! Why worry, it's on the decline!
Bad thing happened to my wife 2 times and me 0 times so you're wrong because my reality is everyone's reality
Imagine a guy saying "Domestic violence doesn't exist; I've never seen a man hit his girlfriend/wife", and how stupid you'd think he was for saying that.
I think people don't realize that because we are fearful, we take a lot of extra precaution to avoid being put into situations that could spiral out of control. It's almost like a survivorship bias.
“Nearly 1 in 5 women (18.3%) and 1 in 71 men (1.4%) in the United States have been raped at some time in their lives, including completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration.
An estimated 13% of women and 6% of men have experienced sexual coercion in their lifetime (i.e., unwanted sexual penetration after being pressured in a nonphysical way); and 27.2% of women and 11.7% of men have experienced unwanted sexual contact.
And now the real surprise: when asked about experiences in the last 12 months, men reported being “made to penetrate”—either by physical force or due to intoxication—at virtually the same rates as women reported rape (both 1.1 percent in 2010, and 1.7 and 1.6 respectively in 2011).
In other words, if being made to penetrate someone was counted as rape—and why shouldn’t it be?—then the headlines could have focused on a truly sensational CDC finding: that women rape men as often as men rape women.
I only described actively fearing getting murdered in your everyday life, as irrational.
Being smug and disingenuous at the same time is a particularly bad combination; educate yourself on how to be honest, and you won't embarrass yourself nearly as much in public fora.
The part you're missing is how very many times women have to deal with fucked up men. As a society we should be doing a lot better raising boys and doing a lot more for men. But that's a whole other ball o wax.
It's interesting to think about how gun violence is so common in the US that it's become local news. You only get brief national coverage if you mass-murder a large gathering of people. School shootings are now so common that they rise to national news if the death count rises above a dozen or so kids. There were 83 school shootings in the 2000's. There were 264 shootings in the 2010's. There have been 181 so far in the 2020's. We're well on track to double the 10's number by the end of the decade. More than 200 kids murdered in schools in the 2010's. How many did you heard about?
And that's just school shootings. The national level of people not murdered by police is far higher. There were 21,000 homicides by guns in 2021 alone. We don't call police-caused deaths "murder," but the nicely qualified "justifiable homocides," but in 2019, cops added another 1,000 people shot and killed by police to that number. It's a lot harder to get at totals when it involves law enforcement.
Anyway, it's rather incredible to me that murder has become so mundane. Or maybe it always has been, and it requires a Lizzy Borden situation to make national news.
That is argument of popular which is fallacy and doesn’t address the argument at all. Just cuz something isn’t in the news Doesn’t mean it’s a safe world. Just doesn’t mean an event is popular to listen to. Much rape reporting doesn’t get televised because of it being so common. Just cuz something isn’t newsworthy doesn’t mean it’s still not wrong and getting unfairly dismissed
Yes, that's what I said. It is reported about, meaning it's news-worthy and probably rare. Like the murders mentioned in the cartoon. Rejected men usually don't kill people.
Of course that doesn't work as well for rape because of the many cases that never get reported. It's much harder to keep a murder out of the statistics though.
Hmm... There was a comic about women and serial killers that got me started thinking about this but...
Do you think both genders are being sold on extremes of the other that might be skewing our ability to interact rationally?
Like women being sold extremes of men abusiveness and cults and rapists and men on stingy or "slutty" women. And now both genders are spending less time with each other and more with internalized extreme versions of each other?
It's like maybe a symptom of a lack of social spaces or maybe just leads to less of them as people only feel comfortable in closed groups. I'm thinking we are all being taken for a ride.
Or people are way worse than I can consider.
That and the gender separation is exaggerated by smaller families. Often a lot of people will only interact extensively with their mother or father as a member of the opposite sex, rarely anyone around their own age.
I certainly think so. Social media and all those publicity-hungry news publishers have contributed to fostering an image of men and women that is unrealistic and without nuance. Not just regarding aggressiveness of men or chronically dtf women.
This might be a weird take, but Ted Bundy was only so successful because his victims inherently trusted him. In today's world I believe he would have a lot more trouble to find a woman that assumes he has good intentions.
Okay so hear me out. I have this pet theory that might explain some of the divide between genders, but also political parties, causing paralysis which ultimately might lead to humanity's extinction. Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious.
I'm going to set up two axioms to arrive at an extrapolated conclusion.
One: Human psychology tends to ascribe more weight to negative things than positive things in the short term. In the long term this generally balances out, but in the short term it's more prudent in a biological sense to pay attention to the rustling in the bushes than the berries you might pick from them. This is known as the negativity bias.
Two: The modern gatekeepers of social interaction, Big Tech, employ blind algorithms that attempt to steer your attention towards spending more time on their platforms. These companies are the arbiters of the content we experience daily and what you do and don't see is mostly at their discretion. The techniques they employ, in simple terms, are designed to provoke what they call 'engagement'. They do this because at the end of the day FAANG have not only a financial interest, but a fiduciary duty to sell advertisements at the behest of their shareholders. The more they can engage you, the more ads they can sell. They employ live A-B testing, divide people into cohorts and poke and prod them with psychological techniques to try and glue your eyeballs to their ads.
Extrapolated conclusion:
These companies have a financial and legally binding interest to divide the population against itself, obstructing politics and social interaction to the point where we might not be able to achieve any of the goals that we need to reach to prevent oblivion.
In this sort of place we are also pretty good at selecting and promoting the best performing offensive material against the other side on whatever axis sides are drawn — cats vs dogs; cars vs bicycles; religion vs religion vs no religion
Not really the best against the other side - the best for their side to feel would offend the other side
Further thought - I was taught to not follow news because news isn't about what's important, it's about what keeps you watching or gets you to buy the newspaper. This problem has always existed since we first had information tied to money
Exactly. Allowing (edit: promoting, even!) that kind of content is in the interest of businesses that need your attention. Fear, anger and outrage drive engagement like nothing else.
I absolutely agree and would only like to add that humans also have a Confirmation bias that is of course reinforced by engagement algorithms as well. So not only do we tend to only see the negative but also predominantly the negative that reinforces our worldview. Best example is the fact that many people are convinced crime rates are going up all the time while they are actually going down world-wide for decades already.
There's a whole documentary about exactly this, called The Social Dilema (2020). The film is a bit over-the-top and hyperbolic, but I get that they're competing with shows that are mostly CGI explosions and have to spice things up. Anyway, it goes into details, using sources from the industry, and it's worth a watch. At the very least you'll feel vindicated about your thesis.
BINGO. You nailed it. This is absolutely how it works. It's not even a "conspiracy" in the traditional sense, evil tends to naturally become "industry standard" in a "highly competitive market."
Also I'd like to add to this, how people are working more than ever, and participation in civics, local politics, hobbies, religious organizations, etc... Have been trending downward for ages. "Third places" between home and work are also disappearing. If you set foot outside your home, you're on somebody's turf and you'd better be buying something or working for them.
And talking with others? My goodness how unproductive! Gotta be working on these 3 side hustles. "Maybe you can monetize talking with friends!" /s
My neighborhood personally is full of renters who never bother to meet each other and are rarely seen outside at all, and many will probably be gone within 3 months. Knocking on your neighbor's door will just get your face on a Ring video posted with
"ANYBODY KNOW THIS GUY? PROBABLY CASING THE PLACE OMG." with responses like
"Never answer your door and get a gun and a big dog. I've seen this on TV and a friend got robbed once."
This all adds up to literally seeing and experiencing the world through a digital filter. A filter that makes tons and tons of money when everybody is in a pocket universe. Scared of each other. Filtering each other. Weaponized by politics. Swayed by ads. Nobody shares resources. Nobody talks. Nobody gathers.
They're all the most important thing in their own little worlds, buying products and generating data. I liken this to when we started seeing split-screen disappear from video games. "Well now each player needs a game console, and a subscription, and the game..."
Lol sorry didn't mean to follow your TED talk with a blog post of my own. But, yeah, how the heck do we get this message out there...our humanity is hanging on by a thread...
Not fond of this "both sides" attitude - you don't see women threatening the safety of men: the onus is on men to ensure that women feel safe around them. It's not enough to not hurt a woman, but to ensure the woman is always in a situation where she feels like you aren't a threat. Don't isolate her from a crowd as there is safety in numbers. Be confrontational against men who male her feel unsafe. Keep space so she doesn't have to fear sudden movements from you. Etc etc etc. It's work to navigate in such an environment, but it isn't impossible.
If you want to engage with women on more equal footing, your enemy is the men who are making them feel unsafe, not the women for feeling unsafe. This is the only viable path forward.
Is it actually intended to protect you, or is it intended to constantly neg you to the point you become a hollow shell of a woman, overly eager to please others out of fear for hypotheticals, no longer capable of recognizing good in others so you'll settle for the abusive relationships you've been conditioned to expect?
I don't consider women human beings capable of discerning a good situation from a bad one.
I believe that women are so simple minded that warning them of the worst case scenario irrevocably ruins them socially.
I think that if we keep showing women the consequences of not being wary of men who may be violent, they will inexplicably choose abusive relationships where that violence is ever present.
Man, you sound like you have zero respect for women whatsoever. You really think that women are so weak minded as a whole that just being exposed to the violence primarily levied against women is going to break all women mentally?
It's not something specific about women, but people in general respond poorly to being constantly bombarded with fear porn. the only thing specific to women in this scenario is the flavour of fear porn being peddled. There are abundant examples of other flavours designed to antagonize other demographics throughout the media landscape.
If what you're saying is that people respond poorly in general to the news, then fine. But that's hardly the same thing as being negged into abusive relationships.
Sure. But painting women as completely beholden to the news to the point that they're negged into paranoia and abusive relationships is blatantly over representing the problem.
or is it intended to constantly neg you to the point you become a hollow shell of a woman, overly eager to please others out of fear for hypotheticals, no longer capable of recognizing good in others so you'll settle for the abusive relationships you've been conditioned to expect?
I'm using your words, in your phrasing. If I'm misrepresenting what you said, then you might want to reexamine what you said.
Ok, and claiming that news pertaining to the rape and murder of women by men who were spurned is manipulative is better in what way?
Painting news organizations as having the overall goal of negging women into paranoia and abusive relationships doesn't even make sense. If anything, their goal would be clicks, not sewing chaos in that way.
And anyway, insinuating that the problem in the original post is the news fear mongering to condition women, and not the pervasive problem of violent men assaulting women, is itself insulting to women. Which is the point I was originally making.
But painting women as completely beholden to the news to the point that they’re negged into paranoia and abusive relationships
I would say it's people in general. Women just happen to be the targets of this particular manipulation. But all people are extremely susceptible to manipulation.
Women are physically inferior to men, and most men don't have a sense of romantic entitlement towards other men. I really can't believe I have to explain why the dynamic of men telling another man no is different from a woman doing the same.
Fear of demonstrably real repercussion. Not unwarranted fear.
You're trying to state that the fear should be just the same, but the dynamic is not. Men don't tend to kill other men out of unrequited love. Trying to say that the difference lies purely in how the media portrays the problem is completely ignoring the context.
It doesn't matter if the murder rate of men to women vs men is roughly the same if the causes are fundamentally different.
Men have been screaming at me in public about their penis feelings since i was in primary school and that's the very least of it. Women don't need the media to know we're in danger. Men will bombard us with enough sexual harrassment to do that themselves.
I think it's valid to bring up gaslighting here since the poster they're replying to is implying that we shouldn't believe women are victims as much as they are. It's pretty much a guarantee that everyone will know a woman who has been subject to sexual assault in their life.
I'm posting this thinking you only see gaslighting as its intentional use by other people.
But there's also the instance of self-gaslighting, where one creates their own demons.
We'll take as an example the idea of the movie "Number 23". Where Jim Carrey plays a man who becomes obsessed with the number 23, starts seeing it everywhere and begins the search for a conspiracy related to it.
When we begin to fear something, we start taking it as a serious possibly of happening. We get drawn by news we'd otherwise pay less attention to, we start searching our surroundings for the chance that something like that might happen, we begin to view potential aggressors with distrust.
And the longer we focus on this fear, the more it takes over and compromises our judgement.
This is where the self-gaslighting comes in. We twist the world to have it conform to this fear, second-guess every interaction, attribute hidden meanings to every conversation and consider anyone who might be able to act as we fear as someone willing to act in that way.
Self-gaslighting can be inferred from the comic above because all we see are the instances in which the fear is magnified in an otherwise normal day.
Catcalling, sticking too close in the subway, dismissive reactions, they're all normal, rude behavior that happen to anyone, but in different ways.
Catcalling specifically happens to women as an uneducated attempt to flirt or show off. Most of the time it's just a dumb ritual of teasing that most of the initiators simply forget about, but on the rare occasions that it devolves to violence, anyone can be a target: the woman in question, the friends the watched it happen or any random passerby that had the misfortune of being a passive observer.
Most women don't stick around long enough to see that part happen though.
Sticking too close in the subway, if not by a violent individual who would be violent regardless when given the chance, is an awkward social need or a sign of depression.
Have you ever seen the meme about a guy relieving himself in the men's restroom, only to have another guy come in and stop at a urinal right next to the first guy? That's not just a meme.
Men have to suffer such individuals all the time.
And in the subway specifically, maybe the person is a creep. But also maybe they don't care who sits around because they like that spot, it soothes them after a long day at work, it's their one real joy and you're in the way. Or maybe they're socially awkward and want to start a conversation, but are too shy to do so in public. Or maybe they're just a creep. Really, they're probably just a creep. The subway brings out the weird in people.
And finally, dismissive reactions are normal in everything. We don't want to live in fear, we don't want to blow things out of proportions, we don't want to engage in stressful situations all around.
It's like going to WebMD, it says you have cancer, so you freak out, people tell you to chill and you're upset they're not freaking out with you.
You may consider the dismissal as a lack of emotional support, yet on the contrary, trying to calm you down is the best emotional support one can offer even though it's done poorly. Freaking out doesn't help, ever.
All in all, self-gaslighting into believing things are worse than they actually are is more common than we think. But the opposite is also very much true.
The dog sitting in a burning room meme saying "This is fine" is the gold standard in today's society.
Even as an introverted, socially awkward guy, I understand the real answer is better socialization. When the only encounter you have is a brief awkward attempt to hit on someone, which has always been low probability for most of us, you’re going to be frustrated. Too bad there weren’t more ways in everyday life for that frustrated guy to have gotten to know more people, recognized women as people, had varying levels of relationships with varying people.
I was going to tell Lemmy a little about this, but if you're getting downvoted, this is not the place. I just confirm it is the case for me, family and classmate. It can be scary outside.
Yeah Lemmy takes Reddit's "full of bitter, lonely men" problem and amplifies it by selecting the ones opinionated enough to leave Reddit on either principle or through a permaban.
It's a common phrase for to describe prioritizing bad news over normal news in media... basically saying bad shit gets top billing on news outlets. For example, murder, accidents, deaths, etc, they will lead the news feeds. This tends to give watchers/readers a skewed perspective as to how bad things are in the world. For example, murder rates may be down but media constantly hyping up the latest murders may get people to think it's the worst it's ever been... reality be damned.
For the men being dramatic in the comments, think about this: if your reaction to women saying they have a reason to be afraid is to take your dating ball and go home, whine and complain about women being afraid of you because of your gender, blame women for listening to reports of crime, or otherwise do anything but listen and expand your empathy, you are a big part of the reason women have to be cautious. Thank you for proving their point.
if your reaction to women saying they have a reason to be afraid is to take your dating ball and go home, whine and complain about women being afraid of you because of your gender, blame women for listening to reports of crime, or otherwise do anything but listen and expand your empathy, you are a big part of the reason women have to be cautious
I guess I must be one of the “dramatic” men, but if women are worried about being killed, then men who aren’t killing women aren’t a big part of the reason. That doesn’t make any sense.
The men who are a big part of the reason women have to be cautious are the ones who are violent against women. Those guys are the problem, period.
You can respond to us however you’d like, but we aren’t the reason women have to be careful. The men who commit violence against women are the reason women have to be careful.
You can be careful around all men. I certainly am. No offense taken; you have to treat everyone as a potential threat to catch the ones who are, and the only non-threat people who resent that are naive.
But that doesn’t mean the non-violent men are the reason women have to be careful. The violent men are the reason women have to be careful. Unless you’re saying something about men who are naive somehow enabling evil?
All I’m getting from this cockroach thing is you’re feeling disgusted by this situation?
Not just the men who commit violence. Women have to be careful around the men who sit by and let it happen, the ones who try to argue with women on the internet instead of learning a bit of empathy. The non-violent men condone the behavior of violent men when they focus on trying to defend themselves rather than join in calling out bad behavior.
I feel like we keep dancing around the fact you’re referring to me, so I’ll go ahead and acknowledge that.
No, the fact that I’m here arguing with you doesn’t mean I would let a man put his hands on you. That also doesn’t make sense.
But I can’t be everywhere, protecting you from every other man. Your vulnerability is not a pure function of my agreeing with you, because your vulnerability is not modulated by my relationship toward you.
In short, I cannot protect you from every other man. No matter how much I stop questioning and focus on empathy, it won’t protect you.
And I can step in and protect you from a man being violent, without agreeing with everything you say. I have sufficient empathy to recognize you as valuable enough to protect from a person being violent.
I can see that you really want to tie together two unrelated things:
Men who commit violence against women
Men who argue with women
But I’m not going to let that happen, because it doesn’t make any sense. This story you have about how men who argue with you would have the power to end the threat of violence against you, if they just stopped arguing … it just doesn’t hold any water.
Bro, I don't need you to protect me. You spend more time arguing with me than arguing with men who think it's okay to use women. And you are confused why that puts you on the side of men who hurt women? Really?
I think that when people experience real violence they lose the illusion that the really violent people are people who can be reasoned with, who might only be missing a bit of argumentation but otherwise perfectly able to live virtuously.
What I’m saying is that I think you don’t have any experience with this because if you did you would understand what you think of as the solution isn’t effective at all.
What are you even talking about? I've never claimed a single solution. I've just pointed out that it's a good idea to avoid men who are apparently like you along with the ones actually committing the violence. In some ways you're worse because you should know better.
Just like I should know better than to have a conversation with an obvious bad actor, but here we are. At least I have enough brains to change my mind when I realize I'm wrong.
In some ways you're worse because you should know better.
Certainly not in the ways that matter. We are talking about rape and murder here, and you’re comparing it to me disagreeing with you, and saying that “in some ways” my disagreeing with you is worse than raping and murdering you.
That is so far out of touch I don’t know how to
respond to it other than to point out how absurd it is.
If in doubt, ask a man you trust. It's not like those guys would be popular among the majority, or we don't know who they are.
Seriously by and large women seem to have completely broken threat and personality radars. Incapable of judging the difference between harmless, insecure/aggressive, and peaceful. Don't let "intimidating" confuse you the peaceful ones are exactly that -- in the rollercoaster sense. If you got yourself a harmless one and want to coax them towards peaceful challenge them to a tickle fight.
Where are you that everybody knows everybody else, including randoms at a bar or out on the street?
From the vibe in this thread this is likely to get me bombed with downvotes, but the stakes are too high to take a gamble on whether a guy is "just intimidating" or a real threat to your safety. If a guy can't take no for an answer in a bar chances are good he's not going to take no in other situations either. And if I'm already uncomfortable, I'm not going to offer to make physical contact in the hopes the guy is just awkward.
Accept the fact that they're not into you and move on. If you can't, or won't, you're part of the problem.
Where are you that everybody knows everybody else, including randoms at a bar or out on the street?
Why would you need to know someone to judge their character quickly. Have you heard about this thing called empathy with which you can walk in someone's shoes and within a split-second see what their state of mind is.
This is precisely what I mean by having a broken threat and personality radar. "Oh I can't tell" yeah then fix that. Learn to read people. If you need help with that, ask someone, but not on the internet this needs real-world experience.
Accept the fact that they’re not into you and move on.
Don't flatter yourself. I'm not talking about picking up girls, you are.
Why would you need to know someone to judge their character quickly.
Wow, you're so naive, if you aren't a troll. You seriously think you can know a person from just a few moments of interaction? So many people are great at masking their true thoughts and intentions.
Ted Bundy was known to be charming and charismatic... but this is by no means limited to serial killers. All kinds of people put on a facade every single day. Oftentimes it's not even malicious.
You don't always know who a person truly is, even if you THINK you know them. Women will get into relationships with men who seem lovely at first, and then they turn abusive as soon as they get married because they believe they've had her tied down enough so she won't leave. You hear from friends, family, neighbors of murderers and abusers say that they had no idea of that person's dark behavior.
Say you have a jar full of candy that you'd like a piece of, but you know that there are a handful of pieces in the jar that will poison and kill you. There's no way to know which is which. Would you not be wary, even though you know that most of them are probably fine?
You're also forgetting about (or ignoring) the kinds of men that look away when their friends or family do/say things to women that aren't ok.
Maybe those men aren't openly misogynistic, and maybe they would never actively harm a woman themselves, but they're also unsafe for us to be around when they do nothing to stop or object to their peers' behavior. Those kinds of men are even more common than abusers. I certainly wouldn't want to be with anyone like that, even if I knew with 100% certainty that they would never lay a hand on me.
You seriously think you can know a person from just a few moments of interaction?
You can tell enough to know whether they're safe to be around.
Women will get into relationships with men who seem lovely at first, and then they turn abusive as soon as they get married because they believe they’ve had her tied down enough so she won’t leave.
Yes. As I said: Women have shit threat and personality radars. Many of those women probably were warned by men they knew. If they weren't, then probably because people knew they wouldn't listen.
So many people are great at masking their true thoughts and intentions.
Those look like they're hiding something.
Seriously, this is a skill issue. Learn to relate to people. Get therapy if need be.
It's naive to think that women who manage to not end up willingly entering relationship after relationship with abusive assholes are somehow just getting lucky. If it was a matter of chance you'd see a more even distribution but the distribution is lopsided, thus, it has to be a skill issue.
But if princess prefers to believe that she is too precious to acquire skills, that the world will bend to her dreams and wishes... I can only hope that luck will follow her around.
What about "here is how you'll be safer, how you'll lead a nicer life, yes a safer and nicer life is possible" is victim blaming. I'm not blaming you for being fucked up, I'm encouraging you to fix it. If that offends you then you have deeper issues than assholes existing in the world.
It's not your fault that society is fucked up, that interpersonal alienation is rampant, that people wear masks so heavy that they lose the capacity to see other people's masks, but it would be your fault if it stays that way because the one you wear is your responsibility.
I don't need to fix anything because I am not the problem. Historically, systemically and individually I am not the problem. I will continue to go about my life with my eyes wide open with risk assessment. I'm happy for you that you're safe but I'm sad that you don't seem able to listen to what all the women (and some men) in these comments are saying.
I will continue to go about my life with my eyes wide open with risk assessment.
It was you who asked, and I quote:
How can you tell which is which when they’re all dressed as men?
Which means you do have (not "are") a problem: You can't distinguish assholes from non-assholes. Or how else am I to interpret that question?
You asked for advise about the topic. I pointed you into directions and now somehow I'm the bad guy? I'm the asshole for providing you with information you, specifically, asked for? You're accusing me of not listening to you because I answered your question?
If you want emotional support, ask for emotional support, don't ask for solutions. I actually thought male-female relationships had evolved past that particular point of misunderstanding but it seems they haven't.
When your response is "if in doubt, ask a man you trust" and women have shit threat radars, "tickling".
Those are not solutions.
I wasn't asking for solutions or emotional support.
Quick recap for you:
"How can you tell which is which when they're all dressed as men?"
And then you responded withpatronising incorrect victim blaming bullshit 👏👏👏
You're basically advocating the missing stair which is all kinda of fucked up. But also! Evidently men don't know which one of you are risk factors - many of you don't even see a risk.
It was a rhetorical question for reasons that you can't or won't understand.
Granted. They're mere pointers in the right direction. Have you ever considered asking your brother, or a trusted colleague, about another man's character? You'd be surprised how open and forthcoming the answer will be.
But also! Evidently men don’t know which one of you are risk factors - many of you don’t even see a risk.
Based on what evidence? Have you actually seeked that information, or are you assuming?
It was a rhetorical question for reasons that you can’t or won’t understand.
I understand the reason to be a function of your psychology. You were seeking reinforcement in your belief that it is justifiable to distrust all men.
Enough. Women are supposed to have a man they trust on hand at all times to check if each man they encounter is safe to respond to freely? A chaperone who knows all these random men on the street who harass?
Like it's all fine because men can recommend a friend.
You don't comprehend my original point and subsequently you're not really responding to it. That's fine, you carry on but I realise you're either a troll or completely naive or just being obtuse. cba anymore. Have a good day.
Women are supposed to have a man they trust on hand at all times
That's a completely new sentence.
You're perfectly free to, I in fact encouraged it a million times in this thread, to unfuck your own threat radar. You can do that on your own, you can do it with help from others, either sex, only people I'd advise to stay away from are a) women who have a history of getting into abusive relationships or are abusers themselves and b) men you don't trust, and, generally, c) neurotic people. Take the judgements of people other than those, compare and contrast them with your and other people's judgements, compare reasoning and what specifically people are pointing out about the person in question, collect data. Given enough of that your own capacities will unlock.
I said "if in doubt". That is, if you are not sure of your own capacity to judge, a trusted man is going to be a way out of that situation because have you ever looked at violent crime statistics? How the vast majority of victims are men? We have plenty of reason to develop good threat radars. Don't think for a second my neck hairs don't stand on end when meeting a character like Andrew Tate in the street: Insecure, irritable, full of himself yet constantly seeking approval, a ticking time bomb on first sight. These two guys? Complete opposite. Sure you don't want to fuck with them but I don't want to, anyway, so that's a nothingburger.
It doesn't make you a poor judge of character to be lied to. Lying is easy. I hope for your sake you can continue to sit in the place of privilege, and not be deceived by someone you care about. That is an ignorance I wish on everyone.
It doesn’t make you a poor judge of character to be lied to. Lying is easy.
Oh no! It is impossible to tell if someone's lying because it's impossible to assess someone's honesty because it's impossible to emphasise with people!
That is an ignorance I wish on everyone.
Why would you be so cruel. In a healthy developmental process, you get lied to by your parents about the location of your nose so that you learn to not be too trusting. No, they didn't actually steal it and yes, they did have tells.
That was a very artfully crafted conversation ender. May you forgive your past self for being as bad of a character judge as she was to move on in a constructive manner. I.e. don't become self-opinionated on her behalf that'd be silly.
The boy, identified only as Landen, was 5 when Emmanuel Aranda threw him nearly 40 feet to the ground. Aranda, who had been banned from the Bloomington, Minnesota, mall twice in previous years, told investigators that when went there “looking for someone to kill” after women rejected his advances.
It is that scary. When I was a younger idiot, I was unintentionally pushy and implied to a lady that I was about to rawdog it. She was scared, and went home, and it's completely my fault that I didn't let her feel safe. I was too myopic to see that a little comment I made had affected her security.
Being a larger, more muscular human I could have put it in despite her protests. Being naked together isn't consent for more than being naked together.
Certainly very scary, a horrible tragedy, and a mental health emergency we need to find a way to prevent. Learning about things like this can understandably frighten anyone. However, the reality is it’s an outlier, very rare, almost no one will ever experience anything like this
Calling things an outlier just serves to dismiss the issue from being dealt with simply because it doesn’t fit some rigid standardized and (lazy) under-developed solution. The problem still remains. It’s still an issue even if you want to play statistics on how it doesn’t affect you personally because a system wasn’t made to deal its it because ‘it’s an outlier’. That’s the problem with standardizing problems that shouldn’t be approached with a standardized solution. In fact it’s the individuality that gets lost and where we fail to deal with problems head on. “It doesn’t fit in my box so I won’t deal with it”.
There are plenty, if not most, good and decent men out there who are respectful and treat not only women well but everyone around them. but they dont end up in the news or even being mentioned. They dont get talked about or even remembered.
Sure some men are terrible but IMO and experience, i wouldn't blame it on their gender. Its more a personality thing
It could be the clickbait title yes! But I feel there's more to it than that. It's also about who is more visible and who gets talked about the most as well as dis-respectfulness being a personality trade instead of a gender characteristic
Go talk to a woman, any woman. And believe what they tell you. Don't explain to them that they're just manipulated by the media. Listen to their actual personal experience. Then ask another woman. See if you find a pattern. It won't be their tv viewing, I promise you that.
... I'm a woman. I've been raped, assaulted, groped, stalked, kerb-crawled, cat-called and intimidated. The majority of my female friends can tick off at least one of the above. As can their friends. And their mothers. And their sisters.
I am sure and I am trully sorry that you've been through it all! I'd be scared if I were you too. It doesn't make it normal though.
If so many of your remediate network have been through the same, you must be living in a terrible place. The majority of females that I have discussed similar issues with have been based in either northern European countries or Mediterranean. What you describe would be extremes to mostly all the women that i have talked with
We're not females, mate, we're women. And it's not isolated to any country or socio-economic group.
These aren't extremes. They're the lived existence of most women. Like I said, that's a list that most women can identify an instance of that they've experienced.
Your word choice and tone make me think that you aren't a person any woman readily or candidly confides in.
Rape, assault, groping, what have you - that happens everywhere. It's not just a bleak story of post-USSR landscapes and people being carted into trucks; it's ordinary people. Pele with families, with white collar jobs. Suburbs and night clubs. Country roads and city alleys.
I'm not a broken shell of a person. I'm a woman in my late 30s who has experienced trauma at the hands of men I trusted, and from complete strangers. I'm a high income earner, I'm privileged. But every woman I know has experienced something on that list.
Listen to women. Wherever they are, whatever they look like.
Stop telling us. We don't need to be told anything.
You're missing the point that it isn't living in a terrible place. It's living in any place. It's the normal, baseline experience of most women. The Mediterranean is one of the worst.
Women don't talk to you about it because it's normal to them.
The thesis of this comic is "women have reasons to be afraid of some men". Responding to that with "not all men are bad" is a straw man, it's responding to an argument that nobody actually made.
Are you being deliberately obtuse? The 'not all men' cry is the same as 'all lives matter'. It's deliberately ignoring the circumstances behind the phrase. Don't be so silly.
Okay. The vast majority of men will not attack you for rejecting their advances. The news loves to cherry pick things that scare people and make them angry, because it increases viewership.
What's the alternative? Men should never speak to women?
Oh shit mate, thanks for telling me that! Phew! I mean, I don't watch the news, but my experience as a woman and all women I know is at least one extremely negative interaction with a man. Where we were legitimately in danger. But now I know it was all in my head, thanks!
Sure, a majority of men are respectful. But when it's a game of odds of being verbally berated or worse for declining some random guys advances I would sure as fuck not trust a random man coming up to me either.
But then you expect a terrible reaction from every guy. As you say, it's a game of odds. I am sure that there are bad guys out there, but expecting every guy to be bad, or preparing for everyone to be bad, is just as discriminating as men expecting all women to be willing to date them.
It's not expecting a terrible reaction from everyone, just acknowledging that there's a slim chance of life-ending consequences. It's not discriminatory against vehicles to avoid tailgating because of a one in ten thousand chance that they'll brake too suddenly for you to react and you'll crash, so it's not reasonable to demand women to be happy putting themselves in a situation where they've got a comparable chance of getting stabbed by a nutter.
It's by no means all men's fault that there are nutters who'll stab women for rejecting them, but they are real, and are much more common than women who'll stab men for rejecting them (not least because of women being less likely to hit on men they don't know in the first place). The problem makes the world worse for everyone, but denying it or saying we should pretend it's not real because it would be sexist still leaves women with a disproportionate and quantifiable actual risk of death, which is a much worse consequence than having to only hit on women in environments they feel safe.
Its just often that you find what you expect and meeting strangers expecting or rather fearing that you'll get stabbed may often lead to other social complications.
Normal situation awareness is very good to have and acknowledging that there are risks in any actions is the best approach to any interaction.
The question is how much weight you add to them. Tailgating is risky yes. So is driving, flying, traveling to foreign countries, changing career, investing money.
My point is not to ignore the risks, but to not let the fear dictate expectations. You are probably right about chances of a guy stabbing a woman are higher than a woman stabbing a man, due to rejection. But what are the chances of being stabbed altogether? People get rejected all the time. Most get sad. Some get angry. Some maybe very angry. But fearing for ones life because of it feels a bit overrated
The risks to driving, flying, etc. aren't actively hunting you out. Nor are they trying to trick you into thinking they aren't a risk. There's a difference.
It's like riding a motorcycle. Most people are reasonably careful, look before they change lanes, keep a decent following distance so they can react in time, aren't looking at their phone, etc. But even when it's a small minority of drivers that aren't paying attention, you still have to treat everyone as potentially one of those, because one of those can fucking end you, and you can't tell the difference until it's too late.
I wonder if how bad they are at come ons is actually a factor. A normal guy approaching in a socially acceptable fashion actually gets some yes and eventually goes off the market temporarily or permanently whereas psycho joe presumably is always offending always failing.
People forget that nobody makes true crime podcasts about a guy who took rejection like a normal person.
That doesn't make the crazy people not a problem, but obsessing on what you read online will give you a skewed view of what people in general are like.
Completely agree with you, I've met some amazing men before! The comic really drives home the fact though that the small amount of bad and violent men out there are why women have to always be at least a little on guard to protect ourselves when men approach us. And yes, no doubt there are bad and violent women out there too
Well I’d hope these good people that you know would not be personalizing and taking away from the point.
One good person doesn’t undo another horrible person’s business. It is news because it’s about the victims in a situation. Let it be about them and not about some fragile guy feeling ‘personally attacked’ over what some other guy did. That’s feeding on someone else’s tragedy and making it about what it isn’t.
I am sorry if this sounds like I got offended or hurt by this. I personally am not involved in this at all. I've been in the same relationship for 15 years and not in 'the game'.
I'm just discussing it on neutral grounds and out of interest.
What we haven't even mentioned are the cultural differences between countries. Some places are more dangerous than others
Since you seem to be surprised people got offended or hurt, I will try to decode this interaction for you. Based on seeing essentially this discussion online over and over again.
I mean my take on this is the original post is essentially saying :
"Please be understanding of women turning you down in less than ideal ways (ie: Ghosting, etc.), they are afraid for their safety because they keep hearing stories of violence from men angry that women did not do what they wanted them to do. "
Then you essentially say :
"There are many good men too". It's also very easy to read into what you say "And we should be talking about how they don't get talked about or remembered" even if you didn't mean to say it that way
This is besides the point. It indicates that you either did not decode the original message right or lack empathy for the situation. I mean, it's very likely the first, but the second is why people can get angry at a reaction like this. If you want to start a discussion on a different topic, why does it need to be in this thread?
What we haven’t even mentioned
There are a LOT of things we haven't mentioned. I don't understand why you feel the need to change the topic a second time in a thread asking for empathy.
Thanks for trying but I am afraid that I am indeed what you believe i am being misunderstood for.
We hear of fatal car crashes all the time but people still drive cars.
Its good to be carefull but it is dangerous to be scared.
Also, my point about local differences is not an attempt to change topics. I can often forget my carkeys in the car and go to sleep without locking my front door because it is a mostly safe country. Maybe some of the women being most vocal about this issue live in areas where men indeed are more dangerous than the average man.
Lastly, I am not trying to ask for sympathy. I am simply discussing the subject. I let people do what they feel is right for themselves while trying to explain why it does not sound logical to me.
Shit is scary out there. Had a situation recently that definitely reinforced how spooky it is being a woman in public.
So I'm chilling with the crew at a bar, came out to catch a homie mixing originals. One of our friends is a cutie. She's with 3 of us fellas. We're in a booth, very obviously a group that came here together. One of the regulars kicks it with us for a bit, harmless banter, classic bar chat shit.
He ends up chilling for a while. We're cracking jokes & having fun, he says his dude owns the bar, etc. He gets a bit flirty (again, felt fully harmless at the time), goes to fetch us a round of brew. She only wanted a water by this stage in the night. When she finally gets around to taking a small sip all her internal alarm bells go off, thinks sum'm tastes off.
We manage to pick up the vibe and dip before anything extra sketch went down and had a lil debrief, made sure everyone was ok etc... One of my dudes had also taken a decent gulp first and seemingly got pretty woozy off it. Now, I can't for sure confirm whether it was truly laced or just shitty dirty bar hose water and a mild panic attack. Can't say whether homie was chemically woozy or placebo woozy (very well could've been tired from long day and lots of brew + dancing), but either way, enough to be a scary situation! We're like 95% sure shit was sketchy.
Absolutely worth trusting the gut when you get an off feeling. Better safe than sorry, all that. As a dude, I've NEVER needed to think twice about a gift beverage at a bar. I circle lots of music scenes and almost every single time I'm out I'll catch a random free drink, smoke, lol candy or whatever off a stranger randomly offering. I've definitely asked to confirm what these gifts are, but generally felt safe enough to take their answers at face value.
Ladies DEFINITELY can't be as cavalier about gifts from strangers though... That's how they end up the subject of these crime podcasts.
Idk, felt like a relevant story to share.
Stay safe, stay frosty, y'all ❤️ Good weekends all around!
I know it shouldn't need to be said, but as a woman, THANK YOU! Thank you so so much for being a safe haven with actual conscious awareness of the dangers women face. We need more men that will stand up to the stupid Alpha Bros and stop shit before we are in serious trouble!
One thing that might help you help the ladies in your life is coming up with a code phrase that lets her tell you she doesn't feel safe in a situation that requires discretion. Ex: "Janice texted me" (with a name yall never use). My fiance and I have a code phrase, and I've had to use it twice. It feels good knowing I have an out no matter what when things start feeling sketchy.
Juuust when you forget how dark the world is for a moment, someone gotta shake your faith in humanity all over again. No thanks necessary, of course, but appreciate ya all the same! 🤙 Even on a goofy night, squad ends up safe at home, every time.
Oh yeah! We IMMEDIATELY began talking about safe words/phrases, like, while we were processing wtf just happened. Smart move having something extra inconspicuous like that! Definitely better than whatever dumbass tropical fruit phrase we semi joked about at the time. 😂😬 (Lol fuck, vaguely recall a phrase about needing to take a nasty shit, uff).
Will for sure be on German Shepard Mode next time we catch a night out. Gonna be hard to turn that off for a minute...
Oh wow. Memory unlocked. We used to have a code word for "get me out of this interaction". The amount of times I've been the one to break off a conversation/situation with a man on behalf of my friends and the amount of time the interaction has been scary.
Growing up as a man, I was told that I should be 'alpha', I should be a predator and girls like only such guys. I tried to question this, but I was surrounded by all this. Hell, even when I reached my mom on such a topic, she just stopped the conversation.
Your post made me recall several situations where I made young women uncomfortable. Hell, I used to be such a dumbass.
Yeah dude, all that pick up artist shit is pretty toxic and counter productive imho. Especially these incel influencers talking about "deserving" goddamn anything. Like, being a "good guy" for a minute doesn't mean you deserve a sex treat, you dirty dogs! 😒
Now, I've thankfully been committed in a ship for a while now so can't speak to modern dating scene (fuck it looks bleak for lads in them middle thirties), but I always leaned on my funny bones more than anything back when I was making moves. That and, now this is pretty obvious, just treating women like regular people -- cause they are! (Duh).
I never tried too hard to "have game." I've just been a perpetually evolving amalgamation of shit I find cool. If you're just naturally comfortable and confident in your skin, and visibly having the most fun in the room it's way more attractive than trying too hard. Desperation reeks. Least that's my take.
Of course the rules are a smidge different when you're 11/10 fine as helllll 🤣 I've seen the chat game on them Chads and it gets reckless lmao
Good on ya for the introspective reflection though, truly! Not necessarily a bad thing to cringe at past you; that means you're growing and improving.
I'm kind of proud of our team of guys at work. We have had a couple of women work with us in the past but its rare. The dudes at work dont shout comments, dont wolf whistle, dont harass women. I dont understand why its so hard for others not to be complete morons. In fact one or two have called out the behaviour of others.
Some industries are better than others. I work in a situation where I work with multiple crews. Some are great where everybody just acts like people and... some are shit where if they get a fem-presenting person on random call from the hall they act like they are radioactive and chuck them back in the call out pool unfailingly at day's end.
I see a lot of bad power dynamics at play regularly. The thing I found the most telling on a crew is the treatment pretty girls get over the plain or unattractive ones. If it seems like the guys are just generally more attentive to the pretty ones and not making an effort through be sociable more generally and not rewarding actual merit - or if a crew tends to keep the same guys and the girls keep cycling out then chances are good there's shit going on under the surface that the girls are too afraid to talk about until they learn you're trustworthy enough to vent to.
I should point out we're hospital binmen. Like the binmen you see on the street but with slightly different kit (plus we also collect clinical waste). Only thing more stereotypically masculine a job is probably being a builder, plumber or electrician. Have seen a fair few women doing electrician roles and such in recent years.
I'm a trans-masculine person who worked in siding and concrete forming before transitioning over to work as union film set dressing. Think professional furniture mover who handles everything from delicate little knicknacks to industrial equipment. My second career is closer to egalitarian split but it's still favors guys by a margin. I fall into the gender gulf as a lot of guys don't really connect with me being their people... But I don't really veiw women as my people either. I can just kind of relate to their problems because we share some of the same issues with how we are precieved and they feel more comfortable venting around me even if they are confused about me.
Isn't this just fear-mongering? This comic implies that every single time that someone rejects a man that man is going to do something bad. I'm not going to deny the fact that there are men that are unhinged but this is nothing but a man-hating comic.
I read that comic much more literally and it think this is true in general. We see something in the news frequently and it can color our whole life. Yea, too many women have experienced an outburst from some rejected guy. Men’s mental health surely is a problem our society needs to do something about. However a random conversation is safe for most people most of the time. I believe women don’t need to live in fear but I’m biased just like in the comic. I like to think both of us want the news to focus on accuracy rather than simple fright or outrage
Studies show most alligators have no carnivorous intentions towards humans, and usually just want to get away. So probably most of the time they’ll just run off at worst. Maybe once in a while they might try biting back to remove a limb, but surely that won’t happen every single time.
This metaphor doesn't make sense when you think about risk analysis. If we are comparing humans to alligators here then let's say you go up to 1000 people and put your arm out in front of them. Now do the same thing with 1,000 alligators. Is it more likely that the alligators will be far more aggressive? Probably. Now until this experiment is done we'll never know but that is the reason why your alligator metaphor. It also implies that women interacting with men would be equivalent to women petting an alligator which let's face it most people wouldn't want to get close to a wild alligator.
Rejecting a man. In public. And experiencing something bad in return. Like the title and comic in the post and your previous reply all depict.
Obviously also gonna be closer to the alligator analogy than just going up to random people and sticking your hand out in front of them for no reason, and you know that. Don't play dumb. Unless you really, truly do not understand the concept of an analogy. In which case, it is time to put the phone down and start paying attention in your language arts classes.
Yes, all forms of murder are statically rare in the USA and most people of all genders have an extremely small chance of ever being murdered. Homicide of any kind is not even in the top 10 causes of death in the USA. Violent crime is overall lower than it has been in recent decades and is on the decrease. So basically none of us need to waste time or energy worrying about that.
I don't have to feel wrong because I have read the statistics that prove what I said. It's inconsequential if you have an opinion that disagrees with our reality, that's just a problem for you.
I understand that but there is a big difference between being cautious and being a paranoid man hater and that's what I've been seeing a lot of lately. There are a lot of disgusting men in the world, I won't deny that, but to assume all men are like that is asinine.
We aren’t assuming all men are like that, we’re assuming an unknown man is more likely to be like that than is worth the risk.
And then there’s the fact that the majority of rape victims knew and trusted their rapist. Then we’re here knowing that when we’re raped or abused or whatever else we’re going to be treated like fools for trusting the person who hurt us.
So if you assume an unknown man is likely to be violent towards you and it's not worth the risk then how do you ever expect to meet new people that are men without automatically assuming they are a rapist? Also, you said that the majority of rape victims knew and trusted their rapists which means that you can't even trust the people you know. So now you're telling me you literally can't trust anyone and you're trying to tell me that you're not paranoid. Please explain to me how that makes sense.
You're the one saying "all men". I'm saying there's a reason women are skeptical and distrusting of nearly all men UNTIL they've gotten to know and vett them. I do research and script writing for a documentary series about crime and was a mortician for a decade; so this subject hits close to home.
That 1/3 feels low tbh. Hell basically every woman I’ve talked about it with has been sexually assaulted in a public setting. Some more severe than others of course but being groped in a bar by someone is such a common experience for women that I can’t help but wonder if they used the word sexual harassment rather than described it. There’s that study that showed if you describe rape without using the word a lot more people are willing to admit to it than if you just use the word.
I should be able to partake in third spaces, including those which sell intoxicants without being sexually assaulted.
But whatever, how was I asking for sexual harassment when I went for a run in a residential neighborhood in broad daylight? Or when my now wife and I walked to a fast food restaurant and had a group of men move from telling us how they wanted to fuck us to calling us slurs and eventually settling on both. These experiences are just the sort of shit most women have been through.
I am not sure if you think that is some sort of "gotcha" but that isn't it. In fact, I'm not sure what you are implying at all. Care to elaborate further?
The comic is not implying that every single time a woman says no to man, that man will do something bad. It is saying that often when a woman wants to say no to a man, they have to do an internal calculation to answer questions like "Can I trust this man to respond okay to a No? How likely will they say something rude, or escalate to harassment? What do I do if he gets physically persistent? Is he going to get pissed off if I say no and come after me when I leave?"
Usually the answer is "he's probably fine", but women do have to go through the calculation much more than men typically. And that's kinda fucked up.
The comic is saying "just say no" ignores/dismisses the non-negligible risk of just saying no.
When I was still with my last partner, we were open: she was dating as was I.
She DID do the, "hey, you're nice but I'm just not feeling it" to a couple people she met and they were absolutely shitty about it. If it wasn't a comment about her being a "stuck up bitch" it was something else. A couple harassed her via text for days afterwords before she blocked them. This was probably half the people she met.
Nowadays if I meet a woman I totally get if they don't want to connect outside of an app before meeting and I don't think they're (necessarily) assholes if I get ghosted. People's behavior has made this sort of thing necessary so I try not to take it personally.
So yeah, all you saying this doesn't happen... hate to be this guy, but it totally happens. Listen to women every once in a while
Yep. I'm a guy and I've seen the absolutely shitty and vile responses female friends have gotten on dating apps for polite rejections. I used to get annoyed when I would send someone an introduction message and get nothing back but now I 100% understand why. Because even a polite rejection could lead to a terrible interaction and this stranger doesn't owe me shit.
I think I understand what you're saying, but don't discount the point here. I think the author is speaking to the experience of being a woman in a first world society. It's not necessarily always incels that react to women with violence, or the threat.
I have never met a single woman who didn't have their own story of aggressive stalking, sexual assault, or violence. Myself and all my friends and family included.
Yeah it's a mess, there are some proper pigs out there. The comic still feels a bit like somebody hears about child abduction on the media and the punch line is that it's somehow insensitive to suggest to let the kids go to school on their own.
I wouldn't be surprised if more men are victims of this too than one would think, or i got incredibly "lucky". I remember when i was a kid, skateboarding in the city, i would go to the toilet of the main train station if i needed to. There were almost always men masturbating and looking over to me, but i didn't understand back then, although i found it very uncomfortable, the smell of that toilet may have done its part though, haha.
When i was older, going home from the club i used to pass the are of the same train station and it must have been a place for male prostitution at night, i had almost every weekend cars stalking me, randos asking if i wanted to jerk them off or some shit. I didn't feel scared though, which seems a bit weird in hindsight, but i never change my route home.
Later i also got randomly jumped and beat up, out of the blue, in the middle of the night by two guys. That one was actually traumatic and it took me half a year to not think about it anymore.
edit: Reading this again, it kinda has some vibes of downplaying women*s experiences. Just wanted to make clear that was not my intention, i know there's levels to this stuff.
(Walking home at 3am. Crowd of kids under a streetlight, a dozen. Figured there was a party nearby. I'm walking by, say hi, one kid approaches me, says "hey you got a light". I aay "nope". He walks closer and says it again. Then bam, somebody hits me on the head from behind with a bat. I'm out for a couple seconds. Come to with blood everywhere. 2 guys standing over me. One says, "give me your wallet, we know where you live, don't call the cops, we've done this before". So I give them my wallet and they run away down the street. Then I'm sitting there bleeding for a minute. The crowd is watching all this. Then one says, "I guess we should run". Then they all leave. Then I get up and walk a block to a friend's house and call an ambulance.)
Still got the scar.
After that, everybody was a suspect. Everybody I saw got my burning looks.
Well, yes but no. This isn't just about incels and really predates their visible presence online. The for-profit media companies do absolutely profit from "engagement" which they achieve by pushing stories that make people fearful.
However, there is much more to the picture. I didn't understand, myself, when I was younger and it took maturing, listening to women around me, and experience as a supervisor for customer support to get through my skull how fucked up and different the experience is that women have in life. Talk to the women in your life and it is likely that they have experiences feeling threatened by men, being treated as incompetent and belittled by men (especially in technical fields), not having their health and medical symptoms taken seriously, or outright sexually assaulted. They're often taught that they just have to go in with life because this is "normal". The statistics show that over 15% of women and 3% of men in the US gave experienced sexual assault and that's with an estimate of 75% being unreported, so likely a larger number.
TL;DR Yes, corporate media is fucked up but, just because slapping the asses of female coworkers is no longer acceptable does not mean that sexism is gone and women don't have legitimate reasons to fear for their safety around men. As unfortunate as it is for the majority of us men who don't engage in awful behavior, it's a lot worse for women who have to think "is this a guy who is going to murder me if I say 'no'?".
I'm look both ways before I cross the road and I've never been hit.
I have been subject to male shittiness (catcallling, groping, abuse and physical abuse when rejecting advances) and I still go about in the world but I will mitigate my risk by keeping myself as safe as possible (let friends know where I am, be on the phone, don't wander around in the dark dressing how I would choose) pulling out the fawn flight or fight when required.
As a man, I will say the very nature of this "solution" is paradoxical. (TL;DR at the end)
As I'm sure you know, some women do hit on men, when they feel safe. For example when they're out with their girlfriends I've seen women turn into absolute horndogs, doing cat-calling, questionably appropriate touching, even in some cases full-on sexual harassment, the whole 9 yards.
Your statement begs the (fair) question: why don't women feel safe openly flirting like that all the time?
In general (i.e. when they're alone), women tend to be afraid to hit on men for the same reason as in this comic, it's just a little harder to grasp/explain.
Let me try: If a woman, alone, sees an attractive man, alone, and decides to "roll the dice" and hit on the man by herself, what are the possible outcomes?
he could be nice, flirt back, and she'll end up liking him and they'll go on a date
he could be nice, flirt back but she might still decide she's not interested and try to say goodbye
(less likely, but still happens) he could give off weird/creepy vibes, and when she tries to walk away, he could try to hurt her or take advantage of her
What you have to understand is that for the woman, Outcome #2 is almost equally scary as Outcome #3. Because women know that regardless of whether they're a creep or the nicest guy ever, a lot of men don't handle rejection well.
I'm not saying you would do this, but ask yourself this: how would most men react if a woman comes up to flirt with them & she changes her mind half way through the conversation & decides to leave? Will most men be okay with it and move on? Or will they take it personally in some way and feel mistreated or get upset with the woman for "leading them on for no reason"?
I have to say, as a man who has interacted with lots of men from lots of cultures, most men, including myself at times, do not handle rejection in a healthy way (even though I've never lashed out at a woman for rejecting me, I've put women in uncomfortable situations out of the fear of rejection).
That is what more men, I feel, need to recognize in themselves, in order for any of this to get better. It's not about normalizing women flirting with men. It's about normalizing men responding to rejection with grace and humility. The attitude of "ah well, better luck next time!" would be so much healthier than the immediate victim mentality most men assume, which is "what did I do to deserve that rejection?". And that is why women have such a hard time feeling safe doing any of that stuff.
TL;DR in order to normalize women flirting with men, women need to feel safe doing so, which will only happen if men can normalize handling rejection in healthy ways.
I’m not saying you would do this, but ask yourself this: how would most men react if a woman comes up to flirt with them & she changes her mind half way through the conversation & decides to leave? Will most men be okay with it and move on? Or will they take it personally in some way and feel mistreated or get upset with the woman for “leading them on for no reason”?
Though this would probably solve itself if women hit on men as much as the opposite. Men feel mistreated in that situation because they “got their hopes up” and then dipped. If that wasn’t a rare occurrence and they had women hitting on them, say, once a month, one rejection wouldn’t hurt as much.
This is all just theory of course, it’s such a huge societal change that I don’t think anyone can reliably predict the outcomes.
“Normalize women hitting on men” isn’t putting the responsibility on women. The opposite actually, most of the times it’s men who berate women for being “sluts” and whatnot. Society as a whole needs to normalize that, not just women.
... and where do you suppose those women learned that behavior?
Such judgments have been written, by men, into practically every religious, historical and news-based text for the greater part of the last thousand years, and passed down as dogma to men, women and children alike under penalty of ostricization or in some cases, death.
Brainwashing is not exclusive to one gender. And while inter-gender discrimination is not as well documented as inter-racial discrimination, both have existed as long as oppressors have made it their goal to weaken the oppressed by sewing division among them.
Please, try reading some history before you go on the internet spouting harmful opinions.
Did I say literally anything that would contradict your last comment? I know that, and I agree. That doesn’t change what I said.
You’re coming off as really aggressive for reasons I don’t understand. If suggesting women aren’t completely guiltless is a “harmful opinion” I don’t know what to tell you.
I’m not even playing devil’s advocate for anyone, I just wanted to add why, in fact, the normalization of women hitting on men could be a solution to the problem.
I’m not advocating for anything, because if you ask me “ok but how do we do that” I’d have no answer. Societal change is a hard thing to do and you can’t “normalize” something through sheer effort.
It was just a hypothetical for a what-if scenario, you’re the one who interpreted it as me putting the responsibility on women. I know a woman can’t just go “ok I’m gonna start hitting on men” in today’s society and expect things to go well, it was just a theory about what would happen if we lived in a society where that was already the norm.
this would probably solve itself if women hit on men as much as the opposite.
Also you:
you’re the one who interpreted it as me putting the responsibility on women.
Okay dude. Whatever you say.
And yes, societal change is hard, but just because you can't think of any solutions, doesn't mean they don't exist. FWIW, there are plenty of practical ways to normalize behavior at the societal scale, some of the more violent & historically successful ones having already been mentioned earlier in this conversation.
One of the most powerful (non-violent) examples that comes to mind: popular film.
That was assuming it was already normalized. I didn’t mean it as “women should start hitting on men in the current society”. I said in that exact comment that it was just a theory.
And if movies worked it would’ve already been normalized. I definitely remember more women than men flirting in movies I’ve seen. But it’s different there because they usually hit on the main character, and most of the times men complaining about that aren’t the ones getting hit on. They’re the jealous ones that wish it happened to them.
(Just to be clear, yes, movies can work in normalizing stuff, just not on this specific topic imo.)
We're going in circles now. I already asked you what's the point of considering such a hypothetical theory (which you admitted isn't practical) other than to distract from the real issue?
Idk what to tell you about film other than... anyone can make a film about anything.
The only thing stopping men from writing (or approving) more film scripts, books and other art about this very topic... is simply the lack of effort.
Every other comment chain in the thread is talking about “the real issue”. This one’s top comment was about normalizing women hitting on men, and I just wanted to chime in about that. It’s not like one chain talking about a different take invalidates every other discussion in here.
