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.
Mods, please maybe keep an eye out and consider whether this thread might need to be locked in the immediate near future. Comment section is beginning to get polarizing, and that shit belongs on Reddit
This is what happens when your ideas are so fragile they can't withstand a discussion. People used to welcome debate / opposing ideas. Now it's seen as "triggering" and must be suppressed. This is how we end up with nerfed echo chambers. It's very intellectually stunting. Personally, I find it boring to only be in rooms where everyone agrees all the time.
Not even. I like to discuss and debate civilly, and I have zero patience for those who lack civility.
But go on, make me your enemy, I won't stoop to your level or anybody's. There are no winners when things devolve into senseless arguing and attempts to put others down. So go off loser, you do you.
It was certainly uncalled for of me in terms of civility, but I felt rather offended by the notion of these words they were pretending to put in my mouth, and intended to display such.
So yes, I stooped to their level, you in turn followed my lead, and in doing so we have demonstrated that it does indeed result in no winners-- now we're just a bunch of losers arguing pointlessly on the Internet.
when things devolve into senseless arguing and attempts to put others down.
So go off loser, you do you.
This is the first instance of an attempt to put others down that I have seen after reading at least half of the comments here. So, other than your comment, I'd say this thread was mostly a civil debate.
Fair. From my perspective, their poor comparison of what I said was an attack in that it was mockfully discrediting my statements by introducing a false (and imo poignant) equivalent.
I personally feel my interpretation of this as a character attack was justified, though I understand others may not have read it as such and my name-calling therefore appears unprovoked from the perspective of others. And were I to try and set a good example, I should have opted to be the bigger man. But I didn't enter the discussion for a hopefully productive debate, not to set a good example.
If my approach isn't to anyone's favor, I would like to apologize, but must refrain as doing so could make it seem as though I don't possess confidence in what I'm saying at this moment.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
