Microblog Memes

You put into words thoughts that I've been unable to for a while.

Like, I read this and I see how someone makes this argument, but I feel fucking terrible afterwards. Sure you haven't said I'm a rapist, but you've said you'll treat me as though I am. You can't expect men as a demographic to agree to this argument if it requires society to assume they're shitty people, at which point, why is it even being made?

The worst part I feel is that there's a lot of incel types that conflate feminism with sexism, which we'd like to school them by pointing them at a dictionary. While incels are generally shitty, we can't ignore the fact that this argument is telling them their behavior doesn't actually matter because we're going to act like they're rapists based solely on their malehood anyways. (to be clear, this is an explanation, not a justification)

There is a distinction between a prejudice born of bigotry, and a prejudice born of a real fear and trauma. And while I understand your point, the difference between these two directly affects how we can effectively address them societally.

To start addressing it, we can't just keep admonishing traumatized women. We have to understand where the prejudice comes from. The reality is that women need to be on guard constantly, not because of all men, but still specifically because of men.

They are continuously exposed to stories like the Rape Academy website, see sexual violence normalized in media, encounter rape threats online, and virtually all of them have either experienced sexual assault themselves or know someone who has.

And while this is not all men, or even most, the statistics are clear: perpetrators of violence and sexual assault against women (and against men) are overwhelmingly male. Since there is no reliable way to identify which men pose a threat until it is too late, it's unsurprising that many women develop a prejudice as a safety mechanism.

It's unfortunate that this can harden into bigotry, but it's even more unfortunate that the threat giving rise to it exists at all.

Your analogy of being robbed by a black man "once" actually highlights how widely the pervasiveness of this threat is misunderstood. For women, this isn't a single incident. It's a lifelong threat most acute during their formative years.

So by way of a counter analogy: would you admonish a black person who grew up in the American South during the Civil Rights era with "not all white people" or "not all cops"? Or would you recognize that their wariness was, prejudiced or not, a rational response to a very real danger?

I agree that we should strive toward a society where no one is judged on anything but the content of their character. But it's worth noting that countless men rush to admonish frustrated and traumatized women with "not all men," while far fewer show up when stories like the Rape Academy actually break. This imbalance is itself part of the problem.

And if we as men, and as human beings, want to see less of this prejudice in the world, perhaps the more productive question isn't whether the prejudice is fair, but why so few of us are doing anything to make it less necessary, and why so many of us are more interested in pushing back against women's reactions than addressing the cause of them. And this, for me, calls to mind MLK's observations about the white moderate...

I have a friend who is a woman who insisted that it's a majority of men who do things like grope women on dance floors or exhibit other such sex pest behaviors.

I pushed back on this because I quite strongly believe that not to be the case, and pointed out that encountering such men a majority of the time when going out doesn't require a majority of men to behave that way. An incidence rate of, say, one in twenty still virtually guarantees you'll run into multiple if you're in a crowd of sufficient size.

I'm also not trying to downplay the seriousness of it being a very real problem. Nor do I deny her lived experience of encountering that behavior often when going to concerts or whatever. Literally just pointing out that such an experience doesn't require a majority.

She got offended, calling me out for not believing her and accused me of making a "not all men" argument to try to invalidate what she was saying, despite explicitly agreeing that it's a problem that needs addressing.

The racial metaphor is misplaced and disingenuous to the conversation. Let’s say as a woman, just about all of your women friends have been at some point attacked by a dog. Some have been completely mauled, some have managed to fight the dog off after a couple of bites, some managed to run away from the dog and jump into a car before it could bite them, and most have a combination of stories from their lives. Some are traumatised and scarred for life, others have been able to move on largely as normal, but they haven’t forgotten that scary moment.

Now our woman may or may not have been attacked by a dog before, but because of all these experiences she’s seen her friends go through, the fear, the lifelong injuries they carry - the pain, the embarrassment, the shame, the blame - she’s pretty anxious about getting a dog. Especially one where she doesn’t know its history. It’s a big dog, strong, gorgeous and seems so sweet wagging his tail. But most dogs are like that when you first meet them. It’s the rarest of dog that shows you complete aggression from the beginning and you know full well to stay away from them. She doesn’t know if she brings this dog into her home, if something seemingly benign might set it off. It’s even riskier if she lives alone.

(As an aside, isn’t it ridiculous that a woman should feel embarrassed or ashamed for having been attacked by a dog… or good god - blamed for inciting it - was she carrying beef jerky visibly as she walked down the street, she should have known a wild dog couldn’t control itself at the sight of jerky??)

If the frequency of dog attacks were as prevalent as violence and assault against women is - no one would be allowed to keep a dog for a pet. Sure, it’s NOT ALL DOGS, but the likelihood and the severity of the consequences is such that you’d be crazy to go into the situation of dog ownership without taking precautions, and in the back of your mind you’ll keep remembering all those friends who’s dogs were sweet right up until they weren’t.

People who have beautiful dogs at home, who see their dog snuggle their baby and is sweet to their cat, and have only ever had warm interactions with dogs won’t understand the fear. Not all dogs they’ll say.

Someone else will come along and say it’s only brown dogs you have to worry about. (Sounds ludicrous in this phrasing doesn’t it).

But you know what the difference is between dogs and humans. In a pack of dogs, the good dogs will call out the bad ones. They’ll pin them down, bark at them, gnash their teeth - make it clear that’s not acceptable if you want to be a part of this pack. Even when play fighting gets a little rough - they say when it’s enough. The dogs keep each other in line.

What we’re seeing in life is that the dogs are saying to women, not all dogs are going to maul you and leave you with scars for life. Most of us are good dogs, and it’s not fair you’re scared of us when we’re not doing the attacking. We’re not seeing enough good dogs giving strong reinforcement. Making sure they’re being well socialised when they’re growing up. They’re not going out and engaging with younger pups and teaching them how to behave properly, they’re not even pulling their friends into line and baring their teeth saying that behaviour is not ok. Even as a joke.

The point is - every woman has multiple stories of people she knows being victimised, and sadly the odds are, she will have some kind of personal experience with it in her lifetime. The impact of being assaulted is every bit as lifelong and traumatic for the victim as a frenzied dog attack.

If we treated it with the severity it really carries, and according to the overwhelming frequency with which it occurs. We’d realise a response of “not all men” is not enough.

Is there like a robbery culture analogous to rape culture that I'm not aware of? Is there a ruling class of black people who feel entitled to other people's stuff? Do black people frequently avoid robbery charges on the grounds that one mistake shouldn't ruin a whole life with jail time and a bad record? Are you sure you didn't want that black man to rob you? What were you wearing at the time?

How many women were in the rape academy chat groups? From what I've read it was all men.