You can’t do anything if you take all the crazy people on the street in consideration
Always keep in mind that you heard about it in the news. So it was a news-worthy event.
Or it was not really news worthy and got inflated by the media untill it was.
Exhibit A: Taylor Swift
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.
School shootings are now so common
Well they got great marketing
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.
This man might be crazy! I better go on a date with him lol
Yeah. Hilarious.
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…
Men fear rejection, women fear being killed.
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.
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.
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 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.
https://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/
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.
Great, so you understand now that sexual violence is actually a widespread problem & not an irrational fear. Glad to have helped educate.
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.
Being intellectually honest is free. Do better.
Holy moving goalposts, batman!
Hey, you missed this part:
he yells, calls the woman names
Talk about how this part doesn’t happen because you’ve never personally seen it.
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.
Post hoc fallacy.
Does a healthy balanced male do all of those things because a woman rejected his advances?
Or is it actually a person likely to end up doing those things who made inappropriate advances in the course of their escapade.
Men don’t generally turn into rampaging gorillas when you decline their advances.
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.
Meh. As a society we should do most things better.
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.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.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
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 out 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.
That is an interesting factor I hadn’t even considered. Thanks for pointing it out.
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.
Awesome, I’ll be sure to check that out. Thanks for the tip!
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.
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…
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.
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.
So true. I find it weird that in my 20’s I wondered where all the people my age went. It seemed like I was only interacting with old people and kids.
Maybe because I couldn’t stay in college, I dunno. =\
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.
Maybe don’t constantly listen what media says? Otherwise u will end up paranoid.
Maybe actually listen to women’s experiences, instead.
I can tell you haven’t.
Yeah, disregard advice destined to protect an endangered group when you belong to that group. That’s going to go reallllllly well.
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?
Translation:
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 just 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.
It’s not fear porn. It’s reality.
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.
You can use real scenarios as fear porn by hyper focusing on them, far beyond what’s reasonable, and to the exclusion of everything else.
You’re treading a fine line with that logic claiming that news like this is designed to neg women into being constantly afraid.
Me 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.
Funny how this is almost never what actually happens.
You kidding? Fear porn is a solid half of social media, at least.
I was denying the point that all fears women have are false or baseless.
If that’s what you thought I was saying, you’re not understanding my point.
Guess what happened the two whole times I deliberately ignored the “paranoia.”
Go on. Guess.No.fucking.shit. !!
I can’t believe you’re getting downvoted.It’s incredible how many people think gaslighting is literally any instance of saying something untrue.
But this instance is particularly egregious, because you didn’t even read the first sentence of the link you posted.
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.
This seems more like an indictment of media than of patriarchy. Listening to too much True Crime will rot your brain
that must be it! if only those women hadn’t listened to True Crime, they would still be alive now
Reading compression’s not your strong suit is it?
…
pushes on book
…
shrug
…
I’m assuming that you meant comprehension. You may want to work on your literacy skills before critiquing others’ reading comprehension abilities.
I’ll admit its a bit more of a stretch but I’d say understanding a misspelled sentence from context is a key sign of reading comprehension
and shit I can’t be perfect at everything before I critique others
Reading compression might be your problem, there.
Hey 'comoression’s double s is way more compressable than comprehension, dont hate on optimization
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 if 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.
Ryan Gosling’s short: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IYF-WYBLNs4
The mall thing actually happened?
Yup:
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.
The guy sounds like a real winner.
Jesus fucking christ I figured it was a joke
When it comes to men being angry or violent at being spurned, it is never a joke.
Women have been telling us forever, though. Do we listen? Hence the comic. “Just say no, it can’t be that scary!”
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I know crazy shit happens CONSTANTLY but ‘threw a kid off a balcony’ was so over the top…
It’s pretty fucking unhinged, indeed.
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.
At least you learned the correct lesson from that about empathy instead of just saying “next time I won’t say anything. I’ll just raw dog it.”
People say I’m a “good guy” but honestly the bar is so low is doesn’t feel like a compliment because I know who they are coming me to.
If a man kills random people, and it’s not obviously racially motivated, you can safely bet it’s about women.
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”.
This article has a story of a man throwing a boy, but doesn’t say the reason why he threw the boy.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/06/us/boy-thrown-mall-of-america-settlement/index.html
Edit: Here is an article with the reason given by the man:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-threw-year-mall-america-balcony-tells-police/story?id=62423602
He said he came up with a plan to “kill someone at the mall” on Thursday and indicated that he was angry because women at the mall had rejected him.
So it looks like the comic is referencing an actual event.
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 crew at 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.
Anyways, he ends up chilling for a bit, cracking jokes, having fun, says his homie 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.
Anyways 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!
This is a colorful perspective.
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 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.
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.
Luckily I’m old and invisible now.
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…
this was hard to read and understand.
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
Ugh. That’s a long way of saying ‘not all men’. Fucking hell, guy.
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.
Maybe you should do the same.
… 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.
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.
I understand and agree to some point.
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
Maybe if men treated other men like they do women, they’d start getting more afraid of the other men.
Fuck no we’d be less afraid.
I think ill leave this discussion now
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.
This is a pretty strong analogy that sort of makes sense!
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
That’s because not sexually assaulting someone isn’t something you get a medal for.
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.
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.
That is… literally the lowest the bar can get
I dunno, I’ve seen some really low bars :P
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.
I imagine it can be especially isolating to be a trans-masculine person… possibly even more than being a trans-feminine person.
I really hope you have people in your life who you feel fully comfortable hanging and talking with! I’m sure that those women appreciate your support.
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.
- Over half of women in the USA have experienced sexual violence
- 1/4 of women have been raped or had someone try to rape them
- 1/3 of women have been sexually harassed in a public setting.
- The leading cause of death of pregnant Americans is murder
There’s a good reason why we’re cautious.
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/fastfact.html
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 in short, not all men, but far too many women
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.
“Paranoid” only applies if it’s not justified. It’s not paranoid to act reasonably to a potential threat.
Most women just fake trust until it’s proven one way or the other. We’re just not bothering faking it with total strangers as much.
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.
groped in a bar
“Public setting with alcohol” is a different beast than just “public setting”.
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.
Yes, you should. I wasn’t saying otherwise. I apologize that it came across the way it did.
Same end result.
Yes, but it would help explain why it’s such a common occurrence when that’s where it’s happening.
Hey, go pet an alligator.
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.
let’s say you go up to 1000 people and put your arm out in front of them.
All fine and dandy but that’s not what they were comparing it to
Then what were they comparing it to?
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 not 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.
Good points!
But I think the saddest part here in the first place is literally “othering” half of humanity as “likely carnivorous reptilian predators.”
Like, damn, what a sad, lonely world.
Yes, wouldn’t it be nice if more men could get their emotions under control and stop hurting and murdering people?
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
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.
Except for US pregnant women.
Nope, the stats are what they are. Pregnancy is a temporary state, not your identity.
By all means, gerrymander definitions so you don’t have to feel wrong.
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.
deny the fact that there are men that are unhinged
Oh look… somebody is peddling the “few bad apples” routine again.
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 want to remind people of a different advice that similarly gets people into bad situations:
“The worst that can happen, is they say no. Go shoot your shot”
Yeah, that’s the worst that you think may happen. The worst that can happen is you misjudged the situation and now you’re making someone fear for their safety, and you’re a horrible creep in the eyes of anyone they talk to. You may get into trouble with your employer, friends, family, you really don’t know. And you only have yourself to blame. And don’t underestimate the effects of shame (as in: feeling guilty about something bad you did)
I’m not saying flirting is never permissible, but you should set boundaries based on the perspective of the other as well. The advice “worst case, they say no” is not at all asking the question how the other would feel being approached in this way. They may have more to lose than you do
As a woman I think a much better approach is “if it’s an appropriate situation go ahead and flirt, but pay attention to if she flirts back. And most importantly trust her words over her behavior.”
I’m not attracted to men, but I don’t mind them hitting on me in appropriate situations. I hate that I get asked out at work (not even public facing). Hell, there’s one man who I knew socially who hit on me, noticed I wasn’t reciprocating, then stopped and became platonically friendly instead. That made me trust him quite a bit actually.
I think a LOT of men just dont see the flirting as flirting anyway. They miss the side-eye (or mistake the nervous social side-eye). I know I missed a LOT of “signals”. I was better when she just said “hey I have a crush on you, do you feel the same?”
You’re probably more in-tune with the signals people show. With B/G relationships I feel there’s a lot of separation society puts inbetween the two so they dont really grow up together understanding each other. So here in the UK that would be separate gendered schooling, separate clubs and activities that are historically accessible or presumed upon each other.
I’m more saying that this is how some men talk themselves into hitting on someone in inappropriate situations, or (in their heads) blur the line without realizing. Missing signals isn’t only realizing years later that she was into you (a cliché story), but also “they’re just being friendly, it’s not flirting” (doesn’t get said enough)
So how are people supposed to meet each other?
As a man, when I was still dating, I loved when women made it clear they weren’t interested or had a boyfriend. They were some of my best friends. We could go out and have a good time and there wouldn’t be any sexual tension. We could talk about other people they liked or I liked. I’d wingman for them and they’d do the same for me.
I had one date where we planned on hanging out at her apartment to watch a movie and pretty much as soon as she invited me in she told me that she wasn’t interested in dating or doing anything with me. We were laughing and joking the whole night. We had an absolute blast and for years even after she moved and married her husband we’d still talk.
So, girls need to make the first move.
Just asking doesn’t make most people feel fear. The problem is that men don’t just ask.
The media cherrypicks for max drama. Your fear is their feast. So you might want to take what they say with a grain of salt.
You are 10000x more likely to get hit by a car than bludgeoned by an incel.
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.
I got jumped once.
(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.
For about 6 months I was like that.
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’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.
Well, yes but no. This isn’t just about incels and really predates their visibile 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’?”.
Yep. I don’t dare share my opinions at work any more because of my experiences with “nice” men who wouldn’t lay a hand on women.
And I’m paid for my opinion. It’s not just sexual assault. It’s the fabric of our lives.
1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Nearly all women have at least a scary or negative experience. This is not a rare thing.
i can’t say trans women shouldn’t be allowed in women’s safe spaces but yet you can regurgitate this BS and get upvotes. feminism is dead.
I’ll have you know that my gurgitation is entirely fresh and original.
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Yes, we need more diversity in our shooters
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I’m married but I still approve this message.
As a man, I will say the very nature of this “solution” is paradoxical.
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.
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.
Hence the paradoxical nature I was referring to…
Putting this responsibility back onto women isn’t pragmatic. In other words, it will never happen.
You might as well have said “war would solve itself if people would just stop fighting!” Ask yourself: how does that help the reality we live in?
This is why the change in normative behavior must come from men first, or nothing will improve.
“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.
If by “society” you mean men, then sure…
…unless you’re suggesting women need to change their behavior in order to not be perceived as “sluts”?
Careful what you imply, you might come off as ignorant.
Women also berate other women for being “sluts”. Men do it more but it’s absolutely not a gendered issue.
… 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.
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As a man same
Feels wrong to approach people in public because it might inconvenience them/make them feel awkward
And I am too worried about romance scams/organ harvesting for online dating
What happened with me was I made a great friend and we decided to start dating years after we’ve met and known each other. I have no experience with dating apps and stuff like that were you meet a stranger to them immediately try to have such a close relationship, never really understood how that could work (maybe my autism speaking there tbh) but it just feels so backwards, isn’t it better to start with a friendship, with no intent on starting a relationship but going there once we find out that it’s somewhere we both want to progress to. Maybe this craze for quickly starting a relationship with a total stranger is a product from romance novels and the lack of free time of our current culture? I don’t know but I know I love my boyfriend very much and we started as just boy friends.
isn’t it better to start with a friendship, with no intent on starting a relationship but going there once we find out that it’s somewhere we both want to progress to
I definitely think this is much healthier, but if you don’t have the time to make a large network of friends until it turns out one of them happens to be single, interested in you, and has known you for a long while, it just isn’t a choice.
Oh that’s def true, but at the same time a lot of people that do have time or can just make time for making friends or nurturing the ones they already have just don’t because they’re stuck in this mentality of rushing straight into meeting their next partner by chance instead, but it is really true that the people that can’t sadly don’t have an alternative
I’m so glad to not feel so alone in this. A thousand times YES.
I met my wife over an MMO and we were close friends for at least a year before we decided to take it further. Our relationship has been strong for over 16 years and I can’t imagine my life without her.
It seems to confuse the heck out of single friends/relatives when I suggest seeking out hobbies and interests or church groups, or volunteering or whatever, and finding someone you want to spend more time with and seeing where that goes.
Neoliberal capitalism ultimately tries to reach its tendrils into every facet of our lives to make our human experience a “product” or “marketplace”, and what are dating apps, if not “online shopping for a mate”? It reduces people to products, the same way job applications do. People reach for it because they don’t know any better or it’s convenient, and end up disappointed that the men are pigs and the women are shallow.
It’s the same reason you aren’t likely to find a quality relationship by hanging around in bars before the apps happened. It’s just a bazaar of “mate hunting” and any meaningful connection made is a mere numbers game.
Of course you’re also right that there’s a negative feedback loop here with the job-life-takeover situation. Many people feel like some exploitative app is their only chance of meeting anybody outside of work. People are too burned out to do anything but work anymore, and social culture has degraded to such a point that walking up and talking to someone you don’t already know is “creepy and rude.”
Tragic stuff.
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I’m not too young and I’ve been in a good number of relationships. The best ones happen when you’re not looking for it or trying to date. It’s worth it to try I think though, a romantic relationship is unique, and even if you think you’re the worst, no one else sees you the same way you see yourself.
That makes me sad for you. I hope you remain open to chance.
Being a straight woman in this day and age is so unfortunate, I feel bad for y’all ngl
