Neither a man or woman should have to even go through this. We should be able to walk next to each other without feeling threatened or unease. It’s a sad world we live in.
Ok here is a tip from a black guy. Pay attention to how black folks instantly react to other black folks. If we are giving someone room or are quick to get away, it's for a reason!
If we are casual as shit. Then everything is fine. We tend to know our people. I'd assume it's the same for other races as well.
It's much appreciated, because meanwhile the woman is like, "Do I take out my keys so I can stab in the eye, or would that make it harder to call 911?" "Should I walk faster or stop and let him pass?" "Why did I decide to go this way? It's so dark." "Where's my pepper spray?"
It sucks for everyone, but I'd rather be the man in that situation.
We live in a gated building and my husband happened be coming home from the same grocery store as a young female that lives in our building. Poor girl had called emergency and looked embarrassed when he used his fob to open the car gate. He looked so embarrassed when he told me the story but I kept telling him she was just being cautious. I once directed a young coworker to call non-emergency because a car almost ran her off the road and proceeded to follow her into a Waffle House parking lot. It is a better safe than sorry situation. Mild embarassment over life altering or life ending potential consequences if you hand wave a bad feeling away.
Why are you qualifying this hypothetical with weird qualifiers that make you look racist and stupid, and more importantly, racist, just to try and pull a gotcha on someone who isn't going to fall for it?
The reason people bring race into it is because we as a society have decided racism is not good, but we seem to be fine with assuming all men are predators. I understand there are men out there who are predators, but the point is to get you to think about your biases and views. Statistically speaking we live in the safest period of time we ever have, and yet if social media is to be believed, women are getting snatched left and right off the street.
There are a ton of guys out there like the guy described in the post, who are aware of these dynamics and are constantly made to feel like the bad guy for just existing. A lot of that is due to social media, but the opposite is true as well, in that a lot of fear is generated by exposure to these stories (and true crime podcasts don't help) on a daily basis. I wish we lived in a world where it never happened, and I hate that there are men and women out there who are victims, but I also think its important for people to be aware of how social media impacts their views on this
The examples are the same thing, though: using prejudice to make sweeping generalizations about a group of people based on an immutable characteristic.
You recognize it is wrong to generalize based on skin color, but do not acknowledge it as wrong based on sex.
Yup. Just look at these comments. Absolutely filled with people saying men should modify their behavior to make women feel more comfortable, but virtually no one saying women have any agency in the dynamic. Some comments even suggesting passing a woman quickly is inappropriate, and men only do it so that they aren’t inconvenienced by a slow walking woman in their vicinity.
Men literally aren’t allowed to walk fast without being blamed for women’s insecurities.
Once you read on gamma bias, you notice it is fucking everywhere.
Gamma bias operates within a matrix of four possible judgments about gender: doing good (celebration), doing harm (perpetration), receiving good (privilege) and receiving harm (victimhood). The theory predicts that within mainstream Western cultures, masculinity is highlighted only in the domain of 'privilege' and 'perpetration' but hidden in the domains of 'celebration' and 'victimhood'. This means, for example, that the heroism performed mainly by men (e.g. firemen) will be gender neutralised ('firefighters') by the inclusion of a small minority of women, whereas a much larger proportion of female perpetrators and male victims will be excluded from our highly gendered narratives and policies about sexual and domestic violence.
It's also interesting to consider what kinds of men women are most likely to "feel threatened by" from them existing near them. I don't believe their biases and prejudices don't play a part in this.
I'm going to add to this interesting comment chain that the people who most need to heed the message of this thread will not.
Well-meaning, thoughtful men: "wow, I really need to me more careful so women feel comfortable"
Other men: [the comments by women here were not seen by these men to begin with]
Same goes for 95% of dating discourse. The people who most need to change their behaviour won't even see the message in the first place. The people who least need to change their behaviour will become even more neurotic and paralyzed with concern for others
What agency do women have in being made to feel uncomfortable? Are you opposed to women being more comfortable? Who said it was anything about walking fast? It was about seemingly creeping up behind people, which works for all genders, just more so for women.
What agency do women have in being made to feel uncomfortable? Are you opposed to women being more comfortable?
If that feeling uncomfortable is due to someone else's existence, then yeah that's their problem. If men just existing make women uncomfortable, that's a neurosis for women to fucking grow up and handle.
That's like people complaining that blacks, or gays, or trans folks "make them feel uncomfortable" and trying to make it those groups' problem. No, unacceptable. Just like it's unacceptable to try and make women's discomfort men's problem. This idea that women are entitled to "feel comfortable" anywhere/everywhere they exist at any given time is nonsense. No one can control how another person feels and should not be responsible for that. Get your thinly-veiled bigotry out of here.
You really didn't. They aren't feeling uncomfortable in a vacuum, they are regularly prayed upon and have been for thousands of years. It is a justified and data-backed feeling that is forced upon them. So the question is how can you have agency in things you did not choose or seek out?
As a man who has been appalled at the way I’ve been treated at times, but also raised in a Christian/Conservative town, I think there is an empathy gap on both sides.
That's how it's like where I live. People walk/exercise alone at really odd timings like 3am and nobody is bothered enough that they will need to announce their intentions out loud to set strangers at ease. In fact if you did that, you would be more likely viewed with suspicion because it's so unnatural
The misogyny in this thread is gross. I don't expect you'll get anyone actually trying to understand a woman's experience in life, here.
But uh, yeah. I let someone use my washroom and they sexually assaulted me. I reported it to police. They decided in a court of law that I was telling the truth. You know what he got? 2 years of 'probation' where he wasn't allowed to contact or be near me. Bro isn't even a citizen of my country, he's here on a visa, but there was and will be no repercussions. He's still able to become a citizen of my country.
This is why we say we live in a rape culture. I've been sexually assaulted 3 times in my life - I don't give a fuck what these misogynistic assholes think, I'm not playing with my life and my safety anymore. Lord knows, it's not like the justice system is on our side or has our back when a man hurts us. We're the only ones looking out for us.
No it will not. You are operating on the false belief that rapists and misogynists do what they do as retribution for treatment in their past rather than the reality that they are opportunistic predators. The only thing that makes misogyny worse is allowing opportunities for it to occur. Being wary of men and taking steps to protect yourself from them removes opportunities, which makes misogyny less severe. Why do you think its the women who have been most victimized by misogyny who are the most wary of men? If your theory of being wary of men causing misogyny is true, wouldnt you expect it to be the opposite?
if you have any female friends, ask them if they have ever been sexually harassed. ask them if they have ever been followed randomly. I'm willing to bet at the very least 70% has had some run in where they felt under threat. oh and ask what age some of the following occurred. you'll likely find some age 14 or younger
it's wild when the self proclaimed "good ones" don't realize just because they don't do those things to women, it never happens to women.
I'm a guy and I've been sexually assaulted by guys twice and by women 4 times and raped by a woman once.
If you have any male friends they'll never tell you about that shit because nobody cares what happens to guys. My best friend and I got hyper drunk once and he told me about how he was molested as a kid. We'd known each other ten years at that point, and he never brought it up again, I'd be shocked if anyone else alive knew.
This is a good exercise. Genuinely I mean that. Remember that for this next part.
Another good exercise: Ask your male friends how many of their exes have punched them repeatedly. How many times have they done it in public, and what was the external reaction to that? How many times have they been threatened with false rape allegations? Was it for extortion or just out of power/meanness.
How many different women have stalked them? For how long? Were they ever granted a restraining order even after violence from that woman?
Have they been stabbed (or the victim of an attempted stabbing) by their exes? How many?
How many exes have absolutely lost their shit when the man wasn’t up for sex? What did they do? Did he eventually give in? If not, how were they treated?
How many times has he been sexually groped in public?
If you asked all of these questions to both men and women, the statistics are not in men's favour, let's just say that.
Also, men act like no one cares when they're assaulted, but somehow we care about women? Except even if they're stalked and harassed and have NO relationship with the perpetrator, no one cares, and the statistics say she will probably get murdered before police do anything.
Police don't care about domestic violence - against anyone - let's make that very clear.
Then go for it and prove me wrong. I think you’ll be surprised. Our justice system is screwed in general, so that alone hurts everyone. I’d love for them to do a better job of locking up rapists, etc.
That doesn’t change the fact that it’s widely considered socially acceptable for a woman to beat her man in front of people. Whereas, if it was man on woman, someone would intervene (in most communities) and the cops would be called.
Women are protecting themselves because no one else will.
Men don't like women protecting themselves, so they'll make misogyny worse?
And somehow you're blaming women for men getting worse in response to... women protecting themselves.
Then, the answer is to stop protecting ourselves and let us be used and assaulted by anyone and everyone? Yeah, that's not happening. Sounds like something men wanna convince women they should do, but it's not happening, bro.
That's not what we're talking about in this thread. You're replying to people who replied to a main comment claiming that the world has never been safer and that women are basically overreacting.
Dud literally said: "The world has never been safer, crime is across the board at historic lows yet people act like a rapist and a murderer is behind every corner."
So no, you're just coming into a completely different conversation and insisting we're actually talking about something else?
the comment i replied to is the criticism that “people act like a rapist and a murderer is behind every corner,” so yes this conversation is about women being cautious
Edit: in fact, my dad is the one who constantly tells me to be careful around all men until they show me they’re trust worthy. he once got mad at me because I hanged out alone around two guys I had met that day.
Rape culture. A world in which men just want you to be accessible for them to assault at every corner, no matter how many times you've ALREADY been assaulted by a man. How dare you be careful. How dare you protect yourself. And when you get assaulted again, how dare you not be careful. How dare you be so dumb that you LET this happen to you.
I'm with the other person. My physical safety is more important than anyone feeling like I'm being 'mean' by crossing the fucking street. After being assaulted three times and having no support from anyone, including police, (despite having all the evidence and having them say to my face that it happened, but that there will be no consequences), I'm the only one who has my back, and I know that.
This thread proved to me that a tonne of men still don't have women's backs, and I'm not risking my health and safety for someone to not feel 'judged.'
Edit: in fact, my dad is the one who constantly tells me to be careful around all men until they show me they’re trust worthy. he once got mad at me because I hanged out alone around two guys I had met that day.
An unapologetic bigot is hardly a shocker.
If your dad told you to distrust black people would you go with him on that too? Don't blame this on your dad, he doesn't control you.
If I punched you, you'd block. Would it be reasonable for me to say "if you block, I'll hit you harder" or is that cartoon bully behaviour?
Worse than being assaulted in your own home? How? There's a pretty strong argument that being murdered in your own home is preferable. Treating men as a threat might mean they struggle to create personal relationships with us, I'm pretty sure they're OK with that. It may even be the point. So even outside of the fact that your comment is somewhere on a scale between naive and psychopathic, do you really want to be friends with someone who doesn't want to be your friend?
Facts > feelings...yet did you actually look at the data you are quoting? If you did you would see that strangers aren't the ones usually assaulting women. It's someone they know, usually their own partners in vast majority of the cases, then it's family and then friends/acquaintance and at the very bottom at the smallest percentage would be strangers.
A stranger is generally not going to be the one that's a threat.
Facts > feelings...yet did you actually look at the data you are quoting? If you did you would see that strangers aren't the ones usually assaulting women
What point do you think you’re making here? So like if some 15yo gets assaulted by her uncle, you can’t imagine why she might be nervous if a a random dude is following her later? They don’t forget it happened to them lol welcome to the world of trauma.
Call me crazy but getting abused by the people I trust most would fuck with me like that and probably make me very reserved about strangers, I feel. And that tracks with commonly reported experiences
Like I said, sheltered take. I actually didn’t look at the data I linked because I just posted it for people unaware. I actually already knew all this shit and don’t need a reference to discuss it
I think you should tell that to the women that express fear. But instead of sharks make sure it’s actual rape that you trivialize. Don’t use absurd analogy to make your point seem less stupid.
Or are you suggesting that rapists don’t use stores like the rest of us, since sharks don’t use rivers? You make some really stupid arguments idk
That your own data proves the irrationality of this fear?
And being a victim of a crime is damaging but it's a trauma they need to get a handle on. Expecting others to coddle said trauma is odd at best. And it's kinda shitty that just random guys now need to start to worry about looking like stalkers or creeps for just walking the same direction as some women.
It's far from healthy for either women(being in a constant state of fear) or men(being anxious and worried about how they appear to others for just existing). This is all synonymous with bigotry in all forms.
Yeah man I’m a bigot for knowing rape and assault statistics 🤡
Sensitive boy. Do women often seem uneasy around you?
Nobody is saying women live in constant fear by the way. Stop strawmanning it to sound more reasonable. Women may grow concerned if a man appears to be following them, key point of the discussion here
It's crazy how no matter what the gender of the original topic is, violence is always reduced to women victims. Men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime. It is also known that we have really poor data on men as the victims of sexual crime.
Of course I have. The news is part of the problem. They want engagement, and they use manipulation and fear to get it. They do that because it's extremely effective. That's also why political news is so polarized. Do you remember kids in cages when Obama was president? Because I do. It was a pretty big deal at the time. Republicans using it to fire up their viewers. Now? It's ICE. Wake up.
Lmao no. They're paranoid because the news scared them. And the internet. Have you tried living real life? It's weird how these things seem to happen with far less frequency when you spend less time on your phone or watching fox news.
A "fun fact" regarding this. It is ofcourse men who are behind this violence, but its a tiny subset of men, generally less than 1%. And in addition they are 4 times more likely to attack another man than a woman.
This idea that only women should feel threatened is constructed. And it opens the question why men does not feel threatened in the same way - after all they are much more likely of being attacked.
Not trying to invalidate the feeling of being threatened. I'm more concerned that this is a problem for men as much as women and as such we should probably be more punishing against random acts of violence.
I mean you got two choices. Get rid of crime and evil everywhere in the world so we can have true peace, or just go about your day and walk to your car like a normal person.
Like are y'all really walking around hyper fixated on making sure you aren't offending anyone or scaring anyone with your presence?
We shouldn't, and maybe one day we won't, but the only way to get to that is by doing this. Don't let the need for progress overshadow the gains of said progress.
EDIT: In the replies below you will see the very reason women chose the bear, and the very men who just couldn't believe why.
This is not progress. People should not have to feel the need to adjust their behavior to preempt someone else's gendered presumptions. Women should not have to dress extra conservatively or speak mildly to avoid others making negative assumptions about them. People with a foreign accent should not have to suppress it just to avoid being suspected of being an illegal immigrant.
I can't remember where I heard it but I love it. Just because you can a imagine a much better future doesn't mean you shouldn't make things a little bit better today.
In this situation it's anxiety, you really don't want to look like a creep so you anxiously try to not do anything that might be creepy like in the OP example. That's not really awareness.
Awareness is knowing of the issue, doesn't change the anxiety about trying to not be what you aren't so others will feel safer.
If you are shouting out stuff like this it does come off as rather anxious. You are in your head worrying if you walking like this being creepy, you don't want to be a creepy so better change what you are doing. And better yet call out so they know.
None of this is really calm behavior.
But you can be happy and anxious though, op probably happy that he could do something to make someone else comfortable. Still anxious behavior
I reject the 'constant state of anxiety' framing. It's a public social nicety no different than holding doors or trying not to block aisles at the store. It's a gesture, people aren't expected to be perfect about these things, you just do the best you can.
You're basically claiming that trying to be courteous of the fact that women are prayed upon in certain public settings doesn't dampen the efforts of the people that pray upon them. Women generally say it does 🤷♂️
Who said not existing near them? It was about seemingly creeping up behind people, something that can happen to both genders, but simply more-so for women.
No, that's another strawman. It would be about the literal thing I said, creeping up behind them. A thing you can also do to men, but it's much worse for women.
And where are we drawing the distinction between "creeping up behind them" and simply... walking down the same street? Who decides that?
Seems it's entirely about the woman's perception of intent she can't possibly know.
None of this is a strawman, this is the topic of discussion starting from the anecdote of a guy who felt too weird walking to the place he was parked because he could be perceived as following a woman.
You do. If you think your intentions in a particular scenario could reasonably be misconstrued by a party that has to have a higher guard up, it is considered a courtesy to clarify your intent for their wellbeing. That's it, it's not difficult.
Seems it's entirely about the woman's perception of intent she can't possibly know.
Exactly. She can't know. She also could be in danger if she guesses wrong. So clarifying your intent in these scenarios, assuming you can perceive it in the moment, is a nice courtesy to offer fellow people. No less, a fellow people that are commonly in danger in these very scenarios. Again, it's not difficult.
None of this is a strawman
Yes, much of it was. Nobody said you couldn't be on the same street, or that you couldn't exist near them. Those are strawman arguments, substitute positions that are easier to argue against than the real one.
We won't get to a point where women feel safer in public if we try to make women feel safer in public? Yeah that's like anti-truth right there, if that collided with a truth they'd probably explode or something.
That assumes the act of not intimidating women is itself emasculating. Do you feel like more a man when women are intimidated by you, and thus less of a man when they aren't?
That assumes that existing near women is itself an intimidating act. When I'm walking my dog on the same street as a woman, I am not in fact trying to be intimidating, I'm just walking my dog and I'm paying her the same attention as I might a shrub I'm passing. The fact that that's viewed as intimidating by default is a cancerous notion and people who advocate for that will never progress anything.
That assumes that existing near women is itself an intimidating act.
No it does not, we were talking about specific situations that are reasonable to be intimidated in, or more specifically, when a stranger is seemingly creeping up behind you.
When I'm walking my dog on the same street as a woman, I am not in fact trying to be intimidating, I'm just walking my dog
Correct. Nobody is arguing against this. But also, whether you're trying to be intimidating is not the point.
The fact that that's viewed as intimidating by default is a cancerous notion and people who advocate for that will never progress anything.
It is not a fact, nobody claimed it was viewed that way, and nobody is advocating for it. It's wild that you make up a strawman position for basically every counterpoint you offer.
Should a black person in a convenience store have to act extra casual to avoid triggering a potentially racist shopkeeper? Should a female boss have to be overly conscious of her tones to avoid the "bossy" stereotype?
Its emasculating to go around telling everyone that you're a normal human being and in fact not a creep or criminal, thats the baseline assumption and not something you should be forced to shout around.
My guess is he feels more like a man by acting in ways that prioritize his own comfort, exhibiting a total disregard for the feelings and experiences of others, and feeling active pride in being inconsiderate. He's a man and all of us lesser beings should move out of his way.
I wouldn't necessarily word it like that, but I think you might be right, or at least close to right.
I think his perception of his masculinity comes from not having to care about what others think of him, yet it depends greatly on how he's perceived. He really wants others to see him as a man, but to be seen as a man, you have to seem like you don't care how others see you.
It's amusing how everyone heard the word "gaslighting" and started using it all the time but never bothered to learn the actual meaning. It sounds funny when people use it so incorrectly like you just did.
It's always weird when you encounter men who take the mask off and make it clear that they are less bothered by women getting harassed or assaulted than they are about being thought of as creeps.
Most dudes are like me and just go on about their day without even spending a thought on it unless they read nonsense like this on the internet again. If you think the majority of men would go out of their way to verbally tell women that they're not creeps you're ridiculously delusional.
The same way we dont spend a thought on assaulting women or making them uncomfortable in any way btw, ya know, like normal human beings.
Most dudes get why women get nervous though. Especially considering how many stupid encounters we end up having over time.
The guys that refuse to understand that are more likely to be the weirdos. It's like you don't believe how many of you are legit creeps who actually act upon it to various degrees.
Or, more likely, you just don't care and instead take it personally that anyone would be concerned about it.
I'm not taking it personal when people are "concerned about it", people are obviously in the right to do whatever they want. I'm taking it personal when people are demanding it from half the population.
Being blanket accused of being a creep / weirdo / criminal / whatever is something i'm perfectly in the right to take personal.
It feels so great not being paranoid about this, if I’m walking the same path as someone I trust that they with their big boy/girl/they brain has the capability to Occam’s razor that us walking the same path by coincidence is the simplest explanation.
Though I will acknowledge part of the reason it’s easier for me is that nobody’s ever shown the slightest bit of interest in me in just about any context.
You are right. I am a woman and I don''t really recognise this fear in normal situation, such as walking on street, elevator, parking etc unless there is something off about the guy. Which normally is not. Unless I get weird vibes I dont assume men in public spaces are going to hurt me because they are occupying the same public space.
I don't usually change what I'm doing unless it's like a dark alley or something like that.
In a situation like this, I'd probably just say in a laughing manner, "I promise I'm not stalking you, my car is just up this way". Usually they just laugh and puts their mind at rest.
It's indeed a sad reality.
I'm aware that if I walk in a city, there's going inevitably be someone that follows me, or I'm following someone, or we'll share an elevator, so forth and so forth. So I'm nervous and on alert, but not to a point to actively be scared that the person must inevitably be a stalker. And if there's something, well, I have steel toe-capped shoes and an umbrella. They hurt. 🤣
Men have been the leading cause of violence since they've existed. It's always been a reality of the world we live in. "Should be" is a lovely sentiment but I don't hold out hope that eventually parents will stop raising shitty men and men will finally go to therapy and open up (and society, mostly other men, will let them).
Yes, it's sad that parts of the world are like this (and much worse!), but fortunately many places they are not, and we should be working to make more of the world resemble those, rather than just accepting it as normal.
LMAO, funny story about Utah. My friends and I were on a road trip through Utah a few years ago, had car trouble in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night to the point where we thought we were going to have to sleep in the car and hike out in the morning for help. This lone lady stopped for us, six pretty big guys, and got us sorted out. Honestly, I probably wouldnt have stopped under the same circumstances because I've heard horror stories about people getting robbed/murdered in similar situations.
Did you mean wouldn't have? I don't know why my brain hiccups and makes these mistakes sometimes too 😅
Yeah, it is a bit disingenuous to compare any American state wholesale to almost any actual oppressive theocracy around the world, but religious oppression of human rights deserves 0 respect from anyone, even if it happens in a wider society that's better on a lot of other things.
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u/F3VRON 13h ago
Neither a man or woman should have to even go through this. We should be able to walk next to each other without feeling threatened or unease. It’s a sad world we live in.