In a recent thread on the creepy guy who harassed me at the laundromat, niblet_head, I believe it was, very eloquently explained what I had been trying to get at, namely, that all women understand, even if only subconciously, that they can be very easily victimized by men. Ask your wife/girlfriend/daughter/female friends, and I’m sure all of them will be able to tell you of a number of times they felt uncomfortable, harassed, or frightened by a ‘creepy’ guy who aggressively hit on them in a socially unacceptable manner. What to men would be a minor annoyance is, to women, a universally frightening experience because of the knowledge that, generally speaking, women are at a great physical disadvantage to men.
There seemed to be a disconnect in the thread, because some of the male posters didn’t seem to understand this fear. niblet_head wondered if there was a similar experience men would find frightening.
So, please give your HO on a universally frightening experience for men. Some guidelines:
It has to be a situation that would involve traumatic physical or emotional harm- although you could argue that all men are afraid of marriage, which could be traumatic :D, that just doesn’t cut it.
No crazy hypotheticals, e.g. zombie attack or killer clowns from outer space.
It has to be common occurance, or at least, not way outside the norm. I’m sure most men would fear being fresh meat at a maximum security prison, but that’s not something the majority of men would experience.
Try to find a situation unique to men- walking through Crack Town in the inner city would be frightening for both sexes.
Concerning point 3, do you mean “as common as being raped at the local laundromat”? 'Cos I’ve been labouring under the apprehension, possibly false, that this hardly ever happens. Possibly a large proportion of such rapes begin with some creep disregarding social conventions and going on from there, but I suspect that the reverse isn’t true, and that most creeps who disregard social conventions and personal boundaries are largely harmless losers.
The risk of being beaten up by some nutter just for looking at him the wrong way is mainly a male preserve; most male aggression is directed at other males. Would that qualify?
Which doesn’t tell us a damned thing about whether a fear of being raped at the local laundromat is well-founded, does it? That’s the point I’ve been driving at for some while, and that Cryptoderk was ineptly trying to make.
Careful. The mean time for a statement of that kind to be equated with “blaming the victim” has been determined to be 3.78 attoseconds.
First off, being victimized by men could include anything from mugging to rape to being chopped up and stuffed in a freezer. This general fear of victimization most often translates into fear of being raped, because it’s quite a bit more common than being stuffed in a freezer, and a lot more traumatic than being mugged.
Second, I don’t know why this has to be limited to the local laundromat. I’m sure there are a lot of women out there who have been raped in a parking garage, or while walking the dog, or when they were out exercising, or in their own homes. I don’t see why the laundromat is such an unlikely place to be victimized, unless there are some magical properties of laundry of which I’m unaware.
Third, I didn’t intend for this thread to rehash whether or not my fear of this creepy guy was unfounded. I was surprised by the dismissive nature of some of the comments in the other thread, and wanted to see if men have any similar experiences.
So, I ask you to please stick to the questions raised in the OP. Should you wish to continue to discuss why I shouldn’t have felt threatened by the creepy guy, I suggest you go start a Pit thread titled “RedRosesForMe is a big scaredy-cat.”
Right, so at the outset I asked if you meant “As common as being raped at the laundromat”, and you respond first of all by quoting this statistic about how common rape is, and duck the question of how this addresses what I asked, and then you say “Why rape?” and then answer your own question with the statement that rape is more common than ending up in the freezer and more traumatic than being mugged, and then you say “Why laundromats?” and then you say “Why not laundromats?” in the same paragraph.
And for some reason it’s my fault if this thread is not going to go the way you intended it. :rolleyes:
Oy. It didn’t take long for this thread to make a wrong turn.
To address the OP, my recurring nightmare involves me duking it out with some faceless bad guy and often ends with me being the victim of the dreaded Testicle Grab and Squeeze.
Think of the scene from Mississippi Burning with Gene Hackman and Michael Rooker.
I think this meets most of the criteria of the original question.
That’s a fascinating question, RedRoses, and I’d really like to hear men’s answers. Malacandra, personally I’d appreciate it if you’d take it to a different thread, so people can stay on topic in this one.
I took your comment, and my memory of your comments in the other thread, to be dismissive and snarky and insinuating somehow that the fact that I felt threatened by the Laundromat Guy was silly. So I posted a link to some American rape statistics, and quoted that one because it also included attempted rape. You see, I get the feeling that you’re trying to tell me, “it’s not very common, so STFU already.” I was trying to clarify what I meant by common.
It’s exactly that sort of tone that prompted me to start this thread, because I don’t understand how hard it is to empathize with women who feel threatened by men in certain situations.
As for the laundromat issue, I see no reason to bring it up, unless to further chastise me for feeling uncomfortable because “only 0.00001% of women are raped in laundromats” or some such. I know that the majority of women are raped by someone they know, but it doesn’t change the fact that if a woman is out alone and confronted by a man behaving inappropriately, or following her down the street, she’s going to be frightened.
I want to see if something similar happens to men. So that is all I have to say on the subject, so as not to derail this thread.
shrug I thought it started out as a fair question, and I already gave an on-topic answer way back in my first answer; but I’m pretty much done with this thread, so you’ve done a good job of bayoneting the corpses after the battle’s over.
ETA: And, Roses, you’re welcome to the last word. Go away thinking you won the argument if you want to.
Nothing terrifies me like getting a call from one of my children’s school nurses, and very little relieves me more than hearing it’s just a bloody nose or a tummyache. I know that it’s equally frightening to their mother. It scares me far more than any threat to my own person that I can think of.
It doesn’t have to be as severe or as permanent as Emasculation – I think most guys will admit to a fear of Being Struck in the Balls. Practically everyone has been, and can identify with the pain.
I’d say facing a situation where you know you could shoot, punch and kick your way out of it, but have it happen when with a more frail companion (wife, kids, etc). Then you can’t defend yourself because that would mean exposing your loved ones. It totally sucks, always a lose-lose.
So far as something PERSONALLY happening to you, I agree. I also agree with OneCentStamp by saying that everyone would fear something happening to their kids.
I…well, I really don’t fear anything. Sure, there’s the situation that you can’t handle that pops up on you unexpectedly, but you can’t very well prepare for everything. I’m not afraid of being stuffed into a freezer and becoming some madman’s TV dinner. I can’t live my life actually having that as an actual legitimate fear. What are the possibilities of something like that happening? Virtually nil?
We should just lower the bar on expectations here. I don’t think that a guy has a fear that’s like rape is for a female. It’s (way too) prevalent to be feasible and “big” enough to be a traumatic experience.
I’ll also echo “being hit in the junk”. That completely and utterly sucks.
