I mean, I would rather be hit on than encounter a bear, but I think the point of that particular meme is about more than being pestered - it’s fear of rape and death.
It’s not a bear at Starbuck’s for a reason.
I agree but I assume that there’s a progression and that incessant pestering is the initial level pain in the ass. Having said that, I’m a guy and perhaps I’m wrong regarding the lower levels of harassment.
The way I think of it is that all of these behaviors exist on a spectrum and social tolerance for things on the lower end of the spectrum pave the way for things on the higher end.
When I was in school to become a teacher, a professor repeatedly insisted that good classroom management consisted of not sweating the small stuff. In my first year, there were many days where I wanted to drive over to my old university and kick her in the shins for her terrible advice.
Lots of kids are curious about boundaries, and they want to know where the limits are, and they’ll keep escalating their behaviors until they bump up against the limits. “Not sweating the small stuff” doesn’t mean you can teach uninterrupted. It just means that you’ll have to sweat much bigger stuff. Addressing the small behaviors means that they understand the limits and are less likely to move on to big behaviors.
I’m feeling like classroom management might be a lot like how we as a society need to deal with assholes.
Indeed.
And I think part of the answer is: don’t get defensive when the issue’s pointed out. (Which LHOD isn’t doing; I’m just taking off from this post.) Be more like the man in @Spice_Weasel 's post #35, who instead of getting mad when she wouldn’t get into his car, went and got gas for her.
I don’t mean that it’s necessary to go out of the way to that extent – but to listen, try to understand the issue, and to do things in accordance.
I think it’s not really separable. Part of the reason that being pestered is such a problem is that there’s always the question of whether the person who isn’t taking no for an answer is a person who really won’t take no for an answer. Most of them aren’t, but as has been pointed out, nobody wears guaranteed-to-be-accurate signs announcing which sort they are. If the absolute worst that could happen were somebody insisting on talking to you – that would be a different world entirely. (And, as I think I’ve pointed out elsewhere, it would almost certainly be a world in which men could get laid a whole lot more easily.)
This is also true.
Assuming that women don’t have a right to refuse conversation leads very easily into an assumption that women don’t have a right to refuse in general.
And there is something else that men of good will can do: which is to call out other men, in one fashion or another, when they behave like assholes. Not sit there and look down at the table and apologize in a mutter to the waitress as they stand up to leave; but say something to the harasser when the harassment starts. And when the really bad jokes start, even if there aren’t any women there. Maybe especially when there aren’t any women there; because then it can’t be seen as trying to make a play for the woman.
As far as I know from my field, bystander intervention is the primary evidence-based means of preventing sexual assault and harassment. We teach it in schools.
But hasn’t that always been the way? The traditional way?
If we go back to nature, it’s not “toxic masculinity.” Human women have NEVER had that level of safety. It’s always been some degree of that way. At the primitive tribal level, it really always has been. I think it’s part of what I would call testosterone. Not even masculinity. There are primates like the bonobos where it shakes out differently, but that’s only when the females have more testosterone and are more violent themselves.
So any sort of realization has to include men and socialization of men as part of the solution… the way it ALWAYS has. I don’t think there’s any new way to do it.
I pick bear. The ladies in my life I asked picked bear. All of us almost instantly. We’ve all had terrifying incidents with men. The one time I saw a bear she ran off in the other direction with her cubs.
The thing is, we don’t know if we’re in the woods with Mr Rogers or Hannibal Lecter. I might be catastrophizing due to my PTSD (due to attacks by a man), but I feel how I feel. I don’t avoid men in general most of the time. But I listen to my inner sense of fear and it’s screaming at me to pick bear.
I have air conditioning and indoor plumbing, and I don’t want to give those up.
Women have more rights and more protections than ever (still not enough) – it used to be perfectly fine to beat your wife and rape inside of a marriage wasn’t considered a thing. We’ve done new things all the time. Young men today are much more concerned (on average…) about consent, “just boys being boys” is becoming less of an excuse. Workplaces have far less sexism, creepiness, and nasty jokes than there used to be.
I think you’re just wrong. Yes, we have certain drives and instincts, but we also have this huge brain which we can use to try and shape those into more fair, more productive outcomes.
My reaction is still man. They don’t have claws or sharp teeth or maybe even outweigh me.
Would we feel the same fear if we were MMA atheletes?
Even if I and every man I know learns this, that’s not going to protect a woman from a strange man in the woods. Because I don’t know that man.
Whatever the interactions of a particular tribe in primitive days, there were men outside the tribe that were threats. That didn’t go away.
So the solutions there seem to be teaching a woman sufficient self defense. In that case I guess the problem goes away. Or the men of the society can help. If that isn’t considered patriarchial.
I don’t think we have a lot of research on whether self-defense training actually prevents rape. I won’t claim it doesn’t work, just that, like martial arts, I think people tend to overestimate its practical utility. Over half of sexual assault cases at my agency involve strangulation and it’s trivially easy to strangle a woman into unconsciousness, for most men. I’ve seen videos of it. It takes seconds.
I also think women can also be involved in bystander intervention.
In the prevention programs we offer, they both involve about ten students of each gender from a given school. These students are already recognized as leaders among their peers, nominated by staff.
The girls and boys are taught separately. Both are taught gender-based violence dynamics, the meaning of consent and what healthy and unhealthy relationships look like. Young women are taught how they can be more assertive in relationships and more involved in advocacy. They are provided resources for what to do if they or a loved one is sexually assaulted.
The focus for the young men is more exploring cultural attitudes toward women and re-examining their assumptions about what is and is not appropriate behavior. They are taught safe and effective bystander intervention techniques.
At the end, each of the leaders does a social impact project to share. I’ve seen some of the presentations and the kids of both genders get really into them. This notion the these kinds of programs somehow hurt boys couldn’t be further from the truth. Most of them feel really empowered. Most boys want to help but don’t know how. A lot of our teen leaders become members of our advisory board and future volunteers.
Then we let these beautiful children out into the world to set the standard for their school communities.
It works.
There are also general ed programs we do about dating violence that involves mixed company.
That’s not all my agency does but I consider it just as important as direct crisis intervention.
Huh. The only time anyone attempted to rape me, he tried to strangle me. But failed. It helped that i had a lot of experience fighting with my brothers as a child, and that i bit him. Hard. So I kinda feel that it can be helpful to fight back. But maybe he just did it wrong.
I think some assailants will be deterred by any kind of fighting back whatsoever. I’m not qualified to advise people on what to do in the event of an assault, but I trust women to use their own best judgment about how and when to fight back.
That’s aside from the physiological phenomenon of tonic immobility. It’s common for women to freeze up during an assault. They cannot physically move. So it’s not a matter of choice for many. That’s part of the education we give to assault survivors - not doing anything is really common and has a scientific explanation. You can imagine how much guilt some women feel for freezing up and doing nothing.
Not going to go into the harassments, comments, dismissals as inferior, wage discrimination, physical assaults I’ve experienced over the years since my midteens; will only say that becoming a frumpy middle-aged, now old woman, self-employed at home, was a huge relief. Also moving to an area where I encounter far fewer men when out and about than when I lived in a city has helped. And I was never that hot-looking to begin with.
It’s my impression that crappy interactions with men constitute the default expeience for women.
I’m an old cis white woman. I do not do Beauty 2K compliance–no makeup, most of my clothes are bought in the men’s section and I only smile if I feel like it. I’ve mostly worked in male dominated fields. Of the common threat responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) I’m about 90% fight, 10% flight. I’m big for a woman, 5’9" and pretty muscular. I walk fast, have a resting bitch face that’s apparently kinda scary and carry myself like someone who might have something in her pocket you weren’t expecting and I know for a fact that I can both take and give a serious beatdown. I’m ace by nature and don’t give off a sexual vibe, like, at all. All this and I’ve been harassed, assaulted, beaten, raped, had asshole guys pull up in a car specifically to jerk themselves off while staring at me and have been in so many situations where my threat radar was screaming so loud you’d think it was an air raid siren. I’m about as far from “desirable, easy target” as it’s possible to be and still be a woman. And it’s been bad.
Worst part is that in general I like guys, have a lot of interests in common with a lot of men, but my own experiences with men and those of women I know have overwhelmingly been shitty. Here’s a recent example–I hang around a mechanic shop when my car’s being worked on because I don’t have anyone available to give me a ride so I’m stuck there for the duration. I don’t mind though, because mechanic’s shops are one of my favorite places to hang out and the one I frequent is very popular with old car restoration hobbyists. It’s super common when a nice car is in for everyone to kinda cluster around and sling the shit about cars we have, had or want to have. It’s nice, and nobody there ever gives me any crap–I’m one of the guys. Love it. Then I get stuck at Discount Tire having a nail removed and the tire patched and this old fart keeps trying to strike up a conversation. I give him nothing but short, barely polite replies and keep turning my attention back to my ebook. (Digression–how much do I LOVE reading on a tablet? No lurid cover art for anyone to remark on or ask about, I could be reading War And Peace or a bunch of furry erotica and there’s no way to tell. LOVE IT.) He isn’t catching on, keeps “shooting his shot” until I finally move to another seat all the way across the room and even then he’s still looking my way and pouting. What. The. Actual. Fuck. My. Dude. I am not here for this guy, I owe this guy nothing but him wanting to claim my time apparently supercedes all my rights to be left alone. Multiply this by millions of men, every day all day. It is exhausting.
So here I am, my cute days are long gone, I’m giving no invite signals, I’m not into Having The Sex, I look like someone who might just snap one day and kill someone who annoys her–and I still get pestered. I can’t imagine how awful it must be for the pretty girly girls who would nonetheless still like to walk the world unmessed with.
Just because some dude finds a woman fuckable, she’s supposed to sit still and entertain his notions? Just…no. And enough of us have discovered to our sorrow just how bad it can get when we stand up for ourselves and say NO. Go check out the subreddit “WhenWomenRefuse” for some seriously eye opening shit.
Men seriously need to check themselves. And each other.
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Since the thread seems to have gotten away from experiences that are physically threatening perhaps I can provide a couple of observations on my perspectives on the dating scene.
I have tried dating a variety of ways. On my most recent site I did get a fair number of likes from women. This is a site where either gender can like, but my luck at getting a match where the woman doesn’t like me first is close to 0%. So I’m pretty much exclusively dealing with women who liked me first. Still, here I’m usually going to wind up sending the first message 80 to 95% of the time. I have to ask for the first meet in person pretty much 100% of the time. I do fairly well here but some conversations will still stop dead at this point. Now these are women on dating sites who presumably want to date men, I am just reporting my experience even in an environment that is 100% dating friendly.
Now I have read from time to time various dating related forums. I kind of stopped due to the negative attitudes on these forums. But periodically there are complaint threads about the quality of profiles on the sites. Cliched pictures and whatnot. These complaints come almost exclusively from women about men’s profiles. Now the women are not required to match with the men, so it shouldn’t seem as if there is anything threatening going on here. Yet the complaints persist. There are also complaints about unimaginative introductory texts like “Hi” or “Hey beautiful.” Again coming almost exclusively from women. Now occasionally men will chime in on these threads reporting that they see much the same quality from the women they encounter. Yet men don’t start the threads focused on complaints about the quality of the online experience.
All I will observe is that who is required to initiate, and who complains about the experience the most, does not seem to change even in the most benign and safest environment possible. Now this is not to say that men can’t behave badly online as there are many stories of dick pics being sent to women. But my comments are about events outside of those, where men and women seemingly should be on equal footing.
I have had relationships. At this point I really do not want to bother women. I’d like to have a mutual good time and help each other with a willing participant. My opinion is that women seem to be harsher graders of the quality of any experience. Perhaps they are with their fellow women as well. Perhaps my experience is all off. I only report what I have seen.
I’m unclear why you have chosen this thread for your complaints about women on your online dating sites.
Maybe you should start your own thread.
Agreed. That rant was totally misplaced. It may have sprung from the book reading tangent which we were asked to stop.