But this is all hypothetical to me–aside from my college years, I’ve always lived in a rather rural area, no sidewalks, no street lighting, narrowish roads. When you walk, you walk on the road itself, when a car comes by you step out onto the grass of someone else’s property (if you are lucky) or into weeds (if you aren’t.) So not only would you be crazy if you were walking down those roads at night, you’d be utterly shocked to run across another human of either sex doing the same thing. As far as I can recall, I have never once in my life been alone on a sidewalk (in the rare instance I’m in a place with sidewalks) at night with someone else approaching.
Actually, manson, the difference as you’ve described it makes a lot of sense to me.
I think most people are unnerved by someone walking directly behind them. I could see it bugging me even if that person was my husband.
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But this is all hypothetical to me–aside from my college years, I’ve always lived in a rather rural area, no sidewalks, no street lighting, narrowish roads. When you walk, you walk on the road itself, when a car comes by you step out onto the grass of someone else’s property (if you are lucky) or into weeds (if you aren’t.) So not only would you be crazy if you were walking down those roads at night, you’d be utterly shocked to run across another human of either sex doing the same thing. As far as I can recall, I have never once in my life been alone on a sidewalk (in the rare instance I’m in a place with sidewalks) at night with someone else approaching.
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Ah, I grew up in just the same sort of place. Which honestly, as a kid who was harassed by strange men a lot (especially between the ages of say, 11 and 13) those were the freakiest places to run into a stranger. But it wasn’t usually someone on the street, it was someone following in a car or something. We also lived maybe a mile down the road from a lake, with a bar, so there were a lot of random guys too drunk to realize we were tweens. I think if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this sort of unwelcome attention, you learn pretty early on how to spot it. It’s not like ‘‘It could be anyone!’’
It’s like… you just know. Their body language, how they look at you, it’s all very predictable.
As a general aside, it’s kind of shitty when you feel like your only line of defense against strange men harassing you is ‘‘I’m twelve.’’
I haven’t had a lot of experiences like that since I grew up, but I have found that in the rare event it does happen, even ‘‘I’m married’’ isn’t enough to get them to leave you alone. They take it as some kind of personal challenge. Next time, I should go back to ‘‘I’m twelve,’’ and see how it goes over.
Hard to say, I don’t know that I’ve ever actually had this come up.
When I am walking the street, I am almost always walking with my dog. And I do cross the street if I am coming up on someone that I do not know, or is not giving me encouragement that they want to meet my dog.
Why, because there are some people out there that are afraid of dogs, and so, if through an insignificant effort on my part, I can make the world a slightly less anxious place, then I see no reason not to do so.
It does depend on context. If you are walking down a deserted dark city street at night, and coming up on a woman that is moving slower than you, then yeah, you should recognize that coming up behind her may cuase her a greater level of discomfort than your crossing the street would cause you. If it is a busy well lit street, then it would be a bit odd for you to do so, and shed be a bit odd to be concerned about you passing.
You equate having empathy with being a good person, and a lack with being a bad person, and that is not really relevant. There are plenty of people out there that are entirely oblivious as to the perception that they create in their actions in other people, and yet, they are good people in and of themselves. From your posting, I have observed that you are not high on empathy, as it has to be constantly explained to you that other people may feel differently about something than you do, and you often times still don’t really get it, but I don’t consider you a bad person due to that, just being low on empathy.
Your attempts at making this a thing about race are not unnoticed, but are ignored, as they have nothing to do with this.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that is how most people define empathy. I very much took your saying “displays a lack of empathy” to mean “is a bad person.”
Sorry, but I don’t do that at all. Others here may though. I’ve been perfectly clear I think about my lack of empathy and I don’t consider myself a bad person. Empathy is not required to do the right thing.
This is also not true. I can understand that people feel differently. Most of the discussions I take part in are within the scope of WHY they feel that way and why they don’t feel that way about other things. Mostly as a way to see hypocrisy, and the rest because I’m bored at work.
For this particular issue? A woman treating individual men differently because of their sex? It absolutely is similar to people treating individuals differently because of their skin color. Your lack of understanding seems deliberate because the two viewpoints of “Men should not be trusted” being a reasonable stance for women to take and “Black people should not be trusted” not being a reasonable stance cannot be reconciled so you continue to ramble on about my personal empathy issue.
To be even more direct - I’m a man. If a woman is afraid of me simply because I’m a man, then she is sexist. And I am pretty sure being sexist is an incorrect viewpoint to take in today’s society. Therefore a woman who does that is wrong. And anyone who defends that behavior or enables it is sexist as well.
It seems as though you are treating “empathy” as something that it is not. It is simply the ability to understand how someone else may feel about something.
Manson’s phrases are similar, take this
“I cross the street when a lone woman is approaching because I have empathy”, now scratch out “have empathy”, and replace with “understand that a woman, walking on her own on a dark street at night, may find my entering into her presence to be very uncomfortable.”
It does not make you a good or a bad person, and while you may be defining empathy as something equated only with good people, that’s not actually how it is defined by most people.
Your taking “displays a lack of empathy” to mean “is a bad person” is entirely your choice to interpret it that way. But if you choose to interpret it that way, then you will not actually understand what it is when people talk about empathy.
Another term for someone who has no empathy is a sociopath. And as for “not actually understanding what it is when people talk about empathy”, well, I say with all sincerity that there is something that you can do with a cactus.
I will not disagree, but I will ask why? What makes you feel that dog owners should go out of their way to make you more comfortable?
You said “if I don’t cross the street, then I have no empathy. As if NOT crossing the street makes me a bad person”, which is why I said that you equate empathy with goodness. I am not sure how to parse that statement without taking it that you equate the two, but I am sure I just missed something.
I agree that empathy is not required to do the right thing, and in too high a dose, it may actually cause someone to do the wrong thing. The “SJW’s” who make me roll my eyes are one. More empathy than sense. They aren’t bad people either, just usually naive about the world.
Well, lemme tell you, if you set off on a quest to find hypocrisy, you will find something that you consider to be hypocrisy. You can always find two situations that are somewhat similar, in that you think that people should react the same way, but are different enough that people actually react in a different way, and call that hypocrisy. Even easier when you have a group to look at, where if one’s actions are contradictory to another’s actions, that’s hypocrisy as well.
It’s an odd hobby, but an easy one, to be sure.
Well, I found the reason that you are having issues. You say “Men should not be trusted” as if that is the message you should get. That is not the message that is being said by pretty much anyone (some silly folk in the corner of a blog somewhere may disagree). So, if that is the message that you are hearing, then I can understand your confusion.
Let me clear it up, no one is saying that men cannot be trusted. They may be saying that people cannot be trusted, in general, and men are people, and men are also people that are larger and stronger than women in such a way that if they chose to, they could very easily abuse them in any physical way they desired.
The reason for the anxiety is more about the disparity in strength in an interaction than questioning the morals of men in general.
Women are not afraid of you because you are a man.
Women are pragmatically concerned about you because you are significantly stronger and larger than they are.
I used to equate ‘‘having empathy’’ with ‘‘being a good person’’ but monstro changed my mind. She reports herself as having very low empathy, but she is a good person.
I have a shit ton of empathy and I don’t think it’s the panacea everyone seems to think. It can actually get in the way of solving problems in many cases, as you can overidentify with their situation so much that you become utterly useless to them. It’s the reason I can’t be an on-call volunteer at work to respond in the aftermath of a sexual assault, even though I would like to do that. And, as K9 points out, some people are just rendered idiots by their feelings.
Empathy is what lets you understand how others are feeling. Many sociopaths are very empathetic, and very good at understanding people and what makes them tick.
A conscience is what makes you feel bad after hurting someone.
If you choose to use the words interchangeably, that is your choice, but it does not help with communication if you use them differently than others, then insist that that is how they are to be used.
thanks for the cactus though, I was thinking about starting a rock garden.
I think ‘‘stranger danger’’ is way overblown in general. But then, when I was seven years old I got lost and allowed a strange man to load my bike into his trunk and drive me to school. He did drive me to school as promised. He turned out to be the husband of one of the teachers there.
Sr. Weasel says I’m more trusting than is prudent.
I think he has a poor capacity for risk assessment.
That’s just it. I DON’T feel that they should go out of their way to make me more comfortable. I just wish they would because I hate dogs.
I doubt that woman are that afraid of other women who are significantly stronger and larger than they are. Nor would you even remotely consider that a stronger and larger woman should cross the street to avoid scaring a woman.
I will further go on to say, if you cross a street to avoid scaring a woman, would you cross the street to avoid scaring a smaller, weaker looking guy? I doubt it. I’m thinking there is a term for someone who treats women and men different. I’ll try to think of it.
Strictly speaking, sociopaths can analyze how other people are feeling, but they don’t feel what other people are feeling. Ergo, they lack empathy. If someone else is in pain, they do not feel that pain.
This is why they have no conscience. They actually know the difference between right and wrong (all humans appear to have an innate moral compass, even sociopaths) they just don’t care when they violate their moral compass because they don’t feel the other person’s pain.
There is a big difference between having lower than average empathy and having none whatsoever.
(Oooh, but it might be environmentally determined whether a sociopath becomes a functioning member of society or not… Can’t remember the guy who did the brain studies and found his own brain scan revealed the structure of a sociopath.)
For this to be true women would also need to be equally pragmatically concerned about OTHER WOMEN who are significantly stronger and larger than they are. Are they?
I don’t either. I walk where I walk and it wouldn’t occur to me that others might find me threatening, as there is no threat in me.
I suspect stories like the two women looking back repeatedly and running are related to my advice above - they kept looking back and the person was always looking at them, so they got out of there. Human nature, but whatever.
