Sorry everyone.
I tend to consider a social norm as something waiting to be subverted or broken, rather than followed. So long as no-one gets hurt, or inconvenienced, you can do whatever you want. Act like a male or a female, or a neuter/asexual, or a non-binary individual, and I’ll still love you.
Try to tell me how to act. and I’ll give you a taste of Kurt Vonnegut’s advice;Go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. Go take a flying fuck at the moon’.
?? What? No, that was @iiandyiiii who made that comparison. I was the one who expressed skepticism about that comparison, because, as I said, I think your tone is more easily explained as part of a general rhetorical qualifier deficiency.
Dude. I don’t think anybody has ever complained, or would ever complain, that the overall tone of your posts isn’t sufficiently reeking of self-hatred, along with all the other hatreds. Like I said, though, I think that’s mostly an artifact of the chronic qualifier deficiency.
Heh, not your fault!
Well I will say this. That bear/man thing never sat right with me. Seems kinda tone deaf. I think it alienated a lot of men. And I don’t relate to it.
I’ve gotten into people’s shit before about misandry, as I personally find it repugnant, but I don’t consider taking sensible precautions to avoid predators to be misandry. That position to me seems fundamentally lacking empathy for people who are at greater risk of being sexually assaulted, or, in many cases, for people who have been sexually assaulted once and don’t want it to happen again.
I don’t think you understand.
53% of US men have chosen to be Republican or lean Republican. According to your own worldview, 53% of US men are virulent misogynist rapist wannabes.
But that statistic is apparently not high enough to justify women’s caution around strange men.
Your own stated beliefs make no sense.
You know that advise about walking through the woods with potential dangerous animals that you don’t want to alarm? Make enough noise that they know you are coming. Didn’t corner them. Don’t get between them and their young… Yeah, that’s what you can do with women, too. Be respectful of their potential fear, and make sure they know they can retreat if they need to.
And… Most men manage this. As someone pointed out, the question gives weird answers because it’s kinda a weird set up. Women share the office elevator with men they don’t know every day, and walk past men they don’t know on the street, and buy groceries from them, and stand next to them while pumping gas. And in the vast majority of those ordinary interactions, the woman isn’t frightened and doesn’t shun the man. Because we all know that most men aren’t monsters, and men in ordinary places doing ordinary expected things aren’t especially scary. Unless we are cornered. Having other men around makes women feel safer, because hey, the more men there are, the lower the odds they are all monsters – by a lot.
Since when? Women are pretty notorious for acting terrified around men all the time. Pulling out pepper spray because a man got out of a car, crossing the street to avoid a man just walking along the sidewalk. The main reason women don’t shun men more is because it’s almost physically impossible to do so.
And I note yet again; nobody has even acknowledged the question “what should men do about it?” Much less answered it.
I just answered it. Did you even read my post?
And i don’t know what you mean by your statement. What fraction of women pull out pepper spray at random times? How does that compare to the fraction of men who actually are sexual predators? Both numbers are really low. What are women supposed to do about your fear of them?
I’m not afraid of them, I ignore and avoid them. And they have bigger problems than me, I’m not one of the people working to reduce them to unpeople. They mostly hate me in the abstract for being a man, without knowing that I personally exist.
All the time? Really? Pretty much very rarely actually. And in fairly predictable and understandable ways. Although I am sure that many women aren’t fearful even in those circumstances
So yeah what we men can do is simply not be clueless idiots who don’t recognize what those predictable circumstances are, and when perchance in one of those circumstances
How far to take it being unclear to me is my issue. I can imagine getting into an empty parking lot stairwell behind a woman by herself late at night could be one of those circumstances. Should I wait to let her get a floor ahead and not walk my usual brisk pace? I’m not sure.
Dunno. The most common situation for me is to be alone with a strange guy late at night in a hotel elevator. (I travel a lot.) I like to let the guy off the elevator first, so he picks a direction and i don’t feel like he’s following me. If he heads towards my room, i might wait a little so I’m not right behind him.
But so long as the guy is acting “normal” I’m not typically afraid. So, either he ignores me or says a generic “hi” in the elevator, doesn’t stare, doesn’t look stressed, and heads off in some direction when the elevator reaches his floor.
Don’t be like John Mulaney.
That video is 17 years old? Oof.
Lol, yeah, don’t be quite that clueless.
It’s weird being followed no matter the gender of the person following you. It must trigger some survival instinct. I’d just say keep a respectable distance and you’re fine.
I can’t even remember the last time I was in this situation (alone with a man I didn’t know) but it probably happens a lot in urban areas.
Well to be fair it doesn’t come up often. In the parking structure at work the short guy in a Bugs Bunny or Paddington tie doesn’t send off very threatening vibes. And at night otherwise in a parking structure I’m usually with my wife. But it has happened that I was conscious it was dark and isolated and I was self aware about the potential for my being perceived as a threat. I waited a bit before entering the stairwell behind the woman to make sure there was some space. Just in case. But I would have gotten in an elevator with her if I wasn’t taking the stairs. Not doing that would be weird.
I think that was polite. And i agree it would have been weird to not get in the elevator.
Maybe instead of being angry at women for their fear, be empathetic because there are people working to reduce them to unpeople, and women have to live in a world with them, and they look exactly like the rest of us, and most of them are men.
I’ll play the other side for a second.
I had mentioned that going up the stairs in the parking structure from work late I am at low risk for being perceived as scary: grey beard short wearing a goofy tie in structure that has a pediatrics office on the ground floor … but to be full in the profiling, and that is what it is, also white. Would those of us respectful of many women’s anxiety that this specific man might be the one who is a threat because a few men are monsters, be as supportive of specifically asking a young Black man to be cautious about not scaring the white lady, who is being profiled as a threat more than I am?