As a man I should rationally have concerns about being mugged by a stranger.
I have less basis for worrying about sexual assault.
They really are different things. My brother was mugged. Broke his nose. He got better. It didn’t scar his life like a rape has more potential of doing.
And again; the serious danger is the men they know. Not strangers. If danger is the actual concern then it’s those strangers they are so scared of that they should prefer.
How about if women are careful both around men they know and men they don’t know? Would that be OK with you?
Really, women don’t need to take unnecessary risks just to make you feel more secure, even if those risks are low.
It’s not just physical assault that women want to avoid – confrontation, verbal harassment, catcalls, leering, stalking, etc. These are still common in 2026.
I didn’t see anyone respond to this part of Der_Trihs’s post, but I do find it interesting. If someone ducked into a store to avoid someone because of their religion or ethnicity, would we tell them “don’t take it personally”?
It’s not a huge deal. If women take extra caution around me, that’s pretty minor as insults go, and I’ll survive. But it does seem to be akin to other things that are acknowledged as insulting.
Ok. I screwup up. I shouldn’t have mentioned being offended. I should have known that would end up being the only thing from my post anyone would talk about. For me that was the least interesting part of my post.
I really was trying to understand the typical length, a typical women, goes through in a typical situation to avoid problems with a man they don’t know. I figured your elevator story fits that mode fairly well.
Thank you for answering where you think you fall on the typical female safety scale as that help calibrate your answers. Could you also answer…
I suspect it’s because a lot of people don’t really want to hear from men when they have a complaint. We’re expected to stoically accept it and move on.
No, the reason I didn’t respond is because there’s no comparison between the harassment women actually experience versus the unreasonable racist fear of a Black person.
What is the complaint that you want to voice?
People can (usually) assess the danger from men they know. It’s much hard to know with strangers.
I’m not entirely sure I understand your point. Are you saying that fear (and avoidance) of men is justified and fear of Blacks or Muslims is not? If that is your point, I don’t see that it lessens the insult. Someone is still assuming the worst about me because of who I am.
How about crossing the street to avoid a Black, Muslim man; should they take that personally, or not?
As I said above, it’s not the worst insult in the world. I just find it ironic that a thread where Der_Trihs was mildly rebuked for telling women what they should be afraid of, that there are people telling men what we should, and shouldn’t, be offended by.
Let us imagine a woman changes sides of the street because anxiety about me as a man walking behind her in the same direction, and I notice. No harm to me.
It is not part of systemic implicit bias against my identity as a white male in American society that causes me or others of that identity harm.
Is that the same as when someone is responding in that way based on ethnic or racial identity, who has already had a thousand cuts based on those implicit biases? No.
Of course avoiding the man, who happens to be Black or … Muslim (how would she know his religion?) … is no different than avoiding me.
No direct harm, and not the same harm as done to someone who has already (as you put it) suffered a thousand cuts. I just disagree with the folks who say that it’s not a cut at all. I can see how a man could be insulted by it. Maybe posters think it’s justified, or unavoidable, or that it’s worth giving offense if it keeps women safe. Those are all arguable positions. I just think that “don’t take it personally” is being a bit disingenuous.
i only take elevators to hotel rooms when I’m traveling, so i don’t really understand your question. Taking an elevator in a shopping mall, or a campus student center, or in an apartment building where i know my neighbors, just doesn’t present the same risks as walking alone in an empty hotel corridor.
what kind is random apartment would i be visiting at home? A friend’s home? Surely you understand that it’s different to be walking towards a place where you will meet people you know than alone in a hotel, heading towards an empty room.
i never worried at work because my workplace was full of people. And on most floors that i went to, i knew a lot of those people. But no, i never worried about my physical safety at work, except maybe sometimes when i climbed onto a wheelie chair to reach something up high. Oh, and there was the time my department fired a crazy men and we kept the doors to the floor locked for a week because some of the managers were afraid he’d come back with a gun. But i don’t think he had any beef with me, if he had shown up, he would have gone after the managers. Still, i thought about it.
No, the man doesn’t have to do anything negative, if I’m alone with a strange man in a hotel elevator. And I’m perfectly aware that the odds are excellent that he’s just some normal guy. But i still don’t want to feel like a strange guy is following me to my hotel room.
And no one ducks into a store to avoid a Black woman. It’s really still a fear of unknown men. The racist part is when being a different race makes the man scarier because he feels more like a stranger. But it’s still basically a fear of men.
Huh. The vast majority of YouTube videos, talk radio shows, panel shows etc. that are all about guys loudly complaining about stuff they feel is unfair to them would seem to suggest otherwise. (See also: the multiple-hundred posts in this thread.)
I guess this is a good example of how fragmented we are when it comes to media. I don’t watch anything from the man-o-sphere, so my knowledge of what they talk about is severely limited. But then I don’t have a lot of direct information about the likes of Andrew Tate, so there’s a positive side to this fragmentation.
? Although I do understand how men can feel that their gender as a whole is being indirectly somewhat insulted when female strangers deliberately avoid them in potentially threatening situations, I’m baffled why they would think that “don’t take it personally” is inappropriate or “disingenuous” advice.
Obviously, the whole point of a female stranger’s attempt to avoid your law-abiding harmless self is that she doesn’t know you personally, and doesn’t know whether you’re a possible threat to her safety. “Don’t take it personally” literally means that it’s not about you as an individual. In this case, it’s about some characteristic that you share with a larger group, a small minority of whom can’t be trusted.
If a teacher forbids smartphone access during a test to discourage potential cheating, is it “disingenuous” to tell the students not to take it personally? I don’t think so: the whole point is that the policy is being applied across the board even though it may be needed only for a small minority of students. No personal judgement of any individual student is intended.
You seem to be interpreting “take it personally” to mean “take it as an accusatory reflection upon the entirety of a larger group of which you happen to be a member”. Which is kind of the exact opposite of the phrase’s more usual meaning as “take it as an accusatory reflection upon yourself specifically and individually”.
? Do you think that the media genres of “men complaining about stuff they feel is unfair to them” are limited to the so-called “manosphere”? Maybe in the case of men complaining specificallly about stuff that they feel counts as misandric bigotry against men as a group.
But there is a metric assload of other media out there consisting of men complaining about various types of unfairness, to them individually or to some group to which they belong. I really think you are underestimating society’s baseline level of tolerance for hearing men resentfully gripe about things.
I honestly don’t see how any man is injured if some women they don’t know go a little out of their way to be a little farther away from that man. Oh noes, you have more space on the street? What is the injury you are being asked to stoically bear?
Nah, I get it, no person of good will likes being suddenly confronted with the recognition that a random stranger is considering them with distrust and aversion when they’ve absolutely neither done nor intended anything wrong.
I still think it’s reasonable to expect said person of good will not to take that distrust personally, i.e., as an indication of fear or distrust towards their individual self. But it’s never fun feeling that you’re being feared or distrusted, even as a random anonymous representative of some larger group.