MandaJo’s point, AFAICT, is that the two are not mutually exclusive. When she says "It’s really easy to steal your wife or daughter or girlfriend or coworker’s freedom ‘just in case’ ", she’s not saying that men are malevolently happy about women’s lack of freedom.
She’s saying that men genuinely want the women they care about (and in many cases, all other women as well) to be safe. But actually making the societal changes required to increase women’s safety is very difficult. Encouraging self-imposed restrictions on the behavior of women themselves, to keep them more scared and less free and at least more safety-anxious even if not realistically safer, is comparatively very easy.
So the logic is “I want to impede your freedom because I don’t want to see you suffer, and I feel helpless to fix the problems that are really causing the threats to your safety, so impeding your freedom at least lets me feel that I’m accomplishing something.”
Clearly, the point I’m pushing back on it not that men face gendered discrimination every moment of every day, but rather, that men, as a class, face significant amounts of gendered discrimination at all. Perhaps you’re some sort of statistical outlier, but the vast majority of men will never face significant gendered discrimination in their lives. Speaking as a man, I’d much prefer if you stuck to describing your own personal experiences, and not try to present yourself as speaking for the gender.
And given the ridiculous lengths you’ve gone to squeeze some outrage out of the story in the OP, I’m not sure you have the moral high ground to lecture other posters about “semantical gymnastics.”
I’m not at all sure that there’s any sense in saying this for the umpteenth time in yet a different set of words. This bit of nonsense you keep saying has been taking over half of the thread, and any attempt whatsoever to counter it is probably just adding to that problem. Nevertheless:
That is not an unexpressed premise of the joke. The exact reverse of that is an unexpressed premise of the joke.
The part about avoiding isolation and staying in lit areas? Yes. Not too long ago I was living in an undisputed ghetto and the probability of an armed mugging was quite high. At the time, I didn’t have anyone who cared, so I had no one to check in with. I doubt I would have done so quiet as extensively, because I didn’t have anything worth taking or making me a particularly lucrative target and out-and-out murder is fairly uncommon even in armed mugging. It also helps that I was traveling less than a block, and rarely if ever in the dark.
I’ve never done that. I’ve ridden in an Uber, if that is a parallel, and I have had to do a “if it became necessary, how quickly could I disable this driver” check when there was any hint of impropriety (example: had a “taxi” driver try to pick me up in an unmarked car while I was abroad and smelled a ransom a mile away. I didn’t wind up taking the ride).
No, but my kel-tec SU-16B, bowie knife, and other scattered weapons would make acting on that information a terrible, terrible mistake. I don’t really put any stock in security through obscurity.
I mean, aren’t you supposed to communicate with the people you live with? I’m really confused by this line of questioning. I… don’t see the gotchas. Am I odd??? Isn’t that normal??? I suppose I didn’t when I was living with really bad room mates or total strangers… but I wouldn’t have anticipated their assistance should trouble have arisen anyway.
I have to weigh a lot of factors when considering if I would take the risk or not. When I was in the ghetto, I really preferred not to venture out alone after dark (even though 7-11 and laundry-mat was very close). I suppose I was more brazen some years ago when I lived on the Mission in SF (not a great area). But even at that time I avoided the Tenderloin like the plague (hell on earth, before gentrification). If it seemed sufficiently probable that harm would come to me, I would avoid the situation. I honestly don’t understand how that line of thinking is strange, but I’m open to the idea that other people find it so, or find it burdensome.
But I don’t dispute there being a problem. I ask, what is to be done? I can think of a million and one “solutions” to this problem, but all of them are obviously worse than status quo (for example, just kill everyone). Does anyone have a ready-to-go solution that allows us to have a better society for everyone involved? Maybe one we haven’t already tried because it needs resources or something? Because I’m not aware of one, but if I’m convinced that it’ll both improve things for everyone and also be a functional plan, the next obvious thing to do would be to see if I could devote resources to it.
What would we do if it were really a comparable problem for everybody? For example, if there were as many gay men as straight men, and gay men were harassing and intimidating and raping straight men as ubiquitously as straight men harass and intimidate and rape women? What steps would society take then?
Or if a city that tended to be unsafe for women at night had a universal curfew slapped on it so that nobody could be outdoors there at night? What steps might be taken then?
I find that these thought experiments about situations that are equally inconvenient for men and for women tend to concentrate the mind wonderfully on practical approaches to solutions, as opposed to all the helpless shrugging that the problem of abusive behavior toward women usually generates.
You sort of keep adding things. I’ve never lived in a high-crime area. I have always lived in quiet , safe residential neighborhoods. I still get told to do these things.
If it seemed sufficiently probable that harm would come to me, I would avoid the situation. I honestly don’t understand how that line of thinking is strange, but I’m open to the idea that other people find it so, or find it burdensome.
Nobody said anything about it being probable that harm would come to me. People give this advice even though there is a miniscule chance that harm will come to me in the situation where they are giving advice. I’ve pretty much ignored it my entire life and harm has never come to me. But I’m not everyone and plenty of women follow it. Some because they are afraid that harm will come to them - and some because there’s something they’re more afraid of than the harm. They’re afraid of being blamed for being assaulted.
I mean, aren’t you supposed to communicate with the people you live with? I’m really confused by this line of questioning. I… don’t see the gotchas. Am I odd??? Isn’t that normal??? I suppose I didn’t when I was living with really bad room mates or total strangers… but I wouldn’t have anticipated their assistance should trouble have arisen anyway.
Sure , you’re supposed to communicate with the people you live with- but I didn’t say anything about living with people and it’s got nothing to do with assistance. The whole thing is so alien to your experience that you apparently really don’t understand what I’m talking about. Women are told that they should do these things when they live alone - if you lived alone, would you call a friend and tell him/her where you are going, when you will be home and then let them know when you’ve gotten home? I doubt it. It’s not so they can provide assistance- it’s so they can call the police to start looking for you ( although whether the police will take any action based on that is another story). And I laugh at the thought of what a woman would be told if she said she was going to move in with total strangers as roommates. (other than a college dorm situation)
I can think of a million and one “solutions” to this problem, but all of them are obviously worse than status quo (for example, just kill everyone).
This right here is kind of the problem - I don’t think putting a curfew on men would actually do any good and I think it wouldn’t even be enforceable. But that’s very different from thinking that putting a curfew on men is obviously worse than women living restricted lives. Why is it so obvious that men being restricted is worse than women being restricted? And I don’t buy the arguments about laws and punishment because I’m pretty sure you’d have the same objections if men felt compelled to stay in after 6 pm due to social pressure rather than laws.
And also, “I wouldn’t accept a 25% reduction in my autonomy to reduce my risk of assault by 1%, and I wouldn’t expect my son to do so, but I do expect you to, because my anxiety about your safety is more important than your lack of autonomy. But it wouldn’t be the same if someone demanded that of me.”
Right. It wouldn’t be even a little interesting if that were the premise. The premise, DOES include the assumption that almost all rapists are men. That’s quite different from saying that almost all men are rapists.
And now we get to the crux of it. We are just things, to be kept safe. Not people who value autonomy.
Etasyde, you keep.talking about “well, sure, if I lived in the ghetto/the Tenderloin/etc.” We are talking about where we live. Urban, suburban, villages, rural areas, rich areas, poor areas. Every goddamned where.
OK, thanks. I’m getting that you don’t see much that’s problematic or unusually burdensome about the advice women get about keeping themselves safe when meeting a potential romantic interest for the first time (or even just generally going about their lives).
I’m surprised, because I thought you would find these appalling. All of this advice is predicated on the idea that the men that women go on dates with, take taxi rides from, walk ten metres ahead of on a dimly-lit street, etc. might be rapists and that therefore they should treat all men as potential rapists until proven otherwise. Why else meet people for the first time in public? Why else tell friends to expect a “back home safe” call after a date? I genuinely thought you would see that and find it outright offensive.
But in fact you backed it up. It’s just common sense that women should regard themselves as some sort of valuable constantly at risk from predators; seek safety in crowds as being alone means being in danger; make sure a friend will be worried if they don’t check in after meeting a new man. Apparently.
“Any man is a potential threat to women so women should alter their behaviour accordingly” strikes you as just standard operating procedure.
“Any man is a potential threat to women so men should alter their behaviour accordingly” strikes you as gross abuse that is not just tantamount to but even worse than accusing people of masterminding genocide.
You’ve obviously lived a challenging life with more than your share of traumatic experiences and this is a topic that you feel strongly about. But I’m going to suggest that the strength of these feelings is blinding to you what is actually being said, and leading you to over-react. And also that you should be prepared to listen to the idea some responsibility for addressing social attitudes to violence against women might lie with men without seeing it as any kind of accusation or smear.
That, and “Women are responsible for acting as if any man is a potential threat and will be considered at fault if they don’t do so and then get assaulted, but they are not allowed to say that out loud because it might hurt men’s feelings”.
I am talking about places I have lived for most of my adult life. I specifically listed areas that I have personally either lived in or nearby. I mean, sure, I lived on the opposite side of the street that delineates Tenderloin, so I never lived in Tenderloin, but how is this just a hypothetical to you? This is my everywhere. How did that escape your notice?
I never once denied the existence or possibility of rapists. They do exist. They are a serious problem in society.
Are you struggling to distinguish between A) “I think you are a rapist” and B) “I don’t know what you are” ? Put another way, I don’t assume anyone is a thief until I have a reason to. I also don’t hand cash to random strangers to hold while I tie my shoes. I’m not assuming they are a thief, and deserve to immediately be imprisoned for theft. In fact, my assumption is fuzzy, has no conviction, and is favorable (that is, they’re probably decent people).
You can operate without boolean, highly convicted assumptions. I don’t know how you could function in society with only such boolean, highly convicted assumptions.
I am not the least bit offended when an unfamiliar potential date asks to meet in public for the first time. She doesn’t know a thing about me, and trust is always earned. I would, however, be extremely offended if she asserted that I was a rapist. Huge difference.
No. “Anyone is a potentially evil person, and every vulnerability has the potential to be exploited, so everyone has a responsibility to themselves to operate wisely.”
No, I said being called a rapist induces a much more strongly negative visceral response than being seriously compared to Hitler and/or considered a Nazi. It’s not an insult to be taken lightly or casually thrown around. The act itself is heinous, the people who commit the act are themselves heinous and trying to weaponize that fact against people who aren’t guilty of it is immoral and wrong.
That said, there are reasonable concessions to be had. I’m not a rapist and I despise those who would knowingly cause that kind of trauma to other people. But I have no problem with, for instance, a woman I just met on the street not feeling comfortable with going off alone with me. I don’t feel accused, I recognize she’s being prudent, and I respect the fact that it’s ultimately up to hear to decide if I’m trustworthy.
Likewise, I make sure never to corner or entrap a woman by blocking pathways of exit, never surround or accost a woman and I respect any clear refusal or rejection. That’s just common decency and/or etiquette. You can replace “woman” with “man” or “person” and the behavior is the same. That’s a reasonable modulation of one’s behavior.
Even though it’s just a precaution, and DOESN’T assume guilt?
I mean, I agree it’s not okay, but I don’t think it presumes a random guy is a rapist any more than the woman not going off alone with a random guy. In both cases, it’s just a precaution. Not a blanket assumption of guilt.
Well, what does it mean, then? To my eyes, if it does not mean “every instance of time” it means “on a very frequent basis,” and that, too, strikes me as being obvious horseshit.
I’ve been male every day for the 49 years of my life. I have never been disadvantaged by it, and I am unaware of a single instance where any man I know was disadvantaged by it. If this happens all the time, even to use that phrase in the widely accepted figurative sense, it’s amazing I’ve never run across it.
The disadvantages women face by being women, in terms of the harassment and danger they face from men, are depressingly numerous. You can’t even address those points, instead trying to distract by talking about your knife or whatever, because, I assume, you just cannot accept women are perpetually - for good reason - worried about what men will do to them.