Has anyone said, “In fact it’s such a terrible thing that stopping it is worth me being personally inconvenienced somewhat”? or “You know what, if the most effective means of dealing with this terrible thing involves as a by product me feeling included in a sweeping generalisation then that’s worth it, on balance.”?
Because if they did, that passed me by, I’m afraid.
Note that this thread is not about you specifically. Just because you personally may not be pushing women to restrict their behavior to guard against the risk of male violence doesn’t mean that this message isn’t being pushed on women in general in our response to the problem of male violence.
Some of this is also likely because men are in a non-scientific sense, more blase and frankly more stupid about adjudicating risk. Men are at more risk of violence when we go out than women are–women are much more at risk when at home than when they are out of the home. I was told when I was a teenager by one of my teachers who was in his thirties that “had he not married, he would have been dead by thirty, and lots of men are just as self destructive.” While that’s not a factual statement by him, I think what he was saying held a “kernel of truth” to it, men are much more likely if they go out during certain hours of night, to come to a violent end, than women. So just the fact that you don’t consider your safety isn’t an objective thing suggesting women face disproportionate risk at going out, it’s more that men and women probably for a complex combination of mostly cultural issues but maybe some gender based psychological ones (all of which is beyond my knowledge), assess and handle risk differently.
Exactly as I said:
Mostly because it seems to be an easy way to prevent anything of substance to be done. If it’s a “people” problem or a “society” problem folks generally don’t really do much about it - just in my experience anyways. If you say well, this seems to be an issue with men, or to be more specific, toxic masculinity, then folks may take more of a critical look at things - with yes, some men getting personally offended by it (though that sometimes lends other men to question, wait, why are they getting mad at that).
I think the goal of the thought experiment as stated by you, inherently collapsed because you’re conflating some sort of “persuasion” with “government rule of law”, and anyone who sees the thought experiment as a headline will view it in that way, as a sensationalist proposal of government overreach. Any ability to reach the intended audience or have the intended affect, in my opinion, is lost. This is not a useful thought experiment as presented in a headline grabbing fashion. Maybe if it was being discussed in a small group setting like a college course or something it would be received differently, but I dump this into a bin with a long list of other progressive “just trying to stir debate” comments/ideas that just serve to muddy the waters and make people upset and focus on wholly different things than the progressives ever intended (see: Defund the Police as a phrase.)
Society shows no interest at all in male autonomy. Several western nations still have compulsory military service for men, that’s not autonomy. Others have widespread use of alimony and child support. Not autonomy.
Female autonomy, that’s the big thing. Right to choose, and so forth. All the things in this thread, where women are supposedly told they’d be safer at home, have one thing in common: there is no compulsion applied to those women. Protection is for women. Compulsion is for men.
Society puts more men than women in oppressed positions. Victims of crime and prisoners alike. The homeless. The mentally ill. Those who commit suicide. Those who don’t have access to higher education. Why does the much smaller number of men at the top outweigh them?
Society pays never-married women more than never-married men. This is where the pay gap comes from, a feminist would say it is from society placing the burden of child rearing on women, but you could just as easily say that women have a choice. Most men will not have the choice to quit work or take a long period of leave to form a relationship with their children, even at the expense of future income. That’s a choice women can make. Almost like society puts more value on female autonomy.
If you think people listen to men more than women, you’re wrong. If you think society listens to male victims more than female victims, you’re delusional.
What that suggests is that the headline needs to be rewritten for clarity, not that the argument of the thought experiment itself is invalid or inconsistent.
These objections come across as more of the pressure toward “tiptoeing” that’s routinely demanded in discussions of male violence against women: Don’t say anything that could hurt men’s feelings. Don’t say anything that could be misunderstood as an accusation against all men. Don’t suggest any ideas that might be misleadingly represented in a headline. Etc., etc.
Alimony and child support go in both directions as a male friend of mine who got alimony from his wife for several years until he remarried would be quick to point out. There are also a few nations that have compulsory military service for women, including Sweden, Norway and Israel.
Perfectly fine to say these are far more common obligations for men (in the case of alimony/child support usually because they make more money which is whole other issue), but since exceptions are out there you should be cautious about how absolute you make your statements.
This is… a pretty weak argument. Just because male autonomy isn’t unlimited in most societies doesn’t mean it’s not socially prioritized. It is certainly socially prioritized above male safety, and above female autonomy.
Nonsense. Most political leaders are men, most lawmakers are men, most business leaders are men, most researchers are men, most school principals and industry association leaders and military leaders and Chamber of Commerce chairs and lawyers and judges and bankers and authors—and almost all historical authorities and influencers of any kind—are men.
Of course men are listened to more than women in a historically and persistently sexist society. Men are the ones with the vast majority of the speaking parts.
But I specifically agreed with you that male victims of violence are socially “erased” by a culture of shame and silence. I’ve explicitly made that point twice already in this thread, but here’s another quote for the third time:
Whilst women are without doubt the most affected by the specific violence you have listed, in fact the thread was about all violence, and men are significantly affected, and traditionally it seems that male vulnerability to violence is not a thing.
So putting a curfew on people who do not perpetrate violence is not about feelings at all, its about indentifying and isolating violent individuals.
There is nothing that should prevent discussion and prevention of any sort of violence against anyone, but to lump all men into that category of violent individuals is to fall into the misandry trap that seems to inhabit a certain sector of the population which openly states every man is a potential rapist - and it simply is not true by any measure, this is unhelpful hyperbole.
Its also counter productive, surely the objective is to enable men to speak out openly against violence instead of accepting it as an extreme form of ‘laddism’.
I’m interested to know what people think you could or should have done in this situation.
How about they’re just related to “Tucker Carlson has enough material by inventing it, so progressive should stop giving him stuff that’s super easy to cause all of his viewers to froth up without the spin.” None of this stuff advances the causes people want them to advance because they only resonate with people who already are thinking the same way you are and are comfortable using the same language you are.
But you are not talking about Feelings, you are talking about Actions, and those actions involve effectively criminalising half the population in order to justify keeping them locked up.
You have effectively moved from victimising one half of the population, to victimising the other half, and yet you somehow think its about feelings, no it isn’t, not at all.
If you say a number of individuals are brutes and need to be controlled, fine, you could point out they are all from one sector of the population - still fine, because it is fact, but to extend that to all members of the male population and to take what is effectively a legal restriction upon them, that isn’t feelings at all - that is an injustice.
All over the internet there are descriptions of various “support actions” that bystanders can undertake when they see somebody being harassed. Here’s one example:
I am certainly not trying to second-guess Stanislaus’s own particular experience by declaring that he should have done any of those specific actions in that case. But in general, yes, there are all these potential “support actions” that can be taken by bystanders in harassment situations.
Thank you. That’s genuinely useful
Unsupported assertion. ISTM we have no real way of knowing how many people are inspired by this sort of publicity to think more deeply and empathetically about the problem, as compared to how many people are just resentfully triggered and turned off by it.
Not a very good title, i will concede.
I suppose it is theoretically possible that 50% of the world can be further neatly divided into people who are either fully supportive or fully opposed but I beg leave to doubt it.
There are almost certainly people for whose the level of support and activity will be affected by the way in which the argument is put to them.
In any case who is lost to us by using the more inclusive and careful language? Where is the downside?
Note also that this thread title is not in fact the way the OP’s linked article summarized the issue in its headline, which read: