I am not proposing a curfew on men. Nor is anyone else.
The popular and social media has certainly been busy trying to frame it that way. Not anybody’s fault here of course.
For me, the discussion has served its purpose. I know I need to spend some time learning what I can do, but I don’t think I am alone in having needed to be led by the hand to that realisation.
One thing that can be done - but requires reading the situation and being able to improvise, is giving the harrassed a friend.
“Jill, is that you? Wow I don’t think I’ve seen you since the Brady’s party. How are you doing.” And just keep talking. The skulker will likely leave for easier prey. If the woman really feels threatened, she’ll catch what you are doing (although a few facial expressions might help here) and play along.
That’s not exactly unprecedented, of course. Pretty much any time a movement tries to put out any kind of message to the effect “Hey, the Status Quo Is Still Kind of Bad for Historically Disadvantaged Groups”, the popular and social media go full-on triggered overreaction about it. This seems to happen no matter how moderately or “provocatively” the message is phrased.
“Black lives matter.” “OMG they’re saying that white lives don’t matter!”
“Kneel in a traditionally respectful and reverential posture before the flag during the anthem.” “OMG they’re disrespecting the flag!”
“Defund the police.” “OMG they want to do away with police entirely!”
“No human is illegal.” “OMG they are advocating totally open borders!”
“How would you feel if there were a curfew for men?” “OMG they are trying to collectively punish all men for the violent actions of a few!”
ISTM that this isn’t coincidental, this is just the status quo mindset protecting itself from having to confront anything that might challenge it.
In this one’s defense, “defund the police” sounds like it means “stop paying for police,” which would do away with police entirely, unless you had some sort of all-volunteer police force.
Oh, no question that some of these messages are phrased, as I said, more provocatively or startlingly than others. My point is that the reflex media overreaction to them doesn’t seem particularly dependent on how provocatively or temperately they’re worded.
I think some of the recalcitrant may eventually come over.
However – I don’t think they’ll come over because of anything women do or don’t say. I think some of them will come over if they run into enough men saying the equivalent of ‘dude, that’s not cool’ – whether about things they may be doing themselves, or about giving bad ‘advice’ to women.
Of course it has logical consistency. It’s saying, stop giving us advice to just stay home, because there’s no way you’d give that advice to men. Something different needs to be done.
@Stanislaus: very good post (#138).
What you did say, without specifying, was:
when the thread was specifically discussing bad and burdensome advice. If you’d said ‘both men and women should be taught situational awareness in the same fashion’, I wouldn’t have responded as I did.
The point of bringing up domestic violence was to point out one of the reasons why the advice given to women is often bad advice. Telling women to stay home when home may be more dangerous than going out is bad advice. Telling women to go out only accompanied by others is bad advice, because in addition to posing an unreasonable burden, the others they’re supposed to get to accompany them (whether people they live with, friends, acquaintances, or the store security guard) may be the ones who pose the danger.
Most people in this thread don’t seem to be viewing it that way; even those who saw the headline.
I think you may be assuming that your reaction is the reaction of “anybody” And I think you’re wrong about that.
The whole point of the comparison is that it would be unfair to lock up all men because of the behavior of some of them! Just as it’s unfair to shut the women up because of the behavior of others, it would also be wrong to shut up some of the men because of the behavior of others. That’s the point.
– I see @Kimstu’s covered this, but I’ll add:
Strike up conversations with your male friends and acquaintances about how uncomfortable and helpless you felt in the situation, and how it must have been much worse for the woman involved. If any of them thinks it wasn’t a big deal, push back.
Again, that’s the point; that it’s an injustice either way around.
Wait! Telling people they need to stay home is criminalizing them? I know the hypothesis (curfew for men) is not a serious suggestion, and would be unduly restrictive. But it’s really not about criminalizing anyone. It’s about pointing out to men just HOW restrictive the advice given to women is.
Almost certainly.
It’s giving up a very useful filter for trustworthy allies versus fickle “friends” who once again are putting all the hard work on the oppressed class?
If someone is going to be turned off by the language used, they’re not actually invested. Anyone who cares that much about appearances is not really committed to the cause.
It’s exactly like those “not racists” who want to make their Black friends do all the work of educating them - but don’t want to actually hear that they might have a few little bit racist behaviours.
I’m a man, and I do not give a flying fuck if a woman says “men are X” in these conversations, or objects when the inevitable Whatabout Man “Well, Acktchually!”-s another thread back into Sausageville. More power to those women. Because it’s not about me.
It’s 2021, man. Did you really?
Pretty obviously quite a lot of people do.
A considerably bigger problem is the ones who have no intention of being open to realizing anything.
One consciousness-raising analogy that I’ve seen used about this issue is for white people to imagine that they’re living in one of the many unofficial “sundown towns” that existed in 20th-c. America, where black people were allowed to work and shop during the day but could not reside or purchase property in. (There were also many official sundown towns where these restrictions were imposed in law, of course.) And the white person’s talking to a black friend about how to stay safe in the situation:
“Oops, it’s getting a bit late in the afternoon, I guess you’ll have to be going now, let me walk out with you to your car just so nobody gets a wrong idea about your staying here. And you know it’s better to drive out on Macallen than on Cardinal Street because Cardinal leads through some pretty hostile neighborhoods, right?”
I mean, all of that is very well-intentioned advice and helpfulness that’s just trying to help the black friend stay safe in a dangerous environment, of course. But surely you can see how the friend might also be thinking “Thanks for your concern and all, but WTF? Why is all this forethought and advice being devoted to how I should behave so as to avoid these dangers? Why aren’t you talking instead to your fellow white people about what’s wrong with this situation in the first place?”
I get how a lot of men genuinely don’t want to live in a sexist culture, just as quite a few 20th-century white people genuinely didn’t want to live in a racist culture, but not unreasonably felt that it was just the way things were and the most practical thing they could do was to help the potential victims stay out of trouble. But sometimes that attitude can be aggravating for the person who feels that they’re being unfairly saddled with the responsibility to stay out of trouble that’s not of their making.
I will admit that I once too used to complain about sweeping generalizations, and that it was GamerGate that really opened my eyes to why this attitude was…counterproductive, shall we say.
Yes, I used to be one of those #notallmen guys - after all, I wasn’t actively harassing female gamers. I wasn’t doxxing them, I wasn’t threatening them, I wasn’t spreading nasty rumors about them while pretending that actually it was about ethics in gaming journalism. No, I just wanted them to acknowledge that I wasn’t like those other guys and was that too much to ask?
And then one day when I was reading about the frankly horrific scale of the abuse that had been going on and the penny dropped. Sure, I was a “nice guy” and didn’t mean those women any harm - but by insisting that they cater to what I wanted, even in a tiny way, I was just making things harder for them. My little half-ounce of selfish indulgence may not have been pressing down hard, but it was on the wrong side of the scale, the same side with the liars and doxxers and ultramisogynists. And I realized that maybe - just maybe - what I wanted wasn’t that important if all it did was make things worse for people already being victimized.
Because ultimately I’m not actually harmed by people saying “men do this” or “white people do that” or “straight people do the other thing”. Yes, it can be annoying - but, keeping things in perspective, should I be more annoyed by being broadly included in with other people who do bad things, or should I be more annoyed that so many of the group I belong to are genuinely doing those bad things in the first place? If the least I can do to help is to put up with some minor irritation rather than stomping off like a spoiled toddler, I think I can just about manage that.
In conclusion, don’t be this guy:
They probably aren’t even really Scottish either.
Yes. Obvious things are only obvious after you know them. How do you think I should already?
I know I’m not contributing anything here but I feel compelled to say that this has been a really really interesting discussion so far that has really helped me to get my thoughts in order about all of this. Thank you all.
I have also needed to have people point out to me my racism, and some other privileged positions. And I’m still pretty damn imperfect. But I’m trying, and have a better target to aim for due to help from others.
Well, yeah, but assuming the Helpful Guy is halfway intelligent he is only assuming two things:
that his black friend is also fairly intelligent and careful,
and that talking to those those racist morons is useless and that anything short of US Marshals and National Guard aint gonna do shit.
Ditto.
We’ve all got walls in our heads. And you can’t see them until you can see them. That’s the nature of walls in our heads – part of what they’re walling off is the ability to see them.
Is he also assuming that talking to all the other people who’ve been assuming the situation can’t change is useless, and nothing whatsoever will ever either get the Marshals and the Guard out there, or render it unnecessary to do so?
Because if so: he’s wrong.
Defender of the defended! I like that.