Plus we have literally no idea of the times the things we did worked, because they worked. If I decided to wear my kick-ass boots and walked nice and fast to look tough, and that “worked” - how would I count that? How do I know that “worked”?
We do so many things, all the time. So many tiny little things, without even thinking about them. And we have no idea of what works and what doesn’t.
I will repeat what I said in the other thread: I am not scared. Not one bit. I don’t think all men are out to hurt me.
But I do not have time to around grinning like a Cheshire Cat at everyone out on the street, because if I make eye contact with men they inevitably come to talk with me,* to ask me out, to ask for my number and endlessly bother me. It takes time and effort to defuse, deflect, extricate, to stay polite yet firm, to not offend, not set them off but to get away. If I walked around smiling like an idiot at everyone I would never get anywhere.
I just want to add this, because not all interaction/non-interaction with men/people is dictated by fear or the idea that they will rape you. I am not scared and I don’t think all men are rapists. But I don’t need anyone’s approval for the way I need to live my life based on my own experiences. I am not rude. I can talk to men just fine. But honestly the amount of times that what started out as a seemingly innocent question turned out to be a ploy to talk to me makes me wary. Not scared, but wary. Not thinking that all men are rapists, but that statistically it is less likely that you really are lost than that you want to bother me for my number. And yet I will still stop to give directions in case someone really is lost. I balance it out.
*NO NOT ALL OF THEM! Ffs. But enough of them to make my life impossible. Even if it’s one on the way to the supermarket I don’t have time for that shit. Even if it is one a week on the way to the supermarket.
I like men. I know that most men are decent people who won’t assault me. But I don’t know which ones aren’t. So there are a lot of situations where I am cautious around strange men. That’s just common sense. I am cautious around women who might be angling to pick my pocket, too.
I’m not sure why some of the men in that other thread got so up-in-arms over it.
I don’t either, especially since no one has said “every man is a potential rapist”, a phrase (or similar) which occasionally came up in past threads. Or claiming that rape is “men’s fault” instead of rapist’s fault. Once I asked what I could do so that they would put their trust back in me, a non-rapist and was told “SIMPLE: DON’T RAPE”
But simply being wary of men you don’t know* or not wanting to be a puppet smile-monkey for everyone isn’t something that should be controversial.
Yes, and even ones you do*, but minute for minute strange men are more dangerous than ones you do know, especially if they are actively trying to become alone with one. One, as in generic “you”, because men should be wary of strange men who are trying to get alone with men because they could get mugged. They should be wary of strange women as well because you could get robbed, but probably not by physical force.
**But then the advice could be extended to “be wary of women you know” as well because there are plenty of instances of women being violent with people they know: with strangers, not so much.
The CDC has a pretty liberal definition of unwanted sexual contact, which does include “unwelcome groping, touching, threats” and its number is 40% of all women experience that in a lifetime, how can that possibly be interpreted as minimizing the problem? Those statistics are staggering. And that does include women who did not report those incidents, because this was an anonymous self-report survey. However, surveys being what they are, we can safely assume the actual number is higher. Anytime a survey asks about a negative personal experience, there is a tendency to under-report.
As for the prevalence of rapists/serial assaulters, I think that’s really hard to know. Based on the study I cited upthread, it looks like about 6% of the male population is responsible for raping about 20% of the female population. The majority of those rapists rape people they already know. Many of them rape their partners. What are the figures for non-rape sexual assault such as the stuff you describe? I honestly don’t know.
That is, in part, why I started this thread. I want to get to the bottom of these stats. I want my questions about the Bureau of Justice Statistics study to be answered. I want to better understand the problem. You can’t fix something you don’t understand.
Questioning whether proliferating a culture of fear of men is a) rational or b) the best way to address the problem of rape culture is not de facto minimizing the experiences of abuse survivors, unless of course the conversation is hijacking a thread created specifically about women sharing their assault experiences, which is why I started it here. There seems to be a tendency in certain narratives about sexual assault to make the claim that women are justified in any response/attitude/etc they develop in response to trauma. If you make that claim (and I’m not saying you are, but many do, I’ve been yelled at by them plenty for daring to take a critical lens to our response to rape culture), that cuts both ways, right? I’m a survivor of sexual assault. I was abused by not one, but two of my mother’s husbands. I have experienced severe PTSD most of my life. Not only was I not believed, my mother tried to convince everyone I was mentally ill and attempted to seize medical Power of Attorney over me. I was pressured by my family to sit across the dinner table from that man for * six years.* I even spent time in the hospital because of it.
During these difficult times in my life, in the midst of trauma, I was not anywhere in the neighborhood of rational. Psychological illnesses are in many cases the result of a broken cognitive schema, which is where I think a lot of this fear comes from, but that doesn’t mean our trauma-induced perceptions of reality need to be accepted as 100% fact. PTSD, like any other anxiety disorder, is not rational. It perceives danger where none exists. In my case, it perceived danger fucking everywhere, not from men but cars and elevators and movie theaters and imaginary people breaking into my house. (Yes, PTSD need not be limited to fear around the thing that happened to you, sometimes it just manifests as these other random fears.) A huge part of healing, particularly through a CBT schema, is testing your perceptions of reality against the evidence that they are true. That’s basically what I’m doing here, for myself and anyone else who is interested.
A huge part of my own path out of this nightmare was stepping up to address these issues on a macro level. Once I began to realize that what happened to me was not just some random freak occurrence, but part of a pattern of rape culture, I set out to address the myriad social issues that affect individuals on a wide scale (poverty, racism, misogny, etc etc.) That includes looking honestly at the evidence and at what about our mainstream narrative about rape culture is not working to fix the problem. I don’t believe that reinforcing a general fear of men within our culture is doing anything else but alienating potential allies. That other thread about sexual assault got so jacked by overly defensive men (which is a problem in and of itself) I can’t even reliably state whether that was happening there, but it does happen, on a regular basis. Then the men become defensive by defaut anytime the subject comes up, then the women talk about how men are minimizing their experiences, then the mansplaining starts, and women’s experiences are further invalidated, ad nauseum.
I care about a coordinated, effective strategy to end sexual assault. Nobody else is obligated to care, but I do, deeply. Sometimes what we have a “right” to do and what is best to do are two completely different things, especially when you’re looking at the end goal for all women vs. your individual feelings in any given moment. But my response is often deemed invalid because it doesn’t fit the standard narrative. My voice doesn’t matter because I’m not fearful or bitter enough. Well, I’m bitter about my treatment by some other feminists, to be honest. The same way women have told men to STFU, women have told me to STFU, because I don’t march in lockstep with the dominant narrative. I think this is toxic. I don’t think any movement or strategy or value system or philosophy can grow without critical analysis. Since men are not allowed to critique any part of this strategy, or they are automatically branded as misogynists, the only one left to do it is a self-identified feminist woman survivor of sexual assault.
By all means, question whether my arguments are valid. Construct your own arguments against them. This issue needs far more critical thinking than it receives. But please do not question my motives.
[QUOTE=Ludovic]
Once I asked what I could do so that they would put their trust back in me, a non-rapist and was told “SIMPLE: DON’T RAPE”
[/QUOTE]
No, it’s not that simple at all, sadly. Most men don’t rape, and women are still getting raped, so obviously there is a lot more to it than that. Non-rapey men need to take a more active role in creating a culture that makes this behavior unacceptable. I’ve gone on at length in other threads about the importance of “bystander intervention” as a solid educational component for young people to consider the root of these issues and develop the skills necessary to prevent them from happening. One thing you can do, if you really are that interested, is volunteer as a mentor at a local shelter. Male mentors are especially needed for the male children of domestic violence and sexual assault survivors. You could also volunteer to be a part of prevention education programs, because, again, boys need to hear this stuff from other men.
Certainly, the world is full of dangers including sexual assault and also murder, robbery, terrorism, and so much more.
Nobody is saying that anyone shouldn’t be cautious in their interactions with strangers for any reasons. I can’t speak for any other men in that thread but I wasn’t up in arms or personally threatened by any of the comments I was responding to.
To do anything about the problem of sexual assault specifically it takes both genders and treating men with suspicion, not just caution, because you can’t be sure is absolutely no different than deciding you suspect all Muslims because of terrorism, or all black people because of prison population statistics, or all women because there are some very violent women out there.
In a dialog on sexual assault, more so than in your own day to day decisions about how to keep yourself safe, it is detrimental to any solution to exclude or discount men’s input and participation. Among us are the only ones who can really help make a dent in the problem.
Spice Weasel always says it better so basically “what she said” except I feel that I should at least respond with my .02 since she started the thread based on my comments in another thread.
…responding to your post in the other threadin the appropriate one:
Ya know, to borrow from the gamergoobers for a minute, you should really “stop using women as a shield”. I don’t have a big issue with what Spice Weasel said. I have big issues with what you said: because you have said different things to what Spice Weasel said. Take responsibility for your own words. Whatever “solid and high ground” you may think you are on: that ground is “just your opinion.” I don’t think you are on “solid or high ground” at all.
“Women’s views towards men as a result of sexual assault” don’t really have an “important impact on our ability as a species to address the problem.” If someone decides not to return a smile: that doesn’t impact our ability to address this problem at all. If women decide not to rely on “spidey sense” (because the stories in the other thread demonstrate that this “spidey sense”, if it exists, failed them every single time) then how does that affect us, as a species, to address the problem?
What problem exactly do you think you have been trying to address in that other thread?
To answer your question you need simply read the thread, not just the posts you want to pick out to criticize, but in it’s entirety.
I never posted or implied that I think anyone should ‘smile’ more or nod back if nodded to. What I was responding to was the overall narrative that Spice Weasel just explained in her last post in this thread. The chances of any one random stranger that nods in passing being a sexual predator are so low as to be practically nil. My response wasn’t that that means anyone should nod back if they don’t want to, it was that the implication of not wanting to nod back for the reasons they stated - that that man may then decide to assault the nodder - is irrational, contrary to all known facts, and projects an attitude that is extremely counter productive to any realistic conversation about changing our culture.
The problem exactly that I think I was addressing in that thread is explained in great detail in the 9 paragraphs 3 posts above this one. Deferring to Spice Weasel’s already large investment in skillfully explaining this isn’t using her as a shield. It is just having no desire or inclination to repeat something that has already been explained as clearly as it possibly can, and realizing that despite that there will be some who simply remain willfully opposed to it regardless of any more that anyone says about it.
I would ask you, though, what problem are you trying to solve there, or here? It appears that your only contribution to that thread were drive by criticisms of my posts, without contributing anything to the subject or addressing any of the issues being discussed and you’re just continuing that tradition here.
Firstly, that depends on the difference in definition between suspicion and caution, which seems like pretty murky territory. Some people apparently think that not smiling at everyone in sight is rude. Is that suspicious? Is it still suspicious if the suspicions are proven correct with great frequency? (“Great frequency” is to say being bothered in the street, not a great frequency of being groped, which is probably never very frequent. Being bothered is still grounds for caution/suspicion/avoidance/whatever.)
Secondly, I don’t think it’s the same as Muslims/black people because most people have not been personally victimised by Islamic terrorism several times. Being cautious/suspicious/afraid can be a reaction to lived experience, rather than a reaction to being poisoned by Fox News.
It is also not the same because being the victim of a terrorist attack by a Muslim really is incredibly unlikely. But being hassled or even assaulted in the street by men is not all that unlikely.
The reason I keep bringing up being hassled generally, though we are talking mostly about sexual assault, is that when women are reacting a certain way you can’t know why. It could be to avoid being assaulted or it could be to avoid being hassled (probably both). Hassling happens a lot, so many women can quite reasonably react with what you might call “suspicion”.
Last thing: if someone reacts with what you call suspicion, start up the empathy engine before judging. People aren’t born suspicious. I also really doubt people become suspicious of men as a result of hearing about rape on the news. You can’t just stop being scared because Some Men are offended by your fear.
And just so this doesn’t give anyone the wrong idea, I will repeat for the millionth time: I am not scared. I talk to people all the time. Also, I have posted frequently on these boards in the past about how sad it is that we are in this situation at all. My lovely husband once had to call me because there was a little girl crying by the side of the road and he didn’t feel he could approach her. That’s awful. But the solution doesn’t lie in telling women how to behave or feel. Women need to do what they need to do to keep safe, and they know better than men what will keep them safe in the spaces they are in. If that means running from offered umbrella’s or not making eye contact then so be it. It might just be the worst option except for all the others.
Again it has nothing to do with whether or not some men are offended by it. It just isn’t productive to solving anything. It isn’t inappropriate to discuss the overall problem clinically while still emotionally feeling for each victim and their own individual story.
If someone is bent on either harassing or even asaulting a random stranger they really don’t care if that person smiles or nods first. They are deciding to impose themselves on that person already fully aware that it is unwanted. That isn’t to say anyone should nod or not nod - the whole reduction of this issue down to whether or not people should nod to each other in passing is really taking away from the bigger point.
The issue I raised wasn’t related to how anyone chooses to live their individual life day to day, or what mechanisms they have to cope with the dangers in the world. It was related to how they might express themselves in an open, public dialog about the problem that included victims, non victims, women, and men.
The comments that brought me into that thread weren’t about nodding, smiling, how one copes, or any of that. They were to say that if someone posts something like “well, the men posting in here haven’t assaulted anyone (yet!)” or “consider your demand to be ignored” to someone who posted “I invite you to…” that hostility is misdirected and they are alienating and excluding a portion of the conversation who actually should really be included if the hope is to ever solve some of the problems that led to so many stories of victimization.
…I’ve read the thread. It didn’t answer my question.
I never stated you did.
Stop hiding behind Spice Weasel. I’m not talking to her, I’m talking to you. “The chances of any one random stranger that nods in passing being a sexual predator are so low as to be practically nil.” Lets accept that for a minute. So the fuck what? Now that you have shared these amazing pearls of wisdom: how does that help “the conversation?” The conversation was, in case you had forgotten, about “Women: share your stories of having your crotch grabbed.” How was the point you made relevant to the experiences women were sharing in that thread?
And this is a strawman. You are arguing with a point that no-one has made: at least in the other thread. No one has claimed that nodding means the “man may then decide to assault the nodder.” What a load of rubbish.
In the other thread people were sharing their experiences. You ignored their experiences, presented a strawman, then argued that anyone who believed the strawman was “irrational, contrary to all known facts, and projects an attitude that is extremely counter productive to any realistic conversation about changing our culture.”
Acting like that is extremely counter productive to any realistic conversation about changing our culture.
The question was addressed to you. Because Spice Weasel hasn’t made the claims that you have made.
You stopped hijacking the other thread and are now posting here. That was the problem I was addressing in the other thread: that problem got solved.
:Why is it irrelevant to defend ‘decent men’ when the thread is based on the unwanted groping experiences women have had? B/c it’s not a thread about men, primarily, it’s about what happens to WOMEN. Or would it kill you to sit back and just read about women’s experiences and learn something about their lives, maybe try to understand where they’re coming from better w/o interjecting to defend the guys that haven’t groped them (yet)?"
“By adding “yet” to that sentence you just admitted that the decent guys are still subject to your suspicion.”
“All men are subject to suspicion, thanks to the fraction of the male population as a whole who are gropers.”
I don’t see anything disagreeable with what Nawth Chucka said. This “Spidey sense” that you claim exists doesn’t really work.
You misunderstand the posters use of “polite words” to mean they were “actually being polite.” Nawth Chucka was perfectly fine to respond as she did. That same poster posted this:
“To the extent that a “safe space,” appears to mean an area in which one participant can share a view or interpretation without challenge by other participants. . . yes, you’re absolutely correct: this thread, this board, and this country are not “safe spaces,” and I intend to work diligently to ensure that they never become safe spaces.”
In a thread where women are sharing extremely personal experiences you can’t get more hostile than that. And yet that particular post doesn’t raise your ire at all.
Do you feel alienated from the conversation? What is it you would like to add to it? You’ve said “The chances of any one random stranger that nods in passing being a sexual predator are so low as to be practically nil.” How does that add to the conversation?
I’m convinced you either aren’t reading anything in this or the other thread, or you’re having difficulty reading for comprehension and context.
Again, not being willing to spend a Sunday evening retyping everyting Spice Weasel has already said, which does directly address everything I wanted to communicate in the other thread, I will try to put it into more easily digested pieces for you.
The biggest problem is that, even if you ask people about “groping, touching, threats,” apparently some people don’t count “grabbing.” As in, “grabbing her by the pussy,” isn’t sexual assault in some eyes. Seriously, there are people, men and women alike, claiming that “grab 'em by the pussy,” isn’t talking about sexual assault.
“Accidentally” being touched on the breasts or ass on a crowded bus may or may not count. A guy “falling” near us in a nightclub and faceplanting into our boobs may or may not count. When we’re in these situations, we ourselves question the reality and nature of what just happened. Cognitive dissonance and our socialization to be nice often leads to denial that there was any ill intent when there absolutely was.
I think 40% is underreported by half. Maybe more. Yes, seriously. Maybe my peer group is just particularly unfortunate, but of the 25 women I regularly socialize with, there is *one *woman who has not been raped or molested. One. And even she’s been groped.
But all that’s unknowable, really.
What really bothers me is that this is the flip side of the “Why didn’t you…” victim blaming that happens when a person is assaulted. “Why didn’t you walk with a group?” “Why were you there in that neighborhood?” “Why were you wearing that?” These questions assume the very premise that now people are refuting: that at any time, you might be so unlucky as to be attacked, simply because you never know who your attacker is going to be. We literally cannot win here. Either we “protect ourselves” by assuming everyone is an attacker - in which case we’re bitches who are profiling men based on their gender - or we don’t - in which case we’re naive fools who kinda deserve what we got. :dubious:
I think some of that, most especially when coming from women and in recent days, is politically motivated due to the asshole who recently brought that phrase into the public conversation.
To me that makes it all the more important to illustrate to everyone that the only way we have to know the real extent of the problem is through such statistics. It’s important to recognize what sexual assault is, and to be honest in answering such surveys. That is a good time to put aside any niceness or uncertainty you had about the motives at the time and just call it an assault if you felt like it was an assault.
In both cases IMHO you’re (you, any women who feel similar pressures) putting way too much importance on what other people think on both sides of that question. Victim blaming is sadly a huge part of the problem and obviously there’s no rational answer to that except that it’s wrong.
Similarly, taking steps to be careful (which doesn’t necessarily require assuming everyone is an attacker - just a potential danger) being considered by anyone to be bitchy or profiling is so absurd that the only response you can really have is to shrug and disregard their opinions and do what your gut tells you.
Well, it’s certainly taught me that the idea that we’re wasting our time and money teaching sexual assault awareness and consent culture on college campuses is…incorrect. We apparently *do *need to be teaching this better than we are. But until such time, I don’t see any way that you can get accurate statistics. In a thread on Facebook about, “why didn’t you report it,” I shared about half a dozen incidents, and why I didn’t report any of them at the time. It wasn’t until the next few hours, as more responses can in and I recognized their stories as similar to my experiences, that I even remembered some other incidents, as well as realizing for the first time that a few incidents I’d written off as accidents probably weren’t. When you can’t even remember or understand them as sexual assaults, you can’t give accurate statistics to be analyzed.
As a nearly 42 year old fat woman, I agree with you. Of course, I’ve developed that inner resolve and independence at a stage in my life when I don’t actually need it, because the assaults have pretty much stopped for me. Asking for young women raised in the culture they’ve been raised in (and not the culture we wish we’d raised them in) to disregard the opinions of other people is asking a lot, though.
Do you think alienating men in this national discussion means there will be more sexual assaults or fewer? Or do you think alienating men will have no affect whatsoever on how many women are sexually assaulted?
You are completely wrong about this. I doubt most rapists leave the house bent on raping someone. (The man who raped me didn’t.) Gropers don’t go out to impose themselves aware that the attention is unwanted. I have now posted several times on my experiences with this. The difference between smiling and not smiling is huge. I don’t nod and smile at random men in public because the harassment that follows is so overwhelming that I can’t continue with my day. I would spend my time diffusing situations with men. Trying to remain kind while explaining why I don’t need to be walked home, why they can’t come with me and why I won’t give them my number.
Sorry if it distracts from your bigger point, but it does seem kind of important if you apparently have no idea.
Now to your bigger point:
I get what Spice Weasel is saying. There is some value in challenging the irrational sides of the fear that can be instilled in women after negative experiences. This is valuable on an individual level and possibly for addressing rape culture.
Excluding all men entirely is bad, OK. But then you say things like
[QUOTE=Crazyhorse]
There’s more than one conversation going here. The very real, very serious problem women face with regard to sexual assault, and another slant on the subject that rationalizes having a suspicion of any unknown male.
[/QUOTE]
and there it gets murky. Because what is suspicion and what is the appropriate amount? As soon as you start talking about what you think that is, you veer off course. Maybe actively thinking that all unknown males are rapists isn’t a very constructive approach to life but acting suspiciously to men in situations in which you are vulnerable is not necessarily a problem. (Depending on the definition of “acting suspiciously”.)
While the general theory might be relevant, you keep steering it in awkward directions.
I have the same experience of remembering other times that were probably sexual assault once we start talking about it. I’ve been assaulted so often that it just makes no sense to me that so many other women could have avoided all of this. How on earth did they do that, are their clothes just really padded? Could I really be that unlucky?
Once in a very busy street in the medina in Tunis, someone seemed to be pushing up against me. There was a lot of jostling, so, eh. Then a little later, the exact same feeling. Wait, is that…? Third time I whipped round, only then was I sure. The same man had been pushing his erection up against me. Had he only done it the once, I’d have thought nothing of it.
I’ve had so many slight brushes, being bumped into, “accidental” boob grazes, awkward hugs, cat calls etc on top of overt assaults and rape that it’s hard to think of as realistic that so many women never have this experience. I don’t think of most of those things, most of the time. And when I was younger they certainly never registered as assault. Some of them probably aren’t? I don’t know. I can’t even tell where the line is. If someone is mostly annoying because he’s drunk and smells bad, do I file him under sexual assault if he grazes-my-boob-drunkenly-on-pupose? If a guy walks around with an erection in his pyjamas and tries to touch me but I dodge, and it’s scary - what is that? Men next to me on the bus, spreading their legs, leaning in to rub their leg against mine, does that count? If I started writing a list it would be long and very confusing. And listing real sexual assault minimises other times that were more upsetting or scary, but weren’t assault.
I can easily see why someone would rather just go with “nothing to report” because the truth is complex and confusing and we have no idea ourselves. If a survey asked me to estimate how many times I’ve been sexually assaulted I’d probably go with just a few of the big ones. Maybe three, four times?
Sorry if this was a hijack, I just wanted to concur.
It could have several effects, some of which one could argue does lead to more sexual assaults - at least in the sense that if nothing else it will slow down the rate at which they decrease if we don’t have all of non-rapey society in on the fight and united. Beyond that it just reinforces an us vs. them mentality on both sides that isn’t helpful to anyone working together to solve any problem.
In that thread I sure wasn’t going to dare mention that 1/10 of sexual assault victims are men. But here we can talk about that too. If you think the female statistics are under-reported you can bet that the male victims are even less likely to report. But 1/10 is what we know of based on reporting similar to the statistics about women.
While 1/10 is small compared to 9/10 that still amounts to literally millions of male sexual assault survivors. Making them unwelcome and automatically suspect of being part of the problem in a discussion for sexual assault survivors is quite unfair and can’t be considered very helpful to them as fellow victims whatever effect it might have on society as a whole.
Also for every one of the huge number of women who has a story about a sexual assault, they very likely have men in their lives who are affected emotionally by it as well. Men have mothers and sisters, daughters, and aunts, they are among the victims of any assaults on their family. For the same reason courts take statements from victim’s families in determining sentencing for violent crimes, the families of those victims necessarily include men and boys, and they are affected by it too.
In the end the main point is just that it isn’t a gender issue, despite the disparity in the sexes of both victims and attackers. It is a human issue. A species-wide issue. It just doesn’t make sense to portray it as a women’s problem that no men should express any opinions about unless they are there simply to say they are sorry for all men and then shut up and be quiet while the real victims talk. We are all the victims.
