Women, Sexual Assault, and the Fear of Men

[raventhief]

@raventhief

I am not Spice Weasel, but I am guessing these are the posts in question.

Perhaps you don’t discern any pain in the first post, but I certainly do. If women have no space to discuss painful experiences, without having our experiences attacked, then what is the point of sharing them> Why go through painful recounting only to be told “Your experiences doesn’t count,” or “You have no right to feel threatened by that?”

And perhaps you didn’t mean “well,good” in your reply, but it did come across that way to me. You intend to work diligently to continue to ensure that women have no space to discuss painful experiences without being challenged on how legitimate our pain actually is.

Clearly, you already knew this, as both of these posts have been extensively discussed already. You evidently don’t read it dismissive of the poster’s pain. I disagree.

[Spice_Weasel]

@Bricker

Would you mind linking to the post in which someone expressed that the depth of their pain was so great that witnessing repeated hijacks and denialism of their experience had effectively driven them into silence? And then to my response?

I ask because I don’t think that exchange happened. But perhaps I was blind to what was being said.

Sure.

[QUOTE=Lamia]
This is a major part of why I am no longer willing to talk about my personal experiences with sexual assault, street harassment, etc., on the SDMB. We’ve had a lot of threads like this one over the years, and while I believe they are well-intentioned they always turn out the same way.

I don’t mean this as a criticism of the OP, but I am tired of being asked to offer up painful and difficult memories so that men who have never even met me can try to make it all about them.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Nawth Chucka]
That this hasn’t been obvious to several posters in this thread proves my point; women share the facts of their reality and men’s response is to insist on shaping and interpreting them to make themselves feel better b/c they feel attacked. Their perception of being attacked is more important to them than the women’s actual experiences of being physically attacked.
This thread is not a safe space, this board is not a safe space and this country will not be a safe space for a very long time.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=gracer]
I just want to quickly add that I feel the same way. It really bothers me that we are sharing our experiences in this thread and we have people going on and on andonandonandonandon with “not all men do this” in a (futile) attempt to keep the space safe and on topic.
[/QUOTE]

I’ll go ahead and parse this for you. A bunch of women are effectively saying, “We are in pain and nobody is listening.”

And this was your response.

[QUOTE=Bricker]
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.
[/QUOTE]

You were effectively saying, “We aren’t obligated to listen.” Which is absolutely true. But heartless as hell.

I know this is really hard to understand if you haven’t been through it, but when this subject comes up countless times and women’s words are hijacked and nitpicked countless times, it feels like screaming into an endless void. People bickering and minimizing and not even paying attention to your suffering, which is very consistent with the lived experiences of men and women who experience sexual assault. It is a repetition of what we’ve already faced in our families and our communities, and it compounds the already existing trauma.

Do you understand the toll this kind of thing places on assault survivors? You can make fun of “safe spaces” all you want, but at the end of the day you aren’t the one who has to go home and relive those painful memories. I’m long past the point where every single one of these threads wrecks me, but shit like this, at the wrong moment, can wreck my entire week, do you understand that? That’s just life with PTSD. But we keep speaking out because we want to prevent it from happening to other people. We have to sacrifice pieces of our dignity and reputation, to risk being viewed as hysterical or attention-seeking or fill_in_the_blank to prevent it from happening to anyone else. This is such an important issue and survivors deserve more respect than that.

[QUOTE=Bricker]
I cannot say. A lot would depend on whether the assumption had been challenged by other posters and a conversation had developed already. I’d feel less restrained about joining a discussion in progress than starting one.
[/QUOTE]

I wouldn’t even consider participating in a hijack of a thread in that hypothetical scenario. In fact, I had a lot to say about the ideas presented in the Sexual Assault thread, didn’t I? But I listened to the women who told me they were in pain and I took my conflicting thoughts here. Where, it should be evident, debating this subject is open season.

[Bricker]

@raventhief

I am not Spice Weasel, but I am guessing these are the posts in question.

Perhaps you don’t discern any pain in the first post, but I certainly do. If women have no space to discuss painful experiences, without having our experiences attacked, then what is the point of sharing them> Why go through painful recounting only to be told “Your experiences doesn’t count,” or “You have no right to feel threatened by that?”

And perhaps you didn’t mean “well,good” in your reply, but it did come across that way to me. You intend to work diligently to continue to ensure that women have no space to discuss painful experiences without being challenged on how legitimate our pain actually is.

I see.

I would point out, though, that the “experiences” I was referring to arose in this post and its predecessors. To briefly recap, here was the sequence:

@Mighty_Girl

A word to men, if I may: Do you often greet strange men, and smile at them?

(note that thos post invites men to answer a direct question)

My response:

@Bricker

The answer is yes. You walk down the street, someone’s coming the other way, you smile and nod that person in passing. Man or woman.

Others responded to me, and I replied:

@Bricker

@HMS Irruncible

You do, I do, but that doesn’t mean everyone has to. If somebody feels safer pulling down their hat and staring at the ground and going about their business, that’s none of your concern. People have reasons for doing that.

@RTFirefly

Maybe you do. And I probably would too, if I lived in a town small enough where everybody knows everyone else. But I don’t.

But still, the main thing is: it’s not a reasonable expectation of others. You can smile at every passerby if you like, as long as whether or not they smile back isn’t something you’re going to be bothered by, or feel the need to remark on.

No, their choice to smile back, nod back, or ignore me is not anything that bothers me. I just see my nod as basic social courtesy, but recognize that others may not share that view, or may share it generally but not that day, or whatever.

Then Nawth Chucka responds, but reads something into my answer that I did not say:

@Nawth_Chucka

Our responsibility to people in public is to not make things needlessly harder; accept people as you find them unless there’s genuine intervention called for (they’re sobbing, having a medical emergency, that sort of thing). Their expression isn’t your business and no one’s entitled to control that but them. That is courtesy at its most basic and it’s confusing to me how anyone could think the expression on another person’s face somehow costs them something.
How would the frown of another person possibly be a detriment?

She inveighs against my saying that their expression was my business… even though I specifically said it wasn’t and I had no concern about what a passerby did in response.

I replied:

@Bricker

I invite you to re-read what I wrote and what you wrote in response:

Having re-read them, I now invite you to point out which of my words said that their expression is any of my business, or that it “costs me” something, or, more generally, I invite you to explain in what specific way what you wrote has any relevance to what I wrote.

Her response:

@Nawth_Chucka

You’re not entitled to a response from me but since this is a written medium I’ll be polite enough to tell you to consider your demand ignored.

And then, after other posters also pointed out that she had crafted “demand” and “other peoples’ expressions” into my words, she responded:

@Nawth_Chucka

That this hasn’t been obvious to several posters in this thread proves my point; women share the facts of their reality and men’s response is to insist on shaping and interpreting them to make themselves feel better b/c they feel attacked. Their perception of being attacked is more important to them than the women’s actual experiences of being physically attacked.
This thread is not a safe space, this board is not a safe space and this country will not be a safe space for a very long time.

And this, then, prompted my response. In my opinion, she’s not entitled to read into what I wrote what she did and then shield herself by claiming it was her woman’s reality. My dismissal of her safe space idea was predicated on that premise.

[Nawth_Chucka]

@Bricker

I see.

I would point out, though, that the “experiences” I was referring to arose in this post and its predecessors. To briefly recap, here was the sequence:

(note that thos post invites men to answer a direct question)

My response:

Others responded to me, and I replied:

Then Nawth Chucka responds, but reads something into my answer that I did not say:

She inveighs against my saying that their expression was my business… even though I specifically said it wasn’t and I had no concern about what a passerby did in response.

I replied:

Her response:

And then, after other posters also pointed out that she had crafted “demand” and “other peoples’ expressions” into my words, she responded:

And this, then, prompted my response. In my opinion, she’s not entitled to read into what I wrote what she did and then shield herself by claiming it was her woman’s reality. My dismissal of her safe space idea was predicated on that premise.

I feel so much better knowing yours was only a personal attack on me b/c I declined to read and re-read your words until I agreed to see them only as you meant them. The many other women who recoiled from your words will find great comfort I’m sure, knowing how they were only meant for the big-mouthed woman who refused to do as you told her.

[Spice_Weasel]

Bricker, just to be clear, you were not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only person hijacking that thread. I was equally annoyed by its entire devolution into a debate about whether or not one should be expected to smile at people. While sexual harassment is tangentially related (and sometimes a segue into) sexual assault, it is not what the thread was about. I just thought your comment to be particularly callous in light of the context.

[Spice_Weasel]

Part of the problem may be that in these threads people often have multiple conversations going at the same time. What one person sees as relevant or important differs from individual to individual. I noticed all the ‘‘pain’’ posts and mentally filtered all the bullshit arguing. So if you make a comment like that in response to a single person, it’s good to consider what other statements have been made in that thread already and how the statement may be perceived in that context.

Because, fundamentally, I agree with you. There is personal experience and then there are assertions or perceptions that are factually untrue. The line between those things can sometimes be blurred. There is a time and a place for sorting out the factually untrue from the perceptions – such as debating the actual prevalence of sexual assault and which studies are more trustworthy than others, as I have actually attempted to do in this thread. Generally speaking, that other thread was not the thread to do that because it was a thread about personal experience. However I can’t fault you for defending your own ‘‘invitation’’ as a ‘‘demand’’ because it clearly was not a demand.

I also think the implications of misogyny against you are unfounded.

[Bricker]

@Nawth_Chucka

I feel so much better knowing yours was only a personal attack on me b/c I declined to read and re-read your words until I agreed to see them only as you meant them. The many other women who recoiled from your words will find great comfort I’m sure, knowing how they were only meant for the big-mouthed woman who refused to do as you told her.

I’m sorry, but this attempt to recast this exchange as my demand that you do as I tell you is neither justified nor entitled to be passed, unremarked, as another instance of your own reality being as equally defensible as actual reality.

It was not objectively reasonable for you to read my word “invite,” as a demand; it’s not objectively reasonable for you to now defend that choice by casting as a male demand directed at a subservient female.

[Bricker]

@Spice_Weasel

However I can’t fault you for defending your own ‘‘invitation’’ as a ‘‘demand’’ because it clearly was not a demand.

I also think the implications of misogyny against you are unfounded.

Thank you.

[Spice_Weasel]

If I could go a step further, I don’t think implications of misogyny against men who participate in these threads are really helpful, absent evidence that they are actually misogynist. There is such a thing as honest ignorance, curiosity, misunderstanding, and a host of reasons other than ‘‘misogyny’’ which might prompt men to make comments that women find upsetting. Such things may happen a lot more often in a culture of misogyny, but that’s a lot different than assuming misogyny of any given individual based on a difference of opinion. (Also, ‘‘misogyny’’ can run the gamut from ‘normal dude with some (perhaps willful) ignorance about a specific issue relevant to women’s rights’’ to ‘‘has a collage on his wall of women he’s murdered’’ – so it’s not a very precise way to categorize someone, at any rate, and someone may infer the latter when the former was intended.)

Of course it happens often on this board that women talk about a culture of misogyny and are perceived to be accusing given individuals of misogyny when that is not the case. But in this specific case, and in others I have seen, people have attacked individual men as misogynistic simply because they disagreed. I won’t even claim I’ve never done that in the heat of anger. But I don’t think it’s helpful.

[Bricker]

@Spice_Weasel

But in this specific case, and in others I have seen, people have attacked individual men as misogynistic simply because they disagreed.

I assumed she was attacking me because I am Hispanic!

I kid, I kid.

[Crazyhorse]

@gracer

You’re not reading very well here. I’m not saying the majority of rapes are by strangers.

This is what you said:

OK I think you’re right. I said in the previous thread “there are two conversations going on here” but in this thread now there are at least six and I wasn’t answering you based on the statement you just quoted. That was opinion not fact and I’m not sure why I didn’t qualify that as such.

The closest I can even imagine it being like is an annoying street vendor following me as I walk down the street “Hey! Dude! Hey, you hey!!” Trying to pretend he isn’t there and walking on just leads him to keep following, more persistent each step. If I turn and stop with a stern but polite “no thank you” it usually sends him off grumbling to himself.

Harassment is certainly a related issue but not really sexual assault, by the definition I am using. I can only imagine having tens or hundreds of those street vendors in my path instead of a few, and having them trying to convince me to give them me, instead of my money, and I very much sympathize.

But as to your comment: “There should be space for men. But a lot of the time you let them talk and they go all Crazyhorse. That’s why we have some spaces where men are asked to just listen.” that isn’t fair.

Neither the first thread nor this one were a place where men were asked to just listen. Again, despite the title of that thread, the OP and many participants insisted it wasn’t just for women and part of the thread’s purpose was confirming that to most men that groping/assaulting isn’t acceptable or normal.

[ThelmaLou]

Crazyhorse, serious suggestion: instead of pointing out how these discussions aren’t following the track you would like them to, why not start a thread of your own with your own guidelines and questions?

Of course, people may accuse you of telling people where and what to post, but <shrug>. It’s impossible to keep control of a thread without resorting to “junior modding,” a hangin’ offense.

But I’m interested in knowing how you think we should be discussing this subject.

[Crazyhorse]

@ThelmaLou

Crazyhorse, serious suggestion: instead of pointing out how these discussions aren’t following the track you would like them to, why not start a thread of your own with your own guidelines and questions?

Of course, people may accuse you of telling people where and what to post, but <shrug>. It’s impossible to keep control of a thread without resorting to “junior modding,” a hangin’ offense.

But I’m interested in knowing how you think we should be discussing this subject.

I think we’re discussing it just fine.

Mentioning to gracer that there are so many conversations going on at once I clearly misunderstood her reference wasn’t a complaint about the state of the thread or a request for anyone to stay on one topic, it’s just the reason I misunderstood her.

[ThelmaLou]

My bad. It sounded to me like a complaint. It’s easy to misunderstand and be misunderstood here. Not that it’s ever happened to me.

[Banquet_Bear]

@Bricker

Yes.

But by the very same logic, I am free to comment on your irrelevant observations.

Right?

…ummmmmm, yes? Of course? Absolutely? 100%?

What sort of answer were you expecting?

We’ll agree to disagree.

Your perception is valid.

Your memory is faulty. As I explained very clearly in this post in that thread, I was offered a topic for debate, and was swayed by the arguments made. Indeed, several people initially shared the view that I was somehow arguing something different… but not all of them continued holding that view as the thread progressed:

You weren’t offered a topic for debate. You created the thread, and you offered the topic for debate. And just because some people changed their minds, there were other people in that thread who didn’t. Including me.

It was inaccurate. I think “wrong” carries a stigma of some moral flaw. You were simply in error.

:: offers wry shrug ::

Every perception is equally valid.

I don’t think I was in error. And you haven’t posted anything here to change my mind.

This one.

An assertion can be defined as “a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief.” A story can be defined as “a narration of the events in the life of a person or the existence of a thing, or such events as a subject for narration.”

Nawth Chucka post does not “suggest her assertions should remained unchallenged.” She makes a passionate defense for the right for people to be able tell their stories without those stories being treated as “assertions.”

To review, you asked, “Is it problematic for women, in a thread called ‘Women: share your stories of having your crotch grabbed (when you didn’t want it)’ for women to actually share their stories of having your crotch grabbed (when you didn’t want it)? Is it problematic that the people participating in that thread didn’t want it hijacked by people determined to talk about something else?”

And I answered your question and went on to explain my view of what constitutes hijacking and how a subject develops organically in a thread…

Nah. You didn’t really answer my question. You said it “depends.” Which means under certain circumstances it can be problematic for women to share their stories. What circumstances are those?

Because the overall mission of the site is the fight against ignorance, and that fight is crippled in a medium that isolates assertions from challenge. I approve of the mission and want to work against a change.

Calling another poster – even me – a bad name is an example of a logical fallacy. It, too, hampers the fight against ignorance.

Well I’m glad we are clearing this up. You aren’t making a First Amendment argument at all. You don’t even have a problem with voluntary “safe spaces” on private forums. You just have a problem with voluntary “safe spaces” on this particular board. Gotcha. Noted. And you will passionately fight to make sure that these boards are not a safe place for women to share there stories of sexual assault. Noted. I’m glad you’ve made these things clear Bricker.

You say “obviously,” but in fact I didn’t know until now. So when you chimed in, discussing the phrase “…this country…” as being a place without a guaranteed safe space, to which country were you alluding?

You seem confused. I’ve quoted the sentence “this country” several times in this thread. But I’m quoting other people. Those other people are talking about the good old US of A. I was just making an irrelevant observation.

I said “obviously” because we’ve interacted in the past, and in that thread I linked to it should be pretty obvious from post number two what country I come from. It is so sad I am so un-memorable.

[marshmallow]

Normalizing Sexual Violence (PDF) goes into some detail on this subject, particularly how young girls view assault as normal male behavior and something to manage instead of report or attempt to change. There are several depressing but not particularly surprising first hand accounts.

@Spice_Weasel

…but this is an element about the dominant narrative about sexual assault that I must reject. We need men as allies, not adversaries.

I don’t recognize painting men as adversaries as the dominant narrative, at least in liberal feminism. It’s usually about education, reaching out, and consciousness raising aimed at men, with the logic that men are half of society, help raise the next generation (including boys), and hold most of the political and corporate power.

Hostile or exclusionary attitudes towards males is more common in more left versions of feminism, especially by the time you get to separatist feminism. Their plans work well enough on an individual level to protect themselves from male aggression, but I don’t know if it would be stable if sizable portions of the population followed it.

@Helena330

We’re not talking about one or two percent of men that are sexual predators.

Not only for the reasons you state, but especially if you factor in male demand for prostitution, trafficking, and pornography (assault by proxy). Society’s impulse to satiate male desire causes a lot of misery in women.

[DaphneBlack]

I posted a thread a while ago about how a friend-of-a-friend (of my husband) grabbed me and tried to flip me upside down and got super pissed that I repeatedly told him “No!” and pushed him. The most striking thing about the whole unpleasant experience was that my husband’s friend told him later, in a sort of pseudo-pology on his friend’s behalf, that this guy “did this sort of thing all the time” and “no one ever complained before”. Good people don’t want to make other people feel uncomfortable… this leads to the small percentage of bad people getting away with things.

Was this rape or sexual assault? No, but it was gross, scary and upsetting and a violation of my personal autonomy. It made me pretty jittery.

A few days after the incident, another (male) friend was sitting next to me at dinner and kept bumping into me, and I was moving away, I didn’t want him to touch me, even incidentally. I didn’t say anything, just shifted away. Then, later he went in for a hug and I kind of froze up. This guy turned to my husband and said “she’s being so awkward and stiff!”

It wasn’t this guy’s fault that I was uncomfortable, but he took it so personally, it was really bothersome. Also the part where he addressed his attitude to my husband rather than me, but, ugh, whatever at this point.

This is a bit of a ramble, but I guess my point is, I think that second guy probably thought I was unreasonably treating him like a threat, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t trying to do anything except set my own personal boundaries, and he took that as an affront to himself. I don’t treat all men as dangerous to me, but I’m not going to consider their feelings over my own comfort and safety, even if that makes them feel a little bad or uncomfortable at times.

I’m not going to contribute to a culture when men can assault people and then act like they had no idea it wasn’t acceptable because no one had ever told them they were uncomfortable with their behavior. I accept that might lead to a little collateral damge.

[Corry_El]

@marshmallow

Not only for the reasons you state, but especially if you factor in male demand for prostitution, trafficking, and pornography (assault by proxy). Society’s impulse to satiate male desire causes a lot of misery in women.

I’ve always been fascinated at the strands of feminism that come back around to the traditionalist or even puritanical position against pornography, especially since I suppose many saying it would view traditional morality as ‘pure evil’ in other respects (of not matching current fashion).

Maybe I’m too practical, but I wonder what practical difference it makes at this point if one criticizes pornography or its (reasonably presumed predominantly male) viewers. Perhaps just in the mode of argument ‘your group is morally inferior, it should pay my group reparations’.

I don’t have a problem with it being a crime to use prostitutes or focus enforcement on that side, or both sides, and not particularly emphasize enforcement against prostitutes themselves (of either sex). Obviously, human trafficking should be fiercely combated. Otherwise I’d tend to focus on my own behavior within the law rather than other people’s. And if it’s up for a vote whether ‘sexual predator’ under criminal law should include anything anybody wants it to since ‘all perceptions are equally valid’ (not necessarily IMO), I vote no. I would keep it to a list that includes unwanted physical touching of various erogenous zones as various laws specifically enumerate (in some jurisdictions and that’s the way to go IMO). And I wouldn’t change the definition for ‘studies’ or to try to boost the % of male ‘sexual predators’ to some high number, which just makes it meaningless.

[Spice_Weasel]

@marshmallow

Hostile or exclusionary attitudes towards males is more common in more left versions of feminism, especially by the time you get to separatist feminism. Their plans work well enough on an individual level to protect themselves from male aggression, but I don’t know if it would be stable if sizable portions of the population followed it.

Maybe I just have super liberal friends, but I see a lot of stuff like this.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it infuriates me.

[puzzlegal]

@DaphneBlack

…
A few days after the incident, another (male) friend was sitting next to me at dinner and kept bumping into me, and I was moving away, I didn’t want him to touch me, even incidentally. I didn’t say anything, just shifted away. Then, later he went in for a hug and I kind of froze up. This guy turned to my husband and said “she’s being so awkward and stiff!”

It wasn’t this guy’s fault that I was uncomfortable, …

! Yes, it most certainly was his fault. It wasn’t his fault if he bumped into you once or twice by accident, or even if he did it once on purpose. But once you moved away, it was absolutely his fault to pursue you. And it was incredibly rude of him to try to hug you after that. And disgusting that he then tried too shame you for your completely valid reaction.

Your husband was put in an awkward spot – the same spot women are put in when they are harassed by people they know in social settings – but I hope he stood up for you.