Caution is not the same as prejudice. Women should not need to put themselves in potentially unsafe situations for the sake of men’s feelings. I have to live with the fear that I might be assaulted again, every day. Every woman knows someone that has been assaulted. I will never give a man that opportunity again, and that means that I’m going to have to live in such a way that I will mistrust a lot of good men too, because we don’t know which ones are dangerous to us. My assaulter was a close friend, was active in the community, and had my trust. For many women, it is family and close friends.
I am being cautious in a non-prejudiced way. Being afraid of black people because of something unrelated to their race is very different than being cautious of men for something directly related to their sex. I was assaulted by a man, like most sexual assault victims were, especially women. Being cautious to not be alone with men I don’t absolutely trust again is not prejudice. There is no way to visually distinguish a rapist. I was assaulted by a close friend that I trusted and would have never thought to be cautious of. A large proportion of victims are assaulted by someone they trust, like family and partners. I am orders of magnitude more likely to be assaulted again by a man. You would have me put myself at risk or be a complete social hermit just for the sake of “fairness.” My actions just aren’t about men, they’re about keeping myself safe and being happy.
Being afraid of black people because of something unrelated to their race is very different than being cautious of men for something directly related to their sex
Not really, you are assuming the behavior of someone based on their immutable characteristics, they are both prejudice.
There is no way to visually distinguish a rapist.
Except if they look like a man, right?
You would have me put myself at risk or be a complete social hermit just for the sake of “fairness.”
No, I would have you be cautious of every human because every human is a possible abuser. Your trauma is not an excuse for prejudice, neither is statistics. Judging any individual because of the group they were born as is prejudice, you are a prejudiced and intolerant person.
I am not assuming anyone’s behavior. I am acting with the caution that my experiences dictate, because I don’t want to be raped again. Men and women can be rapists. I am orders of magnitude more likely to be raped again by a man. My trauma isn’t excusing prejudice because I am not prejudiced against men. I am not judging any individuals, I am just choosing to not be alone with any men that don’t hold my absolute trust. It simply isn’t about them. No man is owed my time, or the time of anyone else, and it’s well within my rights to choose to my company.
Again, it’s not about you. I am not judging any individuals, I hold no opinion on them personally, whatsoever. Is choosing to wait for my friend to be ready to leave so I don’t walk home alone prejudice? Is carrying pepper spray in an accessible location prejudice? Is declining invitations from acquaintances because I don’t want to be alone with them before I know them better prejudiced? All of these choices are informed by my experiences. I have much more to fear from a random man than a random woman, statistically. It isn’t even close. I have watched men try to single out friends of mine, friends of mine have been roofied, or worse, even ignoring my own experiences.
The only way I treat men differently is the same way most women are taught to growing up, by bitter experience or through lessons from our peers and parents: I exercise caution in who has my company, when, and in what environment, because no one is owed my presence or my trust. The people that are safe will show me that and the people that are not will get defensive and make it about them.
You’re right, but I’ve found that men absolutely hate this argument. They hate hearing “I don’t trust you”. They think good people deserve trust and they completely refuse to see from your perspective that you don’t know if they’re good people yet, and think having to earn your trust is unfair.
Here’s the truth, guys. Women generally lack the desire or capability to sexually assault other women. When we get assaulted it’s by men, almost always. We don’t have to distrust women for our own protection. If men would stop assaulting us, we would find it easier to trust random guys… but they just won’t fucking stop. You cannot explain your point of view or how unfair it is to you in a way that will change our minds. The only way to get women to stop being afraid of you is to get men to stop assaulting us.
Is carrying pepper spray in an accessible location prejudice? Is declining invitations from acquaintances because I don’t want to be alone with them before I know them better prejudiced?
I already answered this, caution is not prejudice, but being cautious towards a specific demographic is prejudice. I’m not interested in hearing your prejudiced rationales, I’ve heard many over the years and they’re largely the same.
I have much more to fear from a random man than a random woman, statistically
Yes, as said, statistics are not an excuse to be prejudiced. You cannot treat someone differently because of the group they were born as, that is prejudice. Go ahead and carry pepper spray, because anyone can attack you, but your trauma is leading you to rationalize prejudice and that is absolutely not acceptable in a tolerant society.
You keep making strawmen arguments because you cannot accept that someone is simply anti-prejudice.
You know what? Shame for the imaginary, ideal, equitable world you have in your head, but as long as you aren’t exterminating people, some prejudice is good.
Lmao, what a terrible opinion. “Prejudice is okay because the world isn’t perfect.” At least you aren’t in denial like half the other people in this thread. The world will never be ideal or equitable as long as people like you are justifying, and advocating, the non-ideal and inequitable. Please spend less time in it.
The end goal is no one trusts anyone, and mutual safety is ENSURED. Because I have seen for myself that humans are incapable of anything else.
We have a somewhat viable society, because if you commit a crime, men with guns will come to stop you with force.
It’s not because of trust or anything like that.
But who will put down those men with guns? I have no idea.
Now, about the prejuduce part, it is fairly safe to assume that anyone who is a billionaire is a total psychopath.
Now, not all men are dangerous, but if you let your guard down near everyone, you will end up raped and dumped into the nearest lake, and won’t be equalizing anything.
I feel bad for you. Sucks to have to live in fear. Do you have any feasible solutions? I have not seen many actual proposals on what should be done, except maybe improving equality and fighting discrimination. But those are not solutions for your fear.
I just don’t put myself in situations where that could be a problem anymore. Trusted individuals share my location. In the long run, the only thing that fixes this is education and cultural shift. For individual women’s fear in the short term though, all we can do is live cautiously, carry pepper spray and/or some form of weapon, and always be around people you absolutely trust.
I do not blame men in general; there are men in my life that are excellent examples and the most safe people to be around. I blame the men that are entitled to women’s bodies. Unfortunately there is no way to look at someone and know the difference. No one knows what a rapist looks like. I very much appreciate the men that choose to be understanding and respectful instead of bitter or defensive.
A real solution: make men afraid to assault women. Make it so taboo they would never consider it. Express horror and disgust at the merest suggestion of it. Punish it decisively. Don’t give the benefit of the doubt.
It would have to be unfair as hell and would ruin a lot of men’s lives but I think it would eventually fix our fucked up culture. Once men stop sexually assaulting people so much they’ll be less scary.
A real solution: make men afraid to assault women. Make it so taboo they would never consider it. Express horror and disgust at the merest suggestion of it. Punish it decisively. Don’t give the benefit of the doubt.
You described exactly how pedophilia is treated. Was it solved?
It would have to be unfair as hell and would ruin a lot of men’s lives but I think it would eventually fix our fucked up culture.
Isn’t unfair treatment and ruining of people’s lives what were trying to solve? How more ruined lives are solving this?
Let’s take all your feeling towards men relative to how you feel towards women and apply some statistics to it to determine what percentage if those feeling you should have towards black people relative to white people.
Men are 5.1-5.5 times more likely to assault someone compared to a woman. Black people are 2.7-2.9 times more likely to assault someone than a white person (according to FBI statistics) Combining these relative ratios tells us that you should be bias against men 1.44-1.48 times more than you should against black people. All these values are for a 95% confidence interval.
So whatever your feelings towards men are (as a result of assaults) take that amount divide that by 1.44 to 1.48 and that’s the percentage of ur feelings towards men you should apply to black people. So however u feel about men due to their chances of assault you statistically must be feel between 68% and 69% of that feeling towards black people. Anything else would be logically inconsistent and purely bias either against men or in favour of black people.
So what is it are you biassed against men or biased against white people or willing to abandon ur argument. The mathematics objectively say that you have to be one of those options.
You are misappropriating statistics to present a story they don’t tell. When you normalize for economic and social factors, including victim race, there is no statistically significant difference due to race alone. No race is inherently criminal, it’s entirely based on socioeconomic factors and systemic prejudice. There is no systemic prejudice against men, precisely the opposite, for a long time. Sexually motivated crimes have sexual factors to consider. It would be just as justified to fear race motivated crime perpetuated by certain groups of people, as it has been by many groups targeted by racial violence in history, around the world. Your analogy is not a direct one. A more analogous one would be people fearing race motivated crime, or fearing homophobia motivated crime. Both of those happen often. Fearing sex motivated crime and acting in accordance with your safety is totally valid.
Caution is not the same as prejudice. Women should not need to put themselves in potentially unsafe situations for the sake of men’s feelings. I have to live with the fear that I might be assaulted again, every day. Every woman knows someone that has been assaulted. I will never give a man that opportunity again, and that means that I’m going to have to live in such a way that I will mistrust a lot of good men too, because we don’t know which ones are dangerous to us. My assaulter was a close friend, was active in the community, and had my trust. For many women, it is family and close friends.
If you “caution” against all men, then yes that is prejudice, just as it would be if someone was “cautious” against black people.
That is prejudice. Be cautious in a non-prejudiced way, nobody will care.
I am being cautious in a non-prejudiced way. Being afraid of black people because of something unrelated to their race is very different than being cautious of men for something directly related to their sex. I was assaulted by a man, like most sexual assault victims were, especially women. Being cautious to not be alone with men I don’t absolutely trust again is not prejudice. There is no way to visually distinguish a rapist. I was assaulted by a close friend that I trusted and would have never thought to be cautious of. A large proportion of victims are assaulted by someone they trust, like family and partners. I am orders of magnitude more likely to be assaulted again by a man. You would have me put myself at risk or be a complete social hermit just for the sake of “fairness.” My actions just aren’t about men, they’re about keeping myself safe and being happy.
Not really, you are assuming the behavior of someone based on their immutable characteristics, they are both prejudice.
Except if they look like a man, right?
No, I would have you be cautious of every human because every human is a possible abuser. Your trauma is not an excuse for prejudice, neither is statistics. Judging any individual because of the group they were born as is prejudice, you are a prejudiced and intolerant person.
I am not assuming anyone’s behavior. I am acting with the caution that my experiences dictate, because I don’t want to be raped again. Men and women can be rapists. I am orders of magnitude more likely to be raped again by a man. My trauma isn’t excusing prejudice because I am not prejudiced against men. I am not judging any individuals, I am just choosing to not be alone with any men that don’t hold my absolute trust. It simply isn’t about them. No man is owed my time, or the time of anyone else, and it’s well within my rights to choose to my company.
Again, it’s not about you. I am not judging any individuals, I hold no opinion on them personally, whatsoever. Is choosing to wait for my friend to be ready to leave so I don’t walk home alone prejudice? Is carrying pepper spray in an accessible location prejudice? Is declining invitations from acquaintances because I don’t want to be alone with them before I know them better prejudiced? All of these choices are informed by my experiences. I have much more to fear from a random man than a random woman, statistically. It isn’t even close. I have watched men try to single out friends of mine, friends of mine have been roofied, or worse, even ignoring my own experiences.
The only way I treat men differently is the same way most women are taught to growing up, by bitter experience or through lessons from our peers and parents: I exercise caution in who has my company, when, and in what environment, because no one is owed my presence or my trust. The people that are safe will show me that and the people that are not will get defensive and make it about them.
You’re right, but I’ve found that men absolutely hate this argument. They hate hearing “I don’t trust you”. They think good people deserve trust and they completely refuse to see from your perspective that you don’t know if they’re good people yet, and think having to earn your trust is unfair.
Here’s the truth, guys. Women generally lack the desire or capability to sexually assault other women. When we get assaulted it’s by men, almost always. We don’t have to distrust women for our own protection. If men would stop assaulting us, we would find it easier to trust random guys… but they just won’t fucking stop. You cannot explain your point of view or how unfair it is to you in a way that will change our minds. The only way to get women to stop being afraid of you is to get men to stop assaulting us.
I already answered this, caution is not prejudice, but being cautious towards a specific demographic is prejudice. I’m not interested in hearing your prejudiced rationales, I’ve heard many over the years and they’re largely the same.
Yes, as said, statistics are not an excuse to be prejudiced. You cannot treat someone differently because of the group they were born as, that is prejudice. Go ahead and carry pepper spray, because anyone can attack you, but your trauma is leading you to rationalize prejudice and that is absolutely not acceptable in a tolerant society.
You keep making strawmen arguments because you cannot accept that someone is simply anti-prejudice.
You arm yourself, and go in knowing you can overpower anyone you are with. Hide weapons everywhere.
You know what? Shame for the imaginary, ideal, equitable world you have in your head, but as long as you aren’t exterminating people, some prejudice is good.
Lmao, what a terrible opinion. “Prejudice is okay because the world isn’t perfect.” At least you aren’t in denial like half the other people in this thread. The world will never be ideal or equitable as long as people like you are justifying, and advocating, the non-ideal and inequitable. Please spend less time in it.
The end goal is no one trusts anyone, and mutual safety is ENSURED. Because I have seen for myself that humans are incapable of anything else.
We have a somewhat viable society, because if you commit a crime, men with guns will come to stop you with force.
It’s not because of trust or anything like that.
But who will put down those men with guns? I have no idea.
Now, about the prejuduce part, it is fairly safe to assume that anyone who is a billionaire is a total psychopath.
Now, not all men are dangerous, but if you let your guard down near everyone, you will end up raped and dumped into the nearest lake, and won’t be equalizing anything.
Removed by mod
Oh, you will find out if I was a troll or idiot within a few years yourself.
I feel bad for you. Sucks to have to live in fear. Do you have any feasible solutions? I have not seen many actual proposals on what should be done, except maybe improving equality and fighting discrimination. But those are not solutions for your fear.
I mean, have we tried just killing all men? /s
I just don’t put myself in situations where that could be a problem anymore. Trusted individuals share my location. In the long run, the only thing that fixes this is education and cultural shift. For individual women’s fear in the short term though, all we can do is live cautiously, carry pepper spray and/or some form of weapon, and always be around people you absolutely trust.
I do not blame men in general; there are men in my life that are excellent examples and the most safe people to be around. I blame the men that are entitled to women’s bodies. Unfortunately there is no way to look at someone and know the difference. No one knows what a rapist looks like. I very much appreciate the men that choose to be understanding and respectful instead of bitter or defensive.
A real solution: make men afraid to assault women. Make it so taboo they would never consider it. Express horror and disgust at the merest suggestion of it. Punish it decisively. Don’t give the benefit of the doubt.
It would have to be unfair as hell and would ruin a lot of men’s lives but I think it would eventually fix our fucked up culture. Once men stop sexually assaulting people so much they’ll be less scary.
You described exactly how pedophilia is treated. Was it solved?
Isn’t unfair treatment and ruining of people’s lives what were trying to solve? How more ruined lives are solving this?
I’m not saying “do it”, I’m just saying run it through it the computer and see if it would work.
Edit who downvotes Mitchell and Webb?
Let’s take all your feeling towards men relative to how you feel towards women and apply some statistics to it to determine what percentage if those feeling you should have towards black people relative to white people.
Men are 5.1-5.5 times more likely to assault someone compared to a woman. Black people are 2.7-2.9 times more likely to assault someone than a white person (according to FBI statistics) Combining these relative ratios tells us that you should be bias against men 1.44-1.48 times more than you should against black people. All these values are for a 95% confidence interval.
So whatever your feelings towards men are (as a result of assaults) take that amount divide that by 1.44 to 1.48 and that’s the percentage of ur feelings towards men you should apply to black people. So however u feel about men due to their chances of assault you statistically must be feel between 68% and 69% of that feeling towards black people. Anything else would be logically inconsistent and purely bias either against men or in favour of black people.
So what is it are you biassed against men or biased against white people or willing to abandon ur argument. The mathematics objectively say that you have to be one of those options.
You are misappropriating statistics to present a story they don’t tell. When you normalize for economic and social factors, including victim race, there is no statistically significant difference due to race alone. No race is inherently criminal, it’s entirely based on socioeconomic factors and systemic prejudice. There is no systemic prejudice against men, precisely the opposite, for a long time. Sexually motivated crimes have sexual factors to consider. It would be just as justified to fear race motivated crime perpetuated by certain groups of people, as it has been by many groups targeted by racial violence in history, around the world. Your analogy is not a direct one. A more analogous one would be people fearing race motivated crime, or fearing homophobia motivated crime. Both of those happen often. Fearing sex motivated crime and acting in accordance with your safety is totally valid.