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Man, I really got hit with a "All men are predators, it's in the studies". 2nd wave feminism is a scourge on feminism itself. (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
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This happened to me irl. They ask me to mess a bit with tarot cards and as they're leaving they tell me "You'd go think about stuff before go you out dating. All men are predators". When I ask them that sounds incredibly prejudiced they just respond with "It's in the studies". I was perfectly fine when feminism meant egalitarianism but thats is oughtright stupid vitriol that's gonna help noone.

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[–] -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

Nah. Don't play the word games this way. Women and girls have to operate under the assumption that "all men" specifically because to do otherwise puts them at significant disadvantage and in significant danger. Unknown unknown - I don't know this man, or those men, but statistics say 92.1 % of sexual offenders are men and 1 in 6 women will experience rape. There's a sexual assault every 68 seconds.

So while it may seem unfair to say "all men" because obviously not all men, I have a lot of questions about how op wrote this post.

All bears aren't gonna try to eat you. There's lots of circumstance where that's not going to happen. But the question is do you assume you are in danger from every bear you run across?

The thing about the statistics for African American crime is that a lot of them are deliberately misleading and weaponized against that demographic. You acknowledge how bad of an analogy this is but I i don't really think you understand just how flawed the argument is. Rape and sexual assault are about exerting power and control. The statistic you used is an example of using statistics to exert power and control over a narrative specifically to keep the demographic in question oppressed or subjugated.

If we're strictly arguing against weaponizing statistics against a demographic I can understand. But if op is questioning a woman or women being cautious of him because they have a reasonable fear of being assaulted that's not the same thing.

Women take extra precautions as a matter of course in their daily every day lives to avoid sexual assault and worse. This is something they do both consciously and unconsciously. And still the most likely person to kill a woman is their male significant other or someone they know. Someone they probably trust.

There is a possibility that the person who told op this has trauma related to this. Maybe they lack the ability to communicate nuance. Maybe they are just an asshole. Maybe this was a specific attempt to get op specifically to leave them alone. We don't know the context.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Sure but there's a world of difference between "women need to be cautious around men" and "all men are predators". One is an unfortunate but reasonable statement while the other is a discriminatory generalization. The former could honestly just be rephrased as "people need to be cautious around strangers" and it would be just as accurate.

    The problem with statistics like "There's a sexual assault every 68 seconds" is that they sound really bad but you can do essentially the exact same exercise with any sufficiently large population and come up with similarly scary sounding numbers. E.G. There's a car crash every 13 seconds.

    As for the bear analogy, while I'm sure there are plenty of circumstances in which a individual bear wouldn't attack someone, as you spend more time around any given bear the likelihood of it attacking you approaches 100% even more so when taken as a population. The same does not hold true around men. There are billions of men on this planet the vast overwhelming majority of which are not a danger to women.

    I don't know this man, or those men, but statistics say 92.1 % of sexual offenders are men

    Just like the example of African American crime there's a lot more to this statistic. For instance is that number so high because most men don't report sexual assaults therefore skewing the number of women sexual offenders down? There are lots of complicating societal factors there. Regardless that doesn't justify the sweeping generalization that "all men are predators" or even the slightly weaker "most men are predators", as very obviously the majority are not.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The same does not hold true around men.

    The longer a woman lives, the more men she comes in contact with, and the statistical likelihood of meeting a dangerous man goes up.

    You say "all men are predators" is discriminatory, but for a lot of women it is the only way to drive the point home to their daughters, who may hear "you have to be careful around strangers" and then let their guard down when a predator plays the long game.

    Also, children are often sexually abused by family members or friends. So careful around strangers is not sufficient.

    Does it suck to hear "All men are predators" if you're a good one? Sure. But at the same time, people have no issues claiming all brown guys are terrorists or illegals. Or women are gold diggers. Or whores.

    Humans always generalize. It's just (white) men having been on top of the food chain in the modern society for so long that they feel things are being taken away from them when other groups demand true fairness and equal treatment.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Does it suck to hear "All men are predators" if you're a good one? Sure. But at the same time, people have no issues claiming all brown guys are terrorists or illegals. Or women are gold diggers. Or whores.

    You literally just made my point for me. Every last one of those examples is wrong in exactly the same way. Or are you defending all of those as acceptable generalizations? You're cool with men going around saying "All women are whores" and that just being an acceptable thing?

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    If men want women to stop having to say "All men are predators", they need to remove the survival need behind that line.

    All these lines have a reason behind it, and as long as "All women are whores" gets shrugged off as locker room talk, or excused as he had a bad relationship experience, this aggressive mindset often leads to women trying to leave a relationship they're unhappy in getting harmed or killed.

    If men want women to not see them all as predators they need to keep their bros in check. As well as end the toxic macho culture that regard women as owing men sex when men are nice to them or as their possession once they're in a relationship.

    If a country elects someone who says "Grab them by the pussy" and there are men - "good" men - that meme this, that's not ok. Yet it happened and it's no wonder women feel threatened underneath a government like this.

    It's not in the women's power to stop this. Good men need to finally start fighting the bad apples if they don't want to be mistrusted as a survival strategy.

    Most men I talked to are more upset about being lumped in with the bad apples, when in reality you should be upset how your mothers, sisters, girlfriends, daughters are constantly living in fear and can't move through any space in life without preemptive measures.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Men have exactly as much power to stop this as women do. None of the things you mentioned are acceptable. I don't tolerate someone "memeing" Trumps "grab them by the pussy" remark except to paint Trump as a despicable person specifically because he made that remark (among many other reasons). Anyone trying to defend that kind of remark or shrugging off "all women are whores" as locker room talk is wrong and I would call out anyone who did so. But you also need to see how what you're doing here is essentially the same thing. Someone said "all men are predators" and then when it's pointed out that's not acceptable you try to defend it by citing the statistics for women being assaulted and then dumping all the responsibility for fixing that problem on every man.

    I'm not a senator, I'm not a congressman, I'm not a judge or governor, I'm not a cop, I'm not even a manager. My ability to fix society's problems is highly limited, mostly what I can do is call out bad behaviour when I see it which is exactly what I did in this instance. Beyond that I can donate to charities that try to address these problems which I do, and vote for politicians that try to address these problems which I also do (not that it ever seems to make a difference).

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago

    If you do, good on you! Most men don't.

    The thing is, if men don't change, it will annoy you. But for women it may very well kill them. You're seeing the problem and understanding it, yet you blame women for trying to survive.

    They don't say "All men are predators" because they want to be petty and pay men back for how they talk about women. They live by this because anything else puts them in harms way. I'm pretty sure most women would love to not have to live by that saying. Most women would love to be safe enough to abandon this. But they aren't.

    And here you are, yelling at them for trying to survive and keep themselves and each other save, because it bothers you that you get associated with bad men.

    I don't know, I feel like survival might be more important than someone feeling judged wrongly (even if the judgement truly is wrong).

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Are you encouraging men to come forward with their sexual assault experiences? Are you supportive of them when they are harmed in this way? Do you go out of your way every day of your life to prevent sexual assault or things that lead to sexual assault?

    You're deliberately using something you know is inflammatory as a poorly thought out analogy. That's my first problem with what you said.

    The second problem is that you're deliberately ignoring how trauma (which most women have) affects the ability to communicate, and further affects how we as humans perceive threats. That's the second problem.

    Third problem is that as it stands women do all of the heavy lifting when trying to prevent sexual assault. All of it. We're the ones who pushed for rape and sexual assault to have legal definitions under the law. We're the ones who pushed to criminalize a lot of the stuff that the original commenter for this thread bought up. We're the ones who created and implemented strategies to lower the chances of sexual assault. In my experience it is women who go out of there way to look out for other women. Do men go out of their way to look out for other men?

    Men have most of the privilege in this situation and do just about nothing to actually help (to prevent sexual assault, or to make sexual assault/worse things unacceptable in society). Now they're feeling the pressure to do something about it so they don't get labeled or grouped with "the bad sort" and their response isn't to blame other men. It's to blame and shit on women. Their response isn't to try to help prevent sexual assault or speak up when they see something. It's to lash out at women for using hyperbole. Which you admit that all human beings do.

    You immediately assumed that because I don't agree with what you said I must think all men are rapists or sexual assaulters, or that I think that it's okay to accuse all men of this thing. That's not the case. But what I'm asking you to acknowledge is that this is a story on the internet with scant details about the interaction from a person who's got every reason to lie by omission.

    And you're so stuck on not wanting to be labeled or grouped with bad actors that you are actively blind to what other people are trying to tell you which is that this is a problem created by a patriarchal society that is enabled by that same society and therefore is a problem created by men for men that men actively can help solve but don't.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    You're putting a bunch of words in my mouth here. I never said any of the things you're claiming and this feels like moving the goal posts. My issue, was the assertion made in the post that "all men are predators". There may or may not have been more context to that, but since that was all we were given that's all we can go on. Either you believe that is an accurate and true assertion, in which case you disagree with me and really do believe all men are predators, or you agree with me that that is not an accurate and true assertion.

    The rest of your post basically boils down to "you're not allowed to defend against gender based discrimination unless and until you can show that you're doing everything you possibly could to fix all of societies gender related problems". If we all adopted that same premise nothing would ever improve. Or should we start demanding to see peoples credentials when they call out sexism, racism, fascism, etc. on the internet? Have you done everything you could to stop sexual assault? Have you been writing letters every day to your senators and congressmen to encourage new laws or reforms? Staging protests? Maybe working at abuse shelters? No? Well, seems like you don't have the right to participate in this discussion then by your logic.

    You immediately assumed that because I don't agree with what you said I must think all men are rapists or sexual assaulters, or that I think that it's okay to accuse all men of this thing. That's not the case. But what I'm asking you to acknowledge is that this is a story on the internet with scant details about the interaction from a person who's got every reason to lie by omission.

    No, I didn't. That was literally the point being argued over. I never claimed that there aren't details missing or that there's no potential subtlety here, in fact I very much agree with that, but that still doesn't excuse broad discriminatory statements.

    Had that point been made originally, that there's missing context and we don't know what the interaction was up to that point that would be one thing. I never said I thought OP was a good guy, I was just pointing out that saying "all men are predators" is sexual discrimination and wrong, just like the example given in another reply of "all women are whores" is also wrong.

    You don't stop discrimination by giving the minority group a free pass to engage in discrimination as long as it's targeted at the majority. I would be making the same point (significantly more so) had OP been making discriminatory statements about women, the difference is I wouldn't need to be defending myself from all of you. You should maybe think about that.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    No. My point is that the "all men" phenomenon is a symptom of the bigger problem which is that one demographic is being victimized by a subset of a second demographic and that second demographic as a whole recognizes that there is a problem and doesn't do anything to change that status quo in a meaningful way but won't acknowledge that their continued lack of action may be the reason they are collectively being blamed. 

    Bigger problem -> overgeneralization -> backlash over the over-generalization while maintaining status quo. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

    If your point we're just that "gender bias and the resultant discrimination are bad" you could literally have done that with "Men saying all women are whores/golddiggers are doing the same thing and that is also wrong." 

    Instead, what you did was took an entirely unrelated analogy to a bad conclusion in what I'm sure you think is good faith, ignoring the circumstances and particulars of that situation so that you can try to make a point in the most clumsy way possible and when people give you pushback about it and add clarity of their own views in response it's "moving goal posts". 

    You made a hamfisted attempt to relate sexual assault and the over-reaction to it to racism and got called out. Let's not forget what you were initially responding to which wasn't ops post but a comment at the beginning of the thread which is context for literally just about everything else I've said in subsequent comments which plants the goal posts very much where they started out. 

    "In the US, of 100 rapes against girls and women reported to the police, 18 will be prosecuted. 

    Jeffery Epstein and his cohort abused hundreds of girls, and all anybody cares about is what powerful man might be embarrassed.  Has anyone proposed or suggested anything to protect girls from rich perverts? 

    From the founding till 1951, raping your wife was legal in all 48 states. And that protection extended in several states beyond the federal change. Some states even made common-law husbands immune. 

    The Christian Bible considers rape to be a property crime. in conservative circles, girls as young as 12 are regularly married off to their rapist."

    The leading cause of death for pregnant people in the US is homicide.

    I think young women considering men to be a threat is pretty rational.

    You are the one who acknowledged that the statistic for African American crime has more nuance but also didn't not speak at all to the point of using it for the purposes of subjugation (something you conveniently ignored in order to try to validate your point). 

    You don't stop over generalization by ignoring the root cause. Stop playing games with me. The root cause of the African Americans are criminals BS is literally that to continue to subjugate them and feed the prison population the institution has to make the general populace believe they deserve to be there. The general cause of "all men are predators" is literally that the patriarchy condoned sexual abuse so ardently for so long and continues to do so that the only way we even have conversations about sexual assault and abuse is in forums like this on topics like this one where the topic isnt even about sexual abuse but is absolutely about blaming women for overgeneralizing about it. 

    You are the one who once again argued poorly that as you spend more time around a bear the likelihood that the bear will attack you will go up, ignoring how that's exactly what happens to women. The more time they spend around men the more likely they are to be attacked. The men the spend the most time around are very often the ones who end their lives or commit sexual assault against them. 

    And if you feel like I'm putting words in your mouth, maybe stop and think about what you mean and just say that. Don't use analogies about subjects your clearly poorly understand. Don't try to quote me to refute something I said that you take issue with when you didn't understand it and your response bears that out. The questions I asked about what you were doing? Rhetorical. They were intended to make you think about the root cause of the situation. And also why more men don't report sexual assault. You sure took them as an accusation though.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    You didn't understand a single thing I said and keep trying to change the subject. You entirely missed the point of the analogy which was to demonstrate that using statistics to try to justify discrimination is wrong and does not in fact in any way justify discrimination but that sailed right past you and instead you're hyper focused on the fact that the two analogous situations are not perfectly identical.

    Then you went on and picked a different analogous situation but one which differs in a very critical way that undermines the entire analogy. You missed a critical point which was for a bear, not a population of bears, the longer you stay around and in close proximity to that bear the greater the chance you will be attacked. Bears, all bears, are dangerous. Not all men are dangerous. It doesn't matter how long you spend around a man, your odds of being attacked don't increase. Sure if you spend time around an ever increasing number of men your odds go up, but that applies to any interaction with anyone. The more time men spend around an ever increasing number of women the more the odds of the man being attacked go up. For a large enough population, no matter how small the likelyhood, the probability will always converge towards certainty.

    Ultimately though it's entirely a side tangent as the only reason the analogy was brought up was to illustrate why trying to use statistics to excuse discrimination is wrong.

    Bigger problem -> overgeneralization -> backlash over the over-generalization while maintaining status quo. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

    That's because making overgeneralizations doesn't actually do anything to address the problem and only undermines otherwise legitimate complaints. Instead of wasting all this time trying to defend the overgeneralization, maybe instead focus on trying to solve the problem, because attacking everyone in the majority group regardless of their guilt or innocence just discourages any of them from wanting anything to do with you or even listening to your complaints.

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