Its disparaging to an entire gender. I would argue lots of people need many talks. Lots of evil out there and many of it goes unnoticed or is accepted due to current cultural climate. Including passive aggressive disparaging questions meant to vilify men.
I’d say we’re right to be disparaged against, up until we get our collective act together as men. Women should be wary of us for the simple fact that it aids in their survival. A comment like hers is at the very bottom of my list of things to change.
Honestly, I know you mean we’ll but I find statements like this extremely dangerous and damaging.
There isn’t some ‘international council of men’ that could collectively sort anything out. Ideas like blaming the whole gender is part of the reason why we have a rise in far-right sentiment among young men, as it’s easy to feel like the world is against you for things that you personally have no say in. Young men (just like anyone else) need support, and not to be blamed for bad-behavior of others!
Instead it’s up to those of us (the vast majority) who don’t represent toxic masculinity to set a compassionate example
Women are going to be wary for as long as they have reason to. You’re essentially just stating that we shouldn’t talk about this fact because it hurts the feelings of men who were probably part of the problem to begin with. It’s on those men to listen to the feedback and internalize it, not on women to keep their opinions to themselves.
They didn’t say that at all. What they are trying to express is that stereotypes, such as “men are usually dangerous to women”, or “women should fear men just in case”, are disingenuous ideas that harm both sides.
Some men are good people and some are bad.
Some women are good people and some are bad.
Condemning either group for the actions of a few perpetuates the stereotype by making impressionable indiviuals on both sides of the equation start accepting the “complimentary” stereotypes just because they observe a few correlations from time to time.
Before long, critical thinking goes out the window, correlation is assumed to be causation and you’ve got men reacting aggressively to posts that say they are dangerous and women saying “I chose the bear!” even though they know that is staticallyess safe because it aligns with the message they think they need to share because they buy into the same stereotype the men did and vice versa.
It runs parallel to the same sort of thing playing out in politics around the world though it’s certainly more pronounced in the US thanks to the two party system and volume of communication.
Talking about the issue is fine but this discourse is flawed. Imagine how it would play out if the question was “white people, would you rather be stranded on a island with a black person or an alligator?”
And now your argument would be “white people should be afraid of black people until they are given a reason not to be.”
Doesn’t that sound really messed up to say? I hope so because it felt bad just to type out for the purpose of this comparison.
Each person is an individual unto themselves and I think if you can agree with that, then there is no rationale that can support group stereotypes in human psychology.
I do understand the point you’re making, but the example in the OP has more layers to me than strictly speaking about a bear vs. a man.
It shouldn’t take an incredible leap in logic to ascertain that the comparison is meant to present simply that “men are dangerous to women”. Actually picking the bear is evocative hyperbole. All any man would need to take from this is “I should strive not to make women feel this way”.
If a man takes this sentiment personally and then becomes a threat to a woman, that man is interpreting in bad faith and in fact wants to threaten women. We have a system of patriarchy precisely because men feel superior to women, and women have little they can do about it. I’d wager these angry men were going to find their excuse to exercise their superiority regardless of what a woman says. This rift exists without anyone else’s help, regardless of if you want to accept that’s what it is. We need more clueless yet compassionate men to understand a woman’s struggle, not less. If we pretend that there aren’t a worrying number of dangerous men, we are those dangerous men.
I could write excessively about how a white person describing a black person as dangerous is far and away a completely different conversation from this, but I don’t want to expend the characters. Tiniest tl;dr, the power dynamics and history are not the same (they’re roughly inversed, in fact), and your example has a legitimately sinister reason to happen. It’s far from a 1:1 comparison.
I do not disagree that the two things have vastly different histories but that isn’t the point of the conversation to be had. A woman’s fear of interactions with any random man is her perception molded by her life experiences.
I am not a woman so of course I can not speak with my own experiences on this through my own lens but I have had many conversations with the various women in my life to atleast recognize a portion of their perspectives.
I do also concede that they have explained feeling more fearful around men than I can relate to as a man with a physically imposing stature most of my life.
I totally understand that I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman in a male oriented society and to be looked at like an object as they sometimes are.
HOWEVER, not one of these female friends, family, or partners had ever been sexually assaulted and of all of them, only two had ever been in physical altercations with a 1 man each.
Now before you jump on that as an “aha!” moment, consider that theae incidents occurred in their 30s.
As a generally mildly mannered person, I have also found myself in physical altercations with other men a few times in my life… More so than my female friends.
Only one incident in your whole life as evidence of violence and ready to consider all men as dangerous? Wtf?
How can you have such a low opinion of 50% of the people in your life that you think they are worse than a wild animal? It’s unfounded in reality
An alarming number of the women I’ve spoken with have been sexually assaulted as children. The women in your life are blessed with untroubled pasts I guess. Perhaps this may be why you’re not properly grasping the bigger picture here.
Spelling it out, no one is saying literally “all men”. They are saying “guilty until proven innocent keeps you safer against strange men”. This is generally good advice.
Who exactly are you trying to defend here? The only ones with a finger pointed at them are men who willingly threaten women. Are you that? Do you think this messaging will turn you into that? Some advice, in that case: Accept that you are going to be scary to some strangers because you are bigger and stronger than them, and treat them kindly. I promise you, you will be fine. If someone tries to tell you this is why they hate women, get the fuck off of 4chan.
I’m not trying to defend someone here, I was trying to seek understanding while also expressing that I think any person assuming stereotypes are a valid way to think about people you have never met is a bad mindset to have because it elevates the “value” of confirmation bias.
You say the women in my life are blessed with their experiences but are you sure the opposite doesn’t apply? That the women you know weren’t more unlucky than the usual experience?
The finger being pointed by the discourse around this is just saying “I feel like men in general are more of a danger to me than a wild bear” and statistically that is just false. If a majority of men were truly so bad then the patriarchal structure we live in would be significantly worse and there would be absolutely zero advancements of women’s issues for the simple fact that a majority vote would almost never occur in favor of women.
But that isn’t the case. Things have improved slowly over time and the biggest set back recently is access to abortion care and reproductive rights but I think that has much more to do with religious influence (which is inheritelt patriarchal) in the republican portion of the population.
Finally, an olive branch. I have simply been presenting a viewpoint counter to your own and I have appreciated your input. I’m sorry that the lack of tone and subtext available through written communication seems to have made you think I was being rude or something but the knee-jerk reaction to insult and belittle me and my opinion by aligning me with a group that carries a negative connotation is sort of similar to what we are arguing about is it not?
We can disagree and have opposing views and opinions without having to be adversarial. I am unique in my experiences just like you are in yours. Grouping me with others is unfair to both of us because just like the innocent men at the end of that pointed finger, you grouped me up with people who make having dipshits psuedo intellectual takes their favorite hobby. You lose something from this assumption of stereotypes too.
I assume your perspective of our conversation was colored by stains of past experiences you had with members of that group (or atleast those you assume belong to that group) and it meant that even though I was being genuine you saw my messages as if they were an attack against you personally and motivated by malice.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m still not trying to blame you or anyone for that. Perception is reality afterall. But thats the mindset I’m trying to advocate against. The mindset that a group stereotype allows for a realistically useful assumption about any given “member” of that group’s personality, demeanor, or temperament.
We have to keep trying. Speaking as a black American who knows America’s history with black people, it’s important that we don’t give up just because we haven’t succeeded yet. Change of this magnitude takes a proportional amount of time.
Yep. “Not all _____” just sidesteps the point and tries to make it all about you. When someone not of my demographic says people in my demographic are hurting them, it’s time for me to shut up and listen. It’s not about me.
Its disparaging to an entire gender. I would argue lots of people need many talks. Lots of evil out there and many of it goes unnoticed or is accepted due to current cultural climate. Including passive aggressive disparaging questions meant to vilify men.
I’d say we’re right to be disparaged against, up until we get our collective act together as men. Women should be wary of us for the simple fact that it aids in their survival. A comment like hers is at the very bottom of my list of things to change.
Honestly, I know you mean we’ll but I find statements like this extremely dangerous and damaging.
There isn’t some ‘international council of men’ that could collectively sort anything out. Ideas like blaming the whole gender is part of the reason why we have a rise in far-right sentiment among young men, as it’s easy to feel like the world is against you for things that you personally have no say in. Young men (just like anyone else) need support, and not to be blamed for bad-behavior of others!
Instead it’s up to those of us (the vast majority) who don’t represent toxic masculinity to set a compassionate example
Women are going to be wary for as long as they have reason to. You’re essentially just stating that we shouldn’t talk about this fact because it hurts the feelings of men who were probably part of the problem to begin with. It’s on those men to listen to the feedback and internalize it, not on women to keep their opinions to themselves.
They didn’t say that at all. What they are trying to express is that stereotypes, such as “men are usually dangerous to women”, or “women should fear men just in case”, are disingenuous ideas that harm both sides.
Some men are good people and some are bad. Some women are good people and some are bad.
Condemning either group for the actions of a few perpetuates the stereotype by making impressionable indiviuals on both sides of the equation start accepting the “complimentary” stereotypes just because they observe a few correlations from time to time.
Before long, critical thinking goes out the window, correlation is assumed to be causation and you’ve got men reacting aggressively to posts that say they are dangerous and women saying “I chose the bear!” even though they know that is staticallyess safe because it aligns with the message they think they need to share because they buy into the same stereotype the men did and vice versa.
It runs parallel to the same sort of thing playing out in politics around the world though it’s certainly more pronounced in the US thanks to the two party system and volume of communication.
Talking about the issue is fine but this discourse is flawed. Imagine how it would play out if the question was “white people, would you rather be stranded on a island with a black person or an alligator?”
And now your argument would be “white people should be afraid of black people until they are given a reason not to be.”
Doesn’t that sound really messed up to say? I hope so because it felt bad just to type out for the purpose of this comparison.
Each person is an individual unto themselves and I think if you can agree with that, then there is no rationale that can support group stereotypes in human psychology.
I do understand the point you’re making, but the example in the OP has more layers to me than strictly speaking about a bear vs. a man.
It shouldn’t take an incredible leap in logic to ascertain that the comparison is meant to present simply that “men are dangerous to women”. Actually picking the bear is evocative hyperbole. All any man would need to take from this is “I should strive not to make women feel this way”.
If a man takes this sentiment personally and then becomes a threat to a woman, that man is interpreting in bad faith and in fact wants to threaten women. We have a system of patriarchy precisely because men feel superior to women, and women have little they can do about it. I’d wager these angry men were going to find their excuse to exercise their superiority regardless of what a woman says. This rift exists without anyone else’s help, regardless of if you want to accept that’s what it is. We need more clueless yet compassionate men to understand a woman’s struggle, not less. If we pretend that there aren’t a worrying number of dangerous men, we are those dangerous men.
I could write excessively about how a white person describing a black person as dangerous is far and away a completely different conversation from this, but I don’t want to expend the characters. Tiniest tl;dr, the power dynamics and history are not the same (they’re roughly inversed, in fact), and your example has a legitimately sinister reason to happen. It’s far from a 1:1 comparison.
I do not disagree that the two things have vastly different histories but that isn’t the point of the conversation to be had. A woman’s fear of interactions with any random man is her perception molded by her life experiences.
I am not a woman so of course I can not speak with my own experiences on this through my own lens but I have had many conversations with the various women in my life to atleast recognize a portion of their perspectives.
I do also concede that they have explained feeling more fearful around men than I can relate to as a man with a physically imposing stature most of my life.
I totally understand that I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman in a male oriented society and to be looked at like an object as they sometimes are.
HOWEVER, not one of these female friends, family, or partners had ever been sexually assaulted and of all of them, only two had ever been in physical altercations with a 1 man each.
Now before you jump on that as an “aha!” moment, consider that theae incidents occurred in their 30s.
As a generally mildly mannered person, I have also found myself in physical altercations with other men a few times in my life… More so than my female friends.
Only one incident in your whole life as evidence of violence and ready to consider all men as dangerous? Wtf?
How can you have such a low opinion of 50% of the people in your life that you think they are worse than a wild animal? It’s unfounded in reality
An alarming number of the women I’ve spoken with have been sexually assaulted as children. The women in your life are blessed with untroubled pasts I guess. Perhaps this may be why you’re not properly grasping the bigger picture here.
Spelling it out, no one is saying literally “all men”. They are saying “guilty until proven innocent keeps you safer against strange men”. This is generally good advice.
Who exactly are you trying to defend here? The only ones with a finger pointed at them are men who willingly threaten women. Are you that? Do you think this messaging will turn you into that? Some advice, in that case: Accept that you are going to be scary to some strangers because you are bigger and stronger than them, and treat them kindly. I promise you, you will be fine. If someone tries to tell you this is why they hate women, get the fuck off of 4chan.
I’m not trying to defend someone here, I was trying to seek understanding while also expressing that I think any person assuming stereotypes are a valid way to think about people you have never met is a bad mindset to have because it elevates the “value” of confirmation bias.
You say the women in my life are blessed with their experiences but are you sure the opposite doesn’t apply? That the women you know weren’t more unlucky than the usual experience?
The finger being pointed by the discourse around this is just saying “I feel like men in general are more of a danger to me than a wild bear” and statistically that is just false. If a majority of men were truly so bad then the patriarchal structure we live in would be significantly worse and there would be absolutely zero advancements of women’s issues for the simple fact that a majority vote would almost never occur in favor of women.
But that isn’t the case. Things have improved slowly over time and the biggest set back recently is access to abortion care and reproductive rights but I think that has much more to do with religious influence (which is inheritelt patriarchal) in the republican portion of the population.
Finally, an olive branch. I have simply been presenting a viewpoint counter to your own and I have appreciated your input. I’m sorry that the lack of tone and subtext available through written communication seems to have made you think I was being rude or something but the knee-jerk reaction to insult and belittle me and my opinion by aligning me with a group that carries a negative connotation is sort of similar to what we are arguing about is it not?
We can disagree and have opposing views and opinions without having to be adversarial. I am unique in my experiences just like you are in yours. Grouping me with others is unfair to both of us because just like the innocent men at the end of that pointed finger, you grouped me up with people who make having dipshits psuedo intellectual takes their favorite hobby. You lose something from this assumption of stereotypes too.
I assume your perspective of our conversation was colored by stains of past experiences you had with members of that group (or atleast those you assume belong to that group) and it meant that even though I was being genuine you saw my messages as if they were an attack against you personally and motivated by malice.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m still not trying to blame you or anyone for that. Perception is reality afterall. But thats the mindset I’m trying to advocate against. The mindset that a group stereotype allows for a realistically useful assumption about any given “member” of that group’s personality, demeanor, or temperament.
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We have to keep trying. Speaking as a black American who knows America’s history with black people, it’s important that we don’t give up just because we haven’t succeeded yet. Change of this magnitude takes a proportional amount of time.
Yep. “Not all _____” just sidesteps the point and tries to make it all about you. When someone not of my demographic says people in my demographic are hurting them, it’s time for me to shut up and listen. It’s not about me.