From the article
This situation was completely fucked
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I was talking to my husband about this. He did domestic violence law in TX for a while (these were hard times on our marriage - he was very paranoid and afraid). Apparently something that is a real problem is the free speech issue and free association issue. Like, women would have their exes standing on the sidewalk outside their apartments day and night, and judge would just be like “Well, he has a legal right to be there.”
I don’t know what the solution to that is. I feel like there has to be some better balance than “Your legal rights are absolute 100% of the time” and … the fact that I felt squicked out typing that as a bad thing.
And honestly, I’m a little sensitive about it right now. I was invited to speak to a code of conduct committee for a professional society of which I’m a member about a situation I’ve written about here before, where a senior male in my field physically intimidated me. He is also a member. And they listened, and were like “Well, didn’t happen at one of our events so we’ll keep letting him host meetings for us and travel alone with female staff ¯_(ツ)_/¯” It seems like for women, there’s always a Konami code of things that must be done (or done to you) in the precise right order to get justice or to protect other women. But for men, that code is “Yeah, I’m going to assault or kill you now, k thx bai.” I know that’s a private actor, not a state one. But he’s going to hurt someone, and I’m going to feel responsible, but it’ll be on them.
There has to be a better balance. There just has to. How do we get there?
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When I was in Grade 10, we did a civics unit in history class. The teacher made sure we took a closer look at laws which might affect teenagers, and one of them was the laws about assault. Bear in mind this is for Canada, not the US.
“Attempted assault” legally occurs when the victim perceives the actions to be threatening. So standing outside of someone’s apartment day & night would count.
Now, as usual, getting a conviction would be something else again if no violence has happened (and even then).
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Would you be surprised if I said US assault law is super grim? We have assault (threat of attack) and battery (the actual act). Different states have different laws about assault. Some are intent irrelevant - I believed I was in danger of imminent harm. For that, the reasonable person standard tends to apply. Would a reasonable person think they were in harm’s way? Whether the person meant to cause that impression does not matter. Others are intent relevant - this person had to have meant to cause fear of harm. So if a reasonable person would think someone running up and cornering you while screaming would cause fear of harm, if they didn’t mean to, ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
Sometimes I wonder what the point of being one country even is.
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And of course, if we’re neurodivergent, we’re not considered reasonable…
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Ugh. Those get tough, especially since a “reasonable person” tends to be code for “economically comfortable cis white male”.
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Thread:
Especially:
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And this is why men who misbehave always cite the rules and the laws, because they are set up to protect men’s misbehavior.
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I just set a reminder to read that annually, because that totally sounds like a mindset I could find myself falling into.
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I think it’s not that men don’t understand this, I think there is something more fundamental at work that makes them not even seeking to find the resolution. But I do think that the article gets to the issue that there is some fundamental disconnect happening in communications.
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Could I retrieve my glass from the dishwasher each time, because I really don’t enjoy paying a crazy electricity bill because I had to run 20 glasses in the dishwasher every day?
I cook, I clean, I leave the seat down on the toilet, and would happily buy tampons without being told (I’m still a bachelor), but some things people find essential seem so nitpicky and wasteful.
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It’s a really worthwhile read; I’m considering sharing it with the man I’ve been dating.
Like “the messenger,” the dishwasher itself is irrelevant.
I don’t even have a dishwashing machine, but I grok why the wife in that scenario was so vexed.
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I grok, too. However, that’s probably why I’m still single, for not having found the woman yet who really doesn’t sweat the small stuff like these things like a glass by the sink. Not saying they don’t exist, I just haven’t found the one yet.
And no, this is not a play to shirk responsibility. I simply learned from my mom over a generation’s time that there’s a great deal of little stuff she wishes she hadn’t cared so much about back when she was younger. Dad disrespected her in so many other ways, that a glass out of place really didn’t mean squat in the long run.
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I just refuse to play those silly games. A glass is a glass is a glass is a glass. It’s not a sign of disrespect or taking someone for granted or whatever.
I’m straightforward like that, but not only does it not make my life easier, it pushes people away.
I understand the glass as a sign of disrespect, but my brain’s not wired to think of it intuitively as such. I miss a lot of social cues.
It’s tiring for me. I’m tired of having to be effusively empathetic, but then not having the empathy reciprocated.
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To understand the blog, I take it as “hearing without listening”. He wasn’t paying attention.
But then again, I come from a family that had vastly larger problems than just not being respectful and attentive.
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Dude… it’s not a game. In fact, by categorizing it as such and calling it that, you’re trivializing the core problem and demonstrating it at the same time.
And yeah… constantly doing something that you know actively annoys the person you supposedly care about is a passive aggressive form of disrespect and disregard.
No one is asking anyone else to be psychic; the author of that piece made it clear that he and his ex had multiple conversations about that particular issue - he simply didn’t get the deeper meaning until it was already too late.
Exactly.
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I’m a woman, and I’m a fan of the “keep your glass in a particular spot all day, keep reusing it, and then put it in the dishwasher before it runs” camp.
But that detail isn’t the point. The point Is: find out what makes your partner happy, sad, frustrated…basically, what makes them tick. Then, do what you can to make them happy and NOT make them sad or frustrated, as much as reasonably possible.
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