I think i have the same attitude as @LearnedCoward towards this stuff. Saying “this is alien to me” isn’t trying to dismiss what we’re hearing, it’s trying to express incredulity that anyone would think this is acceptable behaviour.
To be honest, in the face of all of this I’m not sure what I can do to help. I’m not raping people or sexually harassing them. I try to be conscious of personal space, and looking up at the face , but I don’t know what else I can do to let women feel less threatened by me simply because I have a penis.
Because I’m not a threat, and it upsets me to know that’s how some people will see me.
Mostly, I’m just shocked at how prevalent this is. I can’t say I don’t feel powerless, or at least very weak, to do anything about this, given how prevalent it is.
Thanks for the article though. It makes some very good points.
Practice this phrase: “That’s not cool.”
An easy first step. No excuse for not doing this
Read and follow feminist writers.
Sounds tough, but it really really isn’t.
Be mindful of how you introduce women, particularly at work functions. … Don’t mention appearance when introducing female colleagues
Don’t focus on little girls’ looks.
This is important. It’s amazing how sneaky this stuff is, especially for the older folks who grew up swimming in this stuff. Paying attention to word choice definitely helps.
Give extra space after dark.
It was important for me to learn how to do this, and also to learn how to not take it personally.
Teach your elders to do better.
I nearly got punched in the face for this once. Totally worth it.
The “natural” reaction is to minimize their behaviour (part of our anti-confrontation conditioning, partly self-preservstion instinct), but calling fellow men out on their shit is our duty. Therr is no justice, except what humans impose. Let us, thrn, impose a more equitable society… By word or by fisticuffs if necessary.
(Violence isn’t always right, but it sometimes is the only thing men understand)
A younger friend of mine was talking about his bro once, and all his friends rolled their eyes in a “oh man that guy is the worst” kind of way, but he was still his bro, and still their friend. And the reason they all had this reaction was because said bro-dude would only “date” really really drunk girls. And by date, I mean he’d find the drunkest girl at the bar and take her home for the night and probably never see her again. They jokingly referred to him as a rapist, to his face, and he laughed about it.
So I told them all, that he was a rapist, and they were enabling him, and that they needed to call him out and stop him. Because joking about it makes it normal. And what would they do if he “dated” one of their girlfriends?
Literally every time I see my friend now I ask him if he’s still friends with the rapist. Sometimes he gets angry with me, sometimes he listens. Eventually I hope he will stop this guy, and warn people away from him.
There is a program at Tulane that is teaching men to stand up against rapists, because there is research showing that A LOT of the times there is another guy present and that he can stop it if he speaks up. I personally was in this situation once where a guy was aware of his roommate being a rapist and, after I ended up alone in a car with the creep, the roommate came out of the bar and back to the car for me. Very grateful for him.
I’d like to discuss motherhood, and particular women who stay home to be full time moms.
I have two people in my life who do this. One is my step-daughter. She go married at age 19. She has 3 kids. Her husband is an engineer. They seem to be very happy together. She has a side business in family photography that she dabbles in as much as she likes; when she had her youngest she cut it way back, but she still has a local following.
She seems really happy being a mom, and she has time for her relationship with her husband. They have recently gotten into Cross-fit and they also did a Dancing with the Stars type of evening for a local charity where they did a dance performance. She doesn’t seem nearly as stressed as I was trying to juggle a career and a baby.
The other person is my BFF. She also had children young, mainly due to a health issue that meant either have them young or don’t have kids at all (or adopt). She has her degree in teaching but after a year of teaching at an inner city school she gave it up and did some work from home legal transcription. She did that off and on while her kids were little, then gave it up as her husband started bringing home more money.
Both of these people seem like their families handle money better because there is someone there to really pay attention to spending.
I feel like I am part of the Mommy Wars. That I was raised to see their work as less valuable than career work. But when I was at my friend’s home this summer, man it was nice to be in a place where it felt like the family was cared for, and the home was filled with attention and love.
I wonder why staying home full time was never an option I even considered.
I’ve always assumed rape was a violent crime, like stabbing someone. But if you told me that one third of all people are fine with stabbing someone, and about one in fifteen regularly stab people and think it’s Ell Oh Ell, no big deal, I would be a little incredulous. I would be even more incredulous if there was a preponderance of evidence that these numbers were true, or maybe even a little understated.
Then I hear stuff like:
And it creeps me out. I can’t make that claim for myself. I wasn’t raised in a progressive hippy-dippy liberal household. Actually kinda the total opposite of that. Why is not raping women a liberal vs conservative issue, and not just something that decent people don’t do, ever?
This is what I meant when I said it’s hard to not take it personally when giving women space when walking at night. I’m just trying to get home, same as anyone else, and I’m not a criminal or up to no good. For a while, I couldn’t help but take it as an insult against my character. But if one in fifteen men is not only a rapist but a serial rapist, just being outside is tempting fate, so I’d rather not add to that stress.
What’s worse is that rapists don’t all have the same physical appearance or political ideology. Even “Nice Guys™” can be rapists, once they’ve decided that the world owes them something and they’re tired of pretending to be nice. Even people who were raised liberal could be rapists, if they think rape is a political issue and not a human one, and one can change their opinion on rape as easily as they can change their opinion on tax codes. Male feminists can be rapists too, especially if they’re just working an angle and they don’t really care about feminism at all. It’s dumbfounding to me, both how scary this is, and how much of this is completely hidden from me.
To a certain extent, a good part of the fear is simply based upon how much damage an average man can do to an average woman. We’re usually taller and usually stronger, sometimes much taller and stronger. I’m as mild-mannered as they come, and consider myself pretty far from imposing or formidable. But I’m 6’2" tall, and weigh over 200 lbs. I am fully one foot taller than my sisters. As far as any passing woman can tell at a glance, not only am I a potential threat like any other unknown man (and woefully many men known to them), but also potentially a grievous threat. The very same qualities that might make someone attracted to me as a big strong man that could make her feel safe, are the same qualities that can make me look dangerous. Few women indeed could pick me up and carry me home. There are a lot of women I could overpower if the urge struck me, whether or not I know I’d never do such a thing under any circumstances. Biology does not offer comfort here.
I disagree.
I know thats what the average man thinks. But for me, personally, its not that. I know the average man could beat the ever living fuck out of me. I wouldn’t stand a chance. Thats just logic and facts. I’d be a fool not to recognize that.
No, the fear is that another person can take pleasure in my pain.
The fear is that another person can be so alien to my mind, to my philosophy, to my entire way of life, that they can literally take pleasure while causing pain. THAT is the fear. To be faced with something so cold and know that you and your pain, in that moment, do not matter. Thats terrifying.
If it was just a matter of violence and being beaten up then every woman would have a black belt in Aikido.
Because “conservative” is shorthand for “wants a society in which alpha males rule”. That’s what it is. They don’t mean “careful with money and doesn’t speculate” or “evaluate the safety of new medicines properly before releasing them” or “always build bridges with a good safety factor”, which is what conservative means in finance, pharmaceuticals and engineering respectively. They mean “go back to a time when men were men and women and people of different ethnicity knew their place.”
If you look at the Bible at least semi-objectively you will see it recounts a battle between the conservatives - the kings and priests of the city - and the radicals - the prophets of the desert. It is a very ancient distinction. The Catholic Church exterminated the Cathars to stop people saying that the clergy must be held to the same standards as ordinary people.
Radicals are not always progressive, feminist or socialist. The big test is - is their radicalism trying to reinforce the existing order only bigger and faster, or is it marching away from acknowledging the right to rule of kings and priests?
Nor was I. I was raised in a socialist environment. There is nothing hippy or dippy about socialism. The socialists who taught me had flown bombers and fighters, commanded ships, developed weapons, spied, and fought in the ranks to fight fascism.
Coming from a working-class family, I’ve always rejected this. My great-grandmother didn’t have a paying job because she enjoyed it, or because she was big on being a suffragette – she had a paying job because it was going to take the income she was making, and her husband was making, and the older kids who were still at home were making to keep the family afloat. My grandmother was forced to quit school at age 14 to go work. They needed the money.
Now, if you can get by or even thrive on a single income, I say go for it if both partners agree. And it doesn’t have to default to the woman in a straight couple either – I know several happy househusbands.
But here’s what happened to one of those househusbands: the wife left him for a newly-divorced mutual friend of theirs. She does pay child support, he does have custody of the kids during weekdays, but now he needs his own income to support himself.
And he’s been out of the workforce for 15 years.
That’s what really galvanises the “both spouses work” argument. I was so glad my mum had a full-time job when my dad passed away suddenly, leaving her with 3 kids to support on her own.
Single income or double income is only an issue under the “feminism is about choices” paradigm, which I’ve always seen as phony and bourgeois.
If you can afford it and you’re willing to accept the risks, go for it. But you don’t get to beat up those who don’t – and they don’t get to beat up you.
The Bible is an excellent source of writings drmonstrating the innate depravity of humanity; both tedtaments old and new are agitprop, mostly written by alpha-male dudebro patriarchy types. Especially the Epistles - forgeries1, by and large, indicative of the larger society around them.
Textual analysis shows us yhat many of the works attributed to Paul do not share the same author. Ehrman’s written at length with regards to the false attributions and history of early Christianity.
I’m even taller than you, but I’m underweight. I’m like a human stick insect, hardly what I’d consider to be imposing. I’m sure there are guys 5’7" or so who size me up, think they can take me in a fight, and are almost certainly right. Besides, just because I’m taller than average doesn’t mean I’m somehow impervious to gunshot wounds, knife wounds, blunt objects, etc.
Right. I was raised the exact opposite. Everything you just said about conservatives applies exactly to my family, as well as most if not all negative Republican stereotypes you can imagine. We were anti-intellectual, so not socialist at all.
My political beliefs have nothing to do with how I was raised, but more with how I felt when I got out in the world and saw things for how they really are.
Regardless, I have to point out yet again that this is not a political issue. I can see saying “hmm, I don’t need any social safety net functions, and I’m making more money than I used to, so let’s cut taxes and social welfare programs, I’m a Republican now”, but not, “I was taught that rape was wrong, but I haven’t been laid in awhile, so I’m going to switch my position from anti-rape to pro-rape, just until things get better for me”. They better not think that way, because that would be horrifying. Why can’t rape just be one of those things that literally everyone who’s a decent person will agree is wrong?
I don’t think people work because they need a little mad money, or because they love what they do. They work because if they don’t have a steady stream of revenue coming in, they will literally starve to death, if they don’t freeze to death first.
If both partners agree that they can manage money well enough where they both don’t have to work, then by all means, they don’t have to work. But this is still a very privileged position,* where one considers whether or not they want to work rather than if they need to work.
*yes, I know, it used to be a lot easier, but that was before we were living in a kleptocracy. Welcome to life in Russia Jr, everyone
Unfortunately, we have a political party committed to white Christianist male cis-het abled supremacy. From a distance it looks like they’ve decided that being a decent person is wrong-- either being a decent person means being a traitor, or being a human rights extremist, or being a cuck, depending.
Yes, but it’s also a document (or set of documents) that tell us interesting things about the worldviews of several societies that occupied the end of the Mediterranean for quite a long time, just as we have Greek documents that tell us about societies around the Aegean in the same general period. The difference is that we don’t treat the Greek documents as sacred, though I guess if there was one telling me that my family had an ancestral and god-enforced right to, say, the Isle of Samos, I might take an interest. Especially if a US President supported it.
The conflict between the city, nomads and rural areas is such an intrinsic part of so many societies that it’s interesting to observe it in action in such a small group. It’s also interesting to see how the conflict between aristocracy, capitalism and emergent socialism plays out. Most early societies weren’t as literate as the Jews or the Greeks, which is why we tend to use them for source material. (We don’t know Etruscan so, for instance, the development of Rome is pretty much hearsay.)
I don’t give a toss about “Saint Paul”; the material is of interest to people trying to get a clue about the early Church and to Protestants, but really there’s not much in there, even compared to, say, the Apocryphal Book of Ekklesiasticus, which tells us a lot about manners and upper class life of the period. Ekklesiastes, on the other hand, shows that doubt and pessimism of quite a sophisticated kind were tolerated if not encouraged.
I find it more useful to regard the Bible as a collection of sources shedding light on a society as it advances and retreats, than something to get morally excited about.