2 ms·

Edit: For clarification, the (now flagged) parent commenter was expressing that he did not understand why women are so affected by unwanted sexual advances. He

by novia 9y ago

Edit: For clarification, the (now flagged) parent commenter was expressing that he did not understand why women are so affected by unwanted sexual advances. He mentioned that men have come onto him without his consent, and he was (on a separate occasion) beaten up bad enough to end up in the hospital, but his quality of life did not decrease to the same degree that he sees in women who are kissed against their will. He said he didn't understand why being kissed without permission is such a big deal in comparison with actually being beaten up. Following is my response: I think reading this will help you understand: https://www.guernicamag.com/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-things-to-me/ https://www.guernicamag.com/rebecca-solnit-men-explain-thing... Sexual assault & sexual harassment are not isolated events. They are symptoms of a world that can be very fucked up if you're a woman. You've been beaten up, but after the beating you were still (I assume) physically bigger and stronger than ~50% of the human population. That might influence how you feel about the things that have happened to you. Here is an excerpt from the link above: Credibility is a basic survival tool. When I was very young and just beginning to get what feminism was about and why it was necessary, I had a boyfriend whose uncle was a nuclear physicist. One Christmas, he was telling–as though it were a light and amusing subject–how a neighbor’s wife in his suburban bomb-making community had come running out of her house naked in the middle of the night screaming that her husband was trying to kill her. How, I asked, did you know that he wasn’t trying to kill her? He explained, patiently, that they were respectable middle-class people. Therefore, her-husband-trying-to-kill-her was simply not a credible explanation for her fleeing the house yelling that her husband was trying to kill her. That she was crazy, on the other hand…. Even getting a restraining order–a fairly new legal tool–requires acquiring the credibility to convince the courts that some guy is a menace and then getting the cops to enforce it. Restraining orders often don’t work anyway. Violence is one way to silence people, to deny their voice and their credibility, to assert your right to control over their right to exist. About three women a day are murdered by spouses or ex-spouses in this country. It’s one of the main causes of death in pregnant women in the U.S. At the heart of the struggle of feminism to give rape, date rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and workplace sexual harassment legal standing as crimes has been the necessity of making women credible and audible. I tend to believe that women acquired the status of human beings when these kinds of acts started to be taken seriously, when the big things that stop us and kill us were addressed legally from the mid-1970s on; well after, that is, my birth. And for anyone about to argue that workplace sexual intimidation isn’t a life or death issue, remember that Marine Lance Corporal Maria Lauterbach, age 20, was apparently killed by her higher-ranking colleague last winter while she was waiting to testify that he raped her. The burned remains of her pregnant body were found in the fire pit in his backyard in December.

Banthum 9y ago
In America, men are far more likely to be murdered than women. Men are far more likely to be victims of public-sphere violence than women. Private violence is hard to quantify, but what evidence there is suggests that women enact is roughly in equal proportion to men (though of course women are weaker, but they can use weapons and men who are domestically abused are typically ignored or laughed at). Given these data, portraying interpersonal violence as a special thing that women have to deal with is pretty absurd. The reality is that women are the far more protected gender. Nobody cares when men are victims of violence. People have always cared greatly when women are victims of violence. It reminds me of the great amount of political noise in Canada around "missing and murdered Aboriginal women". Meanwhile nobody ever mentions missing and murdered Aboriginal men, even though Aboriginal men are more than twice as likely to be missing or murdered than Aboriginal women! So politically a man's death is far less than half as important as a woman's death. It took years for the MMIW inquiry to even start considering men as a side-detail. [1] I mean heck, your first anecdote. Picture a man running from his house today screaming his wife is trying to kill him. He could be laughed at. He could be arrested for abuse if she simply accuses him. These things happen all the time. The horror stories are everywhere. So, stepping outside the sexist "society must protect women, men must protect themselves" double standard, the case just doesn't add up. There must be another answer to parent's question. [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/mmiw-inquiry-could-include-indigenous-men-and-boys-1.3961554 http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/mmiw-inquiry-could-include...

by novia 9y ago

Banthum 9y ago

In America, men are far more likely to be murdered than women. Men are far more likely to be victims of public-sphere violence than women. Private violence is hard to quantify, but what evidence there is suggests that women enact is roughly in equal proportion to men (though of course women are weaker, but they can use weapons and men who are domestically abused are typically ignored or laughed at). Given these data, portraying interpersonal violence as a special thing that women have to deal with is pretty absurd. The reality is that women are the far more protected gender. Nobody cares when men are victims of violence. People have always cared greatly when women are victims of violence. It reminds me of the great amount of political noise in Canada around "missing and murdered Aboriginal women". Meanwhile nobody ever mentions missing and murdered Aboriginal men, even though Aboriginal men are more than twice as likely to be missing or murdered than Aboriginal women! So politically a man's death is far less than half as important as a woman's death. It took years for the MMIW inquiry to even start considering men as a side-detail. [1] I mean heck, your first anecdote. Picture a man running from his house today screaming his wife is trying to kill him. He could be laughed at. He could be arrested for abuse if she simply accuses him. These things happen all the time. The horror stories are everywhere. So, stepping outside the sexist "society must protect women, men must protect themselves" double standard, the case just doesn't add up. There must be another answer to parent's question. [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/mmiw-inquiry-could-include-indigenous-men-and-boys-1.3961554 http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/mmiw-inquiry-could-include...