This is in response to a recent piece of writing I stumbled across that infuriated me. I'd rather not link to it and give it foot traffic, but I did want to coherently point out my thoughts on the matter because (frankly) it pisses me off.

In the writing, the author claimed that she's a feminist who likes men and doesn't fear them; at the same time, however, she said, "I need you [men] to make things safer for me to trust" and then proceeded to list examples of men who sexually assaulted her. In the comments of this note came a ton of support from people essentially saying, "All men are potential rapists/capable of assault" and that it's OKAY to profile men in this manner. To that I offer: what the fuck?

Is this a consistently okay thing for these kinds of people? I highly doubt it. Generally speaking, this seems to be a far-left attitude (I consider myself a moderate). This same group often concerns itself with being PC and offending nobody (except those with "privilege," of course). The argument, to me, is absurd because if taken to its logical extreme, it would offend the very people who're writing it. Essentially the argument is "most rapists are male, therefore we should be terrified of all men." This is a classic version of Schrodinger's Rapist: rapist until proven not rapist.

There are tons of people who do shitty things in the world, but the fact that there are shitty people in a group doesn't make the entire group, itself, shitty. For example, if you change the "men" part of this to "black men," we get into murky water. "Talk to the black man who stole my money. Talk to the black man who threatened me with a knife." Maybe some people would say it's okay for someone to racially profile based on experiential data in this case, but if not, the hypocrisy becomes evident.

Hell, even switch the sexes; I've dealt with friends who had girls claim rape (just because she was jealous and wanted vengeance; he was later found innocent, but what kind of Hell his life was during that scenario-- still is). I've seen girls lie to men about who the father of their child was because they didn't want to admit to cheating. I've dealt with girls being emotionally and mentally abusive (though I generally just walk away from that stuff, I know plenty of men who don't). I see more women harangue other women for their bodies and sexual choices (especially promiscuity) than I see men. I don't know-- the point is, I don't view women as evil monsters just because some are fucked up.

It's smart to be safe, granted, but then do these people agree with all profiling? If not, then why?

A counter-argument may be that "it's due to previous oppression from white men to other groups, so it's not equivalent! Women were oppressed!" So it's okay for women to label all men a potential danger since most rapists are male... but it's not okay to label BLACK men potentially violent since most violent crimes (in America, anyhow) come from that group? The justification that one group was oppressed seems hardly logical or worthwhile in this context, and if we're using that same logic, haven't men typically been the majority of war-related deaths, the majority victims in homicides, the majority of workplace deaths, and so on? Privilege, as is so often brought up (as "the patriarchy" as if it that term means something cogent), was limited to a very small number of (white) men, not the masses. Granted, there were MORE rights for the average white man, but even that is being generous and-- either way-- it hardly seems "okay" to label a whole group of people as horrid because of the "sins of the father," so to speak.

To that argument, I posit a question: is it okay for black women to profile white women since they suffered more oppression? How about women to profile black men (as they're still, in fact, men)?

Finally, one might claim that I'm giving a false equivalence. You may say that the profiling of a black man who mugs me should make me think, "I don't trust muggers," but the numbers don't lie. My equivocation is correct.

Let's follow that logic just to have it properly explained here. "A black man mugged you, so you should be afraid of muggers." Okay, fair enough. "I was raped by a man. I SHOULD BE AFRAID OF RAPISTS," then, would be the proper equivalent argument. HOWEVER, what wouldn't be the appropriate equivalent argument is "I was raped by a man, so I should be afraid of men." Let's say I give them this argument; statistically speaking, men are more likely to be rapists, so fair enough. However, black men are ALSO more likely to be the perpetrators of violent crimes/murders, so using the same logic, I could easily say, "I have been mugged by black men on multiple occasions. I should be fearful of black men."

Now, let's be clear: I'm not claiming that being more cautious around black men due to statistics is warranted; I'm stating that those are, in fact, equivalent arguments being made. Some feminists/apologists would inevitably say I'm trying to "shame" the victims or that I'm blaming the victims of legitimate rape. I'm doing no such thing. Rapists are utterly reprehensible. The fact that the majority of rapists are male does NOT make the majority of men rapists. That's classical faulty logic. "Some men are doctors. All the doctors I've met have cured me of illness. Therefore, I should assume all men will help cure me of my illness." Surely people don't believe that line of reasoning, right?

Saying, "I'm scared of (all) men and it's justified" is just as silly as saying, "I'm scared of females/Christians/black people and here's why that's justified." Give me a break.