Statistically speaking is women's fear of random men warranted or is it irrational

beatstorelax · 2021-01-27T00:42:15+00:00

its the same as saying" i fear black guys because X reason". yeah there's some shitty black dudes. but they are exception not the rule

ShortTailBoa · 2021-01-27T00:19:54+00:00

Well as I get older and especially dabbling into feminist thought it is hard not to feel like they are taking every single type of male behavior whether it be something innocent or mundane and turning it into some type of slight against women.

Because that's exactly what's happening.

defo18 · 2021-01-27T01:03:19+00:00

So, about 70-80% of violent attacks by strangers in public are male-male violence. Meaning, you're less safe walking home alone at night than a woman is. So, statistically, women should be afraid of letting psycho men into their lives. They don't need to be afraid of strange men anymore than you do. Actually, significantly less than you do. You're more likely to get stabbed over your wallet than they are to get raped.

defo18 · 2021-01-27T02:48:57+00:00

I’ve seen women use explanation that men react...for all intents and purposes...”negatively” when it came to being honest with them for over 10years on Reddit.

Hell, there was a thread on dating advice just today where some young kid was asking why women can’t just say they’re not interested instead of leading him on. And lo and behold, out came the same explanation about how men react in ways that lead the reader to assume the girl was less than perfectly safe. Enough of a reaction that it evidently scars all women for life from being honest with men

When I look at my life, or ask any of my friends if they ever reacted in such a way that could even slightly be misconstrued as an overly aggressive reaction - all say no. All say they don’t know any guys like this. All say they hear from women that it’s other guys who do this

I have never seen a thread on askmen or any male centric sub where men have openly admitted to doing this.

100% I’m seriously starting to think this is yet another plausible deniability tactic.

mewacketergi2 · 2021-01-27T00:53:09+00:00

Ask yourself the same regarding black men, gay men, Jewish men, or virtually any other identifiable demographic group based on immutable characteristics. It should be sufficient to help you answer the question.

WhenIsItOkayToHate · 2021-01-27T00:32:36+00:00

I will not address your question directly, as I believe it's simply too complicated a subject to address given the limited time I personally have atm. However, what I can say for certain is that the fear of male violence is less rationale today than it ever has been before. Collective anxiety regarding male violence has been inversely proportional to the continued decline of violence over time (Steven Pinker talks about this), despite women being less safe in the past they were also less afraid than women are today; the narrative of male violence and it's saturation in contemporary media has clearly had a profound psychological effect on younger generations.

genkernels · 2021-01-27T03:34:34+00:00

Warranted, in some circumstances men are afraid of random men -- everyone should be more afraid of physical violence from men than women. Feminism does seem to want to take it into crazyland, though.

BloomingBrains · 2021-01-27T06:10:03+00:00

There is an abundance of scientific evidence conclusively proving that the fears are way overblown. In fact, just typing in "women's fear of crime" into google will allow anyone to easily find out that this subject has been academically studied in great detail and settled. I recommend looking into if only to arm yourself with concrete statistics and facts in case you ever get into an argument about this, which I find myself doing whenever the topic comes up. This issue is one of the hills I'd be willing to die on because it is probably the root cause of most misandry/gynocentrism.

It gets really hard to argue with feminists about this because it is super hurtful and harmful.

Agreed, but it is hard to argue with feminists in general on any topic because they aren't rational people. If they were rational people, logic and evidence would work on them, in which case they wouldn't be feminists to begin with. That's why I try to focus on converting the "useful idiots" of feminism I meet in daily life...men that are merely hapless at best and simping at worst. Without them, feminists would be largely declawed, I think.

Growing up I already knew I had to watch and double think everything I did because I'm black but being a man makes that double and especially now in this feminist world

Funny how the so-called "left" talks so much about things like intersectionality, (typically meaning black women, etc.) when really the group that is statistically the worst off is black males. Whenever I hear that shit I just mentally add a "we're only talking about women" disclaimer.

it took me years to get over a lot of insecurities whether they be imagined or warranted and that was hard when you live in a world that treats you like a threat first

Same thing here. I used to wonder "Wait, am I actually a creep? If I was then the whole point would be that I don't know I'm doing it, so..." Then when I would ask for people's opinions in any space where there were any women whatsoever (and many where there weren't any, too) I'd get attacked for being a creep. Because obviously only a creep needs help to check if he's a creep. People are so cynical that they automatically assume the worst about people, that's what I learned, even if that person is approaching with genuine intentions and good faith. I also learned what gaslighting is and that really put the nail in the coffin of me internalizing what other people believed.

I really think people don't have empathy or any emotional intelligence anymore...but I digress. It's a really torturous thing to go through but like with rejection, you get desensitized to it and it eventually means nothing. Then you can build yourself back up and learn to not give a shit what idiots think. So in a way I'm glad it happened and I think it's an important life lesson that every guy needs to go through at some point. As messed up as that is to say.

I'd rather know I'm a good, valuable person but not be seen as such, than be liked by everyone and harbor self-doubt.

Well as I get older and especially dabbling into feminist thought it is hard not to feel like they are taking every single type of male behavior whether it be something innocent or mundane and turning it into some type of slight against women

Yeah, pretty much. Except for 20% of the time, the behaviors they complain about are actually good. So what feminism has essentially done is tried to make themselves the arbiters of truth, what they say about a man (if he's a good man or not) is 100% up to them you must believe them.

Plastic_Guarantee_96 · 2021-01-27T06:50:24+00:00

Women don't live in fear of Men, they come home drunk with their shoes in their hands at 2AM. They walk right into you on the street and feign offense that you didn't move out of their way. They call the police on dog-walkers, park Dads and disobedient Boyfriends just to see if they get them killed or jailed.

The actually scary situations are remote parts of their lives, like those of us who live in stable parts of the world, but even more rare.

RottenPeach6 · 2021-01-27T08:48:57+00:00

If you look at a group of people and you are already afraid you are more likely to become afraid by their actions or words. So if we teach them to be afraid before they make their own opinion then we create more fear.

Electronic-Barnacle · 2021-01-27T09:53:36+00:00

Well, society tends to think that every man is a potential rapists. Guilty until proven innocent.

2021-01-27T13:17:20+00:00

If you fear men over women, some women are going to use that to their advantage.

fgyoysgaxt · 2021-01-27T01:58:54+00:00

I think you are asking the wrong questions.

Rational or not, some women are afraid of men.

Rational or not, some men feel the need to act less afraid than they really are.

You aren't going to change either of those things with statistics, because they are subjective emotional issues, it doesn't matter if they are rational or not.

I think the real issue that you should be focusing on is victimization/oppression of men.

Remember also that feminism is a lens, it's natural for feminism to frame anything in the context of its relationship to women, that's how it functions. I think it's ok to acknowledge that viewpoint, even if we don't agree.

skysinsane · 2021-01-27T10:04:55+00:00

It depends on your acceptable level of risk. Men are more likely to be criminal/violent in most categories(though a few of these are likely only due to bias in reporting), so there is some legitimacy to the feeling.

However, the same is true for black people, and most will argue that avoiding black people because they are more likely to be criminals is hella racist.

My general stance is that people across the board tend to be too risk averse, and that includes women being more open to hanging out with men.

Singdancetypethings · 2021-01-28T03:29:11+00:00

What we have at work here, similar to what you see in MGTOW circles, is confirmation bias.

Think back to how many women you encounter on a regular day. Going around the workplace, commuting, walking through a store. Chances are the number is very high. Your average woman encounters equally many men daily.

With how many different people one person who lives in a city might encounter over the course of even two months, it's a statistical certainty that any given woman would have an encounter like that. Similarly, given the number of encounters with black people I have daily at my retail job, it was an inevitability that one of them would decide to race-bait because they were mad at me over something. It's also a certainty that over any long period of time, every coworker I have would have a similar experience.

Because of confirmation bias, it would be easy to come to the conclusion that this must mean there is some epidemic of race-baiting black people in America. But upon closer inspection of the facts, it becomes obvious that we're only paying attention to the one horrendous incident and ignoring the overwhelming majority of interactions that were neutral or positive. Similarly, it's easy to say there's an epidemic of sexual harassment or sexual assault when in fact the people making that claim overlook how many uneventful interactions happen every day.

turbulance4 · 2021-01-28T19:45:58+00:00

Given that all humans are capable of violent behavior, I don't think it's irrational to have some fear of random people are bigger and stronger than you. Depending on the context. I'm not sure men fit as a heuristic unless they only mean big men.

SultanSoSupreme · 2021-01-30T21:22:29+00:00

I think feminism and social media have a lot to answer for. Women who are feminists and study Women's Studies and spend all their time reading feminist blogs and posting on feminist forums are constantly exposed all day every day about how terrible men are and all the bad things men do etc. Understandably, they will be conditioned into believing men are something to be terrified of. I've seen feminists post things like "I carry tweezers and every time I get in an Uber or go somewhere I pull a hair from my head and drop it on the floor to help the police find me incase a man kidnaps me". Sounds like paranoia and a mental illness but this really is what constant exposure to feminism is turning some women into.

Social Media too- plenty of stories about hysterical mothers who thought men were planning to kidnap their kids for sex-trafficking in a department store in broad daylight with CCTV and people everywhere and trafficking experts who say this just isn't how trafficking works (see link). One notable example is a Facebook post from a woman who went viral after she thought 2 men were "following her in IKEA planning to kidnap her kids". Her hysterical story is just one of many from paranoid mothers, who all read each other's stories which reinforced their belief that "they must be right".

I think it's similar to racists who read the news and cherry-pick articles where a black person has done something, and then claims "look at all the violent crimes black/immigrant people commit! We aren't safe because of black people we must do something about them!". If anyone remembers Nick Griffin BNP he did that sort of thing.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-powers-ikea-mom-sex-trafficking-20170331-story.html

https://reason.com/2017/03/31/the-ikea-child-sex-trafficking-story-is/

https://nypost.com/2017/03/29/get-a-grip-crazy-moms-your-kids-wont-get-kidnapped-at-ikea/

I have 2 sisters who (thankfully) aren't feminists. They don't hate men and they aren't terrified of men or think every man wants to rape them or kidnap their children, and they don't resent me because I'm a guy.

Summary- Social media and feminism are toxic and shit-full of unjustified scaremongering.

defo18 · 2021-01-27T15:30:17+00:00

What really gets to me is that, after a social occasion at someone's house, every woman ALWAYS has to be walked home by a man. No matter even if they live only a few doors away. Me and my housemates had a few friends over for drinks a long while ago and this girl INSISTED that we walk her home. On the way back, we didn't even see a single other person out and about, and I remember thinking, did we really need to take a full half an hour out of our evening to walk you home? And obviously there is no regard for the men that have to walk back alone after taking a girl home. And the thing is if you refuse for any reason, you're the bad guy for "letting this girl potentially get raped".

not-too-cynical · 2021-01-27T17:50:31+00:00

i have been both proposed to + groped by random men on the street. so thats my story i guess. and the people i feel least safe around in public are white men . in a more general sense i've been taught growing up to be warier of men in most situations - even when discussing trans rights the conversation will often go straight to 'but pervy men will dress up as women' and that kinda bs.

ninja_deli · 2021-01-27T23:27:30+00:00

The truth is it is and it isn't. Statistically they are less likely to be attacked. However, if we're being honest, the average woman is far more likely to be completely overpowered if they are attacked. So I can understand the fear from that perspective. So it is and it isn't warranted.

saturnsqsoul · 2021-01-28T20:38:02+00:00

okay so if you were viciously attacked by a Rottweiler and then it made you scared of all dogs, even Pomeranians, would you understand that? that it is obviously not a “rational” fear, but that your body remembers being viciously attacked and is trying at all costs to keep you safe?

okay so now put that into context with the stat that in America alone 1 in 6 women have been the victim of penetrative rape and that nearly every woman has experienced sexual assault or harassment, at the hands of men (and it’s true, most of the rapists and assaulters are “serial”, ie it’s not that every man assaults a woman once in his* life, it’s that a few men assault many). does every woman internalize and react to this rape/assault/harassment the same? nope.

do some see everyone as a Rottweiler? yes.

let me be clear: it is not a fun existence to go about life seeing Rottweilers all around you. if i could go back to seeing men and being around men the way i was before my rape i would. my lizard brain is literally just trying to keep me from being attacked again.

hopefully this puts something into perspective for y’all.

edit: fixed pronoun

Title	Statistically speaking is women's fear of random men warranted or is it irrational
Author	defo18
Upvotes	93
Comments	61
Date	January 27, 2021 12:16 AM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/l5ropy/statistically_speaking_is_womens_fear_of_random/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/statistically-speaking-is-womens-fear-of-random.1193267 https://theredarchive.com/post/1193267

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