In a previous thread, I argued that men are not analogous to the weather.

A very common refrain from men in the comments was some iteration of "if you go to a bad area, you should take precautions to reduce the risk".

But how much sense does this actually make?

  • Men as a bad area

A "bad area" is a location in which bad things are more likely to happen compared to the areas around it.

Are bad areas bad? Sure. But you can avoid them by just not going there. You are either in the bad area, or you are not. And there's a certain distance from the bad area where, even if you still get assaulted, you're not going to get sanctimonious finger wagging about not having been prepared for being in a bad area (since you're weren't in the bad area).

Men, however, are 50% of the population. Men go to the grocery store. Men take the bus. There are few places (if any) one could go where you go confidently with the idea that you won't encounter a single man. They don't have assumed proximal limits that a "bad area" has. Men are ubiquitous wherever there are humans.

Unless men as a whole are to be considered dangerous, it does not make sense to compare them to a bad area.

  • Men as sadists

Unlike a bad area, where you generally get attacked to get any valuables stolen, men do not benefit in any way from assaulting women.

If you steal a wallet, you now have access to the cash, cards, and ID inside. If you steal a phone, you can sell it to a pawn shop. If you assault a women, you gain nothing from it but the smug satisfaction that you hurt someone and got away with it.

To argue that a woman has to specifically alter how she lives her life in order to prevent assault from men implies that men as a whole have something to gain from assaulting women. It wouldn't be just an asshole being an asshole - it would be a man fulfilling an in-built sense of sadism that is present in men as a whole (and directed at women).

Unless men as a whole are to be considered sadists, it does not make sense to presume that just existing around them will lead to assault.

  • Men as a monolith

Men are individuals that make individual choices. They have no problem arguing so when an individual woman takes precautions around them. There is no "council of patriarchy" dictating how individual men shall treat individual women, after all.

Curiously, though, this changes when a woman is actually assaulted. Then, she suddenly should have been aware of how men are and should have pivoted to avoid that scenario. However, this argument doesn't make any sense unless one assumes any and every man to be a predator in his own right.

Unless men as a whole are to be considered predators, it does not make sense to blame women for not treating men as inherently predatory.

But if women need to treat men as inherently dangerous sadistic predators, how society treats men should reflect this in all aspects of daily life - not just whenever people can use it as an excuse to avoid getting justice for victims.