Alison Tieman's Interview with the Whig

AlphaWookie · 2014-04-10T10:22:47+00:00

Alison how you holding up?

Marcruise · 2014-04-10T10:38:20+00:00

Thought this was worth submitting separately. I think Tieman made some really good points in here, especially about the way the MRM could actually help women too. I think she's right that, through a combination of confirmation bias, a long-established narrative of men=bad; women=good, and statistical manipulation, the long run effect of gender feminism has been to inculcate a 'siege mentality' of sorts amongst women.

It occurred to me the other day when I was reading many women's relating of everyday sexual harassment that very few of the women indicated how they reacted to the harassment. In their own stories, they always positioned themselves as passive. They were the objects to which things were done. And yet, there's actually plenty a person can do to stop harassment. Just sticking up for yourself goes a long way. The way you carry yourself sends a lot of powerful signals to people. Some women out there (e.g. teachers) successfully give off a 'don't fuck with me' vibe, and they know how to handle such stuff. A woman I know got an unsolicited cock pic from some douchebag. You know what she did? She emailed it to his girlfriend! Job done. He won't be doing that again! (And spare me any pity for this twat).

But these women are all so passive. And then I wondered why they don't react, why they don't enforce their boundaries. It's because they're scared. They think they're in physical danger. And why is this? Some of it may well be an evolved response (the freeze part of the fight, flight or freeze response), but that isn't to say it's immutable. Maybe if we had more women acknowledging that they actually do have a lot of power in that situation, and that they're not helpless, it would go a long way to solving problems like everyday harassment. The woman who lands a response like "It looks like a penis, only smaller" makes it easier for the next woman to walk down the street.

But they're scared. Well, wouldn't you be scared if you kept getting told that 1 in 3 women experience domestic violence, or that 1 in 4 women will experience sexual assault? Isn't feminism creating the very problem it then complains about? A minority of timid, shrinking wallflowers who don't know how to handle themselves in public, but who become the bravest of keyboard warriors later when it comes to blaming all men and insisting that they fight their battles for them?

The point about this is not merely that this is grossly unjust on men, who are expected to fight their own battles and women's battles on their behalf. The point is also that it's not going to work. There won't always be a man around to be your knight in shining armour. And there's going to be less and less of them in future, because good, decent men are getting tired of forever being expected to perform such thankless tasks only to be judged as part of the collective 'man=bad' in the end, anyway. It's not going to work.

What is going to work, however, is reminding women that, actually, they're pretty God-damn safe (far safer than a man, in fact) should they wish to confront a stranger on the street who's made an inappropriate comment. What is going to work is reminding women that they have never been safer than at any point in human history, and that they should feel confident to assert themselves.

typhonblue · 2014-04-10T20:54:10+00:00

Sorry about this, resubmit the new vid that doesn't have her email address in it.

I made a mistake and uploaded the wrong audio file.

Vegemeister · 2014-04-10T15:59:03+00:00

Video is private.

Title	Alison Tieman's Interview with the Whig
Author	Marcruise
Upvotes	18
Comments	5
Date	April 10, 2014 10:16 AM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/mensrights/comments/22ol2v/alison-tiemans-interview-with-the-whig/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/alison-tiemans-interview-with-the-whig.1616172 https://theredarchive.com/post/1616172

Comments