Rethinking something

SchalaZeal01 · 2021-04-09T16:56:10+00:00

The reported rate women get raped at is actually fairly accurate from my anecdotal experience

The yearly and lifetime rates, yes. The college one, no. College put way too many non-assault experiences to get high numbers. You'd think universities are war zones.

throwra_coolname209 · 2021-04-10T02:07:27+00:00

I will admit, this is a topic I have a reallllly hard time with.

I've known women who have been raped. I know plenty of women with sexual assault or harassment stories. Not like, some guy hit on her at the wrong time harassment, like, being followed to their car or groped.

So it's not really an understatement to say those things are a real issue for women. I'm not denying that, and thankfully I don't see much of that happening here.

But, admittedly... some of the statistics get iffy. On top of odd methodologies, occasionally male-exclusionary definitions, and the stigma associated with reporting assault for both women and and men, it makes it very difficult to trust any particular number as "right or correct". Simply approaching the methodology is often labeled as an act of "rape apologia" like I'm somehow trying to undermine them. Mostly I'm trying to ensure that the terms used in academia carry the same meaning as their colloquial uses and that certain victims are not erased completely.

This is usually where the conversation starts to fall apart, because I feel like even if the majority of those on the receiving end of these actions are women, it's simply not acceptable to pretend the opposite is so rare as to not be worth discussing. This invokes a "zero sum" response in a lot of people, who will push that women's sexual assault is a severe enough issue to deem it worthy of the vast majority of social response.

I don't think advocacy for men and women on this issue needs to be split down the middle, 50/50 spending, absolutely even, but it shouldn't be so lopsided that men who have been victimized are not taken seriously and have no support structures.

BluesForBoltzmann · 2021-04-10T14:31:50+00:00

The notion that men must be the pursuer and women must be the prize is as old as time. It is held up by people who think its slutty for a girl to ask a man out and pitiful for a man to date a girl who takes the lead. This leads to rape of both men and women, men because the implication that you must always want it removes consequences for the woman and allows for rape and women because they are a prize to be won through any cost and one that should not be won.

Yes. Women have a lot of sexual entitlement with regard to male bodies when they desire them which is never commented upon (i.e., as entitlement) because from a feminine-centered perspective men always "want it".

And men have been taught both by culture and by women's actions that men who do not pursue women end up alone. So men learn to pursue if they want relationships or sex, and men who are uncritical often try to cast as wide a net as possible and learn the strategies that work on women as an aggregate. Such strategies might work in a numbers game perspective (i.e., you'll more successfully get dates with more women than otherwise), but quite a few other women will see such strategies as psychological manipulation and borderline harassment. One such strategy is demonstrating physical affection to a woman through actions like touching her on her back or arm. Another strategy is being physically aggressive, persistent, and forward with a women. A lot of women like physical aggression, persistence, and forwardness. Other women see it as harassment.

This dichotomy puts introspective men in a bind: Employ no seemingly harassing pursuit strategies and likely end up alone. Or apply some of the PUA-type pursuit strategies and risk being a borderline harasser, but also have the potential for a relationship and sex.

This might strike feminists as a false dichotomy. They might say "There is a way for men to employ feminist-centered pursuit strategies and still end up in a relationship." The problem is the reality does not match the rhetoric which is not surprising because such feminist women are not in the field applying their rhetoric to get dates with women. There is ample experiential evidence that feminist-centric pursuit strategies (e.g., allowing the woman to make the first move, not expressing physical interest until given explicit permission to do so, displaying no signs of dominance or aggression) very often lead to men being alone and women generally frustrated that these men are too sensitive and demurring.

In general, the MeToo movement's discussion of the sexual harassment epidemic has a legitimate core which sought to bring out into the open male abuses of power. But there are segments of it which are just women's attempt to regulate sex to their advantage. They want to stop men they don't find desirable from approaching them, but they also want to make it clear to the men they are attracted to that if such men only treat these women as good for sex (which, you know, is these men's choice) then they will potentially be called out as harassers for doing so. Aziz Ansari Babe-takedown is a good example of the latter.

The natural solution is that after this long cultural discussion the scripts should be flipped and women should be the pursuers who seek out men and risk rejection. Jon Birger's new book discusses this very thing. It sounds nice, but I do not think this will ever happen in aggregate. There are too many thirsty men out there that will continue to pursue women, and people (who generally follow the path of least resistance unless otherwise forced) will not need to pursue men for relationships.

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