"All men are not self-entitled potential rapists looking to catch women out. They're just not."

2014-05-27T17:17:45+00:00

Regarding the entitlement discussions from the last few days:

He was desperate for love, acceptance and a relationship, ‘…I felt depressed because I wanted sex, yet I felt I was unworthy of it’. This is not the language of sexual entitlement. It is the language of inferiority and misery.

I don't think that I could bring myself to read his entire manifesto. I've considered it, and honestly, I would expect such a strong negative response that it's not worth it. But the more I see quoted from it, the more I realize that my early impressions of it were right.

There's something that I've never seen discussed by anybody in a position to analyze or provide therapy for its effects, and that is the way that our culture smothers lonely people with incessant reminders of romance. Film trailers, love songs, television shows, ads for products unrelated... Sex sells, and it's everywhere.

I went through a self-imposed dry spell once, for about a year and a half. There were so many things to get in order in my life that I just didn't try to meet anybody to get involved, while living in a city where I knew nobody. It was a necessary thing to establish myself there and keep forward momentum, but that period is why I was able to see what this maniac was expressing so early, with so few quotes.

Isolation, coupled with a desire for closeness and constant reminders of romance in a culture that belittles those who are alone and that objectifies romance and intimacy... It feels bad, man. Not, "Just lose it and shoot a bunch of people" bad, but that depends upon the person, doesn't it? For me, it was a matter of focus, and I reintegrated socially when the time was right. For him, it was a (likely subconsciously self-imposed) prison.

The thing that makes me worry is that I don't think anybody like this guy would be honest while talking to therapists. They are ashamed of themselves and our culture only feeds and reinforces that. I've never seen a name for that perfectly normal dynamic of having loneliness be magnified by culture, but then I don't think there has ever before been an event that made it seem notable enough to focus upon.

edit: I want to be clear that I'm not justifying his actions, nor attempting to validate his downward spiral. I'm just saying that there's a cognitive and emotional interaction with culture that goes overlooked and doesn't seem to be considered in terms of whether some people experience unhealthy or worrisome intensity of emotional response. His therapists couldn't treat him because not only was he likely not honest with them but there's (to the best of my knowledge) not even a name for what was happening to him.

The best I've ever heard it expressed was, "You don't eat steak in front of a starving person." One would think that if you did, most starving people would be considerate enough of themselves not to look. What happens when they're not?

2014-05-27T16:30:10+00:00

That was fairly good. From the perspective of a feminist who thinks the #YesAllWomen trend is counter productive.

Lobstermansunion · 2014-05-27T16:37:50+00:00

Her comparison to Game of Thrones is a bit unnecessary. She is cherry picking a fairly small part of the overall story, but i'll let her have that outlying opinion because she seems fairly logical otherwise.

Title	"All men are not self-entitled potential rapists looking to catch women out. They're just not."
Author	outhouse_steakhouse
Upvotes	19
Comments	4
Date	May 27, 2014 5:11 AM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/26kz8b/all_men_are_not_selfentitled_potential_rapists/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/all-men-are-not-self-entitled-potential-rapists.1000203 https://theredarchive.com/post/1000203

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