If men are racist it’s all the fault of women!

I remember as a young woman, an older lady at work was telling me how young women today have much lower standards of behaviour. Her sons were always making obscene gestures to the camera in group pictures etc. 'I mean, you expect boys to do that, but I really don't like to see the girls doing it, they should know better!'

This 'they should know better' stuff is not the compliment it's made out to be. It's not because we actually believe that women are better than men, if we did women would hold supremacy in society.

It's because we can't face the challenge of changing male behaviour. So we can just blame 'the women who let them' instead.

I don't want to be held to a higher moral standard than men, its not a fair price to pay for being taken seriously. I want to be equal.

Well, that isn't too much of a stretch. Women are responsible if men commit violence against them, after all. It's not exactly surprising to see them blamed for men's racism too.

The thing that really fucks me off is how it's so often women themselves who buy into this shit, and willingly blame other women like good little servants of the patriarchy.

It's a little like female anti-suffragists. How can any woman oppose women - herself included - becoming autonomous citizens? It's a position that defies logic altogether. Certainly beats the shit out of me.

The first rule of misogyny: women are responsible for what men do.

Personal responsibility is an unknown concept to men. It's all blame, blame, blame. They've tried to fool people into thinking they're the ones who are DV victims/raped by women and it's not working. They simultaneously expect us to believe that women are going around beating and raping men, yet say we're so "weak" and "emotional". Those two things contradict each other and trying to understand male "logic" will give you a headache. If a man is a racist, no woman can put a stop to that. It's simple. That's all on them to deal with.

Women's sin is always greater. That's life under patriarchal norms.

I sometimes look on at current events in bemusement. So many things that happen in our world are male psychodramas. The Floyd murder, for example, was a white man living out dominance fantasies towards a black man. This drama did not involve me or you or any other woman here. It didn't even involve a female perpetrator. But the entire globe participated in the aftermath of that male drama, and white women were dragged to the front of the crowd and told to denounce themselves for the crime of failing to prevent that male drama.

Melia agree

This seems to miss that plenty of women are racist. Women are yet again positioned as the 'moral force' in society and this of course says men can do whatever, women are better, women need to stop them, and if we don't we've failed in our role.

Would an article the other way around happen?

I can't imagine anyone saying to men, this isn't on! Don't sing it don't listen to it etc.

Tiffany Calver took what is, in my opinion, a very brave stand against misogynist lyrics as the DJ on a rap music show on the BBC.

Also perfectly put, Prodigal!

Well said Prodigal

Thanks for the reply fish.

Answer is I don't listen to much music that contains that word apart from some v old hip hop and rap. I wouldn't sing along to it in public, no.

A vast amount of music is sexist and misogynist, singing about underage girls, stalking, killing even. Loads of totally dodgy stuff forever. Words like bitch and ho litter some genres.

I can't imagine anyone saying to men, this isn't on! Don't sing it don't listen to it etc.

And I agree with her general point in terms of not shagging or hanging out with arseholes, but you shouldn't be doing it because it's your job as a woman to Make Men Better, you should stop hanging around men like that because it will make your life better.

We're a safer target

Yeah, we respond by doing penance. Because female socialisation. Someone tells you you've sinned? You ask how many Hail Mary's.

(OK< that might just be me)

Yes imagine having the power to stop men being violent. Who knew we only had to withhold sex and they'd be forced to change their ways. Bravo, lib fems.

Part of the reason the rage is displaced is that raging at a white woman is much less likely to result in her responding with physical violence. We're a safer target.

It seems we have all the responsibility, while men have all the power

Perfectly put.

It's the same dynamic of women being clobbered for their words in the trans/womens rights debate.

Our words are making men commit atrocities? If violent men listened to women I think a lot of our problems would disappear.

So often male violence doesn't even draw comment. It's like air, it just 'is'. But women's behaviour is policed and judged by both men and women. Idiots like these students are doing misogyny's work for them.

Thanks MorrisZapp

I am sure a black feminist would have her own argument as to the historical context around the weaponizing of white womanhood against black brothers, sons, fathers, and I'm not entirely ignorant of that context.

And of course, white women, like other humans, can be racially prejudiced, and can behave in racist manners. My point, really, is the extent to which rage at white men is displaced onto white women.

@Melia100 I totally agree. Too many societies still think a woman is responsible for aggressive male behaviour when they (the women) are the victims. It seems we have all the responsibility, while men have all the power.

Melia you are so spot on. I've been feeling this for a while but you've articulated it so perfectly.

If you haven't yet noticed the extreme difference in how white women have anti-racism marketed to them - be guilty! original sin! repent! - vs how white men have anti-racism marketed to them - radio silence unless they are literally espousing a white nation state - then you just haven't lived.

It's interesting to me the cultural animus directed at white women, who, by any metric, are far less likely to be carrying out say, police shootings, than white men. They tend to police less aggressively, and employ more de-escalation tactics than male officers.

I heard a black college professor interviewed about his experience of being racially profiled. Police wanted to take him to a line up so a (white) woman could ID her attacker. His rage (justified) was directed almost entirely at the idea of a white WOMAN looking at him, not at the male officers who had profiled him. I found that disturbing.

Anyway, underlying all of this is the idea that women are responsible for what men do. That men are in a state of permanent aggression and women act as a civilizing force. To fail to restrain the (white) male through the power of (white) womanhood is seen as a double crime - a failure to feminise others in line with community expectations, and a racist action - whereas (white) male aggression is seen as conforming to natural masculine traits of physical violence. Men have the one sin - implicit bias - but are not held responsible for the same sin women are - that of civilising the (white) savage.

Anyway, it's interesting. Probably entirely taboo to discuss. I personally don't feel that I am responsible for what men do.

What's killing me is that these are kids who got into uni. What does that say about the admission standards? How illiterate were the people who didn't get in?

I think both applies here. It's terrifying.

It makes Everyday feminism look like Shakespeare

To be fair that's true, sometimes it's hard to make the distinction between "this person is thick as pigshit" and "this person's writing is so bad that it makes my inner editor cry".

(Often the answer is "both", ime.)