"Fear" of men

[ComradeJing]

I have a question that relates to two recent threads so apologies for thread about a thread.

Allhailtheaubergine (hope you don't mind - it's your thread I'm referring to) said that she was worried when she walked on the beach and when a man came between her and her exit she became nervous.

Another poster in AIBU said she was unhappy about a male nursery worker taking her daughter to the bathroom.

The OP in AIBU was completely torn to bits over this. Allhail was given support and most people (including myself though I didn't post) agreed that they would have felt scared and validated her response.

Now my question is why is one response valid and rational and the other one not? Is it because one is a person in a job and the other could be "anybody?" I would imagine you're more likely to be attacked by someone in a job (ie taxi driver, gas man, builder or someone else you would invite into your home) than just some stranger off the street but I could well be wrong.

I suppose I was thinking that if one is a feminist issue then the other one must be too as they are both about a fear of men and what men can do to women.

I'm sure there is something wonky in your logic there riven

I guess that if it's the risk of the woman being raped by a stranger vs child being sexually abused at nursery, the answer is that they are both highly unlikely.

I think the difference is that women are reasonably likely to have something else on the spectrum happen to them, that is quite common. So the perception of the risk is different. Women aren't just scared of rape, they are scared of a whole great long list of different things that might happen. Although most of those fears stem from a fear of rape in the first place.

Dittany I had never considered before how this constant diet of "women are prey" in the media affects men...

Or even if it does affect them

I suppose that men who are that way inclined might find a lot of validation in what they see.

The main result surely is that your majority of nice chaps have it drummed into them that women are vulnerable, who then in turn drum it into women even more that they are vulnerable...

but dittany, the fact you have had awful and life changing assaults and attacks does not make it any more likely that anyone else will. it's basic stats. it's understandable that you have been affected and carry more fear.

and i was on the small sexual attacks thread. i do apologise for not having been attacked as many times as you if it makes you feel i am unqualified to comment (clearly statistically we can't answer which of us will be next/ live an attack free life) but it doesn't change the basic premise which is that yes, attacks are awful. yes, some men attack some women.

but to live in fear of something that statistically probably won't happen, isn't rational. we can't help it. but it doesn't make it rational.

i don't want women to be afraid. as i said, campaign against vaw, campaign for better prosecution and zero tolerance, provide better support for women who are attacked. and get angry about the fact that it happens at all.

but please don't use these things as a rationale to tell all women they must be afraid.

and i'm afraid, whatever your personal history, you don't have the right to tell me whether i'm a 'sister' or not. but thanks for pointing out i can fuck off. i'm aware of that, too. as far as i know it's still optional to debate on mn.

I can't speak for anyone else obv, but my perspective is get on with it and do your stuff, but I won't blame you if you feel afraid and I'll understand if you get a cab rather than walking.

Incidentally where has dittany said that women must be afraid? I know she said that she personally was, but I don't see where she said all women had to be?

SQ, I was about to look over the parapet (own petard in hand, ready to get hoisted) and If we all think the myth of the lone beach rapist might be true, why does a man go alone to a beach at night? Or don't they watch the same films? Not saying he would, just saying he could, and he should know we know he could.

Because why should his freedom be limited by the fear of women, whether it is irrational or not, whether it is substantiated or not?

Better to get more people out walking the streets and beaches - young and old, men and women, families and all sorts whenever they fancy it, rather than have the streets there for the group who are less fearful (young men) and stuff everyone else.

If the man decided to take a walk on a beach at night alone, with black leather gloves on, a scream mask, and muttering "you've all got to die" - well then I might wonder what he was thinking!

I think you've got to look at the likelyhood of anything bad happening. In both cases the probability of the woman being attacked or the child being abused is low and if the same level of probability of a negative outcome was applied to all situations then you do anything in life for fear of negative consequences.

I agree Ikoto.

Thing is that advertising campaigns like TFL minicabs and poplar television progs like CSI and the news all serve to inflate our perception of risk.

Coupled with the fact that low level stuff happens to women an awful lot.

SQ, good point. Equally, why should our freedom be limited. The more women go out the safer we all feel.

The taxi thing is ironic after the Warboys case.

Its ridiculous behaviour in both of those circumstances, the probabilities of anything happening are low and if everyone took those views then we'd all be sat at home cowering in the corner, probably frightened that the roof might fall in.

I really and truly look forward to all of you lot piling in next time we have a thread that ends up saying that women should be more careful to avoid assault.

alice yes like a really poor joke.

Those TFL ads were advertising a service that you had to pay for. By using images that played on women's deepest fears and making it sound like "official advice". I used to stand on the tube station staring at an image of a terrified woman's screaming face and get really annoyed. People who say that there is not a background noise of "be afraid" to women do not have their eyes open.

So there is a heightened sense of danger of a specific thing (rape) in certain situations (it's dark he's a stranger) when that is pretty unlikely to happen. Meanwhile where are all the campaigns telling us that our greatest risk is from men we know and trust, and that "minor" incidents with strangers are criminal and should be reported to the police immediately. Eh?

"of course an attack, any attack is devastating. but that doesn't mean that an attack on you (or any of us) personally, at any given time, is likely enough to spend our every moment in fear."

Why are you exaggerating? People don't spend every moment in fear. People feel fear when something happens to arouse that fear. When I looked up and saw some strange bloke getting into my car, I felt fear because he had violated a boundary which I do not think he would have, if I had been a man. Would you ever open someone else's car door when it was obvious that they were not aware of your presence, when they were looking down at a map? For him to have realised that I wasn't hearing him, he must have been looking at me and seeing that I was absorbed in working out the route. It was not unreasonable for my fight or flight instincts to kick in, but that doesn't mean that I was sitting there reading the map in fear. I felt fear when that man gave me a reason to feel it.

I would only open someone else's car door, if I could see that they were unconscious or something. I also wouldn't enter someone else's house without hollering in the door to see if they were around, in case it triggered alarm in them. Isn't that a normal respect for other people's boundaries?

hb - not exaggerating, really. it's a culmination of a lot of recent threads. there are women, lots of them, who appear to be terrified of everything. so i'm not necessarily criticising specific people, it just seems there are so many around at the moment. i had returned to the fem board for a but of sanity, only to find it was all going on here as well.

the nursery thing was just one example. women are apparently genuinely quizzing their nursery child on their return home about who took them to the toilet and who wiped their bum. every. single. day. and assuming if it was a man, then the man must be a paedophile. there's apparently one (and a sex attacker) behind every bush.

the car guy didn't really give you a reason to fear, though, did he? (or only briefly?) he made you jump (he would have made me jump too), but he knew that (i think you said he was immediately hands up trying to explain he'd been trying to get your attention from outside). so yes, a quick 'whoosh' of fight or flight adrenaline becasue you'd been startled, but was it really fear?

he took the chance that he would open the door because he thought you needed help. he didn't make an attempt to get in? just asked if you were ok and if you needed a hand? so in a split second you would have realised he wasn't a danger?

like the guy who didn't pick up the fallen woman (surely a metaphor there ) - you obviously approve of that? i would rather he had (piercings and all) gone and helped her up. she might (again) have had a whoosh of fear briefly, but the fact he didn't mean harm would have been beneficial in the long run to reducing fear on a daily basis. otherwise we are all just pussyfooting around a steretype - women refusing to walk out alone or reclaim the night/ beach whatever, and men who won't help or support in case they are mistaken as attackers. so we're all merrily conforming to the stereotypes assigned to us.

not all blokes with piercings are trying trying to attack you. not all men who open your car door because your music is too loud are doing anything than offering help? so the more men that do offer help and break that 'any man who looks at me is dangerous' myth is actually helping to break the myth. and it is a myth!

and any woman that fights back against the culturally instilled 'you are weak and should be afraid, you are at real risk of attack' message has to be onto a winner.

so, i'm sorry if i've offended anyone. genuinely. it wasn't my intention at all.

but i can't help but feel that a bit more empowerment would go a long way. i just thought i would find it on the fem board. and instead i found a lot of people who seemed to be inagreement that the world was a very dangerous place and we were right to be afraid of men. all of them, as we couldn't be too sure which ones were the baddies. it's lazy paraphrasing on my part, and probably indicates a lack of attention to detail, sorry.

i'm offski for the weekend though. camping with a bunch of impressionable young women and no internet. and coyotes.

Madwoman I agree ( again!) with every single word.

I will add, I don't live in fear and I don't have any fear . I accept that other women do and I feel sad that, for whatever reason, they do.
But I refuse to subscribe to it myself and will not be raising my daughters to either.

Isn't there a difference between living in fear (which I don't) and having a finely tuned spidey sense (which I do). Like my computer virus checker, the latter is running all the time.

Why do I have finely tuned senses? Certainly not because of threads on this board, but because of my experiences. And it's funny to me, because I will pick up on stuff that others don't and dismiss stuff that others take seriously. Who knows who is right? I walk home in the dark all the time. I also disentagle myself, and occasionaly my mates, from men in bars who seem all sweetness and light, on the face of it.

I dunno. This is another of those threads that I can't quite fathom how it got on the course it did.

Madwoman you didn't answer my direct question. Would you ever open someone else's car door without their invitation, unless they were obviously unconscious or somehow otherwise indisposed (like tied up or something)?

It is NOT normal behaviour and it is perfectly logical to be scared by it. Also I wasn't disempowered - I was about to pull away befoer he made the placatory gestures.