"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 knew that the title of "Fear" of Men was wrong but I couldn't think of a better word when writing the OP which was why I put it in quotation marks.

Dittany I completely agree with you and I do think there is a certain denial about VAW. Perhaps more than denial is the belief that it "won't happen to me" even though it does happen and it is happening every day. We're just so programmed to ignore the little assaults and violence's that we think it won't happen even as it is.

FWIW I do think that it is partly the identity of the person in question: dog walker, taxi driver, man coming home from office with briefcase, nursery worker, builder etc is less of a threat than lone man walking on beach as someone said up thread.

Also as said up thread the stakes are so high especially when dealing with children. There has now been a 3rd nursery worker in 2 years (IIRC) charged with assaults on children. I do think the parent in AIBU is mad to be so worried she won't let a worker get on with his job but I do understand why she would be worried.

Unfortunately it isn't news to say x million women walked about today completely unharmed and unmolested and x million DC had a completely normal day at nursery -and so the odd case of either gets completely blown out of proportion.

The fear thing I'm not sure makes sense.
I ride horses. I fall off, sometimes quite badly and then I get back on. Again and again.
I am not wary of riding because I have fallen, I do not fear horses because some have thrown me off.

Dittany - at your horse comments. Are you a Horseenist too?
Actually, a horse will sometimes deliberately throw you but you still go back out there and get back on, you don;t have a fear of all horses forever more and get scared if you see a horse in a field you might be walking across.

Given the majority of women have experienced sexual assault and harrassment, either there.s a few very prolofic men or the majority of men aresexual harrassers?

It's one guy and he's reeeeeeeeeeally busy. Apparently.

The alterntive just doesn't bear thinking on for most people :(

I think you'd need to look more closely at the stats.
I'm mid forties and never had an encounter that was violent or sexually violent.
I suspect some women by my age might have had several, however.

Actually lots of people who have been thrown off horses don't get back on again and no one tells them they should expect mad horsey people.

Princess Diana famously disliked riding because she'd been thrown as a child but came from that class of people who were of the "stuff and nonsense - get back on" school of thought. So she was forced to carry on with it but never really had any great enthusiasm for it.

Lots of people haven't had incidents that are violent.

But they have had incidents that have crossed boundaries. People don't always have to be actively violent, to be threatening.

sorry that should say except mad horsey people, not expect

smashingday your prescription seems to be that if a man attacks you, you should stay with that man in order to get over it. As being with the man who does this is such good fun that you are willing to put up with some possibly life threatening injuries along the way.

Your horse analogy makes no sense.

This thread is confused by the two different issues. People talk about the beach thing and then others say Ha! You hate male nursery workers....

Anyway.

Yes it is a little confusing. Particularly alongside the other thread which is running at the same time.

madwoman said earlier

"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."

Well of course, We don't know which men are "baddies" and so have to muddle through as best we can and hope for the best.

If men who were gropers, followers, flashers, breast grabbers, rapists had big signs on them then life would be a lot easier.

This business about not teaching children to have fear.

I agree that fear is the wrong word. Caution? A sense of awareness?

I am going to teach my DD that if she is alone in a situation with a man who is making her nervous, or sitting next to someone on a bus and they are saying things that are a bit strange (I once was on a bus and the man behind me was whispering "I'm going to rape you" in my ear but I was quite young and didn't know what to do), or if someone seems to be following them, then they should act on their instinct, not worry about offending anyone, and get away. I think that it would be remiss of me as a mother not to teach her this. Surely boys need this lesson too, although I suspect they get less sexual advances than girls and young women.

Someone keeps coming onto the thread (this one? or the other one?) and saying "women sexually assault too". I have never been sexually assaulted by a woman though, and have been by men lots of times. So my experinece tells me that men are the risk group for this behaviour. I suspect the crime stats bear me out on this.

Sorry for multiple posts, have just realised something

On threads about attacks when people like me say that it is irrelevant what women wear as to whether they get attacked, the response is that we are naive, and men respond to different clothing in different ways, and some clothing apparently says "come and assault me". ie people say that there are loads of dangerous men out there who will be inflamed by the sight of a bit of cleavage and commit an assault.

Yet OTOH when I say that I find it quite understandable that women are nervous/scared in certain situations, apparently this makes me a man hater and outrageously illogical.

Can't win, can we

here
she says she is sick of the fear

I reckon most women fear some men sometimes. I'm in that group of women. I think a woman who never fears any man is unusual.

I wish I did not feel fear sometimes, but I don't think it is a weakness. I don't live my entire life in fear of men, very far from it. If violence against women was eradicated, I would be willing to join the fearless.

I haven't suffered from any violence from men, but I have been to self defence classes-it makes sense to do what you normally do and be prepared, rather than to stop doing things and not go out.

I think most people go out. The woman in the beach OP had gone out. She just found herself in a situation which made her feel uncomfortable/afraid.

The real people to look at for not going out are elderly women, who have a whole long list of things to make them fearful, and even in their own homes. I know there are a lot of old women who wont go out after dark, and who get worried if the doorbell goes when they aren't expecting anyone. I don't think that they are silly to feel that way either TBH.

We need to be looking at the predators and con-men and people who make other people fearful in the first place.

If you have done self -defence and manage to fight a bloke off, the next woman might well not be able to. Taking him off the streets would make it safer for all the women he meets in the future.

I think a lot more needs to be done to encourage women to report assaults and to prosecute them. the current situation is laughable. Mind you,the reason it doesn't happen at the moment, is that the people who pull the strings don't care about this stuff.

Part of the fear, is to do with the fact that if anything happens, most of the time there's nothing you or anyone else can to about it.

It does however help to have gone to self defense classes.

The group who have most to fear, statistically, going out are teenage boys.