"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 it does help.

Some women are disabled though, or can't afford it, or it doesn't appeal to them (young women in our society seem to be steered away from anything that makes them break a sweat, apparently).

What I mean is, great for all those who have done self defence classes, what about the ones who haven't?

Like with all predators, they look for easy prey (if you are talking about more serious offences) - and there will always be someone out there who is easier prey. What about them? Why not try and get these dangerous men out of circulation in the first place?

Plus the difficulty that none of these things are magical protection - the lists that circulate, what to do and what not to do, have self defence classes, don't wear heels, don't wear clothing you can't run in, all women know all the things that they are supposed to do to protect themselves as they are told all the time. I am not convinced that any of this stuff makes much difference TBH. Better to tackle the source of the problem.

Have you got the source of the stat for more things happening to teenaged boys? I ask as it gets said a lot but for me personally, lots more has happened than to any men I know.

Is it things that are reported to the police? We know that most sexual stuff goes unreported.

I just wondered as it is always said on threads but I don't know where it comes from and is counter to the experience of me and my friends IYSWIM

I decided that I probably wouldn't be too good at the physical stuff, but there were lots of simple tips at the self defence classes e.g. if a car stops make sure that you stand forward so that you have the door between you and them if they open it. If someone gets in your car and orders you to drive, stall it on a busy roundabout-the chaos it will cause makes it likely they will get out and leg it. Simple things like that made me feel happier.

Sorry but am a bit laughing at those tips!

What if there isn't a handy busy roundabout on your route! Plus an awful lot of cars these days have automatic transmission

I thought if someone got into your car and ordered you to drive your best bet was to crash it into another car or a building or something. Not sure where i got that from though!

It doesn't really matter-you don't have to be literal-the message is don't drive to a lonely place-make a huge cock up in a busy place.
Talking about it with a group is a help in the first place.

Just made me laugh.

Plus

How many car jackings happen in the UK? Sod all. All of these lists of things and tips and blah just make us more fearful IMO.

Any person who has the wherewithall to act in a clever fashion in one of these situations is pretty much just like that. They will do it whether they have heard the tip about roundabouts or not Some people can remain calm and think of tactics when someone has a knife to their throat. Some can't. Not sure what benefit the tips are TBH.

When I was on the wrong end of an armed robbery, I froze. So did most of the other people there. You don't know how you're going to react until it happens. Some people freeze, some people fight, some people remain calm, some people lose the plot. Sure talk about hypothetical situations, practice them, maybe it will help, a little. But when confronted with a highly dangerous and possibly armed person who is much bigger than you, unfortunately the usual answer is sorry mate you are stuffed. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Can't do any harm to talk about it ,even though you have no idea how you would react. I am glad that you said car jackings were so rare that you didn't need to worry. I would imagine it is on the same scale of risk as male nursery workers taking DCs to the toilet.

Quite. Which is why I personally have no worries about male nursery workers.

However I don't think it is at all appropriate for one person to tell another what they should or shouldn't be apprehensive of. Everyone has their own experiences and background, if they feel afraid of something then that is the response they are having. You can't tell them it's "wrong".

And yet you felt reassured for being told a way out of a car-jacking, even though it is highly unlikely to happen, and if it did there is no way of telling whether you would be able to follow through with the tactics, whether for practical or emotional reasons.

Pretty illogical, huh.

I don't get it at all TBH.

Take the man I mentioned earlier who was masturbating at me on the tube. I didn't feel afraid, I felt angry. Other girls or women might have felt afraid. That doesn't make them "wrong" or silly or any of the other things which people seem to be suggesting.

Which takes us right back to the OP. The first one was a woman who knew she was illogical and wanted help- so people were helpful.The second was a woman who was illogical, didn't want help-just for us to say that she was right. Not surprisingly people turned around and told her she was being unreasonable.
My way to help the first post was to mention self defence classes, which I found useful. I have never had to use any of it but it helped to think about it in a group. You seem to find it worthy of ridicule SardineQueen, but you don't have to take my advice, it was merely a suggestion that helped me.

In the second post I told her that I was very saddened that attitudes like that stopped men from making a career in childcare-a great shame because they are much needed and it is ridiculous to have a worker who can't do his job.

In answer to OP, it doesn't surprise me in the least that they got very different responses.

If you think hard enough you can convince yourself that you are under threat all the time. Why not add ghosts and demons into the mix as well? With all these dark forces swirling around women, we will have them back in the house twirling rosary beads within a rew decades! Power to the fear factory!

Oh come off it the idea of heading for a busy roundabout (which may or may not be there) and then stalling the car on purpose (even though it may well be automatic) when carjacked (as happens so frequently in Carshalton or wherever) is silly!

What would be useful would be:

1. The police and society take all nasty incidents of a sexual nature seriously
2. Women are encouraged to report them (as opposed to laugh it off / blame themselves / be ashamed etc etc as happens at present)
3. Police and CPS pull out all the stops to arrest and prosecute

Now that would be helpful.

"With all these dark forces swirling around women"

Are women to ignore the things that men do to them, in order to fit in with society's idea of how things are?

Should we be teaching our girls that a stray hand on the bum, a grab at the crotch, having sexually explicit things shouted at them, being followed, grabbed at, wanked at and all the rest of it, are things that they should keep to themselves as they don't fit in with how society wants things to be? Oh wait.... Tell you what, wouldn't it be good if while giving them the message that they shouldn't talk about this stuff, we also tell them that if anything does happen, it is their fault!!! Brilliant!

If a woman who has had a standard bunch of unpleasant experiences in the UK is walking home by herself in a deserted area in the middle of the night, and hears footsteps following her, why should she not feel apprehensive? Why is she hysterical if she does, and falling foul of her silly female over-active imagination. Huh.

By the way, a male friend of mine got sacked at work for viewing this: - his employer, the University of Warwick was concerned that 'watching videos with children in' showed a serious 'no smoke without fire' concern of sexualised interest in children. His collegues who watched videos of their kids, grandchildren etc and had photos of children all over their workstations who were female got no such attention.

That is why this fear is so despicable - he will lose nearly £50,000, and his reputation is shot, and he is now paranoid about going to the cinema or theatre alone because he feels that people see him as a paedophile. It has had an astonishing effect and all because of exactly the kind of fear you are talking about here.

Why is a woman being scared when she thinks she is being followed at night, anything to do with people getting sacked?

I am also not going to click the link. Why has he put a video of his children on youtube?

Not at the time! At the time you would have to deal with it.
I think that you are being very unfair. It was a whole course lasting several weeks. I took one tiny bit of advice, I have never had to use it but it stuck in my mind. All it really means is it is better to seek a solution, in a busy place than somewhere completely isolated. I think you are nitpicking.
Of course your 1,2 and 3 are useful, but so is thinking how to get of a situation. I have never had to use it- but learning which part of the body to go for in an attack is useful. No one is forcing you to go on a course SardineQueen, but there is no need to belittle it-somepeople might find it useful-I did.

Oh god you lot are paranoid - here is the wikipedia entry for 'that video' if you are really going to gip at watching an actual video... jesus.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Bit_My_Finger

I'm glad you liked your course exoticfruits

Honestly I think it is good when people do stuff like that, I just genuinely wonder about the efficacy, or whether they just give a sense of reassurance IYSWIM.

It also bothers me that these courses are not suitable for everyone - the most vulnerable people will remain the most vulnerable. It doesn't help the root cause, it just gives people who are probably not at such risk (being the sort of proactive confident and probably able-bodied types to sign up for a course in the first place) reassurance.

It doesn't do anything to help the people with learning difficulties, the people with physical disabilities, the frail, the people with psychiatric problems and all the rest of it.

I just think that predators should be found out and locked up, and at the moment there is little interest from the lawmakers in doing this.

Are they his children then, missingfriend? Why did he put them on youtube?

sorry en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Bit_My_Finger for wikipedia about the most popular viral video on YouTube that was somehow seen by the an employer as evidence of sexualised interest in children.