Some men really hate women being single don't they?

[solidgoldbrass]

inspired by a couple of other threads including the separatism one. Have you ever noticed that if a man you don't like or know or fancy is trying to persuade you to date him or spend time with him or even just talk to him, the only really effective way to make him fuck off is to tell him that you are another man's property. Just saying No, leave me alone, no thanks, actually I am having a conversation with my female friend and am not interested in talking to you, never seems to work until you throw in My Boyfriend or My Husband.

I didn't read it like that peanut

Phew, thanks. I read it back and felt it sounded a bit victim blamey.

Wamster, much earlier in the thread I did refer you to Hollaback and the London Anti-Street Harassment campaign, plus the Guardian coverage of this. There have been plenty of other articles linked by other posters, all with similar comment sections. Thousands of women are complaining about this stuff. You might want to read and respect their views.

No sarcasm intended and I don't mean to be flippant, but given that any behaviour by a woman (no matter how seemingly innocent to me or another person) can be interpreted as an invitation to rape in the sick bastards' who commit rape minds, I think that to avoid all possibility a woman has to not engage with men at all.

I don't pretend to know exactly what goes into stopping a rapist being a rapist, but I think that there is a bit more to it than getting him to not hassle a woman in a bar/club.
I also believe that it is always the quiet ones you have to watch for, not the mouthy bloke who has had a few too many to drink and is just trying his luck too hard.

"so it may be on the same continuum, so what? Until it reaches the point of assault or abuse, so what?"

Because it is more likely tht it will reach the point of assault or abuse if it is not nipped in the bud.

Is that not obvious?

Wamster why can't I get annoyed or angry with a man unless he actually physically attacks me?

In the situation I spoke about earlier when the men wouldn't leave when my friend was in the middle of telling me some terrible news, what is wrong with me being pissed off at them?

Do you genuinely not understand this? You don't seem to have much of a grasp of normal human interaction in the UK, and what is polite and what is rude, what is friendly and what is aggressive, what is a nice chat and what is pestering.

The Giuliani analogy is a useful one.

I'm sorry but I don't believe for one moment that Wamster is a feminist and it's a bloody cheek for him/ her to state that s/he is, after hours if not days of posting a whole load of anti-feminist shite. No sort of feminist, however lite their brand, believes that it is OK that women are not allowed to go about their lawful business unharassed.

It's like claiming to be anti racist but thinking "so what" if white people use the N word. It's a contradiction in terms.

Anyone stupid reading this board may think that you are very clever to declare yourself a feminist in order to try and get away with posting anti-woman shit Wamster, but no-one has to be a genius to see what you're up to. I can't spend a couple of days on a thread slagging off immigrants and wishing that England was populated only by white people and then declare myself an anti-racist and expect everyone to accept that. Similarly, no one who has said what you have said, basically saying that it is OK for men to harrass women, can't be taken seriously if they declare that they are feminists.

"It's like claiming to be anti racist but thinking "so what" if white people use the N word. It's a contradiction in terms."

Quite.

Also like the broken window analogy. Thank you ADC

Incidently, no one has picked up on this, but apparently 1 in 60 men are rapists and this is a generally accepted fact (about two pages back). Is it? Generally accepted on these boards you mean? Can anyone find a valid reference for this or is it part of the 'folklore'?

Warmster You are exceedingly boring as you have essentially been making the same point for several days and no one agrees with you. I do laugh, however, at how your POV means that you are clearly a man (yes, HB I'm looking at you).

Breakdown of American statistics and references here

The '1 in 60' thing is mentioned in the Shrodinger's Rapist blog and is based on an average that each rapist will commit ten rapes. There isn't a reference for that in the page above and I can't find it right now, but I remember a flurry of blog posts on the subject when the research came out, because it strengthened the argument that rapists aren't merely good men who misread signs, but dedicated offenders.

For anyone wondering, I literally typed '1 in 6 american women will be raped in their lifetime' into google for the above statistics. You can also click a drop down box (top left) on the page, and hit 'Google Scholar' or 'Google Books' and that will take you to publications on the subject that you searched for.

Just read that back and it sounds a bit snarky. It's not meant to be, it's just all the facts and figures are out there and a lot of the time they're very easy to find. Even if you can't see full articles, abstracts are always available and often bibliographies are too.

You think I have been boring; I think the word I would use is irritating. Nobody here agrees with me- apart from the odd few- but they do in the wider world- if they did not, this whole thread would be unnecessary, wouldn't it?

The people who agree with you in the wider world are men who like to pester, annoy and intimidate women. Why on earth do you want to justify their behaviour?

That's like going onto a thread about mugging and saying "well in the real world actually lots of people like mugging and do it all the time".

How silly.

What a silly idea that, as feminists, we should question and challenge the status quo, heh?

Jenny I think the difficulty with the stats is that some many rapes go unreported and so few that are reported result in a conviction, that the proflicness (is that a word?) and incidence of rape are hard to say conclusively.

The stats (which I don't have to hand) certainly say that an awful lot of women get raped, which means there are an awful lot out there. A significant minority of men are prepared to over-ride women's boundaries in this way. Certainly another survey recently (which I can't be arsed to look for) showed a shocking number of young men and women thought that it was OK for a man to have sex with a woman who was incapacitated through drink or drugs.

The threads on here about rape and sexual assault have been terrible to read, with the majority of rapes unreported and most sexual assaults unreported.

1 in 60? I don't know. I wouldn't be terribly surprised though.

I'd be very surprised to hear the regular person on the street defend harassment in public spaces over and above a single 'get over yourself love, it's harmless'. Then, when confronted with actual women's actual experiences of how persistent it can get, they would probably agree, however grudgingly, that actually it's not really on. Certainly this has been my experience in RL and online (and I hang out in some seriously male-dominated forums - even they've gone from 'get over it/you love it really' to 'oh shit; that really happens? That's not on').

I can't imagine what sort of an arse would hear the experiences of women and continue to defend it over and above that point. Of course they don't have to instantly become a crusader in the War Against Harassment, but I reckon they'd hear my objections probably say something like 'that's fair enough, you shouldn't feel scared, etc'.

here are some stats on public attitudes

something from the nursing times

There is plenty if you google anyway.

a shocking number of young men and women thought that it was OK for a man to have sex with a woman who was incapacitated through drink or drugs.

Even 1 person is shocking!

I really have a problem with statistics; someone somewhere does a study, which will only be released if it supports their agenda, adds in a few factors for this, a few factors for that and the next thing you know everyone is quoting it verbatim as if it's a scientific fact. If you put 60 men and 6 women in a room, one of them will be a rapist and one will have been raped? Globally or within the UK? This is in no way to try and pretend that sexual agression (from verbal abuse to rape) is more or less than any particular point. All I mean is that such random and arbitary statistics actually weaken the credibility of people using them. 32.56% of all statistics are made up etc...