# Me too - bloody hell a man actually gets it, well some of it.

[sashh]

Just come across this. I've heard this guy on the radio talking about his fundamentalist up bringing but I have just come across this blog post where he lists the times he can remember being responsible for assaulting women which he didn't think at the time were assault.

www.patheos.com/blogs/leavingfundamentalism/2017/10/17/im-reason-women-posting-metoo/

Jesus.

PUA is/are creating a generation of rapists.

That was awful. I find it hard to believe he didn't know any of that was wrong, but the pick up artist stuff is pretty vile.

I respect his acknowledgement that lots of men do this and don't realise it. And when he said he didn't think women were people, because he wasn't giving them the same respect he afforded men. I think a lot of men think like this without realising it.

The guy is an idiot.

PUA tells him to do things, so he does.
#MeToo tells him not to do things, so (he alleges) he won't.

Doesn't he have a brain of his own.

What is Pick Up Artistry?

I’ve been thinking about this since the #metoo hashtag started and thought, this isn’t what needs to happen. Men don’t listen to women, it means nothing to them that almost every single woman on the planet has experienced unwanted sexual behaviour, men listen to men. I want to see the #ididittoo hashtag. I want men owning up to it. Because what that man says in his post is wrong. Men aren’t standing wondering where all these sexual assaulters are. They are standing looking at their feet and avoiding eye contact because they know who these sexual assaulters are. They know it was them, and their mates and their brothers and fathers. They have images they can call on immediately of when a woman was sexually assaulted in some way by either them or someone they were with. It isn’t a mystery to them. This guy is lying when he says he didn’t know it was wrong. He did know, he just knew there were no consequences (for him).

I’m glad to see at least one man owning up. Maybe more will. Will it change anything though? They’ll stop owning up when they realise it doesn’t get them hero status and a trophy for doing the right thing (eventually)

I think he did think it was ok.
I think he allowed his impulses and PUA influence to stop him thinking about it. So many people respond with 'women should just grow a backbone', and don't see that they shouldn't have to spend energy on fending men off.

Nah, everyone knows you don’t stick your hand between a persons legs without warning, or consent in a public place. People do it not because they think it’s fine but because they want to and the consequences of doing it are rarely painful for them.

So, a bloke who has seen the error of his ways and realised that, shock horror, his sexually predatory behaviour while younger was... well, sexually predatory. Whoop. Hang out the fucking flags.

OK on one level we do need men (the some men, rather than the not all) to stand up and say - "that bloke? It was me. Sorry." But at the same time what a load of self-serving, exculpatory crap.

His excuse seems to be "I was brought up as a fundy Christian to believe all sex was wrong, so naturally I swung to the opposite extreme in rebelling against that and assumed that all sexual behaviour was okay." Would we buy that as an excuse for, say, serial burglary? Or committing fraud? After all, presumably his parents told him theft was wrong, and murder. Surely he was genius enough to work out that, while not necessarily believing in god, the secular world did at least agree with his parents on those ones. Having a morally repressive upbringing doesn't mean that all your critical faculties get suspended when you break free of that upbringing.

He found himself in a culture that celebrated women's availability, and didn't have enough personal skills and relationships with real people to realise what a load of tripe it is. Popular culture, until recently, has been like that. Encouraging men into stalky behaviour because that is romantic.