Can men really grasp women’s reality re safety?

[Ritascornershop]

I have a 19 year old son who is very compassionate and left-wing (I mention that as he’s been indoctrinated in TWAW) but who can’t grasp the discomfort many women feel at men in women’s private spaces.

And recently a friend was telling me that a family member of his (who he has quite the blind spot over) broke up with his girlfriend. The gf had, before she met his family member, been sexually assaulted. She was naturally quite traumatized by the rape but trying to heal and met this guy and got in a relationship with him. The way my friend tells it. his family member broke up with her after a few months (during an argument) & family member “got so uoset” he punched a hole in the wall and broke a chair. She called the police and called friends. My friend seemed to feel she over-reacted! I think any woman would be frightened and that a woman who’d been sexually assaulted would be particularly terrified.

It does not seem a tricky concept to me, but both these men seem to not be able to wrap their heads around how frightening it can be to be vulnerable around larger, stronger, angry males. Is this something most men don’t get or are these two not trying very hard?

@Charlienotman and FYI being a six foot male, strong rugby player was absolutely no use in that situation. I genuinely cannot believe you would ever consider typing something so utterly awful.

Being raped is not comparable to a playfight with someone you trust.

Me-thinks Charlie is a very angry man, typing furiously from his bedsit with his cock out.
No woman is this stupid.

Man I'm seeing is also about the same height as me and not a particularly strong man but I still wouldnt fancy my chances against him if he turned nasty.

Biology and all that.

I think it’s very difficult to assess how much fear of male violence shapes our lives because we internalise from such an early age its existence and at an early age are socialised to circumscribe our lives to account for that.

I can’t remember which writer it was who went into the reasons for Bill Gates’ astonishing success, but one of the tales he told was of Gates’ parents allowing him to work quite late at school and ride the bus home in the wee hours.

If Gates’ parents had had a daughter instead of Bill, one who was equally as precocious, would they ever have allowed her to do the same?

There are things we simply never ever consider doing, things that never enter consciousness as possibility, because we’ve already internalised that these things aren’t possible for us as females in a male-dominated world.

That’s what some of consciousness-raising and female-only space and conversation was always meant to break.

And I believe ALL men realize the strength differential. They realise it on the playground as soon as puberty starts to kick in. Why else do they scoff so much at women’s sports?

I do think a lot of women don't see it either.

On FB, I'm always seeing posts like 'Works both ways', etc, etc

Me-thinks Charlie is a very angry man, typing furiously from his bedsit with his cock out.
No woman is this stupid

I actually hope so, because its horrifying to think a woman thinks that way too.

Yes, I think Helmet has nailed it.

There’s a huge difference between saying men deserve to be assaulted by other men and making the statistically accurate observation that most of the time, when men are assaulted it is almost exclusively by other men, and they’re usually doing so in the context of other criminality on both parts. When women are assaulted, it is again almost exclusively by men, but is not seen in the context of criminality on her part, only the male’s part.

Men do not move through the world afraid of other men because they know they don’t have to be. They have a reasonable fear proportionate to their risk, which is very low outside a pattern of criminality, which is within their control. Women also have a reasonable fear proportionate to our risk, which is much higher than males when adjusted for pattern of criminality, and since we are just minding our own business, do not have the same opportunity to have lowered our risk by avoiding criminal associations.

One offs do not impact this at all.

Why else do they scoff so much at women’s sports?

Or join in and beat the crap out of them.

@triggsey I got exactly what you were saying. It wasnt victim blaming at all. Correlation and causation are not the same thing at all.

@Charlienotman I see you've only existed on mumsnet under this username for 24 hours. I have no idea if you really are "not man" but I hope that male or female you never get to experience first hand how it is that you're so awfully wrong about that disgusting claim you just made.

I wonder if some of the obliviousness is caused by growing up being told the sexes are equal and misunderstanding?

I'm in my 30s and I remember being told that anything men can do, women can do too. I used to genuinely believe that women and men had the same physical capabilities and to say otherwise was sexist. I couldn't keep up with the guys in sport because I was bad at sport and personally etc rather than women being weaker.

It wasn't until I was assaulted by a guy who was skinnier and smaller than me that I realised the truth of the physical differences. I've seen the same ignorance used to defend transwomen competing in female sport - seeing the truth of bone density, lung capacity, heart size between the sexes being out and out denied the same way I would have done 10-15 years ago.

@Charlienotman

Then you must regard a fairly mild episode of East Enders as propaganda. . My ds certainly doesn’t see that sort of behaviour at home because I’m single.

But he knows to treat another human being with courtesy & respect, and what he saw -before the watershed - clearly offended him.

I wonder if it's better not to engage. I dont particularly want to help someone enjoy themself if you know what I mean. . Not envy.

No I don’t any man can 100% get it.

They can try, but never fully get it.

My dh is a right woman’s activist and believes in equality etc, but even he doesn’t get it 100%.

Last summer I was walking to the shop with my 25 yr old son, he was surprised that I automatically went to walk the "long" way round, rather than cutting through the park. It's a shortcut but very densely wooded, away from any houses etc, whereas the long way is main roads.

We talked about why and he did get it, he was just surprised that I still made the same decision in daylight, somehow in his mind danger to women only existed in the dark , so it was a good conversation to have.

Horrifically, a few months after that, a young womans body was found in that park, half the comments from men on the local FB new page were along the lines of "What was she doing there in the early hours of the morning?"

I bet if you asked men what they are afraid of "being laughed at by women" doesn't even figure.
Of course men are fearful of other men, so they must have some empathy.
I would bet that the men who are violent against men are the same men who would be violent against women.

Look at the outcomes though. Men are at higher risk of death and physical attack from men than women are, particularly strangers. Women are at higher risk of sexual assault and intimate partner violence.

I think people do get that but with trans women it’s a matter of the significance of the risk. Like a pp said there are over 1700 people killed by road collision each year in the U.K. and over 160,000 injured.

Most people, female or male, do not perceive a significant risk of trans women in toilets or even the risk of men pretending to be trans women in toilets. It is incredibly tiny compared to many of the risks we’re exposed to each day.

Which is why some get suspicious when the significance of this minuscule risk is elevated above all else.

Most people, female or male, do not perceive a significant risk of trans women in toilets or even the risk of men pretending to be trans women in toilets. It is incredibly tiny compared to many of the risks we’re exposed to each day.

I don't think I agree with this actually. Of all the people I have ever discussed this with, which is many, I have only ever had one person say that they think that transwomen in women's toilets and changing rooms pose no risk at all. And that is a very woke, very young, female. Every other person I have ever discussed this with has thought that it is indeed a risk. The thing is that it isn't really about the numbers, it is about the severity of the outcome. It is the same reason why loads of people are terrified of flying, whereas few are afraid of getting in a car. Statistically the car is much more dangerous, but you have a high chance of surviving an accident. Air travel is much safer, but if the plane crashes, your chances of survival are slim.

And with regards to the safety issue of transwomen in women's toilets, another reason why the safety aspect is emphasised is because society doesn't care enough about women's feelings to accept that wanting privacy is a good enough reason in itself. If a woman says she wants privacy it is always followed up with 'why?'.

Both my ds and my dd as teenagers worked (at different times) in the same hotel bar in a nearby village. I worried about nasty sleazy customers they both had to serve and the sexist comments, but the big difference was that I didn't worry that a bunch of drunken women would be waiting in the car park to rape or assault my ds, whereas that was exactly what I always worried about with my dd.

I have found women to be as lacking in empathy.

They personally have no problem with something so dictate that nobody else should either. Scary.

It would be terrible if men saw woman as only potential to falsely accused them.

Actually I think that would be great. Men would have to think very very carefully about whether their behaviour could be interpreted as threatening. They'd have to make sure they were beyond reproach, didn't push consent into grey areas, really knew the woman they hoped to sleep with...sounds much more sensible than the current way round to me!

Well said Isabelle

This society doesn't care enough about women's feelings

Blibby exactly.

The oblivious of young men in particular continues to surprise me.

I was walking along with 2 women friends and a group of about 8 lads were walking the same way. We crossed the road to avoid them and they started shouting after us that they wouldn't harm us. They had been walking very close indeed!

In London, I've often had to say "dude, you are WAY too much in my space" quite a few times. It can be difficult, but the really tall guys who think it's funny to walk right behind me, looming at my shoulder (I'm short) then getting all hurty when I tell them to go away....

I also had to barge in on a group of oblivious lads play fighting on the Tube. Bobbing and weaving and throwing fake punches at each other in very close proximity to a pram. They were perfectly nice when I told them to stop but they were so fucking oblivious!

FWIW I don't live in fear but I do live (in public at least) with the constant awareness that some entitled XY-bearer might decide to impose himself into my day and it will take up my focus and attention having to get rid of him politely, because for some weird reason it's socially ok to demand a person's attention but not socially ok to ignore them till they fuck off.

To be clear, it's very rarely a sexual thing at my age, just the unconscious assumption that anything a women might be doing can never be as important to her as the attention of a man.