Are gay men really a risk to women?

[Polynerd]

The @fairplaywomen account tweeted this today:"Male people are an inherent risk to women and children. That includes all groups of males. Gay males, straight males, trans-identified males, white males, black males, old males, young males...."
Are gay men really a risk to women? Personally I think they are an emotional risk, given the numbers of my gay friends who would drop me like a brick of they knew of my GC views. But I would not be at all surprised to learn that gay men physically hurt women at a proportionally much lower rate than straight men. Views?

I do think that most gay men give themselves a pass about their treatment of women thinking that as they do not (as a rule) sexually abuse they are out of that discussion. However, having worked in a variety of industries that are dominated by gay men - fashion and media, I know this is not the case. There is a culture of hiring their own and promoting their own. Women in the their environment are systematically "placed" in certain roles.The roles are more often than not adjacent to but not the apple.
One look at most of the fashion houses and their ad campaigns over the last 20 years will show you all you need to know.

I suppose it's mainly hay couples going for surrogacy, putting women who are mostly in poverty at a level of risk...

I'd say it's mostly about physical strength and being male with male level violence.
Same likelihood of committing a crime as other men.

Gay men are men, and I no more want to get my kit off in front of one than i do a straight man. If I’m walking down a street on my own in the dark I have no idea if a man walking behind me is gay or not, or if a man was to walk into the toilets when I’m in there I know not which sex of person he fancies, and don’t much care.

FWIW I have had a couple of unnerving experiences with gay men. One who hit on me, which maybe he would have been as surprised about as I was when he sobered up. I didn’t feel particularly physically threatened but then we were in a busy bar. It was certainly uncomfortable though. Another gay man became very abusive when he’d had a few and for no reason decided to start making horrible sexually explicit comments about me. According to others that behaviour wasn’t unusual of him when drunk. He got kicked out and barred.

I was quite shocked, somewhat naively it seems, when I came out to find that gay men are at least as misogynistic as their straight brethren, and in some cases more so, or at least more overtly so. Not all gay men obviously, but then not all straight men either, I just don’t know who will be until I find out, which I’d rather not do in places where I am vulnerable.

I hate the way the single sex spaces issue always gets reduced to sex crimes. Sex crimes are not the only reason I don't want men in the same changing room/toilet as me.

It's about privacy from the oppersite sex. (amongst other things)

Plus the post on twitter says all men are a danger to women and children. And although women may not be at risk of sexual violence from gay men, children can be.

Yes of course. Sexuality has nothing to do with hugely superior physical strength. Men don't reserve their violence for the sex or age group they are sexually attracted to.

All males can be a danger to women because virtually all adult males are stronger and larger than all females, unless they are disabled.

I really think there is a benefit to precision in language on these things.

You can break down risk attached to groups into subgroups which may differ. That's how collection of data, how science, works. It's simply not accurate to say that you can't do that. It's entirely possible that gay men are less of a risk of violence for women.

You can still say gay men should not therefore be admitted to women's spaces, because no one can tell for sure who is a gay man, or because bad men might pretend to be gay, or just because women want privacy. Those are all totally compatible with a statement that there is a different statistical risk for the sub group compared to the group as a whole. It's also compatible with the fact that it isn't possible to know the risk of any man as an individual based on the statistics for men as a group. It could be much greater or much less.

Gay men are still male-born and so they have male-born privilege and all the entitlement that comes with it. Sure, compared to straight men they understand oppression and the reality of being marginalised for who they are but they are still male at the end of the day. They are raised in a society that despises female-ness and seeks to control women's bodies. Male-born people as a group have higher rates of violence than female-born people so anyone who is male-born is a higher risk to anyone who is female-born, regardless of how they identify or what their sexual orientation is.

All this talk of statistics and sweeping generalisations that gay men are nicer and understand oppression, etc sounds like a load of bollocks to me.

There are lots of marginalised men - you could use the same argument to say that black men, or Eastern European immigrant men or poor men pose less of a threat to women because they're also marginalised and therefore might understand women's oppression better. Just because straight white males have the most power, it doesn't mean that other males are on a par with women.

Gay men aren't a homogeneous group and the notion that they have some sort of collective mindset is offensive nonsense. Gay men come in all sorts of variants, as do the general population. To say otherwise is merely stereotyping.

Furthermore, when it comes to statistics, these assumptions fail to take into account the fact that male homosexuality was illegal until relatively recently and that there are still lots of gay/bi men in heterosexual relationships for all sorts of reasons. People aren't compelled to reveal their sexuality when violent crime is recorded, so this assumption that male violence against women in heterosexual relationships is almost exclusively committed by straight men relies on unfounded assumptions about people's sexuality based on the relationship they are in at a moment in time. I would imagine that lots of men over the years who have committed violence against women were actually gay. It wasn't like homosexuality became legal and more people were suddenly born gay - they obviously existed before they were legally allowed to and many were doing so in heterosexual relationships.

Gay men are as misogynistic as straight men, so in that sense they are damaging to women.

The other side of this coin is that we should exclude lesbians from female spaces because it is sexual attraction which is dangerous. This is of course ridiculous (although amazingly it has been suggested). It is not sexual attraction to women which makes some men dangerous it is superior physical strength coupled with a sense of entitlement and misogyny.

Good point Seventyone. I have never ever walked down a dark street on high alert, worried that a lesbian is going to jump out of the shadows and attack me!

The other side of this coin is that we should exclude lesbians from female spaces because it is sexual attraction which is dangerous. This is of course ridiculous (although amazingly it has been suggested). It is not sexual attraction to women which makes some men dangerous it is superior physical strength coupled with a sense of entitlement and misogyny.

To me its not just that. It's the male body. I remember being in a communal changing room and being embarrassed and my mum saying, "no one is bothered about you, we all have the same thing". That sums it up really. I don't want to be changing or toileting around male people. I don't actually mind if a woman looks on admiringly at my body, we're all women we're all the same.

Gay men are still men yes there is no sexual element there but they are still men bigger stronger faster etc etc

It is not sexual attraction to women which makes some men dangerous, it is superior physical strength coupled with a sense of entitlement and misogyny

That’s it in a nutshell.

The other side of this coin is that we should exclude lesbians from female spaces because it is sexual attraction which is dangerous. This is of course ridiculous (although amazingly it has been suggested). It is not sexual attraction to women which makes some men dangerous it is superior physical strength coupled with a sense of entitlement and misogyny

But I think we have to be clear that this is an empirical statement. There is really no substantial amount of evidence that lesbians do things like go into toilets and assault other women. If we found that there were a lot of lesbians doing this, or secretly videotaping women for the internet, we might want to do something about it. That would be a reasonable thing to discuss. I'd have said more than, or as well as, being about female and male bodies, its about the forms their sexuality takes.

When we talk about risk or danger, as in, are gay men, or red haired men, or some other minority group of men, more or less dangerous to women, it doesn't just mean in toilets, does it? I think unless someone specifies it means overall. And the question are they as dangerous is not the same as, are they potentially as dangerous - those are quite different questions.

Personal anecdote. I have been assaulted several times (breasts and undercarriage grabbed) by gay men, as apparently it "didn't matter" because they weren't attracted to women.

Yes, this has happened to me many times also. When I protested, I was told to stop being a bloody prude, I don't fancy you anyway

I guess exclusively gay men are going be less likely to rape a woman, and more likely to rape a man, but they are just as likely to be violent, but are less likely to live in close proximity to or be in romantic relationships with a woman.

I think this is nitpicking though, as gay men are men, and this is as useful a definition as botanists are safer than footballers. We are talking about a sex class as being statistically more violent. Not who their victims are likely to be

I remember seeing an interview with a woman who had been homeless as a child and ended up being forced in to prostution. One thing I remember because it surprised me was she said was that all men would have sex with (rape acutally) a underage prostitute, ALL men. Old, young, rich, poor, partnered, single, gay, straight. It suprised me at the time.

The point being she LOOKED like a child, its was easy to tell straight away she was not an adult, and thats why men who would not otherwise wanted sex with her. Or this was her take on it.

@Bezalelle yep I’ve had that too. I shouldn’t be upset that they groped me as they weren’t sexually attracted to me. Well that makes it all ok then

Many years ago I was invited to a gay club that both lesbians and gays frequented.

I wasn't told that the female toilets were used by the gay males for sex, particularly glory hole sex. I should have backed away as soon as I walked in as I was groped and jeered at by several of the men in there. Once in a cubicle, a man poked his penis through the hole and started peeing. I was quick enough to throw my hand up so only my hand got wet and I undoubtedly hurt him but I was still shocked.

I've never actually told anyone about this as I'm still ashamed to this day that I was stupid enough to not have had the foresight that this would happen.

Until then I was under the impression that gay men were no threat to women. Now I know better.

My bravado going in there was a result of abuse by a male in my early teens. I was determined in my twenties that no male would ever abuse me again. I was stupid but now my common sense overrules my bravado - just about every penis owner is capable of violence towards women no matter their sexuality or how they identify.

This thread is a great example of what happens when people start drawing on subjective personal experiences to explain why a certain sub-group of men does or doesn't pose a risk to women.

It's just another version of Not My Nigel coupled with specific negative experiences which would be explained away by doubters on the basis that posters making unfair generalisations.

This is why fairplayforwomen are absolutely right to state that it's male bodies that pose a risk to females and children. It doesn't matter about any other characteristics of a specific male body or the mind that inhabits it - the male body is what poses an inherent risk.

Sexuality, skin colour, gender identity, etc doesn't come into it - male bodies, all of them, potentially pose a risk to women which is why women's spaces are necessary.