Turn him down and he yells, calls the woman names, maybe attacks her now or later, stalks her, rapes her, murders her, kills a kid, shoots up a mall, or mows down a crowd with a van, or…
Turn him down and he yells, calls the woman names, maybe attacks her now or later, stalks her, rapes her, murders her, kills a kid, shoots up a mall, or mows down a crowd with a van, or…
Definitely common everyday occurrences and not massively-cherry picked sensationalism.
women fear being killed
A completely irrational fear in the US at least, given that in a country of 340,000,000, less than 5,000 women are murdered a year. And that’s even if you pretended every single murder was by a rejected man.
Stop letting ideological propaganda make you paranoid.
“Nearly 1 in 5 women (18.3%) and 1 in 71 men (1.4%) in the United States have been raped at some time in their lives, including completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration.
An estimated 13% of women and 6% of men have experienced sexual coercion in their lifetime (i.e., unwanted sexual penetration after being pressured in a nonphysical way); and 27.2% of women and 11.7% of men have experienced unwanted sexual contact.
And now the real surprise: when asked about experiences in the last 12 months, men reported being “made to penetrate”—either by physical force or due to intoxication—at virtually the same rates as women reported rape (both 1.1 percent in 2010, and 1.7 and 1.6 respectively in 2011).
In other words, if being made to penetrate someone was counted as rape—and why shouldn’t it be?—then the headlines could have focused on a truly sensational CDC finding: that women rape men as often as men rape women.
I only described actively fearing getting murdered in your everyday life, as irrational.
Being smug and disingenuous at the same time is a particularly bad combination; educate yourself on how to be honest, and you won’t embarrass yourself nearly as much in public fora.
The stranger danger for rape and murder may be less than the known perpetrator but that doesn’t mean it’s non existant - known perpetrator is way too fucking high.
Male violence (against men and women) is fact not ideological propaganda.
Excuse me but what the fuck are you going on about irrational fear? Do you live in unicorn sparkle land? I’m regularly followed by absolute creeps and people will yell and get physically aggravated at me if I turn them down wrong and personally I don’t know a single femme person where this isn’t just a known risk of going outside. I’ve literally had a gun pulled on me in broad daylight in the middle of town and they followed me in their car for several blocks. My partner had someone yell at them while taking out trash “One of these days I’m going to kill one of you fucking c*nts”. I’ve been molested in a parking lot while there were people around. We don’t even live in sketchy neighborhoods. The fear is not irrational and not unfounded and we never know which of these encounters could end in assault or death so we have to assume and act in a way to prep for the worst
I think people don’t realize that because we are fearful, we take a lot of extra precaution to avoid being put into situations that could spiral out of control. It’s almost like a survivorship bias.
Excuse me but what the fuck are you going on about irrational fear?
It is objectively irrational to actively fear something that happens to 0.0014% (that’s 14% of 1% of 1%) of the population (and I was specifically talking about “being killed”, which is what I quoted–you’re not trying to move the goalposts by pretending I was talking about anything else, are you~?), whether you like it or not. You should be dozens of times more terrified to ever step in a car than to reject a man, if things were in proportion. But, because your fear is irrational, you’re not.
Given that you indeed shoved those goalposts a large distance from what I was saying in the rest of your comment, and that I see from your comment history that you believe in the “patriarchy” conspiracy theory, it’s clear to me it would serve no purpose to seriously discuss anything on this topic with you.
336,199,359 people, more or less. And that is both male and female. If we’re talking numbers of women murdered, how about you use the number of women in the USA, not the numbers of both women and men?
And while we’re at it, how about you include the number of women who are doxxed, beaten, and raped too? It isn’t just murder. 1 in 4 women in the US have dealt with harassment from a man, often times serious harassment. That it doesn’t always end in murder doesn’t make it less of a problem.
You’re right that it might not make sense to worry about being killed in particular, but the person you responded to described a series of genuinely scary situations, and it isn’t irrational to be fearful for your safety in those moments. But then you had to go and say,
Given that you indeed shoved those goalposts a large distance from what I was saying in the rest of your comment, and that I see from your comment history that you believe in the “patriarchy” conspiracy theory, it’s clear to me it would serve no purpose to seriously discuss anything on this topic with you.
and oooooh, you really lost me there, not gonna lie. I’m curious of your understanding of “the patriarchy” is different than mine, but surely you recognize that we live in a male-dominated society, no?
the person you responded to described a series of genuinely scary situations, and it isn’t irrational to be fearful for your safety in those moments
Good thing my comment was under a quote only talking about being killed, making it obvious I was only talking about that one thing.
The grand irony in the phrase “women fear being killed”, juxtaposed against men fearing something else, as if they have no reason to fear being killed by comparison, is that the other sex is killed far, far more often. Imagine someone saying “women fear chipped nails, men fear breast cancer”, for an idea of how abhorrent and sexist “men fear rejection, women fear being killed” actually is.
I’m curious of your understanding of “the patriarchy” is different than mine, but surely you recognize that we live in a male-dominated society, no?
What feminists et al call “the patriarchy” is just the collective of social standards and expectations, which do obviously exist, but the ‘conspiracy theory’ part is in the deliberate anti-male name they use for it, attributing all of it to some sort of sinister male plot, within the equally-bullshit ‘males are all predators, females are all victims’ narrative, by giving this collective a name that places all of the agency and blame at the feet of men. This is done plenty of other times by the same group of ideologues; a couple of examples:
The act of assuming someone lacks knowledge because of a trait of theirs that has no actual relationship to having said knowledge is called “mansplaining”, creating the false narrative that only men do it, they only do it to women, and that being a woman is the only ‘irrelevant trait’. Fact is, both sexes do this, TO both sexes, for many reasons, including but not nearly limited to their sex.
When a fanny pack is marketed to men by using camouflage or gunmetal color schemes in the packaging, it’s because of “male fragility” (i.e. men are so terrified of possessing a stereotypically-female thing that they won’t buy it otherwise). When a set of tools is marketed to women by using floral or pink color schemes, it’s magically no longer ‘fragility’, but an oppressive misogynist plot by the evil corporation.
The fact is that all of the commonly-complained about harmful elements of “the patriarchy” (e.g. the imposition of harmful sex stereotypes on individuals of both sexes), are things both put into place, and maintained perpetuated, by men AND women. Even topics like abortion are falsely characterized as being a strictly male (pro-life) vs. female (pro-choice) issue, when the fact is that the percentage of women who are pro-life, and of men who are pro-choice, are both in the 40s!
All of this “patriarchy” and adjacent crap is just bigoted ideologues creating division where it doesn’t exist, down to giving things that do exist deliberately misleading names that absolve and remove all agency from the in group, in order to blame it all on the out group.
What feminists et al call “the patriarchy” is just the collective of social standards and expectations, which do obviously exist, but the ‘conspiracy theory’ part is in the deliberate anti-male name they use for it
Right? I feel like the person you replied to is one of the people I would avoid in public. Especially since they don’t show a shred of empathy for the real fear women in this country have of being assaulted or murdered by a man with anger issues.
And that’s not even getting into those who suffer from domestic violence.
Radical idea, how about you don’t try and pull this on someone who has stated that they are in the cohort of people who has experienced this type of violence repeatedly with examples?
It is incredibly invalidating to have someone try and use percentages to tell you what you should and shouldn’t be afraid of when you have already had legitimate cause to fear for your safety in the past. This person is not the audience for that and you are only going to make them more afraid because you have demonstrated that you place objective percentages based on wider population demographics over their personal lived experience… Which is a jerk thing to do because what it ACTUALLY does is make a previously victimized person relive experiences of other invalidations they experienced following the traumatic events and deepens their overall distrust of people to care and take what happened to them seriously.
You are trying to score points to prove you’re right at the expense of someone’s overall well being when you do this. Even if you are right it’s a shitty thing to do to a person.
Rare bad things have happened to me, too. But recognizing that they are indeed rare is important, arguably even more so because I have faced it.
Fearing that something bad that’s happened to you will happen again, is natural and understandable, it’s how the human brain works.
Doesn’t make it not irrational, though. Don’t take as a personal insult the stating of that fact. It’s also not “invalidation” to state that fact, as the fact is literally not a direct comment on anything you actually experienced in your actual individual life.
This is coming from someone who was molested by an older girl as a child. Should I fear and suspect all older women? Racists also use this logic to try and justify being ‘wary’ of all members of a race after having some bad experience with one or a few individuals of that race.
The irony of all this is that you’re interpreting my words as a personal attack on you, when it’s literally healthier to get yourself out of the mindset that ‘bad men are everywhere and the next trauma is around every corner waiting to strike’. That’s no way to live.
I want to see people not swallowed whole by their traumas.
Rare bad things have happened to me, too. But recognizing that they are indeed rare is important, arguably even more so because I have faced it.
Survivorship bias. Women take far more considerations than men do. You believe I think twice about going out at night to the store? My wife was accosted twice in a month doing that, so she never did it again. And look, accosting is down! Why worry, it’s on the decline!
Bad thing happened to my wife 2 times and me 0 times so you’re wrong because my reality is everyone’s reality
Imagine a guy saying “Domestic violence doesn’t exist; I’ve never seen a man hit his girlfriend/wife”, and how stupid you’d think he was for saying that.
I am not the person you originally spoke to and I do not feel myself personally attacked. I am also not someone who has experienced this particular trauma but I have experienced some fairly nasty trauma in other fields none-the-less.
Your method of healing your personal trauma does not mend theirs and you are not presenting it in an empathetic way. You are trying to shame them and humiliate them for seeming silly for their experiences by trying to treat them as hysterical. There are ways to de-escalate a fear reaponse in people but that isn’t what you’re doing. You are not listening when someone routinely is telling you they aren’t ready and trying to force your framework on them to make yourself feel justified. Recognize your audience. If someone is going to de-escalate their fear response it is going to be a conscious process over time, not from a random stranger on the internet swaggering up and saying “I have numbers”. Who knows where the person you are talking to might be coming from? They may be in a community that is suffering a disproportional problem where that fear might actually be logical.
Rather than YOU feeling attacked about where she’s coming and trying to strike back maybe realize - if you’ve managed to deal with your traumas you have the advantage of an emotional distance they do not. Use that distance to display empathy to that situation or back off because you are not going to make anything better otherwise. Do you want to be right or do you want to do good because sometimes you have to choose.
Ever heard the saying “it’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility”?
When someone’s irrational/exaggerated fear becomes manifested as sexism, that manifestation absolutely deserves to get shut down, emphatically. If they don’t like that, it’s too damn bad, you are responsible for the statements you make, regardless of what traumas you’ve suffered.
I empathize with the trauma, not with the sexism. There is a difference, and no trauma excuses bigotry.
I stand by all I’ve said. No one would excuse a white person using the same logic to imply they’re justified in constantly fearing violence from black people, no matter how many black people may have done something bad to them in their past.
Half the problem with a lot of these discussions is that they devolve into the “I’ve been wronged” kyriarchy Olympics where people are not content to simply be wronged but they must be the most wronged and everyone else must be smacked for even implying that they are also wronged . She was doing it AND you are doing it too. She’s just reflecting your energy back at you Neither of you are going to get far until you can shelve your individually held needs long enough to recognize the other’s. Yes you were hurt, so were they but they are never going to offer YOU empathy if you can’t demonstrate you understand their fear is real to them.
Remember that women’s indoctrination for all the things they need to watch for to keep themselves safe starts early and there are very rare places in the world where they actually venture out after dark alone without fear. They are taught from childhood that there be monsters, that they are helpless, that they have to be suspicious and wary. You don’t treat fear that has been cultivated since childhood by the people training you to be an adult by dismissal. You don’t treat any fear by dismissal.
You want to talk about owning your shit? This isn’t a race to claim the most victimhood - that is toxic as shit. You want to change things for the better make people feel heard and ask what tools they need to feel safe. Make everyone feel safer and more supported rather than like they can’t trust you to care about anything but your own shit because yeah their fear is your problem. But if you can’t properly engage with it it is never going to go away.
Both sexes yell and call people names. Arguably, women are more likely to do it when rejected, on average (being called a f-slur (I wouldn’t censor it but I don’t know if I’m allowed to frankly use words like that here) by a woman you just turned down is a popular play, I’ve noticed, over the years), simply because they’re more likely to be less exposed to rejection (since they approach, and therefore put themselves in a position where they can be rejected, much less often), and exposure to rejection is generally how someone learns how to handle it maturely.
Also, you clearly have no idea what gaslighting is.
The part you’re missing is how very many times women have to deal with fucked up men. As a society we should be doing a lot better raising boys and doing a lot more for men. But that’s a whole other ball o wax.
When men hear “What’s the worst that could happen?” they focus on the “could” and think about probable results and rank them by awfulness. This makes sense because the gender of “man” is sociologically defined in no small part by expendability,
When women hear “What’s the worst that could happen?” they focus on the “worst” and think about awful results and rank them by probability. This makes sense because the gender of “woman” is sociologically defined in no small part by preciousness.
This line of reasoning doesn’t have anything to do with the lofty ideals of what a gender role is in society or women thinking themselves “precious” or focusing on “could” vs “worst” or whatever you call that. It has to do with the fact that, statistically, women are in more danger than men. Full stop.
of all the sexual assault that happens, more than 80% of the victims are women and more than 95% of the perpetrators are men.
This is demonstrably false. I followed your link and found that the original citation is “U.S. Dept. of Justice, Violence Against Women Report, 2002.” I wasn’t able to find this specific report to check the data, but the reference I usually use is the often-cited 2011 CDC Sexual Violence report, which is 10 years more recent, and which is also the origin of the “99% of rapists are men” myth (but more on that later), so I don’t think you’d object to it too much.
Here are the statistics for sexual violence in the year 2011, according to the CDC:
an estimated 1.6% of women reported that they were raped in the 12 months preceding the survey. The case count for men reporting rape in the preceding 12 months was too small to produce a statistically reliable prevalence estimate.
And
The percentages of women and men who experienced these other forms of sexual violence victimization in the 12 months preceding the survey were an estimated 5.5% and 5.1%, respectively.
Added together, we see that 7.1% of women and 5.1% of men reported being victims of sexual violence in 2011. That is, 58% of victims of all sexual violence in 2011 were women, and 42% were men. For every 3 female victims, there were 2 male victims.
Now on to your second claim: that more than 95% of perpetrators are men. From the “Characteristics of Sexual Violence Perpetrators” section about a third of the way down, keeping in mind the percentages above:
For female rape victims, an estimated 99.0% had only male perpetrators (more on this later…). In addition, an estimated 94.7% of female victims of sexual violence other than rape had only male perpetrators.
And
For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced. The majority of male rape victims (an estimated 79.3%) had only male perpetrators. For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims had only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (an estimated 82.6%), sexual coercion (an estimated 80.0%), and unwanted sexual contact (an estimated 54.7%). For noncontact unwanted sexual experiences, nearly half of male victims (an estimated 46.0%) had only male perpetrators and an estimated 43.6% had only female perpetrators.
To help us with the breakdowns of these numbers, earlier in the report we find that:
1.7% of men were made to penetrate a perpetrator in the 12 months preceding the survey [and] an estimated 1.3% of men experienced sexual coercion in the 12 months before taking the survey [and] an estimated 1.6% of men having experienced unwanted sexual contact in the 12 months before taking the survey [and] an estimated 2.5% of men experienced this type of victimization (noncontact unwanted sexual experiences) in the previous 12 months
So, of the 1.7% of made to penetrate male victims, 82.6% of perpetrators were female. Of the 1.3% sexual coercion, 80% of perpetrators were female. Of the 1.6% unwanted sexual contact, 54.7% were female, and of the 2.5% noncontact, 43.6% were female.
So, 1.4% of the 1.7% made to penetrate, 1% of the 1.3% sexual coercion, .9% of the 1.6% unwanted sexual contact, and 1.1% of the 2.5% noncontact.
So, 4.4% of the 7.1% of men reporting sexual violence had female perpetrators. That is, 62% of sexual violence against men is committed by women (in 2011).
So, going back to our numbers above, we see that 62% of the 42% of sexual violence with men as victims was committed by women.
Our final numbers are: 74% of sexual violence in total is committed by men, and 26% is committed by women. Which ain’t great, but that feels a lot more realistic, and it’s a far cry from the intentionally misleading numbers you’re citing.
BUT IT GETS WORSE…
What happens when we look at just rape? Note that first we have to figure out what the CDC means by “rape”, because at first “99% of rape is committed by men” looks pretty damning.
Well, “rape” is defined by the CDC for the purposes of this study as “completed or attempted forced penetration or alcohol- or drug-facilitated penetration”. That is, only being penetrated counts as rape.
Men, on the other hand, get the completely separate category “made to penetrate”, that is, “being forced to have sex with someone, just doing the penetrating instead of being penetrated.”
So, 99% of rapists are men because rape is intentionally defined as “being penetrated” to exclude male victims of rape from the statistics. I wonder why…
Well, what happens when we actually look at those numbers, counting “made to penetrate” as, y’know, rape, because it is rape?
an estimated 1.6% of women (or approximately 1.9 million women) were raped in the 12 months before taking the survey
And
The case count for men reporting rape in the preceding 12 months was too small to produce a statistically reliable prevalence estimate.
Which is, again, because male rape victims are effectively excluded from this definition. Also, we have this:
an estimated 1.7% of men were made to penetrate a perpetrator in the 12 months preceding the survey
And
Characteristics of Sexual Violence Perpetrators For female rape victims, an estimated 99.0% had only male perpetrators. In addition, an estimated 94.7% of female victims of sexual violence other than rape had only male perpetrators. For male victims, the sex of the perpetrator varied by the type of sexual violence experienced. The majority of male rape victims (an estimated 79.3%) had only male perpetrators. For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims had only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (an estimated 82.6%), sexual coercion (an estimated 80.0%),
Note that these numbers clearly show that made to penetrate happens just as much each year as “rape”. This means that fully half of rape victims are men (in 2011 - the number fluctuates in the other years of the study, but not more than 5%).
Finally, if 99% of rapists are men and 83% of “made to penetrators” are women … then an estimated 42% of the perpetrators of nonconsensual sex (that is, rape) in 2011 were women.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I think it’s important to debunk this sort of misandrist misinformation.
Edit:Here’s a Time article that confirms these numbers. They also mention that boys under 15 are more likely to be sexually assaulted than women over 40, and are more than twice as likely to be assaulted as girls under 15.
The article seems mostly fine to me, though I admit that I did initially just scan it for the statistics. The only thing I saw that I really disagreed with was her assertion that “made to penetrate” victims shouldn’t call themselves rape victims, and I absolutely believe that they should. I do fully agree with the author that getting drunk and then regretting your actions the night before should not constitute a crime of the same seriousness as forcible rape, and I also believe that the CDC’s questionnaire is misleading and far less than perfect. What were your problems with the article?
As far as Cathy Young herself, I’d never heard of her before, but according to her Wikipedia page it seems like we might agree on quite a bit. The Wiki article is short, however, so I may not have the entire story. Is there some reason I should dislike her?
As far as Cathy Young herself, I’d never heard of her before, but according to her Wikipedia page it seems like we might agree on quite a bit. The Wiki article is short, however, so I may not have the entire story. Is there some reason I should dislike her?
I don’t know much about her, but I do know that she’s kind of consistently had shit takes about like, gamergate, and I think SA more generally, but sue me if I’m wrong, I don’t really know too much. It’s mostly like, old news shit takes that I can’t remember the specific basis for. I associate her with bringing bad vibes to the function, and MGTOW shit. In any case, I think it would probably be better practice to just, cite the study that she’s citing directly, if that’s the actual like, statistical set that you want to have a citation of, right, that’s probably better practice. Especially if you’re using the same source she is for your analysis, that kind of makes her analysis a little bit, both redundant, and not really like, on topic. But I’m not your grandma, you can do whatever you want.
For the article itself, I think if I’m reading it correctly, and maybe also the study, then I kind of, disagree with her extrapolations about drunk sexual acts. Mostly in this-
" It is safe to assume that the vast majority of the CDC’s male respondents who were “made to penetrate” someone would not call themselves rape victims—and with good reason." -type of shit. It’s a study that inherently relies on self-reporting, right, but the basis of the study’s questions are to kind of get away from this blanket “Hey, were you raped?”
-type of shit. There are definitely cases in which people have been SA’d, and would accurately describe a SA experience if you were to question them, but wouldn’t define the act as SA. I think this is probably the case for a lot of male SA, and I think this is legitimately the case for prison SA, in many instances, if I’m remembering correctly. So I don’t really think that the person’s testimony should be considered reliable, and more than that, I think the “appealing to the theoretical person’s definition of a thing as being accurate to the thing” tactic is a little, weird. Gives me bad vibes.
For the study, right, I know I just said, sometimes people don’t accurately self-report, right, but I think I’d also probably think that it’s a mistake to kind of, prioritize the “last 12 months” stats, because they’re “more accurate”. They’re not really more or less accurate, they’re just kind of, more accurate to what they are specifically about. Which is questioning if SA happened in the last 12 months, among the polled peoples. We don’t really know if there’s kind of just a specific subset of the population of women, through some other factor or age range, that’s experiencing SA at higher rates, which I would think is probably somewhat likely. But that’s also, my dumb ass, so who knows. In any case, given that, I kinda find her-
“In other words, if being made to penetrate someone was counted as rape—and why shouldn’t it be?—then the headlines could have focused on a truly sensational CDC finding: that women rape men as often as men rape women.”
-to be a kind of cherry picked and sensationalist, while also kind of treading a maybe more socially acceptable “centrist” libnuts kind of position. It’s technically accurate, which oh yes, pog futurama reference that nobody gets the context to, but you can kind of see why it’s like, stupid, right?
Probably, this kinda stuff is why I remember not liking her that much. Take this all with like, a mountain of salt, though, I am somewhat known to be a pretty good vector for misinfo, lies, and deceit. If I say that, then I’m free from the burden of proof, or like, holding reasonable positions, right? I can just say whatever I want? That sounds right, let’s go with that.
I’m just going to leave the cdc report on sexual assault from 2010-2012 that says the same thing as my initial claim, with the same statistics in detail, for you to draw your own conclusions from. Check the tables from page 18 onward.
My friend, statistics aren’t sexist. They just are. I don’t really have time to sit here and argue that women suffer more from sexual violence than men do. It’s not really up for debate, and I’ve learned not to engage the people who think it is.
If you’re going to accuse me of misandry because I’m defending a woman’s prerogative to feel safe, I’m just not going to fire back. Have fun with that.
I think you’ll want to check those numbers, actually, since they perfectly match everything I’m saying (since it’s the published CDC report from the same time). But it is reassuring that even the source you cite has the same numbers I’m citing.
If you’re so certain that your numbers are borne out by the data, could you please point out exactly where your claim that “more than 80% of the victims [of sexual assault] are women and more than 95% of the perpetrators are men” is borne out by the yearly data in this report?
My friend, statistics aren’t sexist. They just are.
I agree, which is why I took the time to cite the statistics exactly, instead of throwing out random numbers that aren’t borne out by the data.
I don’t really have time to sit here and argue that women suffer more from sexual violence than men do. It’s not really up for debate, and I’ve learned not to engage the people who think it is.
I’m not arguing that women don’t suffer more from sexual violence than men do. I’m just arguing that women suffer much less from sexual violence compared to men than is usually believed, that women commit sexual assault much more than is usually believed, and that men are raped as often as women are.
As you say, this is not up for debate, and whether you “debate me” or not, it won’t change the facts, and I’ve made sure that this information is now available and organized for anyone who doesn’t insist on closing their eyes to misandry.
Edit in response to your edit (the last line of your comment): That’s not an accurate description of what’s happening here, and playing the victim under the guise of “I’m just defending a woman’s prerogative to feel safe” isn’t going to work when all I’ve done is show that your misandrist claims about the perpetrators and victims of sexual violence are not correct.
Thank you for taking the time to break down these numbers. That CDC report is extremely misleading and this is not the first time I’ve seen someone attempt to break down the numbers. But you’ve done an especially good job of explaining it.
I didn’t claim that the statistics I made were on rape or penetration or any specific form of sexual violence. Just that incidences are much higher in women being the victims and men being the perpetrators.
Anyway, I’m not continuing this conversation further. It’s completely ridiculous to look at these statistics and draw the conclusion that I must be misandrist for reading the numbers how they are, because your breakdown of the numbers don’t exactly line up with mine but they still paint the same overall picture.
Please do enlighten me. Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve blamed women considering the worst case scenario on some self-important role attached to their gender, and not the very basic and obvious line of reasoning that their safety is on the line.
I can see that. I neither blame anyone, nor ascribe self-importance. Men are encouraged to disregard threats, women encouraged to take them seriously. This is an observation, not a moral judgement.
Violence against men is statistically underreported, and they’re still the majority of reported victims. Everyone’s safety is on the line, men are just taught to disregard that risk and women are taught not to. Again, observation, not moral judgement.
Yeah. Hilarious.
Turn him down and he yells, calls the woman names, maybe attacks her now or later, stalks her, rapes her, murders her, kills a kid, shoots up a mall, or mows down a crowd with a van, or…
Men fear rejection, women fear being killed.
Definitely common everyday occurrences and not massively-cherry picked sensationalism.
A completely irrational fear in the US at least, given that in a country of 340,000,000, less than 5,000 women are murdered a year. And that’s even if you pretended every single murder was by a rejected man.
Stop letting ideological propaganda make you paranoid.
From NSVRC:
https://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/
Great, so you understand now that sexual violence is actually a widespread problem & not an irrational fear. Glad to have helped educate.
I only described actively fearing getting murdered in your everyday life, as irrational.
Being smug and disingenuous at the same time is a particularly bad combination; educate yourself on how to be honest, and you won’t embarrass yourself nearly as much in public fora.
Being intellectually honest is free. Do better.
The stranger danger for rape and murder may be less than the known perpetrator but that doesn’t mean it’s non existant - known perpetrator is way too fucking high. Male violence (against men and women) is fact not ideological propaganda.
https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/crime/UN_BriefFem_251121.pdf
Holy moving goalposts, batman!
Excuse me but what the fuck are you going on about irrational fear? Do you live in unicorn sparkle land? I’m regularly followed by absolute creeps and people will yell and get physically aggravated at me if I turn them down wrong and personally I don’t know a single femme person where this isn’t just a known risk of going outside. I’ve literally had a gun pulled on me in broad daylight in the middle of town and they followed me in their car for several blocks. My partner had someone yell at them while taking out trash “One of these days I’m going to kill one of you fucking c*nts”. I’ve been molested in a parking lot while there were people around. We don’t even live in sketchy neighborhoods. The fear is not irrational and not unfounded and we never know which of these encounters could end in assault or death so we have to assume and act in a way to prep for the worst
I think people don’t realize that because we are fearful, we take a lot of extra precaution to avoid being put into situations that could spiral out of control. It’s almost like a survivorship bias.
It is objectively irrational to actively fear something that happens to 0.0014% (that’s 14% of 1% of 1%) of the population (and I was specifically talking about “being killed”, which is what I quoted–you’re not trying to move the goalposts by pretending I was talking about anything else, are you~?), whether you like it or not. You should be dozens of times more terrified to ever step in a car than to reject a man, if things were in proportion. But, because your fear is irrational, you’re not.
Given that you indeed shoved those goalposts a large distance from what I was saying in the rest of your comment, and that I see from your comment history that you believe in the “patriarchy” conspiracy theory, it’s clear to me it would serve no purpose to seriously discuss anything on this topic with you.
336,199,359 people, more or less. And that is both male and female. If we’re talking numbers of women murdered, how about you use the number of women in the USA, not the numbers of both women and men?
And while we’re at it, how about you include the number of women who are doxxed, beaten, and raped too? It isn’t just murder. 1 in 4 women in the US have dealt with harassment from a man, often times serious harassment. That it doesn’t always end in murder doesn’t make it less of a problem.
You’re right that it might not make sense to worry about being killed in particular, but the person you responded to described a series of genuinely scary situations, and it isn’t irrational to be fearful for your safety in those moments. But then you had to go and say,
and oooooh, you really lost me there, not gonna lie. I’m curious of your understanding of “the patriarchy” is different than mine, but surely you recognize that we live in a male-dominated society, no?
Good thing my comment was under a quote only talking about being killed, making it obvious I was only talking about that one thing.
The grand irony in the phrase “women fear being killed”, juxtaposed against men fearing something else, as if they have no reason to fear being killed by comparison, is that the other sex is killed far, far more often. Imagine someone saying “women fear chipped nails, men fear breast cancer”, for an idea of how abhorrent and sexist “men fear rejection, women fear being killed” actually is.
What feminists et al call “the patriarchy” is just the collective of social standards and expectations, which do obviously exist, but the ‘conspiracy theory’ part is in the deliberate anti-male name they use for it, attributing all of it to some sort of sinister male plot, within the equally-bullshit ‘males are all predators, females are all victims’ narrative, by giving this collective a name that places all of the agency and blame at the feet of men. This is done plenty of other times by the same group of ideologues; a couple of examples:
The fact is that all of the commonly-complained about harmful elements of “the patriarchy” (e.g. the imposition of harmful sex stereotypes on individuals of both sexes), are things both put into place, and maintained perpetuated, by men AND women. Even topics like abortion are falsely characterized as being a strictly male (pro-life) vs. female (pro-choice) issue, when the fact is that the percentage of women who are pro-life, and of men who are pro-choice, are both in the 40s!
All of this “patriarchy” and adjacent crap is just bigoted ideologues creating division where it doesn’t exist, down to giving things that do exist deliberately misleading names that absolve and remove all agency from the in group, in order to blame it all on the out group.
Yikes.
Right? I feel like the person you replied to is one of the people I would avoid in public. Especially since they don’t show a shred of empathy for the real fear women in this country have of being assaulted or murdered by a man with anger issues.
And that’s not even getting into those who suffer from domestic violence.
Yeah the 3rd comment down if you sort by Top is:
Seriously, what the hell happened here?
yeah for serious “woah”. I replied earlier up and I wish I hadn’t bothered now.
I definitely am less happy with the overall Lemmy crowd knowing just how many are out-and-out misogynists.
Radical idea, how about you don’t try and pull this on someone who has stated that they are in the cohort of people who has experienced this type of violence repeatedly with examples?
It is incredibly invalidating to have someone try and use percentages to tell you what you should and shouldn’t be afraid of when you have already had legitimate cause to fear for your safety in the past. This person is not the audience for that and you are only going to make them more afraid because you have demonstrated that you place objective percentages based on wider population demographics over their personal lived experience… Which is a jerk thing to do because what it ACTUALLY does is make a previously victimized person relive experiences of other invalidations they experienced following the traumatic events and deepens their overall distrust of people to care and take what happened to them seriously.
You are trying to score points to prove you’re right at the expense of someone’s overall well being when you do this. Even if you are right it’s a shitty thing to do to a person.
Rare bad things have happened to me, too. But recognizing that they are indeed rare is important, arguably even more so because I have faced it.
Fearing that something bad that’s happened to you will happen again, is natural and understandable, it’s how the human brain works.
Doesn’t make it not irrational, though. Don’t take as a personal insult the stating of that fact. It’s also not “invalidation” to state that fact, as the fact is literally not a direct comment on anything you actually experienced in your actual individual life.
This is coming from someone who was molested by an older girl as a child. Should I fear and suspect all older women? Racists also use this logic to try and justify being ‘wary’ of all members of a race after having some bad experience with one or a few individuals of that race.
The irony of all this is that you’re interpreting my words as a personal attack on you, when it’s literally healthier to get yourself out of the mindset that ‘bad men are everywhere and the next trauma is around every corner waiting to strike’. That’s no way to live.
I want to see people not swallowed whole by their traumas.
Survivorship bias. Women take far more considerations than men do. You believe I think twice about going out at night to the store? My wife was accosted twice in a month doing that, so she never did it again. And look, accosting is down! Why worry, it’s on the decline!
Imagine a guy saying “Domestic violence doesn’t exist; I’ve never seen a man hit his girlfriend/wife”, and how stupid you’d think he was for saying that.
Now you know how you’re being perceived.
I am not the person you originally spoke to and I do not feel myself personally attacked. I am also not someone who has experienced this particular trauma but I have experienced some fairly nasty trauma in other fields none-the-less.
Your method of healing your personal trauma does not mend theirs and you are not presenting it in an empathetic way. You are trying to shame them and humiliate them for seeming silly for their experiences by trying to treat them as hysterical. There are ways to de-escalate a fear reaponse in people but that isn’t what you’re doing. You are not listening when someone routinely is telling you they aren’t ready and trying to force your framework on them to make yourself feel justified. Recognize your audience. If someone is going to de-escalate their fear response it is going to be a conscious process over time, not from a random stranger on the internet swaggering up and saying “I have numbers”. Who knows where the person you are talking to might be coming from? They may be in a community that is suffering a disproportional problem where that fear might actually be logical.
Rather than YOU feeling attacked about where she’s coming and trying to strike back maybe realize - if you’ve managed to deal with your traumas you have the advantage of an emotional distance they do not. Use that distance to display empathy to that situation or back off because you are not going to make anything better otherwise. Do you want to be right or do you want to do good because sometimes you have to choose.
Ever heard the saying “it’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility”?
When someone’s irrational/exaggerated fear becomes manifested as sexism, that manifestation absolutely deserves to get shut down, emphatically. If they don’t like that, it’s too damn bad, you are responsible for the statements you make, regardless of what traumas you’ve suffered.
I empathize with the trauma, not with the sexism. There is a difference, and no trauma excuses bigotry.
I stand by all I’ve said. No one would excuse a white person using the same logic to imply they’re justified in constantly fearing violence from black people, no matter how many black people may have done something bad to them in their past.
This is no different.
Half the problem with a lot of these discussions is that they devolve into the “I’ve been wronged” kyriarchy Olympics where people are not content to simply be wronged but they must be the most wronged and everyone else must be smacked for even implying that they are also wronged . She was doing it AND you are doing it too. She’s just reflecting your energy back at you Neither of you are going to get far until you can shelve your individually held needs long enough to recognize the other’s. Yes you were hurt, so were they but they are never going to offer YOU empathy if you can’t demonstrate you understand their fear is real to them.
Remember that women’s indoctrination for all the things they need to watch for to keep themselves safe starts early and there are very rare places in the world where they actually venture out after dark alone without fear. They are taught from childhood that there be monsters, that they are helpless, that they have to be suspicious and wary. You don’t treat fear that has been cultivated since childhood by the people training you to be an adult by dismissal. You don’t treat any fear by dismissal.
You want to talk about owning your shit? This isn’t a race to claim the most victimhood - that is toxic as shit. You want to change things for the better make people feel heard and ask what tools they need to feel safe. Make everyone feel safer and more supported rather than like they can’t trust you to care about anything but your own shit because yeah their fear is your problem. But if you can’t properly engage with it it is never going to go away.
Hey, you missed this part:
Talk about how this part doesn’t happen because you’ve never personally seen it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
That’s not at all what gaslighting means lol
I know it’s the trendy new word among children but please take the time to read the article you yourself linked.
You’re so passive aggressive. I hate gatekeeping in all its forms.
Both sexes yell and call people names. Arguably, women are more likely to do it when rejected, on average (being called a f-slur (I wouldn’t censor it but I don’t know if I’m allowed to frankly use words like that here) by a woman you just turned down is a popular play, I’ve noticed, over the years), simply because they’re more likely to be less exposed to rejection (since they approach, and therefore put themselves in a position where they can be rejected, much less often), and exposure to rejection is generally how someone learns how to handle it maturely.
Also, you clearly have no idea what gaslighting is.
Post hoc fallacy.
Does a healthy balanced male do all of those things because a woman rejected his advances?
Or is it actually a person likely to end up doing those things who made inappropriate advances in the course of their escapade.
Men don’t generally turn into rampaging gorillas when you decline their advances.
The part you’re missing is how very many times women have to deal with fucked up men. As a society we should be doing a lot better raising boys and doing a lot more for men. But that’s a whole other ball o wax.
Meh. As a society we should do most things better.
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When men hear “What’s the worst that could happen?” they focus on the “could” and think about probable results and rank them by awfulness. This makes sense because the gender of “man” is sociologically defined in no small part by expendability,
When women hear “What’s the worst that could happen?” they focus on the “worst” and think about awful results and rank them by probability. This makes sense because the gender of “woman” is sociologically defined in no small part by preciousness.
This is completely garbage. The reason women have this attitude towards men is because of all the sexual assault that happens, more than 80% of the victims are women and more than 95% of the perpetrators are men.
This line of reasoning doesn’t have anything to do with the lofty ideals of what a gender role is in society or women thinking themselves “precious” or focusing on “could” vs “worst” or whatever you call that. It has to do with the fact that, statistically, women are in more danger than men. Full stop.
This is demonstrably false. I followed your link and found that the original citation is “U.S. Dept. of Justice, Violence Against Women Report, 2002.” I wasn’t able to find this specific report to check the data, but the reference I usually use is the often-cited 2011 CDC Sexual Violence report, which is 10 years more recent, and which is also the origin of the “99% of rapists are men” myth (but more on that later), so I don’t think you’d object to it too much.
Here are the statistics for sexual violence in the year 2011, according to the CDC:
And
Added together, we see that 7.1% of women and 5.1% of men reported being victims of sexual violence in 2011. That is, 58% of victims of all sexual violence in 2011 were women, and 42% were men. For every 3 female victims, there were 2 male victims.
Now on to your second claim: that more than 95% of perpetrators are men. From the “Characteristics of Sexual Violence Perpetrators” section about a third of the way down, keeping in mind the percentages above:
And
To help us with the breakdowns of these numbers, earlier in the report we find that:
So, of the 1.7% of made to penetrate male victims, 82.6% of perpetrators were female. Of the 1.3% sexual coercion, 80% of perpetrators were female. Of the 1.6% unwanted sexual contact, 54.7% were female, and of the 2.5% noncontact, 43.6% were female.
So, 1.4% of the 1.7% made to penetrate, 1% of the 1.3% sexual coercion, .9% of the 1.6% unwanted sexual contact, and 1.1% of the 2.5% noncontact.
So, 4.4% of the 7.1% of men reporting sexual violence had female perpetrators. That is, 62% of sexual violence against men is committed by women (in 2011).
So, going back to our numbers above, we see that 62% of the 42% of sexual violence with men as victims was committed by women.
Our final numbers are: 74% of sexual violence in total is committed by men, and 26% is committed by women. Which ain’t great, but that feels a lot more realistic, and it’s a far cry from the intentionally misleading numbers you’re citing.
BUT IT GETS WORSE…
What happens when we look at just rape? Note that first we have to figure out what the CDC means by “rape”, because at first “99% of rape is committed by men” looks pretty damning.
Well, “rape” is defined by the CDC for the purposes of this study as “completed or attempted forced penetration or alcohol- or drug-facilitated penetration”. That is, only being penetrated counts as rape.
Men, on the other hand, get the completely separate category “made to penetrate”, that is, “being forced to have sex with someone, just doing the penetrating instead of being penetrated.”
So, 99% of rapists are men because rape is intentionally defined as “being penetrated” to exclude male victims of rape from the statistics. I wonder why…
Well, what happens when we actually look at those numbers, counting “made to penetrate” as, y’know, rape, because it is rape?
And
Which is, again, because male rape victims are effectively excluded from this definition. Also, we have this:
And
Note that these numbers clearly show that made to penetrate happens just as much each year as “rape”. This means that fully half of rape victims are men (in 2011 - the number fluctuates in the other years of the study, but not more than 5%).
Finally, if 99% of rapists are men and 83% of “made to penetrators” are women … then an estimated 42% of the perpetrators of nonconsensual sex (that is, rape) in 2011 were women.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I think it’s important to debunk this sort of misandrist misinformation.
Edit: Here’s a Time article that confirms these numbers. They also mention that boys under 15 are more likely to be sexually assaulted than women over 40, and are more than twice as likely to be assaulted as girls under 15.
you should probably look up the author of that times article, and read it more closely.
The article seems mostly fine to me, though I admit that I did initially just scan it for the statistics. The only thing I saw that I really disagreed with was her assertion that “made to penetrate” victims shouldn’t call themselves rape victims, and I absolutely believe that they should. I do fully agree with the author that getting drunk and then regretting your actions the night before should not constitute a crime of the same seriousness as forcible rape, and I also believe that the CDC’s questionnaire is misleading and far less than perfect. What were your problems with the article?
As far as Cathy Young herself, I’d never heard of her before, but according to her Wikipedia page it seems like we might agree on quite a bit. The Wiki article is short, however, so I may not have the entire story. Is there some reason I should dislike her?
I don’t know much about her, but I do know that she’s kind of consistently had shit takes about like, gamergate, and I think SA more generally, but sue me if I’m wrong, I don’t really know too much. It’s mostly like, old news shit takes that I can’t remember the specific basis for. I associate her with bringing bad vibes to the function, and MGTOW shit. In any case, I think it would probably be better practice to just, cite the study that she’s citing directly, if that’s the actual like, statistical set that you want to have a citation of, right, that’s probably better practice. Especially if you’re using the same source she is for your analysis, that kind of makes her analysis a little bit, both redundant, and not really like, on topic. But I’m not your grandma, you can do whatever you want.
For the article itself, I think if I’m reading it correctly, and maybe also the study, then I kind of, disagree with her extrapolations about drunk sexual acts. Mostly in this-
" It is safe to assume that the vast majority of the CDC’s male respondents who were “made to penetrate” someone would not call themselves rape victims—and with good reason." -type of shit. It’s a study that inherently relies on self-reporting, right, but the basis of the study’s questions are to kind of get away from this blanket “Hey, were you raped?”
-type of shit. There are definitely cases in which people have been SA’d, and would accurately describe a SA experience if you were to question them, but wouldn’t define the act as SA. I think this is probably the case for a lot of male SA, and I think this is legitimately the case for prison SA, in many instances, if I’m remembering correctly. So I don’t really think that the person’s testimony should be considered reliable, and more than that, I think the “appealing to the theoretical person’s definition of a thing as being accurate to the thing” tactic is a little, weird. Gives me bad vibes.
For the study, right, I know I just said, sometimes people don’t accurately self-report, right, but I think I’d also probably think that it’s a mistake to kind of, prioritize the “last 12 months” stats, because they’re “more accurate”. They’re not really more or less accurate, they’re just kind of, more accurate to what they are specifically about. Which is questioning if SA happened in the last 12 months, among the polled peoples. We don’t really know if there’s kind of just a specific subset of the population of women, through some other factor or age range, that’s experiencing SA at higher rates, which I would think is probably somewhat likely. But that’s also, my dumb ass, so who knows. In any case, given that, I kinda find her-
“In other words, if being made to penetrate someone was counted as rape—and why shouldn’t it be?—then the headlines could have focused on a truly sensational CDC finding: that women rape men as often as men rape women.”
-to be a kind of cherry picked and sensationalist, while also kind of treading a maybe more socially acceptable “centrist” libnuts kind of position. It’s technically accurate, which oh yes, pog futurama reference that nobody gets the context to, but you can kind of see why it’s like, stupid, right?
Probably, this kinda stuff is why I remember not liking her that much. Take this all with like, a mountain of salt, though, I am somewhat known to be a pretty good vector for misinfo, lies, and deceit. If I say that, then I’m free from the burden of proof, or like, holding reasonable positions, right? I can just say whatever I want? That sounds right, let’s go with that.
I’m just going to leave the cdc report on sexual assault from 2010-2012 that says the same thing as my initial claim, with the same statistics in detail, for you to draw your own conclusions from. Check the tables from page 18 onward.
My friend, statistics aren’t sexist. They just are. I don’t really have time to sit here and argue that women suffer more from sexual violence than men do. It’s not really up for debate, and I’ve learned not to engage the people who think it is.
If you’re going to accuse me of misandry because I’m defending a woman’s prerogative to feel safe, I’m just not going to fire back. Have fun with that.
I think you’ll want to check those numbers, actually, since they perfectly match everything I’m saying (since it’s the published CDC report from the same time). But it is reassuring that even the source you cite has the same numbers I’m citing.
If you’re so certain that your numbers are borne out by the data, could you please point out exactly where your claim that “more than 80% of the victims [of sexual assault] are women and more than 95% of the perpetrators are men” is borne out by the yearly data in this report?
I agree, which is why I took the time to cite the statistics exactly, instead of throwing out random numbers that aren’t borne out by the data.
I’m not arguing that women don’t suffer more from sexual violence than men do. I’m just arguing that women suffer much less from sexual violence compared to men than is usually believed, that women commit sexual assault much more than is usually believed, and that men are raped as often as women are.
As you say, this is not up for debate, and whether you “debate me” or not, it won’t change the facts, and I’ve made sure that this information is now available and organized for anyone who doesn’t insist on closing their eyes to misandry.
Edit in response to your edit (the last line of your comment): That’s not an accurate description of what’s happening here, and playing the victim under the guise of “I’m just defending a woman’s prerogative to feel safe” isn’t going to work when all I’ve done is show that your misandrist claims about the perpetrators and victims of sexual violence are not correct.
Thank you for taking the time to break down these numbers. That CDC report is extremely misleading and this is not the first time I’ve seen someone attempt to break down the numbers. But you’ve done an especially good job of explaining it.
Page 25 and 32. Male perpetrators only statistic.
It’s not ambiguous.
I didn’t claim that the statistics I made were on rape or penetration or any specific form of sexual violence. Just that incidences are much higher in women being the victims and men being the perpetrators.
Anyway, I’m not continuing this conversation further. It’s completely ridiculous to look at these statistics and draw the conclusion that I must be misandrist for reading the numbers how they are, because your breakdown of the numbers don’t exactly line up with mine but they still paint the same overall picture.
Have a good night.
You’ve misunderstood my point.
Please do enlighten me. Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve blamed women considering the worst case scenario on some self-important role attached to their gender, and not the very basic and obvious line of reasoning that their safety is on the line.
I can see that. I neither blame anyone, nor ascribe self-importance. Men are encouraged to disregard threats, women encouraged to take them seriously. This is an observation, not a moral judgement.
Violence against men is statistically underreported, and they’re still the majority of reported victims. Everyone’s safety is on the line, men are just taught to disregard that risk and women are taught not to. Again, observation, not moral judgement.
That’s fair. I did misunderstand your point. It wasn’t very clear just reading it back.