The Dating and Social Issues Surrounding Respect and Public Treatment Between Men & Women Might Never Be Fully Resolved
Nobody likes to be hurt. Not physically. Not emotionally. To any men out there - myself included - who might ever think women don't have a point when they call attention to the risks of bodily harm they face when interacting with male strangers or even partners they know, you're wrong. They do.
My fear is this problem may never be fully or satisfactorily resolved. And therefore, all the related gender issues and conflicts that develop out of these very real fears imposed upon women will never be resolved either.
There is no doubt that it is the statistics surrounding r*pe, murder, sexual assault and domestic abuse of women by men are what cause women to fear pretty much all men. And while there may be many toxic men that may take issue with such a generalized fear of an entire gender, women really have no idea who is who among the men they encounter daily or what man in their life might someday become abusing or violent. So the fear women express should be respected, validated and acknowledged as real and rooted in reality.
The problem we face as human beings after recognizing this fear - that is such a point of contention and hurt feelings between the sexes -is how to ever resolve it and make it go away so men and women can interact in a less antagonistic and more healthy manner.
And this is where I fear the issue will never be resolved and it's not women's fault.
The problem is, asking men to stop r*ping, abusing, stalking, sexually assaulting is about as effective as asking criminals to stop crime-ing or thieves to stop thieve-ing.
Theft is a crime older than humanity itself and, so far, none of our attempts as a species have managed to eliminate the risk of being robbed. What makes us think we will be more successful at eliminating other crimes?
Oddly, as a species we kind of just accept that theft will always be there and no #MeToo movements have ever arisen from the hundreds of millions of victims of theft over the history of human societies. Equally as odd, there have been no large movements of innocent men rising up in objection at being profiled by most of humanity as possible thieves. This might be because it is not as devaluing and threatening to a man to be suspected as a thief of some inanimate object than to be suspected as a potential abuser of women.
So this sets us up for a perpetual problem unique between men and women in regards to our daily interactions: Women don't want to be murdered, r@ped, stalked, harassed or victims of a whole host of other abuses at the hands of men. Totally understandable. And innocent, well-meaning men don't want to be profiled and devalued as potential creeps as they go through otherwise innocuous activities and tasks throughout their day. Now by "innocuous activities and tasks" I don't mean cold-approaching women they don't know in public. There's no excuse for that and we can probably all agree it is better not to do that no matter how attractive the woman appears. It's better to let such connections occur organically, through mutual friends perhaps, rather than forcing such interactions just because we found someone's appearance attractive. You don't know them. They don't know you. You have no mutual friends or acquaintances. If you can't take or don't want to accept an immediate rejection, don't put a woman you don't know on the spot by asking them out because you just saw them.
But returning to the perpetual problem between men and women:
Like any historically documented crime such as theft, unless there is a major and systemic shift in the way we design our societies and approach our social existence as human beings, there will probably always be men violating women's boundaries and rights and, as a result, there will always be women, cautious of their interactions with men, who will not greet us with a smile, be non responsive when we say 'Hello' or ask them an otherwise genuinely innocent question. And because men will continue to commit crimes against women, there will always be women who cross the other side of the street when they see a strange man walking towards them...even if that man knows he would never think of hurting a woman or even cold-approaching one.
And, as a consequence of this pre-existing dynamic, yes, there will always be innocent, good and genuinely well-meaning men - however minor their pains and concerns may be compared to the life and death concerns of women - who walk away from such encounters feeling like shit about themselves. Let's just acknowledge that too. Yes, a good man, with not even the intention of bothering a woman or asking her out, can still be greeted like a potential creep by that woman and walk away from the encounter feeling punished and profiled for something as little as just trying to check out his groceries. It's understandable why women would be brusque and stone-faced and even walk away from such interactions. But it still is a shot to someone's dignity - especially if it occurs in public - and it does hurt. I'm not talking about men approaching women doing their shopping as much as men, who are customers in a store being profiled and treated brusquely by female staff just because they are trying to conduct business and checkout their items. I realize women in these jobs are being put into situations where they encounter rude and forward men on a daily basis and so feel they must be stone-faced and closed and even rude to get men to leave them alone but, if that's the case, it begs the question: Why are we putting women in working situations where they are so uncomfortable that the coping strategy is to negatively impact the customer experience of an otherwise well-meaning male customer? Let's break down what is happening in such cases because I don't want the reader to think this is something trivial: Because women are victims of a litany of serious crimes, abuses and harassments at the hands of men in the United States and world-wide - which I do not argue against or deny in any manner - this means that nearly most men who walk into a store as paying customers - typically those men unaccompanied by a woman who can validate their value - will be treated by the staff as potential creeps. Now that's great if they are creeps. But imagine if it's a guy struggling -through no fault of his own - with social issues? What if he already suffers from low-self esteem from abuse at home and has no intention of hitting on a young woman? That's not the woman's problem but in such a scenario, it quickly feels like one potential victim victimizing another, making the issues between men and women worse instead addressing the original issue that gives rise to women feeling uncomfortable dealing with men.
This is like saying because there is car theft in the world, every male should be treated as a suspected car thief whether they are one or not. And yet no one reacts this way towards men in regards to the proliferation of car theft or theft in general.
Now don't get me wrong, the creep radar SHOULD be on for all women under the world's current circumstances of such violence and harassment towards women. So yeah, keep doing that, keep frowning, keep walking away and doing what you have to do as a person and woman to feel safe and in control of your surroundings.
But I just feel like - because violence, harassment and stalking against women exists and will always exist - this argument between victimized women on the one hand and genuinely good men with no actual bad intentions towards women on the other, will never be resolved. It will never be resolved because the battle has morphed into two victims just further victimizing each other while the men guilty of creating these suspicions between both victims just keep victimizing women.
Women, understandably, don't want to be murdered, r@ped, stalked, harassed or put down by men.
And men with genuinely honest and pro-women ideals don't want to be treated like a potential creep in situations where they must interact with women in order to conduct business.
They're both right. Life shouldn't be this way. We shouldn't be victimizing each other. And, idk, maybe that means not forcing women to work in situations that make them so uncomfortable and fearful that they're miserable and then, in order to protect themselves, they, quite understandably, have to pass that misery onto some guy just trying to check out.
No matter how you look at it and how petty the men's complaint in this situation seems to you compared to the many women victimized by men, life and its daily activities that should be pleasant and lack tension are becoming tense and sad for all of us just trying to do a job or just trying to buy groceries.
We need to stop hurting each other in ways that are, in effect, collateral damage to the real battle and problem.
How do you solve such a problem if violence and harassment against women doesn't stop? And how do you create a world where an entire area of criminal activity just disappears?
#gender relations #mens issues #womens issues #women #men #feminism #sexes #gender #metoo #harassment
