An informal poll about attitudes - REVISED

[unixronin]

Caution:  May be inflammatory.

Just for the sake of possibly-morbid curiosity:  I direct you to this article that perspicuity pointed out to me elsewhere.  Please go and read it.  Particularly the beginning.

Now, please answer only one poll.  First up, asking my readers of the feminine persuasion here:

[Poll #1472271]

For my chromosomally heterogeneous readers, I offer the following alternate poll with your own seven eight choices:

[Poll #1472272]

My personal feeling is that if you regard every male as a probable rapist lacking only the opportunity, I want some way to know in advance, because if the very first thought that goes through a woman's head is, "Is that man going to try to rape me?", I don't even want to start a conversation.  I find the whole attitude insulting, to say the least.  It's way too high a disadvantage to start out having to first of all convince someone that you're not planning to rape or murder them, and if I knew in advance that I was going to be up against that, I'd move on immediately to talk to someone saner.  I don't know how people who approach the world with that kind of level of fear every day can even function, but I do believe that it's not my responsibility to walk on eggshells everywhere I go, just to avoid triggering someone else's paranoia.

(Heh.  I just discovered I have to answer both polls to be able to see the results of my own poll.  Pretty obviously, so does everyone else.  Please note I am RESUBMITTING to add a "Just show me the results" entry to each poll.  If you already voted, this means your vote will be lost.  Feel free to vote again.  We apologize for the confusion.)

Comments

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

First of all, thanks for re-voting.

Awareness, I think, is essential to everyone. People who have no threat awareness, people who go through their days in what we call "condition white", are very frequently those who get mugged or assaulted, because their lack of situational awareness leaves them unable to recognize a threat until it's too late to avoid or escape it. Awareness informs caution, and caution guides action. Caution lies in avoiding a potential threat once you've become aware of it, instead of continuing to walk into it.

Let me talk a little about awareness states, as taught by Col. Jeff Cooper (USMC).

Condition white, as we've already mentioned, is complete unawareness ... you're neither looking for potential threats, nor in any frame of mind to be able to avoid them. You are completely unprepared in the event of an attack.
In condition yellow, you are aware of your surroundings and alert for potential threats, and you're thinking about how you might use your surroundings to escape or evade a threat, and about what possible escape routes you have.
In condition orange, you have positively identified a tangible threat, and — in a civilian environment — should be taking action to evade or escape it and reach a place of safety, and if possible preparing to defend yourself if necessary. If you're armed, you should have made sure your weapon is ready and accessible.
In condition red, you have directly encountered the threat and are faced with either defending yourself, disengaging, or both, possibly involving the use of force, potentially including deadly force. If you're armed, you should have already cleared your weapon for action.

Unfortunately, most people are in condition white most of the time. The ideal of situational awareness is to train yourself to habitually be in condition yellow, rather than condition white. It enables you to avoid most threats by recognizing them before you walk into them, and just not entering the situation.

That article reads to me as though the writer lives in condition orange. She sees threats where there are none. She seems to assume everything is a threat until proven otherwise. That's bad for several reasons, including that it desensitizes and overloads you to the point that you may not recognize a real threat when it appears. It's the principle of the boy who cried wolf: when an actual threat does appear, it may take vital seconds to convince your limbic system "No, this is REAL this time." On the other hand, it also carries the risk of inappropriately escalating to red — in the case of the article and writer, frankly if I knew how hinky she was, I'd want to stay well away from her lest she mace me simply because she thought I looked at her funny. And it could simply be that I'm facing in her direction while thinking negative things about something else entirely, and not even registering that she as a person is there.


You're right, it isn't a fluffy-bunny world, and unicorns don't fart lottery tickets, winning or otherwise. But neither does every shadowed doorway hide a slavering monster waiting to leap out. Awareness is great; preparedness is excellent; appropriate caution is perfectly reasonable. (And none of them require being a herd animal ... in fact, the herd mentality is actively counterproductive.) But I think this writer has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Many of her individual points are basically sound — but the whole, colored with the attitudes she started out by describing, add up to something I find pretty scary. She comes across as someone more likely than most to just snap one day.

[wyrdling.livejournal.com]

i take a lot of that stuff into consideration in my basic situational threat monitoring. i assume my gut will ping off of whether or not a person is likely to be a threat, and some of the markers she mentions are telltales. though not grasping when someone is trying to be left alone is common enough to not be such a big deal to me.
i mean, sometimes i'm not very good at figuring that out. particularly with women who think they're obligated to be nice.

doesn't mean i assume guilt until innocence is proven, i just suspend judgement until i think i have enough data. which can take less than a second based on body language and vocal cues. for the basic immediate threat or possible support impression.

i've done pretty well at picking up pretty fast what men i would want to have standing near me if something stupid started happening.
(reminding me for some reason of any of the men in my father's family is a good cue, so maybe i'm luckier than women who don't have those sorts of subconscious models of protective figures in their lives.)
but it's not primarily a conscious process- i think it's high level subconscious information digestion/intuition.

thus, having a ongoing threat assessment level doesn't make me paranoid. i think.
but i'm also pretty confident in my ability to stay out of dead ends and think on my feet. and, if necessary, my ability to smash things with steel toed boots. (martial arts training as a teenager. a bit rusty, but i keep discovering how imprinted those reflexes are.)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Nothing wrong with ongoing threat assessment. That's called "being in condition yellow." :)

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

Perhaps most men live in condition white all the time. Most women, however, live in condition yellow. It is really, truly, not unusual for a woman to live in condition orange. This is not insanity. It's just a sad commentary on society.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That is, indeed, not a comforting thought.