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

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

When you go to the bank, there's at least one armed guard, an alarm button no more than two feet from the teller's lap, and maybe bulletproof glass. Not because you're a bank robber, or because there are so many bank robbers, but because banks just hate to get robbed, even once. If a customer feels insulted by all this, that's his tough luck. Most of us take the guards, alarm buttons, and bulletproof glass as a matter of course. (Actually, bulletproof glass is a little off-putting to me -- maybe over the top -- but if I were a bank teller, or if my wife were, I'd probably see it differently.)

So when a woman discloses the ugly truth that one of the first questions she tries to settle when she's getting to know you is whether you're going to assault her, it similarly ought to be no surprise. I do the same IFF myself walking down some streets.

I think every man ought to meditate on the privileges he enjoys just by being male; one of them being that as long as you can stay out of jail, you don't have to worry about getting raped.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

While this is true, I don't believe it's really applicable, because the alarm button and armed guard don't interfere with you doing your banking¹, and because they're there to protect you and your money, not just the bank. You benefit as well by their presence.

By contrast, as several other commenters have pointed out, the woman who wrote this article has set up her standard of "reasonable" behavior such that if one is to comply strictly with her rules, a man MAY NOT EVER initiate communication with a woman, because she has set up a standard of safety that is de facto impossible to meet.

Ask yourself, “If I were dangerous, would this woman be safe in this space with me?” If the answer is no, then it isn’t appropriate to approach her.

And as cipherpunk explicitly pointed out, IF I am dangerous to her, then by definition it's not safe for her to be in any space with me. Hence, according to her rules, if I am dangerous, it is never appropriate for me to initiate communication. But there is no room permitted for an "I'm not a danger to her" condition. Under her rules, I am required to a priori always assume that I am a danger to her. Hence the test will always fail, because the failure condition is expressly set up as a required precondition for the test. It's as though, before checking whether your phone has dial tone, you were required to always unplug it first. Of COURSE it doesn't have dial tone ... it's not plugged in.

The only way to comply with her rules is for the man to ALWAYS wait for the woman to make the first move ... and even in today's relatively "enlightened" times, probably somewhere between 80% and 95% of women never will. (And that's not even getting into the mixed-signals issue.)

(I also note, purely as an aside, that it is a myth that a male cannot be raped by a female. It is uncommon, true, but it happens. And as for males never having to fear rape outside of prison ... I would have thought all the recent publicity about priests sexually molesting young boys should have set that to rest.)



[1] Although the bullet proof glass sometimes makes communication with the teller a little difficult, if they haven't paid attention to that. Then again, I can't remember the last time I was in a bank that hid the tellers away behind bullet proof glass.

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

"I think every man ought to meditate on the privileges he enjoys just by being male; one of them being that as long as you can stay out of jail, you don't have to worry about getting raped"

Like the privilege to be much more likely to be the victim of a violent crime? (for most of my like *massively* more likely, but as crime rates (including rape) have plummeted since the early 70s, that disparity is shrinking, so men are only about 25% more likely to be victims.