Men's attitudes to sexual harassment

[mirrorshard]

Lots of people have been posting about this recently, with good reason. However, everyone I've seen posting recommendations has been either female or transmale, so here goes.

cereta has been hosting a discussion about rape and men's attitudes to it. I'm not going to attempt to summarize or quote; read it.

khalinche tells her own stories, and asks: where are you? Where are the Nice Guys who Aren't Like That when women need them?

wildeabandon asks for shared stories - go fill in the poll/.

This is not an exhaustive list.

In comments to khalinche's post, she asks why straight cis-men aren't commenting much. Since I'm rather curious too, here's a poll.

NB: "participation" means reading at least one post I linked above, preferably all of them, posting at least one comment, and sticking around to read any followups. Less than that is either "listening" (good-ish) or "driveby" (bad).

If you haven't seen any of these posts linked to yet, read them then fill in the poll! There is no onus on you to participate immediately. Considered reflection is good. You have no obligation to participate at all, but it would be a Good Thing to do.

"I", of course, means the person filling in the poll.

"My friends" means male friends, specifically. I am not interested in female sexism here. Nor is anyone else.

[Poll #1414756]

Comments

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

By "female sexism" I mostly meant "do not derail the discussion by trying to broaden it out". It's not official terminology, or if it is I'm probably using it wrongly.

I'd say the first of those, in context.

[midnightmelody.livejournal.com]

Ah, in which case my answer is an emphatic 'Good grief, no, and far less than I am'. :)

[shreena.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I don't know. Is "Women are better at childcare" sexism in favour of women? It's praising women, on the surface but I'd argue that ultimately it's favouring men.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Mm, it's hard to separate those. And whilst it sounds like praise, it's also treating women in a very broad and generalizing way, which I'd very briefly summarize as "women are not interesting or important enough to treat as individuals". Attention gets paid to the apparently-rare men who can do this, rather than the apparently-evil women who can't.

[shreena.livejournal.com]

What about "men are worse at childcare" then?

I know a lot of men who talk about how bad men are at multitasking - i.e. childcare and housework - and I think it's totally sexist even though it's generalising about men and, on the face of it, favouring women.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

We appear to be getting derailed into the argument I said I didn't want to have, so let's hold this one off for some other time?

[shreena.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced it's a separate issue.

In any case, to explain my voting at least - I think my male friends are sometimes sexist and I don't really know how to exclude "female sexism" from that as I think it's all part and parcel of the same thing.