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

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link and for broadening out the discussion. It did seem very significant to me how few men felt moved to comment on the OP (this is gradually improving), especially since much of the thrust of cereta's post was to exhort men to participate more fully in anti-rape and anti-misogyny conversations both with women and among themselves.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I can think of a variety of reasons why this could happen.

1. Her readership is disproportionately female. (I have no idea, I don't know her, but I know that this is true of my readership.)

2. Women are more likely to refer their friends to read the post since they feel more urgently concerned by it.

3. Some men won't respond because they are the ones we're all complaining about, who treat women as sexual objects they're entitled to paw at. Which is probably a good thing for everyone's comfort, and avoids unnecessary flame wars with sexist idiots, but it does mean that we're not getting the overall picture.

4. Some men won't respond because they are worried that they'll get jumped on and accused of being sexist, and/or are not sure how it would be appropriate for them to respond, and/or feel that the post is primarily in the "safe space for women" category and it's not their place to speak up.

5. Women are more affected by this problem as victims than men are, more likely to worry about it, more likely to feel passionately about it, and less likely to zone out when seeing it come up.

I wonder where the best place would be to post something like this in order to get a good response from non-sexist men as well as women? Probably a community dedicated to discussing egalitarianism etc. with an even balance of male and female participants. If anyone knows of one, point me to it!

If and when I get around to posting about this myself, may I link to your post as well?

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I was unclear: I was moaning about a lack of straight cis male participation on my post. The points you make still stand, apart from the first: my lj friendslist is fairly equally divided gender-wise. Certainly, most of the people who have linked to it have been female or trans, but that doesn't mean that their friendslists are likewise mostly composed of female people. I do see what you mean about arseholes being dismissive by their silence, and how you don't want to be arguing with them anyway, and how genuinely conscious men might feel intrusive. But I wrote that post partially because I wanted to show to people who don't get harassed what it is like when it's a normal part of your life, and how it influences totally mundane daily routines. I'm not unhappy with any of the responses I've gotten -everyone has had good, well-expressed points to make - but it was very striking how few straight cis men seemed to want to talk about it.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

*nodnods* And what I wanted to do was find out some of the reasons behind silence, because a poll is much easier and anonymous to everyone except me. That hasn't been all that successful, because only a small proportion of my friendslist have filled it in so far; I don't know whether this is because they haven't seen the post, didn't click through the cut because it wasn't an interesting subject, or saw it and decided it wasn't something they could do.

[deborah_c]

I have referred three people to the post. Of those, one is someone with whom I had been having a similar discussion, and is female; the other two are male.

My son was upset to discover that not everyone shares his view of the world: he can't imagine people behaving the way that cereta talks about. We had a long talk, and he really does get it, and understands that if he ever sees friends or schoolmates behaving that way, stepping in and stopping it is the right thing to do. He's nearly 13.

The other... is a highly intelligent student friend, who is generally lovely, someone I feel safe with, and who I thought would almost certainly be one of Those Guys. I'd been out for dinner earlier, and the context of my mentioning the article was an apology on my part for things I'd said which I later realised could be misinterpreted -- reading cereta's post made me very sensitive about issues of consent and badgering and so on.

His reaction (to reading it) was not one I'd expected: he was angry because (he said) he has lots of stories of being That Guy. I explained that I've been sexually assaulted more than once, and he told me that I'm the exception, and that doesn't really happen much. (Also that drunk girls go to parties to have sex with people and boast about it afterwards.) We had a very heated discussion for an hour or more; I think he still believes that actually, most men are entirely honourable and women are unreasonable in being afraid. I rather despair, if that's the enlightened end of the spectrum :-(

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

I admire your son's response immensely.

The other... mm, it's always a real shock to find out someone who's otherwise lovely has something unpleasant about them.

"Most men are entirely honourable; most women are wrong; I know this because I'm a man" - I don't understand how this can be a convincing argument for anyone. I'm wondering, though, if it ties into something libellum said in a comment (http://khalinche.livejournal.com/345558.html?thread=1703638#t1703638) to khalinche's post, about needing the experience of being a victim to tell the difference between good intentions and bad.

[deborah_c]

Possibly. I certainly used to be a good deal more trusting before the first of my sexual assaults. I resent that I no longer am, and that that is still necessary. And I hate the implication of libellum's comment, as a mum to two coming-up-to-teenage daughters :-(

Actually, I say "the first of", but that's not even accurate. "The first of the more major and frightening of my recent" would be more accurate, because the more minor and pervasive stuff (like getting groped on the Tube, probably more often than not if I'm travelling in the rush hour) just gets filtered out unless I actually think about it hard. And somehow I have childhood abuse filed in some entirely separate category; I'm not sure why.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course... PTSD. I should have made the connection before. It's at least as bad from protracted low-level stress & trauma as from single stressor incidents, and they all contribute to it.

It's sad, and offensive, and enraging that the trauma is so common and so gendered. And I hope very much that your daughters can resist it.

[cynsa.livejournal.com]

I wonder where the best place would be to post something like this in order to get a good response from non-sexist men as well as women?

In a way, though, I don't think it matters that the stories being told are coming largely from the women; or it's even better, since many of the stories are so sincerely praising remembered acts of kindness from That Guy. As long as there are guys out there reading, I guess, that's the kicker--hopefully there are guys reading the thread and seeing how these acts are being remembered with tremendous, almost shameful gratitude, long, long after the fact.

It's possible to be a hero in someone's life with such simple, decent acts. Kinda heartbreaking, really. Such an incredible discussion.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

You're entirely welcome! I haven't yet gone through all the comments to cereta's post to find something useful I could say and a place to say it, and I'm anal about doing that before speaking most of the time.