"b-but bears are actually dangerous!" Shut the hell up.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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This is a great look into the mindset of someone who's been through SA. Thanks for sharing.
The point I think a lot of men are trying to make is that: In the same way that somebody who commits SA may have been abused themselves, women who are prejudiced against men create a new victim. Treating a harmless man as worse than a dangerous animal is an experience that most every man goes through and that sucks.
I can understand and sympathize with your position. But it doesn't absolve you of your behavior. Just like someone who commits SA isn't off the hook because they were beaten as a child and that screwed them up. I feel for someone who was abused growing up, but they don't get to throw up their hands and say it's not their fault they victimize others. Compassion is crucial, but at the end of the day, everyone is responsible for their own actions.
But what's going on here isn't something within the control of most people. When you're abused by somebody you don't choose to fear those people, you fear them because that's what your brain is wired to do to avoid repeated trauma. Like I said, therapy is the solution, but only part of the solution. The other part is fixing the issue causing the trauma in the first place. Men aren't being victimized by the women who fear them, they're being victimized by the other men who caused that fear.
And I want to be clear, because I've realized at this point that this isn't obvious anymore in today's world, fear is not an excuse for misandry. At the same time, fear of men is not misandry. Somebody saying they'd rather pick the bear should be met with "oh, we should fix the issue causing them to fear men more than bears," not "oh, they should fear bears more."
I also want to be clear that this isn't even a gendered issue despite the fact that it's been made into one. A man who's been abused by women and would rather pick the bear should also be met with compassion and "how can we reduce the number of female abusers?" I've actually been abused by women too. In fact, more often than I have men. I want to be clear that even though this discussion has been about men specifically, I feel the exact same way about women. That we still need to be compassionate to their victims and accept that the people who traumatized them are the problem, not their trauma.
Fearing somebody is not an action you perform, it's a state you're in.
You seem incredibly well adjusted for what you've been through and clearly you've learned a lot from your life experience. Thanks for laying all that out. It was very insightful. I think we agree on 99% of this. So at the risk of splitting hairs, I'm going to put a magnifying glass on that last 1%.
I think fear absolutely victimizes people. I've seen xenophobia and homophobia do plenty of damage. Men are far from a disenfranchised minority and I think the issue of women's safety is much more pressing than men being treated unfairly in some situations. But it still shouldn't happen.
You're right that in a way it's the fault of the dangerous men who abuse women. But in a way, hypothetically, it's really the fault of their parents who sexually assaulted them. But in a way it's the fault of their parents genetics that made them mentally unstable, etc, etc all the way back to the first multicellular organism. This thinking, however true, isn't very useful. People need to take responsibility for their own actions.
We agree fear is not an excuse for misandry. I don't think it's unreasonable for women to fear men after having a traumatic experience. However I can still point out the problem here. I think a good example is the trolley problem. If you pull the lever to only kill one person instead of six, I can both: agree with your decision but also point out that you killed someone. You can argue that's insensitive to your difficult dilemma, but I think it's worse to pretend like someone isn't getting hurt. That one person who died still was a life with people who will mourn them.
I think what's irking men about this whole bear thing is not that the result is not what they want or even what they expect. It's that a huge chunk of people seem to not even see it as a problem that most men are being judged for something they have nothing to do with.