Purely personal speculation here, I haven’t done any hard reading on the subject:
I suspect we need a two-pronged approach. There’s two issues here. The first one, and by far and away the most important one to address, is the simple fact that women are being assaulted a lot. I don’t think that fact is in question among rational people. The way we’ve been attempting to fix this so far is to tell men to not rape women. It should be pretty obvious that tactic has a very limited potential to help. Anyone willing to listen to women saying to not rape them, isn’t generally interested in raping women in the first place. We need different methods to reach people who either aren’t interested in listening, or who don’t think what they’re doing is “bad”. This will require a lot of work and research, but the first step is acknowledging that the current efforts are not helping.
The second issue is the amplification of toxic mindsets among women. Like I said, this is absolutely not as big a problem, but it is a problem, and it’s one we haven’t been allowed to talk about for fear of being labeled misogynistic. Women say “not all men” as if it’s a joke, but it’s actually a REALLY IMPORTANT TRUE STATEMENT. Men wanting to not be discriminated against should not be the butt of a joke. Sexism is not okay, even in response to sexism. We need to clamp down on that and make it clear that such language is not acceptable.
The phrase “women’s safety is more important than men’s feelings” is just as disingenuous as calling the anti-abortion movement the “pro-life” movement. Because it’s not about women’s safety, everyone here agrees that women’s safety is important. This whole discussion is about women’s perception of safety: women’s feelings.
When you say “women’s safety is more important than men’s feelings”
What you mean is “women’s feelings is more important than men’s feelings”
Purely personal speculation here, I haven’t done any hard reading on the subject:
I suspect we need a two-pronged approach. There’s two issues here. The first one, and by far and away the most important one to address, is the simple fact that women are being assaulted a lot. I don’t think that fact is in question among rational people. The way we’ve been attempting to fix this so far is to tell men to not rape women. It should be pretty obvious that tactic has a very limited potential to help. Anyone willing to listen to women saying to not rape them, isn’t generally interested in raping women in the first place. We need different methods to reach people who either aren’t interested in listening, or who don’t think what they’re doing is “bad”. This will require a lot of work and research, but the first step is acknowledging that the current efforts are not helping.
The second issue is the amplification of toxic mindsets among women. Like I said, this is absolutely not as big a problem, but it is a problem, and it’s one we haven’t been allowed to talk about for fear of being labeled misogynistic. Women say “not all men” as if it’s a joke, but it’s actually a REALLY IMPORTANT TRUE STATEMENT. Men wanting to not be discriminated against should not be the butt of a joke. Sexism is not okay, even in response to sexism. We need to clamp down on that and make it clear that such language is not acceptable.
The phrase “women’s safety is more important than men’s feelings” is just as disingenuous as calling the anti-abortion movement the “pro-life” movement. Because it’s not about women’s safety, everyone here agrees that women’s safety is important. This whole discussion is about women’s perception of safety: women’s feelings.
When you say “women’s safety is more important than men’s feelings”
What you mean is “women’s feelings is more important than men’s feelings”
And that’s not cool. That’s sexism.
Well say no more!
k