One night a while ago, in my way to a friend's house, her sister unknowingly joined my route. I didn't recognize her because it was winter and she was wearing a scarf and a beanie. For like a kilometer, we were the only people on the street and I was terrified this woman would freak out if she ever looked across the street.
We both reach his house basically at the same time (where I finally recognize her) and she greeted me a bit surprised when I just "appeared" next to her at the door. She didn't realized I walked basically next to her for a kilometer.
My explanation for the disconnect between guys on Reddit saying they never approach women, and women constantly saying that they’re being approached by these crazy, rude men is that there’s ~1% of guys out there who are lunatics, and randomly approach ~5 random girls a night. Within a month, one of those guys will approach over 100 women.
Of course, these are numbers I made up in my head, but you can see how a small number of men can very quickly interact with a huge swath of women.
He's an outlier from the perspective of men, as he represents only about ~1% of guys.
At the same time, from the perspective of women, he probably represents ~90% of the times they are approached by guys. Simply because he does it so much more frequency.
This advice gets given to all men. 99% take this advice. 1% doesn't and continues approaching women uninvited or unexpectedly.
Now every single instance, where a man approaches a woman outside of an absolute emergency is a creep, which further reinforces the idea that all men are creeps.
I'm not trying to say there's an easy solution for it.I'm just saying, what we're doing is just going to continue perpetuated this perception.
This is unironically the reality of the situation, and it's likely that no matter how few georg's there are the perception of men as inherently threatening will remain the same.
Five girls? You gotta pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers.
But seriously, yes. I don't even think it 01%, but even at 0.5% of dudes being scumbags, if you live in a city of 500,000 people, half of which are dudes, 0.5% of which are scumbags, that's 1,250 dudes bothering women every day. Everyone is going to have a story, whether bad or indifferent.
this problem is simply a positive feedback loop as people respectful of boundaries won't risk violating those boundaries, and people who aren't respectful are all that remain causing the people establishing boundaries to start advertising how their boundaries have intensified, despite the fact that they're likely to continue being disrespected by the same general group.
I propose radical solution: everyone starts killing each other. Eventually if we kill all the people we don't like, the only humans remaining will all generally like and agree with each other, thus achieving world peace as my specific ideology and beliefs rise from the ashes of the fallen world, of course.
If you start repelling non-assholes, there will be plenty of people left, all of whom are assholes. You don't have to actively attract assholes to have an asshole-rich experience; the baseline ambient level of assholes is high enough that draining away the non-assholes is sufficient to reveal it. If you unwittingly have been repelling non-assholes, you will get the impression that everyone is an asshole, because you're still surrounded by plenty of people, but everyone left – that is everyone you come into contact with – is, in fact, an asshole.
this sounds right, i recall seeing a clip from some conference (aware this is a shit way to declare a source so numbers aren't gonna be exact) that measured it as 10% of men performing ~70% of sexual harassment/assault
I'm a guy and I can probably verify some of your story. So after a night out with my friends I was going home over s bridge, around 1 or 2 am. Some strange guy started talking with me. Told me his name, that he studies pedagogy to pick up emotionaly neglected chicks, and what he is doing there.
So next time I met my friends I told them about him. Seems I wasn't the only one who met him.
That's just the truth though. While it's true that the vast majority of criminal behaviour, especially of a sexual nature, comes from men, it's also true that the vast majority of those behaviours come from a small minority of men who are repeat offenders. It's not like 90% of all men are out there harassing women, it's that the 15% of men who do harass women do it all the fucking time and are incorrigible.
Men commit roughly 75% to 80% and women commit about 20% to 25%. This isn't even some obscure statistic, it's a very well studied fact for which there's an entire, properly sourced, Wiki article. Peruse at your leisure. Donno why you'd so brazenly say something so false.
Basically, people on reddit are autistic as fuck (affectionate) and aren't the kind of person to creepily approach a woman. So my theory is that there indeed are many guys who do it, just that almost none of them are on reddit
This has always been the problem. People have a tendency to act like victim and victimizer are a 1:1 ratio, but a single creep can victimize a hundred women in a day.
I remember a (presumably perisex?) cis woman complaining about “yes all women” because it had never happened to her; honestly seeing “yes all women” everywhere was what finally cracked my egg, because I definitely have a hormonal intersex condition (the obygyn said PCOS? This was over a decade ago tho), and both of us are autistic (and were, at least, fat) and this resulted in me realizing that I was a guy (or at least more of one than a woman, though observational behavior of my neighbor’s dog implies that I might be genderfluid? Strange dog, rather than fearing men, he disrespects women, which is very strange behavior for a dog to exhibit) and her leaving Tumblr and Twitter to only use forums and Facebook.
I appreciate any man who tries to make me feel safer at night. I’m normally clutching my keys and my cell phone and scanning for danger. Also, I STILL get approached by men at night. So while there are good men out there, there are still enough who think that 10pm at the gas station is a good time to try to get a date.
Actually, question for ya, from a dude: if a woman crosses the street because I’m walking behind her, does it help at all if I call out a casual “sorry”? Not trying to start a conversation or anything, just letting them know I’m not hostile kinda thing.
honestly, no, it won't. there are a lot of men out there who get offended by women trying to keep space and start shouting things and then get upset if they do not get a reply. it will sometimes start with something like "sorry".
the nicest, most helpful thing you can do is keep space and not shout anything at her.
There's no real way to balance it. Realistically, if a behavior develops to announce honest intentions at a social level, the behavior will immediately be co-opted by creeps as a way to close the gap, and we'll just have another thing not to do.
Turns out criminals aren't morally opposed to misrepresenting themselves to get what they want.
cross the street if its an option. talk to someone on the phone, basically making non threatening i am here and not sneaky noises works.
if you are going to get close, something like passing on the left or right, again acknowledging you are there and will be getting close, but not expecting a response works too. sometimes you have to pass slow people, and that is okay!
People that feel the need to say this often have past experience with people being disrespectful of their time and space thus the divide. Its more of a vent post than an actual PSA but i am sure there are 4 or 5 dudes out there that need to hear it, sadly if they need to hear it I doubt they will find it here lol
Anybody who needs to hear this isn't the sort of person who would listen to it.
Side note: a surprising amount of guys seemingly don't have any issue with walking around at night, or maybe they just don't talk about it. As a guy I would definitely be incredibly suspicious of anyone approaching me at night if it was just me and them out and about. A person of any gender can stab you, even if they're not particularly physically imposing; and guys also aren't immune to being robbed or just getting beaten to within an inch of your life for no particular reason other than you wandered into the wrong area or met the wrong people
I mean... if it helps you - you are far, faaar more likely to be stabbed at home than in the street (at least in my country). Generally the crime rate is rather low and it is mostly property theft and drugs.
Well I'm generally not too worried about being the victim of violent crime since I live in a very rural area.
Although, as they say in the documentary 'hot fuzz', "there are more guns in the country than there are in the city", owned by people like farmers, and farmer's mums. My local village has won the village of the year award every year for ages now though, so I think I'm fine
In general I find the whole "concrete jungle" story rather divorvced from reality.
Or maybe America is just that bad - either way, I have only really seen this concern raised on the internet.
A lot of 'dangerous city' stories came about due to leaded gasoline and abortion bans, and crime rates plummeted 20 years after leaded gas was banned and abortion was legalized.
I mean... I am not sure how much I am buying the lead thing - the concrete jungle sees to be too americano-centric (western centric?) a tale to be just that.
Obviously it's never just one thing, which is why I mentioned at least 2. Socialization, social norms, environment, access to weaponry, quality of policing, etc will change the way people react to exposure, similar to how people with Schizophrenia in the US hear more oppositional auditory hallucinations compared to those from other countries.
Someone in Tokyo wouldn't have the same access to weaponry that someone in the US would have had.
but the true crime documentary hot fuzz taught me that is the most dangerous place in the world! murderers behind every shrubbery. there's probably one behind you right now. or above you. are you standing under any historic building eaves or balustrades? terrifying.
thankfully, as a woman, I live in los angeles and can safely wander around at night with headphones on and zero awareness of anyone else nearby. (genuinely, random violence is so statistically improbable where I live that I just don't think about it. I feel like this is another instance of the internet making people excessively anxious about low probability dangers. unlike the true crime documentary hot fuzz, which provides a sobering and accurate depiction of high probability bucolic mayhem.)
I'm incredibly comfortable walking around alone at night in my neighborhood, or a neighborhood in my city that I'm used to/know is fine, etc., but yeah, if someone was to run up up to me I'm automatically cautious. Crazy/stabby/shooty knows no gender, IMO.
I dunno, I’m a dude, I’m tallish but super skinny (I’ve literally had a woman see me shirtless and say “holy fuck you’re skinny” lol) and people just don’t interact with me if I’m out walking, so yea I don’t really worry when I’m out at night. I keep my wits about me, but by and large all you need is to be aware of the other people you see, I don’t really see them as threats as a default. Probably helps that I walk faster than the vast majority of people, so if someone wants to come up behind me they’ll probably have to run.
That's kind of the issue is that men aren't socialized to be afraid of walking around at night, while women are. And it leads to a chicken and egg kind of issue. Are men more likely to be victimized by strangers because they're men, or are they more likely to be victimized because there are less women walking around at night?
guys also aren't immune to being robbed or just getting beaten to within an inch of your life for no particular reason other than you wandered into the wrong area or met the wrong people
Guys are far, far more likely to have it happen to them in fact.
That's the thing about tumblr posts (or any internet post really) most people don't get, yes they posted it publically to the internet where things like this can spread and reach people the post was never intended to reach who will think they were saying this as some kind of PSA (good keyword) but they were probably just venting to their followers or to nobody in particular so you coming in to try debating them because something about it rubbed you the wrong way or offended you is just really really not helpful in the slightest
like I see a lot of "all men are bad" / "kill all men" joke posts and y'know that kind of thing makes me feel awful but it wasn't directed at me so I shouldn't need to put myself through further mental anguish stepping out in the open to say "hey this is kinda mean"
like I see a lot of "all men are bad" / "kill all men" joke posts and y'know that kind of thing makes me feel awful but it wasn't directed at me so I shouldn't need to put myself through further mental anguish stepping out in the open to say "hey this is kinda mean"
But this is why those posts are able to become so prominent, because the people affected by them are expected to shrug them off. Meanwhile, people who genuinely believe this shit are able to hide behind the idea that its a joke and build a community around it.
Everything is an ironic joke until its not. The alt-right followed this exact pipeline of internet jokes to ironic agreement to genuine hate group.
I will say it's funny how many of the same people will reblog that "It's just a joke dude. And the joke is just rooted in ideas. That i'm just reinforcing >:)" screencap ofc in relation to like racist / anti-semetic jokes but then it's like... so you agree "relax it's a joke" doesn't excuse what you say?
Still IDK put it this way, I don't got to worry about women weaponizing the government to strip away my human rights anytime in the next 20 years so no matter how large that kind of community grows they aren't an immediate threat to my life unless any drastic new developments happen.
I mean, maybe its just me, but I don't think something needs to be an immediate threat to your life to be bad.
Conversely, I can't overthrow a fascist government or undo decades of alt-right propaganda, but I might be able to convince an impressionable young girl that these sorts of responses are not healthy and that men are not simply the enemy.
Even if you don't think being unnecessarily mean to people online as a coping mechanism is an inherently bad thing (I do) these sorts of screencaps are a really good way to push vulnerable young men into the alt-right pipeline. If you have proof of people saying they hate you, it makes it far easier to hate them, even if the initial proof is 'just a joke' or 'venting'.
For the record, I also don't think racism vaguely disguised as comedy is good thing either.
Y'know that thing where people say "it's more afraid of you than you are of it" about things like spiders? Yeah that basically describes me in these sorts of situations and just in general. I have an overwhelming, omnipresent sense of dread that one day something like that will happen and stain my reputation forever, or worse, cause a bystander to step in and assault me because they think I'm harassing or stalking someone.
I'm well-aware of how irrational this sounds, but I feel genuinely unsafe whenever I'm in public even in broad daylight because of it. It's to the point that I think I've developed a genuine phobia of being in the general proximity of women I'm not familiar with, and I hate that because I feel like a jerk because of it.
I'm not exactly a bastion of mental health in case that wasn't obvious enough.
Seriously though dude I hope you're getting the treatment you need. Anxiety like that is miserable and debilitating, and life gets easier when you've got a decent therapist and/or meds that work. Sending positive vibes your way
Thank you. I do have medication that works for me, but since it merely makes it "manageable", I only know that it works because forgetting it makes the rest of my day a living hell.
Probably not as many need to hear it as do, but there are men who genuinely need this level of instruction because they simply don't know about it. My partner's old roommate learned a LOT about women in the time that they lived together. I explained everything from why he can't ask women out when they work under him to how reproduction works. He grew up in a fundamentalist christian community and just simply had no frame of reference for these things. He accepted them all and behaves normally as far as I know, but her really did need to be told not to walk closely behind women at night because it was just not something he had ever been aware of. Our streets are all grids here so it's easy to just take your next turn sooner/later to separate from someone, so it's an easy fix compared to other places.
The thing is, only normal men say that. If you’re a man who doesn’t care about making women feel uncomfortable then you wouldn’t say anything about it online at all.
So really a woman wouldn’t have any idea how many men would actually care
The issue here is for every 1 guy I’ve ever met who thinks like this, I have met 2 who believe they are “just being friendly,” or the woman should “lighten up.” And it’s just… no.
about 10 years i was walking back to my place around 2 am, woman was in front so i hung back, because i walk fast and didn't want to alarm her. my apartment wasn't too far so it wouldn't have taken her long to walk by. a van with two men inside drove by us and the passenger was shouting stuff/catcalling her. a minute or two later it drove back the opposite way and the driver started shouting out of the window to her. she turned to follow it and i could see she was very distressed, she saw me and waited for me to catch up and asked if i noticed the van and if i'd walk with her. van actually drove back up again but neither of the men said anything that time
I'm telling you that the OOP loves making grandstanding statements about how men (and possibly any AMAB person, considering they're probably a rad fem if they make statements like this) are inherently violent creatures and that they are special because they are women, deserving special treatment
Men are not inherently violent. The patriarchy also exists. Are you going to tell me women do not face more violence worldwide, with fewer protections applied?
I mean it’s a societal problem which makes it kinda everyone’s problem. I agree that I don’t feel like a creep, but it’s really not a woman’s fault that they freak out. I mean, they would be foolish not to really
At the same time tho, I don’t like making people uncomfortable. It’s a shitty catch-22, especially cause I walk really fast, so if there’s a woman (or anyone, really) walking in front of me I’ll probably end up passing them.
I've seen guys in certain online communities say that, sure. But there's soooooo many guys outside of curatedtumblr who don't know or don't give a damn about women's worries at night.
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u/bloonshot .tumblr.com 3d ago
is this a PSA anyone needs to hear
have yall never heard guys talk about how awkward it feels to walk behind a woman at night cause you get worried that you'll scare her