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The Buff Scammer, isolation, and the male loneliness epidemic
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- Title
- Reblog by @whetstonefires
- Authors
- whetstonefires, doubleca5t, redeless, overfedvenison
- Word count
- 1563 words
You know... This is actually a really insightful take, I think. I would maybe even further qualify this as "straight cis male sexuality". Gay male sexuality is (rightfully, I think!) very much celebrated, at least by circles accepting of gayness.
There's a reason for this cultural perspective: the vast majority of predators are men, and a horrifyingly large portion of non-men have experienced at least some level of predatory sexual behavior from men. But I would contend that most straight male sexuality is probably still not predatory? I don't have numbers for this. But there are a lot of straight men engaging in sex, and I suspect most of it is mutually consensual and mutually enjoyed.
I don't think it's wrong for femme folks to be wary of or averse to sexual advances from men. And I definitely think that the way we teach boys about sex and relationships is alarmingly problematic, and directly leads to the predatory behavior we see from so many men.
But it also sucks that there's a real message being delivered to young men that their sexuality specifically is problematic, while basically every other group is being told that their sexuality is beautiful and powerful. And to be clear, I don't even think this is the dominant message — that winner is still the Buff Scammer, which is obviously also a terrible message designed to make men feel bad about themselves.
I have no idea what to do about this, but it does suck, and it is nice to see it expressed well and with nuance.
Yeah, I think the fact that this post is on Tumblr helped make this point particularly salient because it's so often a very progressive, queer space, and those spaces are often where people fall into this trap (or, less charitably, where radfems try to launder their gender essentialism as being progressive).
There is obviously a huge amount of societal stuff that leads to men being more often perpetrators of a wide array of pretty awful behaviors (and not even only towards non-men -- men are very often victims of other men too), and I do think that support for victims is deeply necessary. But framing men as inherently predatory I think is ultimately counterproductive if we actually want to encourage men to have healthy, positive behavior towards themselves and others. It absolves men of the choices they make in perpetuating these behaviors and utterly fails to offer an alternative path forward for men who don't want to do so.
I don't have anything to add, really, but I totally agree with everything you've said here, especially this:
Thanks for sharing this conversation, I got a lot out of it!
It makes me think of comments like "oh you know how boys are" being used to justify and attribute an individual's behavior, and how it's often said with a tone that says that the behavior is expected of them.
The type of straight male behaviors that, if taken to the extreme, lead to harm and assault, are at the same time, if exercised in moderate amounts, explicitly desired. Men are still expected to make the first move when dating. Confidence and (monetary) independence are still highly valued traits, which if taken to the extreme, lead to this classic manosphere toxic masculinity described in the tumblr post from OP. But if you take that confidence down a few notches, then it's what's required for dating. The "traditional rugged man" is what a lot of women still like and want.
(Edit: I remember years ago reading an article from a reputable German newspaper about how university educated women still look towards a man that is higher on the educational ladder than them, which narrows your dating scope significantly when you have a Master's, lol.)
At the same time, I think that considering how many individuals on the internet this discussion involves every single time, you're just going to get a lot of conflicting opinions on top. It's the usual mistake of online discussions involving 3+ people.
I think there's also a lack of role models right now. Look at famous men. The really famous ones. What do they embody? What do they stand for? Could a boy growing up, lacking good examples in his immediate surroundings, use them as a guiding star? It just seems dire to me.
Even in homosexual situations I've seen this collective male guilt manifest. Two male friends of mine - one pan and one bi - are currently in a strained friendship because one asked the other if they'd like to cuddle together twice without getting an enthusiastic response either time. The guy that was doing the rejecting clearly wasn't being as clear and verbal in his rejection as necessary for the other (somewhat autistic) guy to perceive. The requester also should have realized that asking twice without getting a yes meant he'd overstepped and should have apologized.
When I brought this up to my friend to suggest he apologize he clearly felt very guilty. I kept telling him that I knew (because I had been told so) that apologizing would completely clear up the matter and that he's not a bad person for making this mistake. That didn't quite make it through at the time, but hopefully will after a couple of days of reflection. Men are taught that any kind of mistake in courtship is a tremendous grievance if not outright sexual harassment. Most of the blame here goes to the truly abusive men out there, but some of it goes to the rest of humanity that doesn't have the emotional intelligence to discuss this stuff and educate each other on nuance.
93% of sexual crimes are commited by men. Of course most men are not predators, but that kind of statistical imbalance is hard to overcome.
I think we'll just have to accept that we have to watch our behavior constantly in order to not be perceived as a threat and that is unlikely to change in our lifetimes.
Gay men are also constantly watched and scrutinized by the way.
I don't doubt the statistic. But I do doubt the answer. Because isn't that just being guilty by association? Which we know isn't right. I would think that would be unacceptable to say if we were to attribute that 93% to a different group. A specific race or ethnicity or religion, etc.
Because even though 93% of sexual crimes are being committed by Group X, it's not being done by 93% of Group X*.
That said, I don't know what the answer is. I, being a man, also engage in the "watching myself" behavior. Like not walking too closely behind a woman on a not-so-crowded street, moving to a position so she can more easily see me, overtaking with a wide berth, etc.
I don't think that's "ruined me" in some way. I've had successful relationships -- romantic or simply platonic -- with the opposite sex. But I could see how at a much larger scale how that could be hurting boys and young men. We're stereotyping and even criminalizing them from the start. It's not OK when we do that to black youths. It's not OK when we do that to Muslims. I don't think it's OK here.
...Right? Hmm.
*At least my assumption is that 93% of men aren't committing sexual crimes. Please tell me I'm right and that it's a far, far, far smaller percentage.
Back of the envelope maths on the UK using ONS and census data, the male population is 29.2 million and total number of sexual crimes at 1.1 million. Assuming they are all unrelated, none are unreported (a known stigma with male victims), and 93% of those are committed by men, it works out to about 3.5% of the male population. That 1.1 million includes all forms of sexual crimes from unwanted touching (most common) to the more explicit stuff.
So yes, a lot lower than 93% of all men
This brings up the possibility that the data is skewed. I'm not trying to say anything about women in general, but I have noticed that it's more socially acceptable for women to physically sexually assault men and just get away with it. If a man is grabbing women's butts in a club or bar, he's likely to get called out for it. If the positions are reversed, then most people won't bat an eye at it when they see it.
I saw similar things on some of the fitness subreddits. If a man builds muscle, there is an increased chance of that muscle being grabbed by women who are attempting to flirt. It's mostly harmless, but if men tried the same thing with fit women they would absolutely get in trouble.
It's a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle. Men's behavior is viewed as more predatory, so they get labeled as predators. Again, it's not all women - it probably matches the 3.5% stat that you came up with for men. But if unwanted touching is the majority of sexual crimes, then I'm willing to bet that there's a lot of unreported crimes coming the other way.
I think this is just a failure to reconstruct a normative set of rules for social interactions, given current theories of consent.
There's a model in which no one may physically touch anyone at any time without verbally asking for and receiving permission from someone who is under no particular pressure to say yes. This might be correct! Maybe extending a hand to shake in a business context should be forbidden, and we actually need to start with something like "May I shake your hand? You are completely fine to say no, I won't be upset."
In practice in most spaces we are still using a lot of implicit negotiation, or non-negotiation, and people are still sort of poking each other and seeing if anyone complains, tapping each other's shoulders, leaning in to do that cheek kissing thing they do in Europe, and so on. It might be possible to make that workable under a developed theory of consent, if it essentially rises to a language that everyone involved knows, but it also might just all be wrong and need to change.
It's easier to see the problem when it is flowing down the power gradient instead of up, and e.g. the person who makes twice as much money at work and does not have the state taking a malicious interest in their guts is the one who did not in fact have permission to punch the other one in the arm for a bad pun. And if we persist in having any acceptable social interactions that are meant to be initiated and then accepted or refused, then maybe some things really are only wrong when going down the power gradient, because the person at the bottom is under pressure to permit them that the person at the top is not.
Your argument makes a lot of sense until your last paragraph. I mainly disagree with this:
My issue with this conclusion is that I don't feel any more powerful than the women that are my peers. While I am not directly targeted by the state, I have no more power than them to prevent that malicious intent nor did I cause it. I do not benefit from it, and yet I am treated as if I do so I must give something up in order for treatment to be fair. This is the case for most men (indeed, most people) who are not at the very top - because some men are objectively harmful, the ones lower down are treated as if they benefit from that harm.
Physical power isn't necessarily a good argument either. I am shorter than the average height for men in the US, and I am not particularly muscular. Most of the women that I have dated in the last decade (including my wife) outweigh me by a decent margin. Despite that, I have consistently been told that due to the circumstances of my birth I am a potential predator. I have been made aware of limits that I have never had intentions of approaching, yet I am told not to cross them anyway. And so, despite not gaining social power in one area, I am restricted in others to balance that out.
This is one of the few points that I agree with in mens' rights spaces (since so many turn fairly misogynistic over time): Men at the top have significant power, and they use it poorly, and in turn the men without that power are punished socially. Our commander in chief has never, and likely will never, see consequences for his actions in this regard; many others in similar positions will not either. Instead, the perception shifts ever so slightly against the average man, and we are once again reminded that we hold power that women do not.
Do I agree that, in the big picture, men have more power than women? Yes, I do. However, just like income, look at the median rather than the mean - eliminate the outliers and see where that leaves everyone else.
Note that I am looking at this one-dimensionally and only taking into account the sexual assault issues discussed higher in this thread. Wage disparity, family issues, and more invisible things like hiring and medical prejudice deserve their own conversations and should not be used to justify unequal sexual assault treatment.
I think I think of power gradients as kind of like the gradients of multuvariable calculus. If you have like rich white woman CEO over here, and a poor homeless noncitizen Hispanic man over there, the first might have a higher "absolute" level of power than the second, but if you look at the derivative just along the gender dimension, that component points the other way. That local gradient might then be relevant if you are trying to think about gender-related aspects of their interactions, like who would be more likely to be taken to task for not giving enough attention to their children. I'm not really sure what current thinking is on who should be believed more if each simultaneously accuses the other of sexual assault, because you've put the "believe women" maxim up against the rest of the body of critical theory. I know you aren't meant to do a sort of "oppression Olympics" or start assigning point values to identity characteristics, but I don't really know what you are supposed to do instead.
Sexual exploitation indeed doesn't only happen down the gender gradient. Any power imbalance, for any reason, creates an opportunity for sexual exploitation. If people are going around thinking that is only a man thing, they are wrong. But that also means that you should take power dynamics other than gender into account when thinking about sexual assault.
Even if you don't feel more powerful as a man than women who are your peers, the theory says that the local gradient wherever you are is still "more woman -> less power", so if you were everything you are but also a woman, you would be predicted to have additional problems. I suppose it's possible you've found a place where that isn't actually true, but the theory also says that power disparities are much harder to see from the high side than the low side: the work of thinking about and dealing with them generally gets put on the people with less power. So you might want to check with the women peers to get their perspectives.
I think one of the biggest issues when discussing power dynamics is that people often think of them as fixed, linear things rather than the incredibly complex, fluid, and situational interplay of factors that they actually are.
It causes resentment on both sides, because it gives everyone a justifiable reason to think that the people disagreeing are wrong, when they're just oversimplifying in a different way. Talking about the power gradient from men to women frustrates people because, as you rightly say, there's a strong concentration of unearned power among a small subset of men that the rest of us will never see. Talking about those small number of men having the power frustrates others in turn because even the "average" man is at least sometimes afforded the power to be listened to in meetings more readily than his colleague, or to live without his reproductive choices being legislated, or a plethora of other day to day examples.
I don't think it's fair to look at unwanted touching through the lens of power dynamics without acknowledging the roles played by social hierarchy, customer/employee hierarchy, employer/employee hierarchy, class hierarchy, and many other highly situational hierarchies that can easily and dramatically change the situation in conjunction with gender. But I think that complexity applies when discussing the dynamics experienced by the median man in other parts of life as well, and how his gender might sometimes shift things in his favour compared to a median woman in the same situation.
It's going to be even lower because they won't all be unrelated. A small fraction of one group is terrorizing a large portion of everyone else.
It seems reasonable that sexual predators would offend more then once as opportunity presents itself.
One missing piece here is the power landscape. While stereotyping and criminalizing groups of people is never OK, it hits different when it is "punching down", so to speak. You can point to a statistic as potentially explanatory for a cultural attitude without laying down another brick in the wall of the oppression of men, because in the society we currently inhabit, for all that they do have their own specific problems, "men" are not marginalized.
But also, in this system of thought, I don't think collective guilt is meant to be real, because it's not a rules-based, deontological system that works on concepts like "guilt". It's a consequentialist, "harm"-based system. So while a member of a dominant group is obligated to be aware of, say, how walking near a member of an oppressed group might make the other person feel, it is not because of anything wrong with or collectively bad about the members of the dominant group, and it is entirely about the moral imperative to protect the members of the marginalized group from further negative impacts.
Black people in the US are held to be owed reparations, as I understand it, not because of the collective guilt of their enslavers, but because of what was taken from them.
Since it's all based on outcomes, there is no correct set of rules to follow. It's not even, really, a matter of being obligated to think about how you might affect someone negatively and take "reasonable" steps to avoid it. It's a matter of being obligated to succeed in not negatively impacting them, by either walking too close or too far away. You thus obviously can't win all the time, and nothing you personally do can ever be enough. This accurately reflects how no individual member of a dominant group is going to personally dismantle the enclosing system of oppression.
I'm going to copy something I said just the other day in another thread, because I think it's very relevant here:
It doesn't have to be a question of social hierarchy, or guilt vs harm, or "the oppression of men", or even obligation. It just hurts to so often be reminded that the group we're part of, whether we want to be or not, is the bad group. It hurts knowing that it statistically is the bad group, and knowing that will always influence how the rest of the world relates to us, for that matter.
And yeah, that's a small harm in the scheme of things. In contexts other than a thread like this, or the prior one that was also about men's issues specifically, I wouldn't mention it at all. If being reminded of that is a price we have to pay to counter the actual, larger, systematic harms then it's a price I'd absolutely say is worth paying. But I don't know if it is a necessity. It seems like "don't judge whole groups of people based on the harm caused by some small subset of that group" is probably a positive angle to take regardless?
[Edit] Typo
While it is directly a rather small harm, I think it is indirectly a rather large harm that has been a substantial cause of the current political landscape. We shouldn't be surprised that many find something like "you're not bad and it's just the evil woke left telling you that you are" to be an appealing position. Some of us are okay with paying this price, but enough aren't and telling them they need to anyway seems to be rather counterproductive in practice.
I suppose this is true of many small harms that can be politicized. Tell everyone "you must all absorb this minor inconvenience for the greater good" and the vote so very often lands in favor of preventing the minor inconvenience rather than the promoting the greater good.
Curious to hear your thoughts on similar veins of thought. Does it hurt to be reminded that you descend from individuals who've killed other humans to steal their land and resources? Does it hurt to be reminded that your government is responsible for the murder of untold numbers of civilians? That it used to condone slavery? That it had periods of time of deep regression, sexism, racism, homophobia? That it may have interfered with the governance of other countries, or gone to war and killed them? Does it hurt to be reminded that you are a member of humanity, which has committed countless untold atrocities on other humans and life on this planet? Where does the line stop - how close to the group do you have to be for it to be painful that there are bad actors?
In the context it was brought up here, it was an explanation for why women in particular, who suffer proportionally excessive sexual crime, are taught to keep an eye on and be wary of men specifically as a defensive mechanism to protect themselves. Would you rather we not educate women on how to keep themselves safe in order to prevent men from being hurt by the reminder that the group they are part of commits more sexual crimes? I'm genuinely interested if you have any notes on how to improve this interaction, because some women need to understand the gravity of threat in order to treat it as an actual threat.
To be clear here, I have sympathy for the feelings of hurt that come along with being confronted with statistics and sayings like the ones mentioned above. I understand why it pushes some men to become reactionary and fall down altright rabbit holes. But I also don't think it's fair to blame that on the statements themselves, drawing attention away from the malicious actors in the space- the organized altright domestic terrorist grooming circles which have existed for decades. It is absolutely right, however, to point out that we need to be careful about how we approach these topics and that we are cognizant of the atmosphere the dominance of negatively framed statements can have on the psyche of a fragile individual. We need to be careful to balance messaging with positively framed statements if we are trying to work towards a future in which we can both recognize systemic harm, arm individuals with the information they need to defend and protect themselves, and teach young men how to be more resilient to toxic violent messaging.
Those are some really interesting examples, and my answer is an absolute yes to all of the above, but with differing levels of intensity.
The first and last - ancestors and humanity in general - are painful in the sense of general empathy, in the sense of wishing the world could be better, and in the sense of feeling a kinship with those who have suffered at the hands of others. But they aren’t really examples of what I was meaning in my previous comment.
The government examples hit much closer to home, and they are an example of what I was talking about: actions of a group that I’m part of, unwillingly so, that hurt others. It’s nationality rather than gender, but it’s the same concept. I guess if I really boil it down what I’m saying is I don’t like being involuntarily grouped at all, because it just makes me want to scream “those assholes don’t represent me”. And since that’s always going to be the case with grouping on a characteristic or attribute rather than an action, maybe talking about the actions in the context of the attribute isn’t a great thing to do?
I’m genuinely posing that as a question - I’m thinking on my feet as I type this, less trying to make a point and more trying to genuinely explore an idea that I have an emotional response to but no real conclusion for.
Of course not, but it’s contextual. The top comment was a thoughtful and heartfelt one that strongly acknowledged the genuine harm done by some men, but expressed sadness for what this means about the perception of male sexuality. I thought it was a really good point, and one that isn’t often discussed in such a sensitive way - in part I think because it is very difficult to do so without inadvertently appearing to be brushing off the genuine harm that, in part, leads to those perceptions.
In that context, a direct reply about the statistics absolutely didn’t read as an effort to protect or educate those who can benefit from knowing the information. It read as, essentially, “no, people are right to have a negative view of male sexuality and these numbers prove it, we’ve got to just live with that”.
I guess if I really boil it down, the exchange read to me as: “it’s a real shame that bad actors tarnish how an important part of life is perceived for our entire group, perhaps that’s harmful to the good members of the group, despite being understandable given the circumstances?” “yes but that group is objectively the bad one, deal with it”.
I think this is perhaps where I didn’t do a great job of saying what I was trying to say.
I know the group I’m in is responsible for an enormous majority of global violence, both sexual and otherwise. If I could disassociate myself from the group I would, but it’s an innate part of me and part of how the world perceives me, so I can’t.
I’m not blaming the statements (or talking about the direction they push reactionary men, really, although I did pull the quote from that thread so I see why you went there), more reflecting on how and where they’re said, and how that affects the discussion of “men [group] [negative]” vs “men [individuals]”.
[Edit] Minor clarification
It's complicated, because that attribute is important in the context of building awareness and arming women with the knowledge they need to prepare, defend, and ward themselves from sexual predation. As I stated elsewhere in my comment, I think the devil is in the details here, and I think you bring up the crux of the problem well when you stated the following:
Balanced messaging and hedging are extremely important, at least in my view, when we make any statements that are negative about a group of individuals. I hate that we need to state it because it's simply not what the words are saying, but we do need to state "not all men" when we talk about the statistically average man and the same is true when we talk about any other group and broad statistical trends. This can be sidestepped, at times, by contrasting pros and cons as the author at the top did and you highlighted, as it's another way to recognize that it's a complicated issue and we're trying to focus in on the problems rather than the individuals and we're not interested in placing blame anywhere so much as we are trying to discuss a complex topic.
However, I disagree with your following take:
because their comment on statistics is immediately followed by the following text
This seems to be exactly the counter-balancing you asked for in your replies, yet it seems to either have gone wholly unnoticed or it wasn't enough. Which makes me wonder, how could they have changed their messaging? Did they not hedge their comment enough for you to realize they aren't throwing all men under the bus? Did they need to expand their viewpoint in more depth for you to realize they are talking about the problem and not the individual and that they are not trying to cast blame on you or any men in specific but rather statistically characterizing the problem?
I think it didn’t need to be said at all. I think it’s entirely reasonable to say in general, I just don’t think it was the time or place - because the first post already acknowledged it, so it wasn’t going unsaid, and because the second one’s strong conclusion of “just have to live with it” felt very much like it was shutting down the thoughtful exploration of the first, rather than adding to it.
But there’s something I’m clearly still not communicating well, because you’re suggesting I see it as a comment on all men, or on me. I don’t, I completely understand that the “not all men” is both implied, and pointed out explicitly in this case. I’m not asking for more hedging, or more carve outs.
I’m saying that being able to climb no higher than “one of the good ones” sucks, and in light of that I’d rather not be part of the group at all. But that’s not an option, nor is ceasing to use “men” as a categorical grouping at all, so I don’t really have a conclusion.
Oh okay, yea that's totally understandable... but it also seems impossible to escape for literally any human? There will always be someone who hates my group and thus gives me the opportunity to be "one of the good ones", no matter what that group is. That group could be something I was simply born with (like gender or race) or it could be something more innocuous like the fact that I enjoy pineapple on pizza. Perhaps it's because I'm autistic, but I don't really see the difference between the various characteristics that one could be discriminated against by as making any one characteristic more unique or more hurtful, but I do agree that it certainly doesn't feel good for others to have such limited views of the world, strong preconceptions, or simply be wording things in a way that hurts on first brush.
I think the ultimate issue with the comment that started this whole discussion (which seems to not be yours from what I can tell) is that the same statements and statistics come off in extremely differently based on context. Statistics exist in context as part of a story. Smores's original comment was very nuanced and acknowledged the outsized harm that men commit in society while also expressing sympathy for them and discussing how much societal conditioning is pushing towards this outcome. Responding with statistics about sexual assault perpetrators here ultimately carries the heavy implication that we shouldn't acknowledge that this is the result of society and how it trains men to be, but rather that it is something inherent to men that they cannot escape and should not try to. Those same sexual assault statistics would come across very differently in a conversation that began focused on why women are guarded among men or on why women take certain precautions, but since that's not what the initial context was, I'm not surprised the comment ended up rubbing a lot of people the wrong way. The exact same stats communicate very different things in different contexts.
Since I work so heavily with statistics (in specific in healthcare) this didn't even occur to me - its very rare that statistics are so directly explainable, but rather a symptom for which a root cause analysis is necessary. But this completely explains why some folks would be so much on the defensive! Thank you for this insight, it will certainly help me frame things in the future to avoid more conflict and have more productive conversations.
I don't feel annoyed if someone tells me any of those things individually, but if I were to be told that over and over again by different people, I'd get annoyed for sure. As someone living in a liberal city, I've heard the evils of man my whole life. At a certain point, you're just piling on with no benefits. We know. We try to abide by good values, conscious of the potential perceptions of all our actions. And then we're rewarded by more moralizing.
Thank you for your perspective. I agree that we need to be paying attention to the balance of messaging when and where we can.
Yeah thanks for understanding. :) I'm a bit raw right now because I got lectured three times recently. Two times after I asked someone out at a wedding. I had chosen the timing and location to give her the greatest sense of security possible (at the end of the wedding, around all her people, in order to make her not feel trapped).
The other time, I got lectured after going on a date that a woman asked me out on, despite me being upfront multiple times that it was a longshot there'd be a second date*. We didn't have sex either. We just talked and I paid the bill.
After reflection, I think the criticism I got from third parties had more to do with general bad man behaviors that I don't feel I was exhibiting, but ended up bearing the responsibility for anyway. But for weeks after the criticism, I felt hurt because.. what did I as an individual do wrong?
* it's possible we weren't on the same wavelength but given that we live in different countries, I thought she'd understand..
I certainly don't have the entire context, but it sounds like they were being some level of vulnerable with you? Like if they thought you were exhibiting this behavior or bore any responsibility for it, they probably wouldn't have shared this information with you? It sounds like you feel like a safe space for them to vent about something that was bothering them. It sucks that there happens to be an overlap with your identity, but I genuinely think they may not have been even considering that when they vented.
It's still wrong to generalize groups of people based on statistics. Whether those statistics bear anything out. Should we be teaching women to be more careful around certain ethnic backgrounds of men? Would that be ok with you? I don't think I would be ok doing that. There's harm reduction and there is straight up discrimination, or racism. Those aren't defensible because of ""statistics "" that's a right wing talking point
That's really not a fair analogy because "science" done in that way is done with clear bias aimed at increasing racism. It also doesn't play out unless we're talking about crime statistics, and clear literature shows that's an outcome of systemic racism and choosing to incarcerate black men, for example, at higher rates. It's entirely unfair to paint this as a right wing talking point, because for one right wing people do not quote male violent crime statistics (they are targeted at the groups they are being bigoted towards), but more importantly this is about protecting people from real tangible harms that we can measure and have done a pretty good job of eliminating bias around. It's an unfortunate reality of the world and likely mostly a side effect of the patriarchy and cultural norms but being dismissive of protecting people from reality to save the feelings of men seems rather short-sighted to me.
If you're going to use crime and perpetrator statistics, specifically around sexual assault as some kind of justification for bigotry(and definitionally, treating all men as potential threats based on those statistics is in fact bigoted) is literally no different than taking it one step further and saying since black men are overrepresented as perpetrators of sexual assault, that women should be more wary of them. Or that white or Asian women should be less wary because they are less likely to be victims of sexual assault comparatively compared to black women. Whether or not this is the fault of systemic racism or not has no basis in your so called generalization in pursuit of "harm reduction" and pointing to statistics, whether that be crime, or socioeconomic status, or intelligence, or any other attribute true or not that is ascribed whole cloth to a demographic based solely on them being a member of that demographic through no choice of their own is morally wrong. I feel like you're trying to handwave your own logic because you, like me, find the idea of telling people to be careful around specific ethnic groups to be racist, which it is.
If you want to talk about it from the perspective of systemic racism why don't you also mention systemic sexism? How men are incarcerated and prosecuted at a significantly higher rate than women, so it's definitionally skewed those 93% statistics, or how women perpetrated childhood sex abuse is notoriously played down, or how women receive lighter sentences for the same crimes, all of this because of cultural biases that men are more violent, or less worthy of empathy, or whatever have you. It cuts both ways, and I dislike it in all forms. Statistics is observation, with all the inherent bias that comes along with that. When the vast majority of men are not predators, it's ridiculous to paint them all and make all of them suffer based on these preconceived notions and general persecution of their personhood and their sexuality. The exact same ridiculousness that makes people view women only based on their beauty, or youth, or how ""feminine"" they are, it's bullshit there too! The solution is not more stereotyping!
That's not what I said at all and I don't feel like you've been treating what I've been saying in good faith.
A hugely important point! and something we should talk a lot about, but we're talking specifically about sexual predation here and important information for people to have.
That's not what I'm arguing at all, and I never did. I really don't like you painting my intentions with a broad brush or attributing malice to what I'm saying just because there are bad actors out there who do.
Can you please help me understand where I suggested that we should be stereotyping individuals? Or that we should be attributing cause or intent to specific individuals based on observations of statistics? I'm at a loss from where you got this intent out of my replies.
It's absolutely this part, if, in relation to someone telling you that they don't like guilt by association, you use the statistics to justify that rhetoric, that's what I have a problem with. I feel like you're being overly defensive when I fully believe you understand where I'm coming from in relation to your original comment or are being willfully obtuse. If the version of educating women involves communicating to them the "risk" inherent in the statistics, whether you believe that that is harm reducing, or you want to take a consequentialist approach, that's all well and good, but I believe it's discriminatory. It definitionally is, you are saying verbatim that women should be wary of men because of the statistics of sexual assault, I'm only extending your point, that you could sit there and go each additional layer of attributes, from gender, to ethnicity, to socioeconomic status, and all the while you're vilifying an entire group, I believe that's wrong. It reinforces dehumanizing rhetoric. I don't feel like you're acting in good faith when instead of addressing what I'm saying you reactively "I don't know what you're talking about". But in the interest of both our sakes I'm fine to drop it.
Civil rights activists, like Martin Luther King Jr. are not seeking to exclude. Neither are feminists. If men today read his speech and feel excluded, then they are reading the words "and all flesh shall see it together" and "little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers" and somehow claiming it excludes them. Civil rights activists do not seek to exclude anyone based on gender, race, or sexual orientation. They seek to exclude bigots.
So, if you are a modern man who feels excluded by inclusive actions, can you take the time to ask yourself why? Really, really ask yourself, and be open to the difficult truth that may be there. Do you need feel like you of the same value as people of a different race, gender, or sexual orientation?
Does this really map to what they were saying, though? I read a comment about the use of statistics and stereotyping - one that I don't necessarily agree 100% with every nuance of, but one that seemed pretty specific and targeted in discussing that particular approach to how these issues are communicated - and this seems kind of a non sequitur.
It's also veering very close, at least by my reading, to suggesting that those who feel excluded (something that the original comment didn't actually suggest, as far as I can see) are part of the problem, when it could very much be the case that those who intend to be inclusive are still falling into some rhetorical traps because, y'know, we're all fallible humans and sometimes it's helpful to point out how lines of thinking and methods of communication can be improved.
Appreciate this. Even as was I was typing out my comment, I was thinking, "Hmm, something's not quite right here; I don't know if this comparison fully works. It's really not 'hitting' the same way with men, as it does with those other groups..." Which is why I ended on a question.
But I think what you're saying, the power dynamics at play with each of these groups, does a good job of explaining why it doesn't fully work. Like I still think it's wrong in some sense, but not to the same degree as with the other groups. Because, as you say, at the end of the day, men are still at the top, for better or worse.
The same reasoning is used by racists when talking about black people in the US and violent crime.
I really don't question what is right here. That is just what it is.
In the past, I've been very critical of a lot of the posts people have shared here discussing the "male loneliness epidemic". I've found myself very dissatisfied with most of the "discourse" surrounding it, where I've encountered a lot of stuff that's, frankly, rife with misogyny. But I do think it's a worthwhile topic worth addressing from the right angle, because the phenomenon in question is real and is caused, imo, by a lot of complex intermingling societal factors.
I suspect most other Tildes users don't use Tumblr and might scoff at someone sharing a Tumblr post here, but I think this particular post and its replies are some of the best, most nuanced discussion I've seen of the topic. And, for the record, I think the fact that the OP is a trans woman and the first reply is from someone who's trans masculine are a big part of that. I think transitioning socially does genuinely give many trans people a lot of unique insight into how society and gender interact in ways that aren't necessarily obvious to most cis people.
I hope others here appreciate the linked discussion and hopefully gain some insight from it. I know I did!
This is a lovely post, thank you for posting it!
i love this. every time i see discourse about "how can we solve the manosphere", someone always makes the point that women doing more emotional work to pander to men is a terrible idea. they're obviously right, but it's never said in good faith and is more used as a way to avoid any critical analysis of left-wing cultural ideals and fall back on "men are bad" rhetoric. this is the first time that i've seen anyone make that argument in an honest way, and it's an incredibly good point.
i'm a cis man, and i haven't ever experienced the "That's Gay" thing earnestly, but certainly i do not open up to any of my male friends as much as i would to any other friend, and that's already not a lot. that point got me thinking about my own experience, and i think it's touching on something that's a more specific version of the root cause: male friendships are mean.
there's a stereotype that men are mean to each other's faces (and nice behind their backs) and that women are mean behind each other's backs (but nice to their faces), but that stereotype always comes with some kind of implication that the male mean-ness is... better? like, it's not equally as harmful? sure, there's banter that never actually leaves any emotional damage but when so much friendly male interaction walks that line, it (accidentally) gets crossed a lot and you end up genuinely hurt. when everyone else shrugs it off as just more banter, you're pressured to let the hurtful stuff go as you would with harmless stuff and you build up a distrust for these people, even if you like them!
this is sort of a stream-of-consciousness comment, and i'm now not so sure which of the two issues comes first: are men mean to each other to not seem gay, or are men scared of being called gay because that's the kind of insult that might get thrown around?
in my own experience, the "That's Gay" thing actually manifests as the complete opposite: men will act gay for their homies, with the intention of laughing it off. i really don't know what kind of cultural aspects contribute to that but it gives a vibe of "making a facade of male intimacy to get a hit of that security, but still maintaining the low-level homophobia of 'haha no but thats actually fucked if i did that for real' to keep up masculine appearances/affirm my own gender"
i have no grand point to make, but thought i would say that i liked the post.
welcome to the club, it sucks in this corner too.
I did experience the “That’s Gay” thing earnestly — as a boy, I was friends with a lot of girls, and did “girly” sports like cross country and swimming (??) and “girly” activities like art (??), and I got called gay and the f word like… quite a bit. I developed a reflexive retort — liking these things doesn’t make you gay, and it doesn’t make you a girl, straight boys can like whatever they damn well please. This was an easy stance to take, because I knew I liked these things, and I also knew I liked girls.
Except… I also liked boys. And folks that later turned out to be non-binary. And trans. It turns out gender didn't really have any role at all in whether I had romantic or sexual feelings for someone. But I didn't really allow myself to see that until I was halfway through college, because I had spent so much energy defending myself against “That’s Gay”.
Anyway, all that to say that the “That’s Gay” thing really fucks up straight men's relationships, and it also fucks up queer men (which is, I guess, the intended audience). I guess that's probably not news to anyone, but it was what I thought of when I read your message (which I rather like and agree with, by the way!).
The other thing I thought of is how fucking constantly my brother, dad, and ex-step-dad insist (in private) that they know the sexuality of someone (always another man) based on ridiculous things like their mannerisms or speech patterns, and have the gall to get extremely defensive and mad at me when I lightly suggest that you can't actually know someone’s sexual preferences based on how they speak. Me. The only queer person they actually know. I get where, psychologically, this defensiveness comes from, but goddammn is it infuriating.
I don't know when this shift happened, but it feels like at some point the list of "acceptable male activities" got hugely reduced. It always seems like if you push far enough back in history the societal norm goes from "man is big strong guy who cut log" to "man is big strong guy who cut log AND also the only gender capable of having nuanced philosophical and artistic expression"... when/why did the patriarchy cut out the arts?
I'm very lucky to have been born to/surrounded myself with people who are comparatively progressive about this sort of thing, so I've never had much real interaction with it. I'm also basically at the top of the privilege chart in just about every metric, so if anything I'm much more likely to be an inadvertent perpetrator of these issues than a victim. I'm curious about your age and what years you were in college and whatnot, because I'm relatively young so my experience is also more recent, which I think has a big impact on my lack of firsthand experience with "That's Gay".
This kind of surprises me, I would assume that being able to "guess" someone's sexuality would be considered gay in and of itself (did i use that right?), just based on my experience of the gaydar trope in films and TV.
They will deny it vehemently, but ultimately, they see gayness as a deficit in men. Speculating about a man's gayness is a way for them to feel better than them, to implicitly at their own straightness. This is sort of transparently obvious, because the two times I have dared to push back (I was genuinely very gentle and lighthearted), my dad aggressively insisted that it was fine if the person was gay and he wasn't homophobic. So. You know.
Fwiw, while I think acknowledging your privilege is a great thing, I don't actually think this type of issue is one that can be neatly divided into perpetrators and victims. The same people are very often both perpetrators and victims of this type of behavior simultaneously. It's part of how this behavior perpetuates itself.
I don't think the "that's gay" thing is overt. It's just sort of an ever present background noise.
I don't even know if "that's gay" is really necessarily the right way to frame it though. I was never afraid of being perceived as gay growing up. For one, I'm not gay, and I'm pretty secure in my sexuality. Secondly, I wouldn't mind if people did think of me as gay, although I was never bullied for being perceived as gay so maybe that colors my opinion there.
I think the fear is more like being perceived as weak, rather than gay.
There's always been an undeniable pressure throughout my whole life. Physically strong, mentally tough, always even keeled, the bedrock, the one who had the answers, the person with the plan.
This pressure came from friends, family, and especially from women. In the back of my mind, I always knew that if I came home one day, and could just no longer keep it together and fell down on the floor sobbing because of the sheer weight of all of my responsibilities and expectations, a not insufficient amount of respect for me would be irrecoverably lost.
I think most heterosexual men can identify with this.
That's the real reason I haven't and still don't open up to people about the things that really weigh on me, and as a result I think I'm worse at relating to other people when things weigh on them.
It doesn't really have anything to do with being worried about looking gay, at least for me.
This is my experience also. The best way I ever saw it framed was the difference between what is explicitly requested of us, versus what is implicitly expected of us.
It was from a Reddit post a decade ago that I saved. Full post in full below, I can't credit the original author because they've deleted it. It came from a thread about 'Why do men always try and solve problems instead of just listening?'
Really great post. Thank you for sharing. When I think about implicit expectations versus explicit asks, I think the most poignant modern phenomenon is the concept of "the ick". In theory, the definition is some random, inconsequential behavior that inexplicably causes a woman to lose attraction to an otherwise attractive man.
In practice, it's just overwhelmingly an enforcement of strict gender roles. A man gets too excited about something he's passionate about? Ick. A man cries because he got emotional about something personal to him? Ick. A man skips, or eats an ice cream cone, or carries a hand bag or takes baths? Ick.
They're not all enforcing traditional masculine gender roles, but it's hard to read any compiled list of icks as a whole and read them as a prescription for a very specific type of traditional masculinity, one which explicitly does not include sharing any emotions except for anger and lust.
When you consider the fact that for heterosexual men, they consider the opinion of women they're attracted to more than anyone else, it's not hard to see how this attitude can create a self reinforcing feedback loop.
That's not to say that this is women's fault. For the most part you can't really help what you're attracted to, but being conscious of it could certainly help it diminish over time.
I get frustrated when I see the opinion of "we keep telling men we want them to be more sensitive and communicate. Why don't they?"
Like, yes, we explicitly say sometimes that we want men to share their emotions. However, we implicitly SCREAM at them that sharing emotions is weak, and weakness is unattractive and undesirable in men. It doesn't matter how much you do the former if you don't stop doing the latter.
I think there might be a stereotype-generating effect of large groups going on here. If you take dozens of different people, and get one fragment of a desired gender role from each, and AND them together, you're going to get an extremely tiny and plausibly empty region of gender space. If each had kept just one piece of a received "man" gender as something they personally actually like, you can end up reconstructing the whole thing even when no one individually wants that.
Nobody can be, or should try to be, desirable to everyone.
I think you get this as a cultural phenomenon because you are throwing strangers together and expecting them to date. If you have a good read on someone to start with, you're not likely to be surprised and prompted to re-evaluate them by their consumption of ice cream or by them having a good cry. And if whoever it is is someone actually in your community, who won't solipsistically cease to exist if you stop dating them, then deciding you don't actually want to date them anymore has much less of the character of discarding something disgusting than the word "ick" would imply.
Yes, I'm not speaking about individuals, I'm speaking about large groups as a necessary generalization, since we're discussion the effect of those attitudes on men as a whole not the cause.
Even though it would be rare for an individual to specify that they're turned off by men eating ice cream and having a good cry, the fact that we're broadcasting those things so much means that men take it as a generally expected set of behaviors, rather than an individual demand from a single specific person.
It's much like how women feel like they're expected to raise children and be extremely thin and small, and have a good career (but not be too masculine), and support her husband's career. Sure, there are men that expect all those things at once, but it's not exactly common. That's the general messaging though, and the effect is the same; reinforcing strict gender roles.
I’m lucky that I haven’t personally had to deal with this outside of interactions from non-friends in high school and earlier. I suppose if you live in more progressive cities and are raised by progressive parents this isn’t as much of a problem.
Sorry for the long quote, but it's important to get the whole context. I'm really, really glad I never bought into that notion. I think this whole concept of being close with male friends as being "gay" is on the way out. Almost all of the younger people (20 and under, especially elementary and middle school kids) I see have no problem with being emotionally close to their friends.
This gives me hope that as the 90s-00s kids either grow old enough to find healing, self compassion and companionship, or (I hope absolutely none of them) die alone, the homophobia dies with that generation.
That entire generation's [faith group redacted] Parents stripped away anything good and human out of being a boy/man because "it's gay": sleep, good food, friendship, sunshine, swimming, animals, music, dance, art, literature, charity, community, pets, love, family, heck even caring about the women you're having sex with was gay. That generation grew up with the Doom Guy brand of masculinity: Angry Silent Man Kills World as the only possibly not gay shape for a man to be, a violent loner who destroys and is feared.
I don't know what we can do for that generation. But i have hope for the kids in this one, that when they get tired of the Buff Scammer and look up anything under the heavens that is of interest to them, they'll find a niche group who also loves that thing and won't call them slurs for loving it.
I'm of the opinion that it is being taught, but it's being taught by women /not-Buff Scammers, so lessons in compassion and all those good things becomes further signs of danger ensnared men need to run away from. It's like luring a child: "everyone is going to tell you you're too young, but what we have is special and I know you're special and old enough, so you need to self isolate and throw away all those other sources that tell you good things and come only with me. You will see how
maturemanly you are the more you feel attacked, unloved and isolated."I think the comparison to grooming is very apt -- ultimately a lot of the same tactics are used in online radicalization.
There is also an excellent King of the Hill episode about toxic male influencers/scammers.
So, here's my big problem here with this entire topic. These people have all written a series of posts about this buzzword topic, and they are often contradicting each other. Many of them are contradicting themselves in their own pieces. Take, for instance, the best written of all of them by overfedvenison:
In my reading of this, he's saying: So men feel lonely. Men feel isolated. The solution is: safe spaces just for really manly men and no one else? Because without the subtext of what they actually mean, they just described a gym. They described Planet Fitness or any of the chains or locally owned gyms in the country. That is where you go when you want to improve physically and grow stronger.
Yes, there is a "male loneliness epidemic," and yes it is real. Yes, it is being exploited and exacerbated by bad actors. But, in the end, I think the problem is that some men for some reason(s) refuse to let themselves feel comfortable around people they see as others. And these men are increasingly labeling wider and wider groups as others: be it people of color, foreigners, women, LGBTQ+, autistic, liberal, etc. We can not solve that for them.
edit to add below
Okay, I unfortunately have more to say, specifically about this:
That right there. That's inherent prejudice and a dogwistle they are sending off. It's not funny when it's fiction. It literally just shouldn't matter in the slightest to anyone if someone is gay. If you feel like you can't be friends with another man because you think it's gay
My experience tells me that the root of the issue is due to the fact that men are expected to initiate and pursued. This results in men getting almost no experience being pursued while men getting almost no experience pursuing. Thus both sexes in a heterosexual context lack the opposite experience and fail their interactions more often as a result. We see examples of this all the time with men not recognizing the subtle signals, not stopping or not pursuing hard enough, or women rejecting really harshly or not knowing how to say no. It's just bad for the overall dynamic to have such one sided culture.
I think this can certainly contribute to some factors of how men get socialized into certain types of toxic behaviors (and, honestly, how women are too, albeit to a different set thereof), but I think focusing on this to the exclusion of other issues commits the all-too-common sin of considering romantic/sexual relationships with women the only ones that matter when it comes to "male loneliness".