Singular Intellect wrote:I think it is also being ignored that many women actually like that kind of attention.
Singular Intellect wrote:Others may wish correct me, but I've always gotten the impression most women generally want to be considered sexually attractive, desirable and pursuable.
I expect these posters I singled out will become defensive over it. No need. This minimization need not come from malice. It comes from a lack of putting oneself in the viewpoint of another, a skill that requires age, experience, and effort to achieve.amigocabal wrote:Who is it that tells women that they are "over-sensitive and over-reacting or accused of inviting it simply by being female" if men behaved as you describe?
Let me go over why these statements are a problem:
1) “many women actually like that kind of attention”
One can only assume that the argument being made here is that because some women like this (an unproven statement at best) then all women should tolerate it, or that we should ignore the women who don't like this form of “attention”.
Or, to be more graphic, just because hookers seek out horny men doesn't mean every woman walking the street welcomes this sort of attention. Unless, of course, you assume every woman walking along the street is a whore. Just because promiscuous women might welcome this form of male attention at, say, a bar, does not mean every woman in said bar welcomes that attention. Unless, of course, you assume every woman in a bar is promiscuous and seeking sex with strangers. Some people – women as well as men – do make those assumptions. Which is sad, because it means that non-whore, non-promiscuous women are not allowed to walk on the street alone or go into bars, and if they do, they somehow deserve whatever happens to them.
2) “Others may wish correct me, but I've always gotten the impression most women generally want to be considered sexually attractive, desirable and pursuable”
The only comparison I can come up with this morning is that most men want to be fathers – but they don't want a one-night stand to drag them into court, announce they're the father, and demand 18 years of child support via garnished wages. Yes, women want those things but not constantly and not against their will. This ties into assumptions that a woman who is big-breasted must be as sexually excited about them as an observing man who gets a hard on looking at them. Again, it's a lack of empathy and inability to see another's viewpoint. A woman no more walks around all day thinking about the size of her tits than a man walks around all day thinking about the hair on his balls. Yet, his balls are still hairy and her tits are still big.
There are all too many men who think that because they find a woman “hot” that woman must find them equally hot and those women are just as eager to engage in sex and should be available to such men. And if they aren't interested how dare them for having female attributes, the damn cock-teases. It doesn't matter if said women are near-naked or wrapped in a burka – underneath that burka is a FEMALE!!!! and for some sad, sorry men that is all it takes.
3) “Who is it that tells women that they are "over-sensitive and over-reacting or accused of inviting it simply by being female" if men behaved as you describe?”
This is like asking “who says a woman who is raped deserves it?” It's the same assumption – good girls don't leave the house without male escort, they don't go certain places at all, and any woman who does so is a whore or looking for sex. Let's just ignore that this harassment occurs pretty damn everywhere – the grocery store, the post office, everywhere a woman needs to go to get things done in the modern world. The mind set is also one of “I don't see it, I don't hear it, I don't experience, therefore it doesn't exist”. Unless you can truthfully claim to have experienced everything possible a human being can experience this assumption is in error. Again, it's a lack of empathy, a lack of being able to see thing from a different viewpoint than your own.
Men frequently are oblivious to this sort of thing until one or more of the women in their lives experience it in a graphic and undeniable manner. Even then, there are cultures where the men are trained to assume not that this happened to a good mother/sister/wife/daughter but if it happens to such a woman then that woman – contrary to a lifetime of experience otherwise – must have done something wrong or to deserve it. Hence, honor killings and punishment of rape victims, beating of women out jealously because some random stranger made a comment and the woman must have somehow invited it, and so forth.
The good news is that the vast majority of men have some empathy, refrain from being assholes most of the time, and most of the young ones will outgrow the worst tendencies with more time and experience. Meanwhile, it's bullshit every woman has to deal with every day of her life. Yes, there are worse places than the western world, that doesn't mean the mainstream west is flawless. There is still a shit-ton of sexism and harassment in even the most liberated and egalitarian society today.
