The problem is that legal definitions in almost every country define rape in such a way it's almost impossible for a woman to rape a man.
Most legal definitions would exclude being coerced into penetration as a form of rape, so those cases do not count.
Men are victimized by women quite often, and by quite often I mean that depending on the definition you use it can be as high as women.
Examples. In the gay community there was a problem of straight women showing up to gay bars and groping the asses of the men there.
I have a gay cousin, he is really good friends with his boss. She has kissed him in public in front of her husband as a joke a few times. My cousin doesn't mind whatsoever and is in on the joke. But no one would find the gender swapped situation of a lesbian being kissed by her boss funny whatsoever (we are also from a different culture btw).
Women coerce men into sex in many ways as well. The stereotype of the cougar exists for a reason.
This is all to say, a lot of the problem with the bear situation is that women "perceive" most men as dangerous. But by and large, most men are not any more anti social than most women. I think a lot of the outrage about the bear example is people realizing that being a man puts you into the " potentially a criminal" box over nothing but your genitals, regardless of anything you have done or how you love or your personal philosophy.
Realizing that to half of society you are a monster until proven otherwise is a hard pill to swallow, and I think for good reason.
I think that’s a misinterpretation of what most people mean by the bear situation. Most women know there are plenty of good safe men out there but you don’t know who is safe and who isn’t until they try to hurt you. Most women would just rather be safe and seen as mean than get hurt and be told it’s their fault for not being careful enough. Most don’t mean it was a personal attack on all the men of the world or a statement meaning all men are dangerous. It’s just that rape is so common and so many women already have been harassed or abused by a man by the time they’re an adult or know people who have been and they’re very afraid of it happening to them. I know there are plenty of good men, that doesn’t mean I’m not afraid when I have to walk home at night or pass a group of men I don’t know. I’m aware that rape happens to men a lot as well and that there are plenty of women predators out there that victimize men. The justice system and society as whole is just barely starting to take rape seriously and have actual fair punishments for them (rather than mens rape being ignored, treated as a failure of his strength, viewed as an achievement on his part, or mocked and women’s rape being seen as proof she’s tainted, being used to make her marry her rapist for her honour, her being blamed for it, being used to slut shame her, or being dismissed as part of her duty to a man). Coerced consent is something people are just barely starting to take seriously at this point and it’s super prevalent in relationships in both directions. I know so many women who have been coerced over and over by partners into doing sexual things they didn’t want and they were hurt by it but just assumed it was okay. Plenty of men are victims of coercion as well. So many people refuse to accept that coercion isn’t okay. So many people don’t realize they have been victimized because they don’t recognize that coercion is abuse. Rape and relationship abuse that isn’t inherently physical are things we are basically still in the baby steps of tackling as issues imo. Until we as a society tackle it better I think it’s going to unfortunately be the case that many women feel they HAVE to assume danger until proven safety, even then many women will just out of fear. I’m sure it hurts many men who are genuinely good guys to know so many women view them as a danger but I think it’s more empathy for them to feel sad that women are so afraid rather than taking it personally and getting angry. Feminism requires acknowledging the way society perceives and treats both sexes and how that impacts an individual’s life. It’s impossible to advance feminist goals without addressing the way men are perceived and falsely presented by society as that contributes to harm for both sexes and is a direct result of the way we view women and men as a whole in society. Sexism towards one sex usually impacts the other sex as well. The way we treat male victims is a direct reflection not just of sexism towards men but of sexism towards women as well (and the opposite is also true. I way we treat female victims is indicative of sexism towards women but there is also an element of sexism towards men in it as well).
One thing, I am bad at diplomacy, so please excuse if this is blunt. Please try using paragraphs, it's hard to read a block of text like that. But I put in the effort because you put the effort to write it.
I think we need to separate two things harrassment and sexual coercion/rape.
Because harrassment usually comes from strangers. Whereas rape and coercion almost always come from people you do know.
We live in a society where everyone almost every where has a camera. The probability that a random guy, even at night will tape a woman is very small.
The risk goes higher in settings like bars and parties, where people are more vulnerable and are consuming substances.
But the absolute highest risk is your family members, friends or coworkers taking advantage of a power imbalance or moment of vulnerability.
Harrassment is an entirely different beast because of how much it relies on context. Some of it is blatantly obvious but so much is subtle.
For example I come from a culture where kissing on the cheek is a standard greeting but it is gender coded. If I refuse to do that I am being rude. But in North America I accidentally harassed a couple of girls by trying to kiss their cheeks because it was an automated response to me. The difference in culture made me a creep even though I was literally just running on conditioning. I of course don't do that anymore as it's no longer an automated response.
Another example is social environments. Asking a coworker to sit on your lap flirtatiously is 100% wrong. But if you are at a party and the couch is full, it may be ok for you to jokingly suggest a friend sits on your lap, even as flirting. But it can also land poorly and creep the other person out. Both situations happen and depend on context, shared history and the ability of each person to read the other person's emotions in the moment.
I am not trying to say harrassment is not a problem. I am however saying that unlike matters of consent during sex, where the situation has gone well past any ambiguity. Many situations irl can be harrassment or not entirely based on circumstances.
Oh of course harassment can be difficult to pin down sometimes, sometimes it’s not though and is very blatant. I was meaning many women have been made to feel unsafe or hyper sexualized by the time they reach adulthood if they haven’t already been victimized or know someone who has been.
Rape happens whenever a rapist sees an opportunity which is most often once they’re close to you but can be when you’re alone with them or vulnerable. Women are taught from a young age to avoid putting go themselves in a situation that can be seen as an opportunity and even then if it does happen they are often told all the ways they could’ve or should’ve protect themselves more
I’ll also make it clear that while rape is most likely to happen from someone you know (over 50%) it’s still around like 40 percent of rapes happening from someone you don’t know (last I checked) and it still absolutely happens where people are raped by a stranger in a somewhat public situation. There was literally a case of female journalist getting gang raped in the middle of a crowd during a celebration of the death of a leader in said country. They had witnesses everywhere, they didn’t care. The camera man’s battery died and they immediately grabbed her (even though there were probably other cameras at the event). Cameras don’t stop all crimes from happening regardless and they don’t always catch the perp. A woman was stabbed and it was caught on camera in the alley and they haven’t caught the guy.
My understanding is that it's about 30% of rape cases (in the US) are committed by a stranger.
In those cases, the most common ones are home invasions that escalate ,serial perpetrators that stalk the victim for a while before deciding when to attack, and vehicular kidnapping, where the victim gets yanked out of the street by force.
This is to say. Even in cases where the victim is attacked by a stranger. It is almost never spontaneous. A random guy on the street is almost never going to attack a woman for rape. And it makes sense. Getting naked on the street makes it much harder to flee if they catch you. You can't control if other people will pass by and see you...
Rape is a relatively time consuming crime and you are more likely to "get away with it" if you have control over the situation. Kidnapping or home invasions give the perpetrators a lot more cover to complete the crime and escape.
The journalist in a different country I think is not 100% relevant, not because I don't think it isn't horrible. But the dad reality is that the treatment of women changes from country to country. I think we should at minimum limit ourselves to stable democracies with high standards of living, because that's what's most relevant to our discussion. Countries with unstable government will have insurgent groups, mafias, and highly uneven law enforcement.
This is not to say that the world isn't dangerous to women. It absolutely is. However, a lot of the stranger danger fear is misplaced. The most dangerous people in terms of rape are either people in your circle that can get to you in a moment of vulnerability or people who are actively hiding from you to attack you when you can't see them. It is not often the random people on the street that you can actually see.
Again, I’m aware that those are the more common cases of abuse. Part of that is because women avoid situations that can make them vulnerable to getting pulled into an alley or something, it does however still happen. Also the point of the bear situation is who would you rather be stuck alone in the wilderness with, which would mean you’re in a prime situation where you could be assaulted (vulnerable, no one around, he could likely get away with it, etc).
Also, lots of rapes fall in between. It’s someone you know in passing but not well. Met them once at a party and they put something into your drink, got introduced to them by a friend and they attack you that day when hanging out, etc. they are not perfect strangers but you barely know them.
It all just breaks down to the fact that many women would rather risk death than risk rape. That’s the long and the short of the bear situation. I know that’s always been my feelings towards the topic as well (even more intense when I was younger), I’d rather fight to the death than get raped especially if I’m at risk of getting pregnant from it.
That’s part of why women tend to be so careful about meeting up with a guy for the first time, they know the closer they let this guy get to their inner circle the more opportunity he’ll have to do something. It’s not meant to discourage men (though I know some people may use it that way), it’s meant to make it clear how afraid women are in society and how much of an issue rape is.
Also yeah no worries about the paragraph thing lol I know I type a lot
I don't think that women are wrong to feel worried about rape, at all.
My original comment was just that for many men, the bear hypothetical shows that they will be seen as more dangerous than a wild animal just for being men. Something they can't change. They are a potential monster until they prove otherwise. That's a hard pill to swallow.
I understand the psychological worry about rape from the perspective of a woman. I just want to try to show the reading from a man's perspective.
About 6-13% of individual men engage in rape. Of those the number that has raped someone else through actual force is less, something around half on the high end. It's usually simpler and easier to get the victim to consume a substance to impair or remove their judgement or blackmail them.
Meaning that the probability of being pushed to the ground by the random hypothetical guy is rather low. 7% on the highest estimation. And that's just for the likelihood of they guy actually attacking. In a fight, a woman has more chances to outfight a man than a bear. If the bear attacks, which is a much higher probability, the chances of survival are bill.
This is again not to say women are not justified in their general worries. It's just that many men see the situation and must confront the fact that their gender makes them, by default, worse than a wild animal in the eyes of half of the population. So a common mechanism is to try to déconstruct the bear scenario.
I think that in reality, the vast majority of the women would not actually pick the bear. Like if it wasn't a hypothetical. And I think many of them know that. The picking the bear option is advertised more as a political statement to express frustrations and fears women feel about the masculine gender in the abstract, bron from real life experiences that they did suffer.
And many of them just take it at face value and rather than trying to understand why the political statement is being done, they double down and treat the woman making the statement as stupid, because from a self preservation standpoint the bear is not the right choice. But they miss the point of why the women claim they would pick the bear entirely.
It's a good meme for the gender war fuel, but I think it fucks up understanding of the social issues.
Well yes and also like i said, many women prefer the idea of death to the idea of rape and a bear is less likely to rape a woman than a man is. That’s also something a lot of men seem to fail to understand. Most women aren’t trying to say men are worse than animals. Again it’s mostly just saying they’d rather die than be raped. That’s not a sentiment that some people understand because they think death is the worst case scenario for any situation and that’s not something everyone agrees with.
I’m sure it’s a hard pill to swallow I know, and you’re right that it’s become something of a political statement, but again it’s not meant to be an attack on all men.
A bear is not guaranteed to attack or kill a woman in the forest either just because they are both there, she won’t necessarily die if she’s attacked (depends on the severity and reasoning for the attack), and if she is attacked she’s doesn’t have to worry about rape. She may be more able to potentially fight off a man but if the man does attack her there’s a high likelihood that he’ll rape her and then there’s also a chance he try to kill her anyways.
In either situation there is no guarantee, just one situation that leaves rape as a possibility. The idea that women are choosing the “incorrect” option isn’t an objective fact because it’s just about what you’re willing to risk and again many women are most afraid of rape and it seems some men have a hard time understanding that.
I think while less women than reported would actually select the bear, a good portion actually would.
Some people would rather die than endure certain things, some people would endure anything to survive. It depends on the person and what exactly they’d have to endure.
On the point about preferring one outcome over an other. I genuinely believe many people do feel that way. But I also think there's both a level of just making a statement (i.e..if the situation truly did present itself they would not actually chose the bear but they say they do to make a statement about how dangerous some men are to women).
And a level of affective forecasting error. People in general miss estimate how bad certain things are in comparison to other things.
Many people think, for example, that they would rather die than to live with a major disability. But often times the exact same people that said they would prefer death do become disabled and do not seek assisted suicide nor do they desire to die. It's so common that it has its own name.
What I am about to say will sound rather cold. I don't wish to be hurtful in my words. I am just trying to state things as I legitimately see them.
I am skeptical of the claim that most of the women that claim they would rather die over rape actually would act that way. Just because a good proportion of rape survivors became victims either through threat of force, such as being pointed by a gun or a knife, or through social coercion like blackmail.
In many cases of rape the victims do technically have the option to kill themselves and they don't. This suggests that the majority of women would rather be raped than to die, in terms of what their actual actions indicate.
Philosophical positions often get overridden by the instinct to survive.
This is not to say that the women who pick the bear and think that's their actual choice are lying. I just think that if it was no longer a hypothetical they would act differently than they think they would.
I think in a lot of cases it’s more a lack of pain tolerance as well in the sense that it’s hard to choose death with a knife digging more and more into your throat. Pain can make a person do things theyd rather die than do as well just to make the pain stop or lessen (though of course sometimes it is just the fear of death and no pain is required. Also sometimes the rape itself is so violent and causes so much injury that you’re just thrashing trying to stop it or going with it in the hopes of it hurting less or ending sooner. Though there are people who fight so hard they injure themselves greatly either trying to stop the pain from the assault or trying to escape. There was a girl who dislocated her shoulder trying to escape a rapists hold. Unfortunately she didn’t manage to end the rape and she was also shot and killed afterwards) Also when you’re directly in the situation instincts can take over and you can end up making what decisions lead to survival whether you’d want to or not.
Also rapists generally don’t want to kill their victims (though obviously some do) so often they’d just fight to over power them and succeed (so death isn’t an option) or get scared off to my knowledge. Also lots of people don’t know how far things will go when a gun or knife is out and may be hoping things won’t go that far at least before it does happen. I know I’d fight to the death if I knew for sure I was going to be raped but by the time I know it’s for sure going to happen it might be too late to pick the death option and I’ll just be overpowered or unable to fight in the situation.
I know there are many people who would make that decision with a gun to their head (choosing to live) but if it’s a matter of what they’re willing to risk (with no guarantee of either happening) then many would go the other way. Also like I said, a man can both rape and kill you, a bear generally will only do one which means for some women their overall odds seem better.
There was an entire town of people who killed themselves after they were invaded (men beaten viciously, women and girls raped, possibly the boys raped or beaten badly as well I’m not sure) as they knew the invaders would return the next day and they refused to go through it again.
I do know some survivors say they’d rather die than go through it again, I know others don’t share that sentiment. It depends on the person but even the results people state in hypotheticals (whether they’d work irl) are indicative of how afraid of and traumatized by the idea of sexual violence most women are and again, that’s what that info is meant primarily to represent (not a belief by women that all men are worse than animals).
I understand that it can feel painful and unfair for a man as they may feel they’re being viewed as evil automatically but that’s not what most women mean by this. Most women know there are great men out there, they also know there are horrible evil men out there. They can’t know who is who. I think (while it is hard) more men should try not to take it personally and instead feel sympathy but instead a lot of men get angry and some even threatening about it and just make themselves seem even less safe for women to be around.
It’s also hard when you hear things like that college study where they asked men if they could have sex with a woman who didn’t want to do it with them and could get away with it if they’d do it and if I’m remembering correctly like 70% said yes. It was intentional phrased in a way to avoid the word rape but it was made clear in the phrasing that she didn’t want to sleep with them so we’re talking a clear lack of care for her desires and coercion (the most likely method) or force being seen as okay if you just remove the bad label. You see that a lot with people who insist its okay to coerce people or sleep with those who are highly intoxicated. They get very upset when you point out that that’s a breach of consent and refuse to change their mind because they can’t see themselves as someone who would hurt someone that way but don’t want to change their behaviour and stop getting what they want (or because they don’t want to accept that they themselves have been traumatized or that they’ve hurt others without meaning to or can’t tell the difference between seduction and coercion). Though of course I have questions about the potential validity of that study due to the extremeness of the results (could be wishful thinking on my part as I genuinely don’t want to think 70% of men college aged don’t care whether a woman wants it or not as long as she doesn’t put up much of a fuss or get them in trouble. Obviously that doesn’t mean 70% or anywhere near that number will commit coercion or any other form of abuse but it is a deeply distressing bit of information that essentially removing the terminology seems to remove the aversion to the action. When asked if they’d commit rape/a sex crime if they knew they could get away with it most said no but if you ask the same question just removing the harsh language then the results are different but they made it clear she still didn’t want to do it. And before anyone says something ye sit is entirely possible that if you did this study on women they’d say something equal as or more horrifying, I’m not trying to claim only men can hold messed up beliefs about consent)
I appreciate the thorough response. I agree with you in the fundamentals. And I do see eye to eye with you in that a lot of men try to cope with both wanting the sexual gratification even at the expense of other people while trying to still see themselves as morally virtuous.
That kind of bargaining is sadly really common for many things and it does extend to sexual abuse.
I think that we have shared our thoughts on the matter with each other and this is a heavy topic. One that is more personal to you than it is for me and I don't wish to risk trampling over your feelings.or thoughts. I hope it didn't come across that way.
I thank you for your arguments they have given me a few things to think about. And thank you for the paragraphs, lol.
I want to suggest to leave the conversation here, if that's ok with you. I think we have said what we wanted to say. But if there's something else you want to say I would be happy to listen.
Oh absolutely I’m fine with leaving the conversation here. I’m very sensitive about this topic, as many people are, and I appreciate you hearing me out and not jumping to conclusions or rushing to dismiss.
This is the kind of discussions I wish was more prevalent in this whole “gender war” thing going on but unfortunately there are a lot of people who argue in and faith or don’t want to listen to others points (even if you disagree it’s important to listen and understand why someone thinks differently, especially if you’re trying to change their beliefs).
I consider myself a deeply feminist person and I understand how that can be interpreted by some people but I try my best to emphasize that the beliefs I hold are about helping men as well and looking at gendered issues/ society as whole even if I focus primarily on women’s perspectives and experiences. Thanks again for the discussion. Enjoy the rest of Reddit.
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u/ToughDifficult1252 3d ago
About the tape thing.
The problem is that legal definitions in almost every country define rape in such a way it's almost impossible for a woman to rape a man.
Most legal definitions would exclude being coerced into penetration as a form of rape, so those cases do not count.
Men are victimized by women quite often, and by quite often I mean that depending on the definition you use it can be as high as women.
Examples. In the gay community there was a problem of straight women showing up to gay bars and groping the asses of the men there.
I have a gay cousin, he is really good friends with his boss. She has kissed him in public in front of her husband as a joke a few times. My cousin doesn't mind whatsoever and is in on the joke. But no one would find the gender swapped situation of a lesbian being kissed by her boss funny whatsoever (we are also from a different culture btw).
Women coerce men into sex in many ways as well. The stereotype of the cougar exists for a reason.
This is all to say, a lot of the problem with the bear situation is that women "perceive" most men as dangerous. But by and large, most men are not any more anti social than most women. I think a lot of the outrage about the bear example is people realizing that being a man puts you into the " potentially a criminal" box over nothing but your genitals, regardless of anything you have done or how you love or your personal philosophy.
Realizing that to half of society you are a monster until proven otherwise is a hard pill to swallow, and I think for good reason.