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The problem is equating males to sharks. The exact same arguments have been directed at ethnic groups in the past.
This is just the Bayesian approach; overall men have high enough tendancy for aggression and sexual assault that from a risk analysis point it makes sense to be on your guard until you get to know that person better. Of course media has a bias for presenting the awful stuff that happens in the world, one would rarely get coverage of a heart warming relationship between two people involving atleast one man. So these priors despite being in the correct direction might be biased too.
But I think, neither the shark anology or the expression “all man are dangerous” is useful for getting this point across though.
I hate this argument every time I see it. It could be used to justify so many terrible prejudices that we’ve been trying to get rid of for decades. I got robbed by a black man once so should I now treat all black men as potential criminals?
I have a friend who is a woman who insisted that it’s a majority of men who do things like grope women on dance floors or exhibit other such sex pest behaviors.
I pushed back on this because I quite strongly believe that not to be the case, and pointed out that encountering such men a majority of the time when going out doesn’t require a majority of men to behave that way. An incidence rate of, say, one in twenty still virtually guarantees you’ll run into multiple if you’re in a crowd of sufficient size.
I’m also not trying to downplay the seriousness of it being a very real problem. Nor do I deny her lived experience of encountering that behavior often when going to concerts or whatever. Literally just pointing out that such an experience doesn’t require a majority.
She got offended, calling me out for not believing her and accused me of making a “not all men” argument to try to invalidate what she was saying, despite explicitly agreeing that it’s a problem that needs addressing.
She is not wrong. Pretty much every man in my firm will bully you if you don’t behave like that.
And in a bit of irony, the woman co-worker that drives me told another co-worker “oh, he doesn’t like women”.
Like, cmon, just because I don’t behave like that!?!
You put into words thoughts that I’ve been unable to for a while.
Like, I read this and I see how someone makes this argument, but I feel fucking terrible afterwards. Sure you haven’t said I’m a rapist, but you’ve said you’ll treat me as though I am. You can’t expect men as a demographic to agree to this argument if it requires society to assume they’re shitty people, at which point, why is it even being made?
The worst part I feel is that there’s a lot of incel types that conflate feminism with sexism, which we’d like to school them by pointing them at a dictionary. While incels are generally shitty, we can’t ignore the fact that this argument is telling them their behavior doesn’t actually matter because we’re going to act like they’re rapists based solely on their malehood anyways. (to be clear, this is an explanation, not a justification)
This argument is so stupid I don’t know why you got so many upvotes. It’s nothing like the same situation. Men in general are physically stronger than women, men ARE generally more dangerous to women than women. Racism is the baseless belief that race determines the danger someone poses, but men are actually more dangerous to women in a very real way.
The post is titled “all men are dangerous”.
Nobody is denying that some men are dangerous. Nobody is denying that you can’t tell if someone is dangerous or not. Nobody is denying that men are physically more dangerous to women than other women.
What you, and everyone else, are saying is that “all men are potentially dangerous”.
What you, and everyone else, are saying is that “all men are potentially dangerous”.
“All men are dangerous” is the exact same sentence as “all men are potentially dangerous.” These are the exact same sentence.
Someone is not “dangerous” if they’re actively in the act of raping someone. They’re well past the point of being dangerous to being an active violent threat. “Dangerous” in this context simply means “risky.” And yes, all men are dangerous if you don’t know about them. They present a potential danger. Ie, they’re dangerous. A woman meeting stumbling across a random man on a street at night is in a dangerous situation. There’s real risk there. Even if the guy turns out to be a saint, that danger still exists until proven otherwise.
Dangerous and potentially dangerous are not the same sentence. Every person, male or female is potentially dangerous.
Ah, ok thanks. I’ve seen this crop up a few times and wondered how the arguments spin wildly out of control. I get it now.
You (and I assume the OP) are using the word “dangerous” differently than most people here.
When you say “dangerous”, you mean “might be a threat”, right? Most people here understand it as “is a threat”.
To use an abstract example, to me “this sandwich is dangerous” and “this sandwich is potentially dangerous” are wildly different. One says this sandwich is definitely poisoned or something, the other is simply telling me to keep my guard up.
By “most people” you mean “men.” You’re doing the male as default.
The way women, who are most people, use dangerous, is that the person might be a threat.
Women are half the population. Neither men as a group nor women as a group are ‘most people’
The racial metaphor is misplaced and disingenuous to the conversation. Let’s say as a woman, just about all of your women friends have been at some point attacked by a dog. Some have been completely mauled, some have managed to fight the dog off after a couple of bites, some managed to run away from the dog and jump into a car before it could bite them, and most have a combination of stories from their lives. Some are traumatised and scarred for life, others have been able to move on largely as normal, but they haven’t forgotten that scary moment.
Now our woman may or may not have been attacked by a dog before, but because of all these experiences she’s seen her friends go through, the fear, the lifelong injuries they carry - the pain, the embarrassment, the shame, the blame - she’s pretty anxious about getting a dog. Especially one where she doesn’t know its history. It’s a big dog, strong, gorgeous and seems so sweet wagging his tail. But most dogs are like that when you first meet them. It’s the rarest of dog that shows you complete aggression from the beginning and you know full well to stay away from them. She doesn’t know if she brings this dog into her home, if something seemingly benign might set it off. It’s even riskier if she lives alone.
(As an aside, isn’t it ridiculous that a woman should feel embarrassed or ashamed for having been attacked by a dog… or good god - blamed for inciting it - was she carrying beef jerky visibly as she walked down the street, she should have known a wild dog couldn’t control itself at the sight of jerky??)
If the frequency of dog attacks were as prevalent as violence and assault against women is - no one would be allowed to keep a dog for a pet. Sure, it’s NOT ALL DOGS, but the likelihood and the severity of the consequences is such that you’d be crazy to go into the situation of dog ownership without taking precautions, and in the back of your mind you’ll keep remembering all those friends who’s dogs were sweet right up until they weren’t.
People who have beautiful dogs at home, who see their dog snuggle their baby and is sweet to their cat, and have only ever had warm interactions with dogs won’t understand the fear. Not all dogs they’ll say.
Someone else will come along and say it’s only brown dogs you have to worry about. (Sounds ludicrous in this phrasing doesn’t it).
But you know what the difference is between dogs and humans. In a pack of dogs, the good dogs will call out the bad ones. They’ll pin them down, bark at them, gnash their teeth - make it clear that’s not acceptable if you want to be a part of this pack. Even when play fighting gets a little rough - they say when it’s enough. The dogs keep each other in line.
What we’re seeing in life is that the dogs are saying to women, not all dogs are going to maul you and leave you with scars for life. Most of us are good dogs, and it’s not fair you’re scared of us when we’re not doing the attacking. We’re not seeing enough good dogs giving strong reinforcement. Making sure they’re being well socialised when they’re growing up. They’re not going out and engaging with younger pups and teaching them how to behave properly, they’re not even pulling their friends into line and baring their teeth saying that behaviour is not ok. Even as a joke.
The point is - every woman has multiple stories of people she knows being victimised, and sadly the odds are, she will have some kind of personal experience with it in her lifetime. The impact of being assaulted is every bit as lifelong and traumatic for the victim as a frenzied dog attack.
If we treated it with the severity it really carries, and according to the overwhelming frequency with which it occurs. We’d realise a response of “not all men” is not enough.
But you know what the difference is between dogs and humans. In a pack of dogs, the good dogs will call out the bad ones. They’ll pin them down, bark at them, gnash their teeth - make it clear that’s not acceptable if you want to be a part of this pack.
If a human man tries doing that, people will tell him to “stop white knighting” and they’ll shun him worse than the guy whose behavior he was trying to put a stop to.
The fact is that predatory behavior is often indistinguishable from typical human mating rituals when viewed from the sidelines. The difference ultimately boils down to whether the recipient of the advances is accepting of them, which is often an internal thing that no one but a mind reader could tell from an outsider’s perspective.
People tend to be aloof and circumspect about these types of things. Women don’t always openly reject unwanted advances. Sometimes they expect the guy to “just figure it out.” And women don’t always openly encourage wanted advances either. Sometimes they expect the guy to “just figure it out.”
So, if a woman is being quiet, is she just playing it cool, or is she silently resenting the guy talking to her? At what point is a nearby observer supposed to step in and say “Is this guy bothering you?” And if she says “it’s fine,” to what extent are you supposed to take her word for it?
Or are we all just supposed to magically know the secret code to perfectly interpret every situation every time? Because at that point, what’s the point of having a secret code in the first place?
I stopped talking to women because almost always they expected me to “just figure it out” without them ever having to state how they feel, good or bad. Maybe they tried dropping hints but they went over my head. Sometimes I had the feeling they were dropping a hint but I didn’t know what it meant one way or the other. And then they would get upset when I didn’t read their minds. And I’m supposed to believe that that’s a moral failing on my part? When my whole life I’ve struggled with a lack of social skills in general to begin with?
So I stopped talking to women, to avoid the situation altogether. And now I’m expected to somehow intervene in other people’s interactions?!? Which still requires a modicum of mind reading ability, by the way.
It’s ridiculous. Men don’t have this magical ability to control what other men do.
There is a distinction between a prejudice born of bigotry, and a prejudice born of a real fear and trauma. And while I understand your point, the difference between these two directly affects how we can effectively address them societally.
To start addressing it, we can’t just keep admonishing traumatized women. We have to understand where the prejudice comes from. The reality is that women need to be on guard constantly, not because of all men, but still specifically because of men.
They are continuously exposed to stories like the Rape Academy website, see sexual violence normalized in media, encounter rape threats online, and virtually all of them have either experienced sexual assault themselves or know someone who has.
And while this is not all men, or even most, the statistics are clear: perpetrators of violence and sexual assault against women (and against men) are overwhelmingly male. Since there is no reliable way to identify which men pose a threat until it is too late, it’s unsurprising that many women develop a prejudice as a safety mechanism.
It’s unfortunate that this can harden into bigotry, but it’s even more unfortunate that the threat giving rise to it exists at all.
Your analogy of being robbed by a black man “once” actually highlights how widely the pervasiveness of this threat is misunderstood. For women, this isn’t a single incident. It’s a lifelong threat most acute during their formative years.
So by way of a counter analogy: would you admonish a black person who grew up in the American South during the Civil Rights era with “not all white people” or “not all cops”? Or would you recognize that their wariness was, prejudiced or not, a rational response to a very real danger?
I agree that we should strive toward a society where no one is judged on anything but the content of their character. But it’s worth noting that countless men rush to admonish frustrated and traumatized women with “not all men,” while far fewer show up when stories like the Rape Academy actually break. This imbalance is itself part of the problem.
And if we as men, and as human beings, want to see less of this prejudice in the world, perhaps the more productive question isn’t whether the prejudice is fair, but why so few of us are doing anything to make it less necessary, and why so many of us are more interested in pushing back against women’s reactions than addressing the cause of them. And this, for me, calls to mind MLK’s observations about the white moderate…
Bad analogy. Skin colour was not a factor in the criminality here. Being a man absolutely is when it comes to violence against women.
Prejudice is unacceptable for any immutable characteristic, such as sex, gender, race, or sexuality.
Caution is not the same as prejudice. Women should not need to put themselves in potentially unsafe situations for the sake of men’s feelings. I have to live with the fear that I might be assaulted again, every day. Every woman knows someone that has been assaulted. I will never give a man that opportunity again, and that means that I’m going to have to live in such a way that I will mistrust a lot of good men too, because we don’t know which ones are dangerous to us. My assaulter was a close friend, was active in the community, and had my trust. For many women, it is family and close friends.
I feel bad for you. Sucks to have to live in fear. Do you have any feasible solutions? I have not seen many actual proposals on what should be done, except maybe improving equality and fighting discrimination. But those are not solutions for your fear.
I mean, have we tried just killing all men? /s
I mean, have we tried just killing all men? /s
I’m not saying “do it”, I’m just saying run it through it the computer and see if it would work.
Edit who downvotes Mitchell and Webb?
The epidemic of male violence on women is evidence based, therefore not prejudice.
FBI stats put black people 13% of the population at 51% of violent crime offenders. That’s evidence based are you saying that treating black people differently because of these statistics is therefore not prejudice?
That’s data, not evidence. To treat it as evidence you’d have to understand the causes (poverty, segregation, policing patterns, etc.).
And you’re mixing two things: using group averages to judge individuals vs managing risk under uncertainty. The first is prejudice, the second is safety behaviour.
Men on average are simply a higher physical risk to women than women are and so cost of being wrong is higher.
Judging all men based on the actions of others (pre-judging them, if you will) just because of what group they are in, is prejudiced.
The post literally says not “all men”. I don’t know why yourself and so many other commenters are inserting a straw man to argue with. If it’s intentional, it’s a bad-faith practise. If it’s unintentional it’s a literacy issue (common problem is USA).
The post literally says not “all men”.
Really? Because the title of the post is “All men are dangerous”
Even if the post didn’t say that, that’s what others in the comments are defending and/or advocating for.
Women are punching up. Racists are punching down.
Feels different cus of the power dynamic.
So the husband’s way of putting it was more precise while the implied blanket statement the wife made is inaccurate.
Makes sense someone in the maligned group would raise a question about it.
You can’t ignore the numbers. Can’t justify blanket statements or judgment based on them. Sounds like a case for nuance. Maybe judge any case separately without looking for oversimplification.
I agree with the sentiment, yes, there are dangerous men out there. But this is a terrible analogy.
How is it bad?
For one, the shark is not at fault. The swimmer is. Which doesn’t really fit the overall message.
A better analogy would be insects. Not all yellow-and-black flying insects are dangerous, but if you see one flying around your head, it’s safer to assume it’s a yellowjacket than to assume it’s a honeybee.
I mean maybe it’s because your statement was explicitly “all men are dangerous”, not “men are dangerous”
This was my thought reading it as well. To be fair, it could be that the conversation went like “men are dangerous” “I disagree” “women know it’s not all men etc” but the author forgot or had a typo or whatever. Idk.
I used to think this way, “hey it’s not all men”! That was until my wife was roofied in a bar. Luckily I was there, just in the bathroom, and when I came out the coward bolted away, but it shattered all of my illusions about my own gender.
She put her drink down for less than 5 seconds, at her table, with other friends there. They were distracted for a split second while he put something in her drink. God knows what would have happened if I wasn’t there.
Men, we all need to understand that it may be a few bad apples, but a few bad apples spoil the bunch. Women have to keep their guard up because one slip, 10 seconds of being distracted is all it takes. Before that incident I never thought about how guarded they have to be… all the time. It’s insane. Even that instance she was with corowrkers and her fiance was there! She hadn’t talked to anyone else and still it happened to her! We never have to worry about things like that. Hell I’m pretty sure just this week I set my drink down and went to the bathroom, and still it didn’t cross my mind to check.
Men bad because, yes, men are real fucking bad. There’s people out there who literally do try this shit, and as a woman meeting people they don’t know who you are or what you’ll try. It is not as simple as “Why don’t the trust us”? Because some of us slip roofies into drinks, that’s why. Real men will see that and vow to punch those fucking cowards in the face, watch their female friend’s drinks for them, and many other things.
There’s a place a few towns over, it’s like organized rape. The bar owner is in on it, bartenders and the bouncers. They all help drug women and help the rapists. Cops are called every week, they don’t care and are possibly engaged in the same activity. It’s been years. Known as a rape bar. I highly doubt this is the only one.
OK. I was abused by a woman. And know of many cases of abusive women (men too, but we’ve already decided in this context that all men are dangerous, so that’s beside the point). So this means all women are dangerous, too?
unfortunately yeah
do women statistically commit as many violent and/or sexual crimes? no. but some still do
I’ve been made fun of (lightly, but still) for letting friends know when I’m going home with a strange woman (which I shouldn’t do at all but do anyway for various reasons). Strangers are strangers, you never fuckin know
do women statistically commit as many violent and/or sexual crimes? no. but some still do
Even that assumption I’ve started questioning. My abuser never appears in any crime statistics, because it’s not particularly easy to prosecute a case that is mostly based on psychological torture, since the crimes are hard to prove, easily dismissed as “just a bit of nasty behavior” and have relatively short times within which they have to be reported in order to be prosecuted, depending on the country you’re living in. If on top of that you’re a man and the abuser is a woman, have fun getting anyone in charge to legitimately believe your story. It doesn’t diminish the violence that occurred, I just barely survived it.
Certain kinds of abuse are vastly underreported. Domestic, psychological and sexual violence (which are not exclusive categories, by the way) belong to these kinds of abuses. Some statistics say northwards of 40% of domestic abuse victims are men, for instance. Well at that point, we’re kind of close to parity.
So let’s focus on reducing violence entirely. Because another thing I’ve learned: while the individual elements of abuse tend to differ between men and women, the patterns are almost always very similar.
Yeah. It’d be nice if people could just… stop fuckin abusing each other. Gender differences are part of the conversation but we should be discussing it in ways that raise awareness and equip people to recognize, report, and reduce violence. Not in ways that just cause more fuckin arguing and division. Which isn’t easy. I certainly have fucked up my rhetorical approach to these things, I think. But we should try, at least :(
Interestingly, the most violent relationships are lesbian, the least violent are gay men.
Hetero falls in the middle.
That’s not really accurate, or doesn’t really tell the whole story.
I’m a feminist and I don’t get this argument at all. There are plenty of dangerous women too so all women as well? It makes no sense and it’s pure toxic femcel delusion.
Also as an ex-professional scuba diver: the shark analogy is a great illustration how stupidly inaccurate this argument is.
Women can be dangerous as well…Are there chat groups full of women sharing information about how to drug and rape their husbands, as well as filming the rape and sharing it online?
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2026/03/world/expose-rape-assault-online-vis-intl/index.htmlNo women go in for personality assassination of individuals they’ve arbitrarily decided they don’t like. Like that tea app from a few years ago.
Reminds me of this:
“If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you, would you take a handful?” said the tweet on the verified @DonaldTrumpJr handle.
“That’s our Syrian refugee problem,” said the post, which caused a stir and negative tweets on the internet into Tuesday.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/donald-trump-jr-likens-syrian-refugees-poisoned-skittles
Are you sure THIS is how we should think?
As per usual it’s a stupid analogy. It assumes that only bad things can happen and the best you can hope for is a not poisoned skittle, it totally precludes the possibility of a beneficial skittle. But of course it does because the Trump family deals exclusively in zero-sum games, it’s either all or nothing with these idiots.
Thats basically saying all men are rapists, you just don’t know which one is going to rape you.
When you go through a safe driving class, they teach you to assume everyone else on the road is an idiot who can’t drive. This isn’t because they are, it’s because it’s safer to approach it that way.
In scouts you’re taught that if you encounter a carrion animal, you should assume it has rabies. Not because rabies is common, but because you really don’t want to be the rare case of rabies.
When you’re learning how to handle firearms, you’re taught to assume all guns are loaded until you’ve personally checked and cleared it. This isn’t because guns magically manifest bullets as they’re handed from one person to another, it’s because it’s safer to make sure than to hope someone else didn’t make a mistake.
The only reason this is any different is because it makes weak men feel the same way they want to make everyone else feel.
Reading comprehension has taken a total nosedive, or men in these comments are willfully misinterpreting very clear language because they can’t stand the idea of being compared to dangerous men.
We know not all men are dangerous. We don’t know which men are dangerous. And by the time we find out there isn’t much we can do about it.
That’s the takeaway.
Half the comments: BASICALLY SAYING ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS
My best friend is a man. He’s a wonderful person. I love all the men I’ve chosen to be in my life. I’ve identified them as safe. I, too, don’t want them to be pre-categorized as potential monsters. But it doesn’t matter what I want. Enough men violence or sexually harass women that the gamble is too risky.
And here’s the scariest part.
Over half of homicides committed against women come from intimate partners and family members.
Like, even when we find men we think we trust, it’s still no better than a coin flip that one day they might violently hurt us, rape us, or kill us.
Put your stupid pride aside for a fucking second and address that there is a problem when how violence against women is normalized and dismissed. Even now in this very thread.
It doesn’t mean men can’t be harmed in return. I know plenty of abusive women exist out there. That does not negate a single part of this argument. It’s another problem, and one we should also take seriously and address.
We should ALL be on team: All Of This Sucks And We Should Do Something About It
Over half of homicides committed against women come from intimate partners and family members.
Like, even when we find men we think we trust, it’s still no better than a coin flip that one day they might violently hurt us, rape us, or kill us.
That’s not how that statistic works.
You need to get your eyes checked. The title of the post itself is “All men are dangerous”.
This is some incredibly obvious rage bait of a post, meant to get people arguing past each other because some people will assume the sort of good faith discussion in the image, others won’t accept ot anyway, and some will be explicitly calling out the bullshit title while others defend the argument in the image, shouting past each other about different things.
Over half of homicides committed against women come from intimate partners and family members.
Like, even when we find men we think we trust, it’s still no better than a coin flip that one day they might violently hurt us, rape us, or kill us.
I don’t see how the latter follows from the former. The statistic claims that when a woman is killed, the odds are >50% that it was a partner or family member.
It makes no statement of the gender of the partners or family members, and it’s also not “a coin flip” whether your partner kills you. If you get killed, it’s a coin flip whether it’s a stranger or not.
Rewind: I’m in my 20s, well maybe also early 30s. The girls I know all tell me I’m not fit for dating because “you’re just not exciting and dangerous!”
Oh, the completely unrealized irony.
I’ve literally never heard a woman say they want a dangerous man… except in discussions like this
I’m ok with women expressing this sort of sentiment, so long as they’re also ok with guys making generalisations about women in the same vein – ie “There are enough of ‘this type’ of character out there, that you gotta be defensive and assume any could be”.
Saying all men are dangerous is fair, it’s also fair to say all women exploit men for financial gain. I don’t know many men who’ve dated for a while, who haven’t come across women clearly just seeking free meals, gifts etc; ones who’ll judge you based solely on income.
That said, it’s prejudice in either case to assume that an individual of either gender is either of those things just because you’ve acknowledged the risk is there. Like if your store is constantly robbed by one specific ethnic demographic, it’s human nature to be suspicious of any member of that demographic when they come in – but you’d cross into racism if you explicitly treated them like thieves prior to them being shown as a thief at an individual level.
It’s not fair in either sense imo. Agree with your last paragraph - we are setting back fight for equality with these dumb meme rage bait statements. This is not the way no matter how you look at this issue. It’s just rage bait.
Not all women exploit men for financial gain, but the few that do, is the reason I can’t casually be with any of them.
Now compare this to why women have to be distrustful of me and you.
Risk levels may determine the appropriate level of defensiveness, but the general principle I stated remains valid.
For example, where I live, there have been lots of known cases of women drugging men and stealing from them. There’s one woman who’s done it and killed a few guys, including a few well known small business people – she’s still out, “dating”, while she awaits trial I believe. So I’d be ‘fine’ with guys around here being more cautious on that front, as there’s more risk there.
But again, prejudging every individual as an imminent threat and treating them as such can go too far, and lead to more toxic relationships/interactions. Having a defensive posture doesn’t mean lashing out at others / treating others poorly in advance “just in case” they turn out to be a threat. I realise this is likely a strange concept for you, seeing as you seem to have identified as an American in another post – and you all are very keen these days on the idea of things like “Genocide all palestinians” and “Destroy all of southern lebanon” based on “some people there might be violent towards us”. You’re so keen on it, you guys even side with Russia now against Ukraine, because “NATO and the USA were potentially violent towards Russia, so it’s fair for them to try and destroy that whole country!”
You must be mistaken because I often say us and our society etc. I am Serbian.
You defended America in another comment, when an American was tryin to take the moral high ground against Canada. Sorry if I misread that.
The general point regarding risk/defensiveness, and that it doesn’t include lashing out / attacking others, remains though.
*I should clarify – you defended America by seemingly citing hyperbolic claims that are pushed by america-centric right wing sources in regards to Canada’s systems. Wasn’t just that you were taking Americas side.
