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?
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)
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.
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…
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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)
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!?!
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.
The epidemic of male violence on women is evidence based, therefore not prejudice.
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).
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.
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.
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’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 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.
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.
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”.
“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’
Women are punching up. Racists are punching down.
Feels different cus of the power dynamic.