How most men, even good caring men, have no clue what women go through

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

I think I might have missed Signora's appeal-to-authority/ECH thing - what thread was that in?

And an interesting metaphor came to mind when I was reading Burns's post just now. Typical socialization of boys seems to be a climbing race to manhood, where your peers (of all genders) are the only permissible ladder. Boys get in the habit of stepping all over people, and some don't seem to kick that habit even after they've already reached the finishing line. Or maybe a lot of us are just never sure we've ever even reached it, and keep climbing just to make sure.

Art imitates life.

[Juana]

Signora has been extremely disingenuous. The appeal to authority at ECH was pointlessly exclusive.

Not gonna lie, that got me wrapped around the axle pretty bad. And that's not easy to do. And I feel that, in my subsequent anger and what I wrote about that subject, I wasn't clear enough in distinguishing that when I was talking about how I felt when being talked to on the subject by Garbo or SP, I don't think Garbo intends to come off that way. I think SP definitely does, and I'm taking her lack of any cogent response to me about this as evidence.

I really don't mean to come off that way. I'm trying to make sure I don't do so in the future.

Garbo, you seem to see danger and hostility in every place you go. If that example had been at a bar I would agree completely.
I agree that some women are more vulnrable, I disagree that this vulnrability is universal, the bus is a conetious issue for me because there is a reason the crazies always come to talk to me:
I'm generally the only one on the bus not wearing earphones or staring at a phone. I hate the insular nature of it and I believe EVERYONE on the bus should be making the effort and talking to each other, men, women and fence sitters alike.

You belong to the dominant group. People who are not part of the dominant group (women, queers, PoC, etc.) are living in a place that is hostile and sometimes dangerous to us. The social vulnerability of women has been hashed and rehashed like a million times here already, so I'm not going to debate with you on this. You're not listening anyway.
Women and females have good reasons for trying to avoid conversations with strange men in certain kinds of situations (and the bus is one of them). I'm all for reconnecting with other people, but I think that could be done in ways that won't leave an entire class of people uncomfortable.

How blessed he was that you would take the time to talk to him, Faust.

About the time I registered to this site I came about a hairs breath away from being that guy. Unless someone is flashing their knob, grabbing, or shitting themselves I think the bus example is a bad one.

I'm glad you didn't go down that road, but just because you're okay with random strangers striking up a conversation doesn't mean you should begrudge women who shut that down (because that's how you came across to me). You're less socially vulnerable than a woman, and women are constantly aware of that vulnerability.

Horseshit, Unless your Busess are WAAAY worse then ours there is no danger or vulnrability involved other then a waste of your time.
If it was a DANGEROUS person chances are they would follw you off the bus without ever speaking to you which has happened to my fiance

I don't use the bus if I can help it, mostly because the buses here are expensive and slow, so I have no idea how the local ones are. But I'm gonna point out that the OP is about being harassed and treated disrespectfully by strange men who think they have the right to try to force their attention on her when she's expressed no interest and then treat her like shit for refusing them.

[Juana]

I'm rather curious about the other players in this scenario.  Seeing that they're all men and that it's the consensus of this board that a man can't really speak for women when it comes to feminist issues I'll instead speak to the issues that seem to be surrounding the men and their roles in the scene.

1.  The bicyclist guy.  He was screaming about his mother.  I think we should address this point as it seems to really play into the foundations by which men base their relationships with women.  Now I'm not about to psychoanalyze this guy but I don't think we should dismiss that after she rejected him, all of a sudden the scene becomes about his mother!  I'm not looking to shift blame anywhere here, but I am curious as to how much of this attitude--where a guy feels the need to call a woman a bitch under his breath after some seemingly apparent rejection--stems from deeply rooted mommy issues.  I'm wonder if issues like these manifest from a lack of a father resulting in an over-dependence on mom or similar family structural factors. 

2.  The old frail guy at the back of the car.  There seems to be this sort of unspoken protector role a guy must assume when a 'damsel is in distress' (to quote the corresponding mythological cliche).  Granted, the guy here didn't react in that manner but if I were in his shoes, I'd have felt that archetype arise inside me as I'm sure old frail guy did.  I might have even acted upon it.  I'm not sure that that unspoken role on men does either sex any good as it seems to pigeonhole both .  Take for example a man with a flat tire on the side of the road vs. a woman with a flat tire.  More men will stop for a woman than for a man, right?  Is it wrong to say that a female in need is attractive whereas a man in need is repulsive?  This, to me, seems to illustrate a greater disconnect between men and women.

3. The group of boys.  This looks like that typical pressure to perform.  These boys, after not getting any action, felt the need to demonstrate their false power in front of each other because it's absolutely HORRIBLE to appear weak in front of other boys.  The worst thing in the world is to be considered a 'pussy' or a 'girl' or a 'faggot' in front of each other.  These boys HAD to act that way because the alternative is to confront their own internal shame at the fact that they are cowards inside.  Violence doesn't come from a feeling of real power, it comes from a feeling of powerlessness.

Before you say it, I'm by no means excuse anybody's behavior in this scene.  I really want to explore the root causes of these situations rather than looking at the surface reactions and superficially say, well there's another poor victim of a male dominated society. There's much more going on here--my heart goes out to the woman because it makes me sick to know that we men have all this potential and yet act in these ways.  *She shouldn't be the one to have to face the brunt of these issues.

When it comes down to it, I'm not sure that men really have as much power as it might seem.  That is to say, if one defines power as the ability to control one's own life. 

*ETA

1. It might be mommy issues for that guy, but I think it's a society teaching men that they have a right to female attention on a broader scale. No one likes it when they're denied what they think is rightfully theirs.

2. That makes sense, I think.

3. Sounds about right.

Maybe not, but they try to exercise what power they do have to insult or degrade the person who gave them their current sad.

[Faust]

You belong to the dominant group. People who are not part of the dominant group (women, queers, PoC, etc.) are living in a place that is hostile and sometimes dangerous to us. The social vulnerability of women has been hashed and rehashed like a million times here already, so I'm not going to debate with you on this. You're not listening anyway.
Women and females have good reasons for trying to avoid conversations with strange men in certain kinds of situations (and the bus is one of them). I'm all for reconnecting with other people, but I think that could be done in ways that won't leave an entire class of people uncomfortable.

You are a bigot or presumptuous. My sexuality gets me lumped in as a queer in world that is hostile, in which I am labelled a queer because of the way I dress and look and I STILL think you are living in a deluded dreamland that sees everything as hostile. But thats just it, you presume the world is out to get you and use an ideology to hide and justify that unreasonable fear.

[Juana]

I'm sorry that I made assumptions. I ought to know better. That's my fault. But you are, nevertheless, white and a cis male, yes? That right there still puts you into the dominant group in two very important ways (I think I've said this before, but one's sex/gender, race, and class are the three biggest determiners of how your life will go and how others will treat you).
It's not fear, it's wariness. Jesus. If I thought everything was out to get me, I'd never go anywhere except to therapy or something. Can we not derail this further?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You belong to the dominant group. People who are not part of the dominant group (women, queers, PoC, etc.) are living in a place that is hostile and sometimes dangerous to us. The social vulnerability of women has been hashed and rehashed like a million times here already, so I'm not going to debate with you on this. You're not listening anyway.
Women and females have good reasons for trying to avoid conversations with strange men in certain kinds of situations (and the bus is one of them). I'm all for reconnecting with other people, but I think that could be done in ways that won't leave an entire class of people uncomfortable.

You are a bigot or presumptuous. My sexuality gets me lumped in as a queer in world that is hostile, in which I am labelled a queer because of the way I dress and look and I STILL think you are living in a deluded dreamland that sees everything as hostile. But thats just it, you presume the world is out to get you and use an ideology to hide and justify that unreasonable fear.

Garbo is really focused on the "danger" element; personally, I rarely feel actually threatened on the bus, but I often feel intruded upon, disrespected, insulted, or denigrated. I am polite to others, including people who talk to me when I don't want to have a conversation with a stranger. I believe that everyone is entitled to being treated with basic respect, and that nobody else, with the exception of their children, is entitled to their time and attention.

If ECH was reading a book and a random strange guy tried to strike up a conversation, and ECH didn't feel like having one and said "Sorry, I just want to read my book", if the guy responded with "Oh, you're too good to talk to me?" or "So I'm not as interesting as a book?" or "Right... stuck-up dick!" it's highly likely that he's a crazy person. That's weird behavior.

On the other hand, if the same interaction happens with me instead of ECH, it just becomes another commonplace interaction. It's demoralizing, dehumanizing, and tiresome to be treated like that on a regular basis, and it's reflective of some pretty icky social issues.

[Salty]

I'm sorry that I made assumptions. I ought to know better. That's my fault. But you are, nevertheless, white and a cis male, yes? That right there still puts you into the dominant group in two very important ways (I think I've said this before, but one's sex/gender, race, and class are the three biggest determiners of how your life will go and how others will treat you).
It's not fear, it's wariness. Jesus. If I thought everything was out to get me, I'd never go anywhere except to therapy or something. Can we not derail this further?

Just shove people into whatever hole you want! It's Feminism™, ladies and gentlemen!

[Juana]

What the fuck does that even mean, Alty? That there's a dominant group is straight up fact, Alty. That it's determined a lot by race, gender/sex, and class is also straight up fact. There are certain factors no one can control that puts them into those boxes or holes or whatever. It someone looks white, then they're going to be treated white. If someone looks like a man, they'll be treated as a man. If someone dresses middle or upper class, they'll be treated as such. That's how it works, no ^TM about it.


Yes, I do tend to get a little caught up in the danger aspect, but I generally don't feel very threatened either. It's not like I walk through the day on the edge or something (although I'm aware I may have made it appear to be so), just something I'm aware of in certain kinds of situations (not something I think of while in the supermarket, but something I think of when I'm walking back home in the dark from the store).

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm sorry that I made assumptions. I ought to know better. That's my fault. But you are, nevertheless, white and a cis male, yes? That right there still puts you into the dominant group in two very important ways (I think I've said this before, but one's sex/gender, race, and class are the three biggest determiners of how your life will go and how others will treat you).
It's not fear, it's wariness. Jesus. If I thought everything was out to get me, I'd never go anywhere except to therapy or something. Can we not derail this further?

Just shove people into whatever hole you want! It's Feminism™, ladies and gentlemen!

The privileges still exist, even if the level of respect/privilege one receives is countered by anti-privileges, if that makes sense. If someone is white and male, the white male privilege points still exists for them, even if they are poor and gay... if that makes any sense. It makes no sense at all to deny that.

Say the default is 20 social privilege points. Subtract two points each for any of the following: gay, trans, female, brown, poor, disabled. Subtract one point each for fat or ugly. So, if you're white and male, but also poor and gay, you have sixteen social privilege points. A poor gay brown woman has twelve.

This is a horribly oversimplistic way of trying to describe it, but any description is going to be oversimplistic, by necessity.

[AFK]

Class is a bigger factor these days than gender.

[Juana]

Mhm. A well off white gal is gonna have more privilege than a poor white dude.



I think no one's explain privilege and I know I personally keep throwing it around, and it looks like we might be talking about this soon so I'mma do it here real quick: privilege exists in a society that gives privileges and status to certain kinds of people, not for anything that they did but for what they are (white, a man, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle or upper class, etc.). Most people have some sort of privilege and it's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just what is. Privilege compounds itself, both for good and for ill. A wealthy cis white heteroseuxal man has waaaaaaaaaaaay more privilege and is better treated than a poor queer transwoman of color (again, this is nothing either party can control and neither party should be ashamed of it, It just is).
Anyone got anything to add or correct?

[AFK]

Seems kinda pointless given that each person has a different combination of factors going for them whether it is class, race, sex, orientation, body type, etc.  Given all that, what's the damned point of it all? 

[Juana]

What seems kind of pointless?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Mhm. A well off white gal is gonna have more privilege than a poor white dude.



I think no one's explain privilege and I know I personally keep throwing it around, and it looks like we might be talking about this soon so I'mma do it here real quick: privilege exists in a society that gives privileges and status to certain kinds of people, not for anything that they did but for what they are (white, a man, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle or upper class, etc.). Most people have some sort of privilege and it's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just what is. Privilege compounds itself, both for good and for ill. A wealthy cis white heteroseuxal man has waaaaaaaaaaaay more privilege and is better treated than a poor queer transwoman of color (again, this is nothing either party can control and neither party should be ashamed of it, It just is).
Anyone got anything to add or correct?

That seems like a pretty concise explanation.

I think I had a privilege thread around here somewhere once upon a time. It can be hard to remember, but most of us have some kind of advantage or privilege... something that gave us an edge of some kind. In my case it's having highly educated parents.

[AFK]

What seems kind of pointless?

This whole thread of the conversation.  The privilege discussion.  It revolves around blanket generalizations that don't really exist when you start examining reality.