I hear all this talk about women’s safety when out on the streets (a real issue which I do acknowledge) and how we as men need to do our part to make sure they feel comfortable, safe, and that we hold other men accountable when doing the same thing. Absolutely have no problem with this. But one of the main issues men have is a rise in male loneliness and the expectation to be the one to take an active role in interaction especially those that are romantic in nature. How are we supposed to take the lead and approach while keeping women safe at the same time when approaching her could make her feel uncomfortable, even in safe environments such as social groups, bars & clubs, workplaces, etc?
I found a couple of videos which explains why men are out here street harassing women. The link to this video there’s a section called “bottom line”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZiaTDxJ-rQ
The guy here basically goes on to explain that a woman is not gonna make a move on him, that he needs to show her he’s the man and have a wolf mentality. Obviously, the way he worded this is just wrong but this is the mentality I see from men who are trying to be the take charge types. I don’t think this kind of thinking comes from nowhere. Men already deal with the expectation to approach and make the first move. If you put that much pressure on men, it’s gonna make them wanna find communities that will tell them how to do exactly that. Guess where they turn to? The redpill/PUA. These are the communities that teach them the alpha-beta nonsense, how they got ideas that “a woman loves a confident masculine man, show her that by letting her feel your strong presence” and they learn messed up tips and tactics to do exactly that, which then leads to men making women feel uncomfortable.
For anyone that watches the 12 hour video of a woman walking down the street, within those hours, a lot of men came out to talk to her. I don’t think these men would be doing that if they didn’t face any expectations to be the pursuers in courtship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A&ab_channel=RobBliss
Over 90% of women don’t initiate interactions with men first & often expect them to do it, and I think this is a huge problem that’s contributing to both men & women’s issues. Safety is a big issue for women on the daily and I think male expectations in dating are a big factor for that. The expectations for men to do something first will make women not take an active role, resulting in most men feeling undesired (& also lonely tho male loneliness is a multi-faceted issue), and when they decide to do something about it, they turn to communities that will teach them strategies beyond the mainstream to give them that success, which then turns into having a lot of men out there street harassing women. It doesn’t just have to be street harassment. This can also happen in social groups, friend groups, bars and harassment can very much happen there.
So the first step here is for society to stop expecting men to make the first move and not just that. Stop expecting them to read signs (especially signs women gives as an invitation as her “first move” as they’re subtle, not obvious), stop expecting men to start flirting, and stop expecting men to be the first ones to initiate conversations about sex. We should start telling women to be more active (and obviously active) and do some of these things to take the pressure off of men.
This doesn’t mean that dating should completely fall into the woman’s hands. What I am saying ultimately is to not have expectations of any gender to bear the heavy burden of doing everything. Once we get rid of those expectations, then we can start implementing some gender neutral courtship rules that allows men and women to take active agency without much pressure. But I don’t believe we as a society (given our current practices) should partake in active agency with dating until we’ve gotten rid of those expectations.
Taking the expectations off isn’t going to stop SOME men from being psychos, there’s always going to be bad apples in society that makes things uncomfortable for everybody. But I don’t believe women are getting approached only by these types. Chances are, they’re getting approached by men who are dealing with societal expectations of being a man (this doesn’t mean u should entertain him. If he makes you feel unsafe just do what u have to do to gtfo there. Just cuz men have the expectation doesn’t mean u throw away your need to feel safe. If no man is allowed to approach on the streets, then any man, even if he is decent and friendly in their approach, should be doing that as that is street harassment and would make you feel uncomfortable.). How is it that the average man can go a day without having a woman or another man bother him, but women can’t go a whole day without having any man try his shot with her? This all goes back to the expectations we have of men.
We should not be doing any active courting in dating nor give out any dating advice until we have reached a point where society doesn’t expect men to be the initiators all the time. That means adults telling boys that they don’t need to take up that role and that it’s okay for women to make the first move. That means women telling their female friends to not expect guys to make the first move and do the heavy lifting, especially in the beginning stages.
We have already been told not to assume that a woman wants us to approach just because she’s dressed a certain way. We have already been told that we shouldn’t be out here bothering anyone on the streets. We have already been told that if we get told “no” or get a “no” signal, we accept it and move on. Absolutely fine with that. But we cannot have these rules and then conform men to the expectations of being the pursuer all the damn time and not expect that most of these interactions will turn into street harassment, especially when these men turn into martyrs when they do go to TRP/PUA communities that will tell them practical yet messed up tips that just end up making women feel unsafe. This is just backwards and will only ensure that this toxic cycle continues.
A street is different because usually, you’re doing something, or moving somewhere when you’re walking on the street (see my “read the room” statement earlier). It’s about the approach too. If you’ve paced me for like 5 blocks, already me feel uncomfortable, and then catch up to me and start trying to immediately get my number, it comes off as aggressive and not cool. Why use this example? It’s happened more than once’s.
Regardless of instagram statistics, 1 in 6 women has been the victim of rape, or attempted rape. And 9 out of 10 rape victims are women. Think about 6 women you know, at least one have been a victim already. There’s a reason women are distrustful of men. See my dog metaphor earlier.
I didn’t say hitting on. Like they weren’t asking me out, but they were DEFINITELY gross and some DEFINITELY belonged in jail. It wasn’t a one time thing. It happened a lot. Partly different time (I’m older than standard here). Partly there wasn’t anyone to tell dudes to fuck off back then (“you minded your own business back then” is a total bullshit cop out but it was kinda true). Possible some cultural things at play, but I don’t think much has really changed. Like I said it STARTED when I was about 10 or 11 and never stopped/got better. As a teen it was infinitely worse. According to RAINN: A majority of child victims are 12-17. Of victims under the age of 18: 34% of victims of sexual assault and rape are under age 12, and 66% of victims of sexual assault and rape are age 12-17. That pretty much backs up what my experience was.
As explained above, if it was 100% “dating culture” that caused women to be afraid of men, then why are men aggressively perusing/catcalling/raping/grooming/etc children they aren’t supposed to date? What else would creepy entitled guys motive be? I honestly, can’t think of another logical conclusion. He’s just an asshole? Yeah sure, but they aren’t mutually exclusive.
I have had enough experience where guys DO think they are entitled to your time, or to date you, or that you ARE their possession (see stats on domestic violence) so I can only draw conclusions from personal experience.
Let’s also not forget that that 1 in 4 women have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner. Again, think about those 6 women from earlier. At least 2 of them have been the victim of domestic violence.
Again, it has NOTHING to do with modern dating culture. As I said I’m older, and ALL of these things existed LONG before the internet.
I agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but some of your stats are just propaganda. For example:
This is absolutely false. Mary P. Koss doctored the stats, because she does not believe that women can rape men, or that that would be serious. But if you take forced penetration into account, then suddenly it is roughly 50-50 and no longer a gendered crime.
That may be true. I don’t know enough to say for sure or not. I googled stats and multiple places said the same thing, so I assumed it true. My mistake if not.
See for example https://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/
So, rhetorical take away from that seems to be lots of women are raped annually, or had some form of coercion, domestic violence, but men are underreported, which I never argued. That article says 2 million women were sexually assaulted whatever year they did the article off of. Regardless of whether the exact numbers given are accurate or not, and when you factor in people that don’t report, it’s a SIGNIFICANT number of women, spiritually, since that’s what this conversation is about, who suffer. Nothing in my statements changes.
The “9 out of 10 rape victims are women” should change.
Every single victim of rape is one too many, of course. But by presenting this as a gendered crime, we would erase the male victims. They suffer in silence. But what happened to them is a crime too.
I can see that. Even in bars, for example, if you’re just out to grab dinner and go about your business, even you wouldn’t want someone coming up to you and talking to you. I guess technically speaking, even street approaches aren’t bad if you approach it properly. I’ve had a few instances where I’ve had great conversations with women on the street, I wouldn’t recommend it though so maybe I just got lucky.
Those statistics from RAINN are a compilation of multiple NCVS studies consisting 9 years of data (it had years 2005-2014 listed there), whereas if you look at the NCVS (the study RAINN sources), it does list out statistics of incidents from both reported and unreported incidents, sure, but it also provides more information to look at. The total population in the US (as well as the total population of males and females) are listed there. The number of incidents that happened are a lot lower when you compare that to the general population, so the stats you’re displaying right now are stats out of those incidents, not of the general population which was the point insta-stats were trying to make. Crime in general is very hard to measure as you have to look at multiple factors. However, most stats comes from what the victim reports, but many of these incidents could be done by the same perpetrator (or repeat offenders if you will).
On RAINN, it states that 433,648 Americans 12 years or older were sexually assaulted or rape per year. Now of course there are margin of error for these numbers since crime is very hard to measure but let’s go with that number. The total population reported on the NCVS in 2021 are 279,188,570. If we do the math, then 433,648 / 279,188,570 (could be higher or lower as of this year) = 0.16% per year. It’s likely the numbers presented on RAINN are coming from this 0.16%. The number of incidents that happened annually are roughly 4M (when these account for both men and women). Even in the FBI stats (another source RAINN looks at), the number of offenders are actually small compared to the number of victims on those incidents which would imply repeat offenders.
And both NCVS and NISVS shows that domestic violence, even severe, are 50/50 so this isn’t a gendered issue.
Perusing and catcalling when done towards adults I’d say do come from male expectations, not when it’s directed towards children (tho there have been times where girls who are the ages of 14-17 look like adults so confusion can come from there, it doesn’t excuse the crimes tho) Even raping depending on how it’s done could be due to male expectations. PUA/TRP do teach men many ways to get sex from women, even if it’s through manipulation. And many of them have tips on how men can be “dominant” which I wouldn’t be surprised if it does lead into rape.
Maybe they reached a point where they’re tired of putting themselves out there and went off the deep end from there. Notorious incels such as Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian were both involved in PUA spaces before eventually reaching a point where they’re out there killing people. And these are the extreme cases, most incels are not gonna reach this level. So I wouldn’t be surprised if these men started off trying to go for grown women but then later on decided to target children instead for some power trip. I’m not saying this is a good thing and I think if you’re intentionally going after children then this goes beyond male expectations and more of a mental issue with these men.
So all these numbers on RAINN are coming from that 0.16% victims per year, but the reality of women is that they have to deal with men coming onto them based on the 2 videos I shared? I’m not saying that dating culture (or male expectations) are 100% the culprit, but I think those situations specifically are due to male expectations society has on men. This doesn’t just include men who are out there targeting children (which becomes a completely different issue once they start going for children), but men as a whole.
Women’s dating coach Matthew Hussey actually has a chart explaining this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9ONWHXCsrk&ab_channel=BrandonJohnson. A small minority of men are out here doing creepy shit, the rest of the men do approach women but oftentimes wait for the right moment. But it doesn’t change the fact we still expect men to do the heavy lifting initially.