Is it Possible to be Prejudiced Against Men?
Recently, this woman I was good friends with (until we fought over this) received a private message on FB. She decided to share it on her wall, to make the guy who sent it to her into an object of public ridicule. That didn't sit right with me. What I couldn't have predicted was how big a mess it would blow up into when I called her out on it:
Is he really a "creeper" for complimenting her? I don't see any dick pics. I don't see any lewd language. It looks perfectly polite to me, if bold. He works in IT, so the classic scenario of a nerd daring to approach a popular, pretty girl and being torn to shreds for it was (if you'll forgive the Tumblr language) 'triggering'.
I mean, I've been there before in middle and highschool. I relate to another tech guy way more than to the female friend he sent the message to. One of him is worth the same to me as ten of her, given that she does fuck all with her life besides post on FB.
So, when I called her out for taking a message sent in confidence and making it public to attract ridicule to a lonely man who crossed no lines whatsoever, what was the reaction?
Basically she and a bunch of her girlfriends related to me stories of creepy guys who started out polite, but then got aggressive/pervy. Guys other than him, who share nothing in common with him except being male. The way they explained it to me, they were basing their feelings of unease with male attention on a pattern of bad experiences with men. Simply "protecting themselves".
Does that sound familiar to you? It does to me. Where I'm from, that's called prejudice. Having lived in Florida for three years, I met no shortage of white Southerners who, when challenged on their racism, defended it on the grounds that they've had a pattern of bad experiences with black Americans. They, too, felt that doing so was simply a common sense precaution to protect themselves and their families.
It is the exact. same. thing. White American women who live in Northern states often can't see it that way because they've never had those kinds of experiences with blacks, but have had plenty of scary, dangerous experiences with men.
You know why? Because men are everywhere. In every state, in every country, all around the world. Conversely there are only a few states in the US with large black populations. Not coincidentally, they're the most infamously racist states in the US:
So naturally, it is far more common for white women in the US to have scary experiences with men in general than specifically with black men. So they might imagine that bigotry against blacks in this country is based on nothing. That it's some kind of insane hatred that is wholly undeserved. Certainly there's plenty of convincing propaganda on social media to that effect these days.
I lived in Orlando for three years. I saw the kind of stuff that turns white Southerners into racists. I don't think it's a mature reaction to that sort of thing, but I understand it. I have not, on the other hand, ever had the sort of experiences with other men that make women distrustful towards men in general.
Even so, it seems to me that however you look at it, when you mistrust an entire subset of humanity defined by an inborn characteristic (be it sex or race) based on a pattern of bad experiences with them, that is prejudice. Yes, even if it's often vindicated.
The idea behind egalitarianism is not that such patterns don't exist, but that we all agree to turn a blind eye to them for the sake of good, decent people who don't deserve to be maligned for what other people of their sex, race, orientation, religion, etc. have done.
Was I wrong? I don't see how. Instead it seems to me that the angry, defensive outpouring is what typically results when you identify bigotry in somebody who does not recognize that they are bigoted.
There seem to be a great many women in my life who do not recognize this attitude towards men as prejudicial, because they think prejudice is by definition based on falsehood, whereas they've personally experienced the reality of male misbehavior many times in their lives.
Prejudice can be and often is based on actual patterns of bad behavior by members of a group. That doesn't make it not prejudice. What defines prejudice is pre-judging someone as likely to misbehave just because they're a member of a group you've experienced that sort of behavior from in the past.
Prejudice is still wrong, even when based on reality, because of the unfair effects it has on individuals. On good, decent people who are just trying to live their lives, but are discriminated against by people who've had bad experiences with other members of the same group in the past.
There is no uniquely moral prejudice, which is better than all others. Prejudice is prejudice is prejudice. Most people can agree with this principle and will condemn every prejudice right along with you, one by one...until you arrive at their own personal pet hatred. Then they fly off the handle.
Be honest when identifying prejudice in yourself. Don't make special exceptions for kinds of prejudice you consider justified, because everybody considers their own pet hatred to be justified.
If you distrust an entire subset of humanity that is defined by an inborn characteristic, based on a pattern of bad experiences with them, that is prejudice and an attitude to work on ridding yourself of if you aspire to be an unprejudiced person.
Commenting on just the question and not the story that goes with it, of course it is possible to be prejudiced towards men. I have seen sexism directed towards both men and women in the workplace. I have definitely seen both at different times. I have worked in childcare and I have seen sexism directed towards the male workers which is quite horrible really because that's not fair to them and many are good at their job but it's also not good for the kids if it makes less guys consider the job as men and women are different and having a few male workers caring for the kids is good as on average, men tend to have a different way of looking at things dealing with issues to women etc. It's the same as how primary students often benefit from a male teacher but those aren't too common nowadays either (though I'd think still more common than the male childcare worker).
I have also seen prejudice towards men in other ways. Where I live people protested a documentary on Men's Issues which was about stuff like suicide rates etc (stuff that we really should be speaking about) because they didn't think we should have a documentary on Men's issues. The protesters won and the documentary was banned from screening in the whole country. This is essentially saying we can't talk about men's issues. I thought that was disgusting. I have both male and female friends, and I wouldn't be a good friend if I cared about the rights and issues of only my female or only my male friends. I cannot understand why women having issues translated to "we can't talk about men's issues" or even "men don't have issues". That makes no sense. Women can have issues and we can also have documentaries about issues facing men.
And I'm a woman saying this.
That's why as a man, I can concede women suffer at the hands of men more often than the reverse. Because you weren't a blinkered stubborn person digging in their heels, refusing to lay it all out and have an open, honest convo about it.
I do think I made a mistake in retrospect, namely not recognizing it was an emotionally charged topic before I opined on it. But even emotionally charged discussions don't need to immediately turn into combat.
True it is good to recognise if something is emotionally charged as you know what to expect. However, talking about emotionally charged topics isn't a mistake itself. Emotionally charged topics most of the time are topics we should talk about every now and then. I wouldn't say you made a mistake because we should talk about these things at times, though certainly it is helpful, at least for yourself, to be mindful of how conversations might go down by recognising how emotionally charged them may be. It seems to depend on the medium too. You probably would have got more angry responses to this if you tried this on facebook. Here and reddit seem more open to discussion and less likely to turn into arguments / combat than facebook from my experience (I have more experience with reddit than here but so far steemit seems on the more normal, keen to discuss side of things).
I've seen women do this in person too. A perfectly nice guy will approach them and say, "You're really beautiful," and they'll reply with, "Screw off, loser."
Sure, some guys can be creepy and pushy. It just never occurred to me that the solution to this was to punch them all in the face the moment they spoke to me. But I'm not much of a girly girl, so maybe I'm missing something.
That's not even so bad as deciding a guy is a "creep" just because he exists nearby, is older and unattractive.
There's some argument to be made for not approaching uninterested strangers in public, but mistaking ones own slanted perception of another person for a deliberate attempt on their part to make you feel uneasy is straight up prejudice.
I've not yet been accused of that, which is weird since I write horror and dress unusually. But then I'm 34. I imagine once I'm in my 40s I will become a creep just by riding the same train as fragile, easily frightened women I don't know and have no desire to.
Come on, you're a horror writer. Think of the fun you can have riding on trains and scaring the wits out of delicate young flowers, without even having to lift a pen. That's what getting old is all about. ;-)
Seriously, though, women tend to like mysteriously dressed, creative types, even if they're over forty, so you should be fine.
Be thankful you won't become a forty year old woman instead, in a culture that says, "be hot, or we don't want to see you at all."
I wouldn't enjoy anybody sincerely thinking I am some kind of threatening person. I'm a tender dude. :'I
Cougars and milfs are a thing. There's an audience for everything.
Yeah she's wrong for putting that shit up.
Even if he crossed the line, ultimately, it still reflects and shows who you really are as a person to want to cross your own line to publicly shame and ridicule others.
Many have been the times I see my own friends put shit up. My ONLY reaction is always, "Dude... I know you're mad, but you didn't have to put this up yourself. Just let it go."
I guess some people find it hard to let it go.
Sure you can. It's called misandry, and it's a basically a synonym to modern day feminism. And it's a cancer on society.
And regarding black folk, it's not the fact that they're black generally, but the gangsta-subculture mostly found amongst black men, that is the issue, at least in my view. But of course there are actual racists out there, but I think it's a small minority.
And regarding bigotry in general, it's stupid. Sure, patterns exist, and one should be wary of them, but that says nothing of an individual, but just their likelyhood of having a set of characteristics. But not their actual characteristics. But I do have to point out an exception, and that is towards religion. Whereas being male or black or whatever, is something you're born with, religions are sets of ideas. One chooses to follow them, so bigotry towards someone on the basis of religion has merit, as one opposed to that set of ideas can dismiss their followers without further inspection. Sure, there are different levels of following to that set of ideas, but you can already expect certain traits outright.
I agree with you about religion actually, I didn't think of that.
Yeah, well... Most of us know religious people that are still sensible and chose to follow the good rules of said religion and ignore (most of) the stupid stuff that comes along with it. Thus one might consider that something similar to skin colour or sex.
This is a nice writeup. I completely understand your reaction towards this woman, though I guess I also understand the reactions of her girlfriends. First of all, I do find it rude to post such a harmless message out in the open like that. I don't think she should have ever done that. The guy looks like a normal, shy guy to me (though I guess that's assumptions aswell). She could have just ignored it, like I used to do with those kind of Facebook messages.
I guess it is simply human nature though, to act the way they did. If you've had this same bad experience plenty of times, you'll learn to distrust. It's how we're wired. It's the same reason why I react with distrust to Steemit.chat messages from random people. They aren't all out for some self-promotion, but most have turned out to do just that. I've reacted pretty rudely to someone who didn't deserve it because of that.
I think predjudice isn't really something you can avoid, but it is good to be aware of it. I know I'm being prejudice in plenty of circumstances, but I'll happily change my attitude towards individuals if they seem to fall out of the 'norm' I'm used to. I guess for me it's like you said: You just have to be aware of it.
Also, the tags, Alex. The tagggs. They need to be fixed, lol.
I fixed four of them, but having already put in "gaming" first, it won't let me remove that one.
Ah, that's kinda lame. I guess that's something implemented due to the blockchain and not being able to delete/censor content and what not? Oh, well. The post is still doing well, even with it having the gaming tags for awhile :P
I'm kinda split on this. On one hand, her publicly shaming the guy when he wasn't aggressive or saying anything rude is pretty shitty of her. I definitely wouldn't have done that in her shoes. On the other hand, I don't think facebook should be used like tinder. A fair amount of people in my experience don't want random people trying to be flirty on there, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. (But, honestly, I might be biased. My girlfriend and I have both had irritating/weird experiences with people doing this to us in the past. So, maybe that's just me.)
The polite and reasonable choice would have just to respond with "Sorry, I'm not interested in flirting. Take care." or something along those lines. Then if the guy was an asshole, block him if you feel it's needed.
Those responses you received though from her friends definitely do sound prejudiced, as I'm sure the guy didn't have bad intentions. I just think he's using the wrong platform for trying to find a relationship or someone to flirt with. And, again, she was in the wrong for naming/shaming the guy over something that isn't a big deal at all.
Just my 2 cents :)
I agree with you on this. You basically said how I felt about this. I have had both sexes doing that sort of thing to me (as well as just the ones that are complete strangers not messaging but just trying to friend you and the pics kind of give away it's just one of "those accounts"). I don't think it is unnatural to think it is creepy but given it could just be someone really awkward going about stuff like that the completely wrong way, it isn't really fair to shame the person. If they are just awkward, that could unnecessarily hurt them if someone was to shame them like that.
Huh. I never considered what the experience of this would be like for a bisexual. You kinda get the best and worst of both men and women, don't you.
I'm not bisexual. I just get both message me on Facebook. It has happened both when I have had a picture of myself and when I have had cartoons etc as the profile pic. If it was just the cartoons I'd guess they didn't work out the sex of who they were contacting, but I'm pretty sure thinking back it has happened when I have had a proper profile pic as well. Tbh I thought everyone got the girls from time to time as a lot of those don't appear to be real facebook profiles if you look at them but just a supposedly "sexy" profile trying to friend you or message you.
Oh, I see. Yeah, I've gotten the bullshit phishing accounts trying to add me too but I can smell them a mile away, they often don't bother to even fill anything out.
You ever had them message you rather than just try to friend you? I've had it once or twice but they don't do it that much. Messages I've got have mostly come from guys but I have got it a couple of times from the phishing accounts as well. Yeah a lot of fake stuff is pretty obvious. I've got spam in my email at one point that literally in the start of it (that I could see without opening it) said "Dear (Insert Name Here)". That's kind of obvious.
No, but I have tried to lead them on as long as possible, Andy Kaufman style. There's some wonderful video accounts of people doing this to 419 email scammers as well.
Cool. I've seen a few people mess with scammers before. I remember seeing one with the scams that try to take over your computer and the guy was running a virtual machine type thing within his computer (computer within a computer essentially) and just messing with the guy who was pretending he was Microsoft to scam and ended up pissing the scammer off so much in the end.
A reasonable take on it. We're in full agreement.
Yeah, too bad a lot of people can't be more kind and have to always react like high schoolers. I've really stopped using Facebook for the most part due to that, I see way too many full grown adults behaving like we're back in high school cliques all over again. It's ridiculous.
@alexbeyman,
Personally I hate FB and luckily I found STEEMIT!
Now a problem, what's the relationship between what i said and your post! Coz at least I have Flag option in this platform which can hurt bad behaviors than FB flagging option!
Anyway, if we wish to be at Social media, we should not reveal everything about ourselves, and we should not jump others posts with a gun and shoot else where! Personally I believe FB is a disaster for women and men also! I personally have few bad experiences with that platform!
Great discussion you brought here!
Cheers~
Frankly, as a woman, the answer to this question is, yes. I have a problem with the use of the word prejudice as an innately bad thing. We all have prejudices. Some people hate baseball, or hamburgers, or pickles, etc... The kind of prejudice that is a problem is unjust prejudice for something a person cannot control, like sexism. Yes, women can be sexist. Our society has come to the place where we observe Injustice against a segment of the population, and then decide that those on the other side are the villains. Then we proclaim that the ones who we originally observed the injustice against can now do no wrong, because we observed injustice against them, which is a ridiculous conclusion, because we ALL make mistakes. Personally I like men, as a general rule. I like women, as I am one. However, frankly there are jerks in both groups, and it looks like you found one. A bad version of Where's Waldo...
You can admit that, so I can admit men commit the lion's share of violent and sexual crimes, and women get the worst of it. That's a shame and while I can't understand your experience of life as a woman, I regret that men are typically the ones making it less safe.
Often times there's concessions like these on either side of a conflict waiting to be made, but neither side is willing until somebody extends the first olive branch. You are cool, have a follow.
Thank you! I resteemed your post!
I find that many women take offense to flirting if it's not wanted. I get that, I struggle with it, most of us have had so many experiences with men going off or getting hostile when we reject their advances. But I feel there's nothing wrong with being flirtatious as long as the man can accept that I may reject him or it won't go any further without them getting hostile. I feel many women have a reaction where they just immediately clam up.
I'd recommend men don't go in for a cold opener. (Immediately hitting on the woman with the "You are beautiful" etc) It only works on a very specific type of woman in a specific setting. (Club, etc.) and if she is beautiful she has probably heard that a thousand times over. I don't want to hear I am beautiful from a creeper, anyway. I want to hear that I'm beautiful from someone who seems thoughtful and engaging.
It helps to start with a more neutral opening with a woman and then lean in if there appears to be any interest.
And because you can concede that, I can concede that from what I have seen, it really is a shamefully high percentage of men who react to rejection with temper tantrums. I feel like there wouldn't be this growing gap of alienation between the sexes if we could each make some concessions. Stuff we know is true but don't want to admit until the other side gives some ground. Somebody has to be the first to extend an olive branch for reconciliation to occur, but few are willing to risk it.
The advice is appreciated but I've been single for nearly a decade and in that time I have made perhaps a dozen attempts at dating. My approach is always to unfold some of my mind for them to browse the contents of and decide whether they like it and want more of it. Direct neural interface.
I am 34, not 14. I am too old to be chasing every shiny thing that enters my field of vision. I am at a stage of life where I want to find somebody whose mind complements my own in a synergistic way. Then again I've always been like that. There is as much difference between me and an NT male as there is between me and most women I have so far met.
My beef was mainly that the response was not proportional and seemed deliberately cruel. I've been made the object of group mockery before, so it struck a nerve. Probably this wasn't the right hill to die on, so to speak, as I lost 3 friends over an argument about it.