A simple analogy to illustrate why women can't live by "but not ALL men!"
This is one the tactical peeps will love (or hate?)
When those of us ladies try to explain our lived experiences that include men of the creepy or violent variety, a dude bro sprains his fingers in his haste to hate peck the comment “BUT NOT ALL MEN!” even though that’s usually implied. But as I’ve sadly come to learn, the dude bros who spend far too much time on the internet and not enough time outdoors with grass, sunshine and reality, are typically not of the genus rationalus thinkosaurus. I’ve watched ladies explain this to the knuckle-dragging buffoons countless times, but I’ve not seen this analogy put to use. Ladies, don’t explain things to dudes who don’t understand explanations or who refuse to take any words from women. Unfortunately, and this can be yet another topic I hit at yet another time, it seems far too many dudes only take information about a woman if it first is filtered through a man, and probably one who’s anointed himself an “alpha.” Hopefully some guy out there will take the analogy I’m employing below to explain to the internet’s cavemen why screaming “not all men” at women is a futile effort. I just ask I’m given credit if and when they do.
It’s simple. The first rule of gun safety: treat all weapons as if they’re loaded. Until you’re sure the weapon is unloaded, by checking the chamber and the magazine, every weapon is assumed to be a loaded one that could kill. Because a loaded weapon can kill.
This is how women must treat men they do not know especially in new or strange circumstances.
Yes, it is that simple.
Until women can be sure which man is a loaded weapon and which one is not, we have to assume he is dangerous and might harm us. Because, statistically speaking, men are far more physically dangerous than women. Especially to women but also to men.
Screaming “but not all men” doesn’t matter. Scream until you’re as blue in the face as a third wave feminist’s hair. Men can’t go around smack talking the stupidity of women’s sports, or beat their chests about how their superior in strength, then get their boxers in a bunch when women have to abide by the very reality over which they share manly giggles when mocking the WNBA.
What’s doubly annoying with a dash of nagging on the top, is men instinctively know this and abide by it frequently. I’ll take you back a year or so to GymSpandexGate, when lady influencers with lycra up their booty cracks set up their phones to record men at the gym who, they said, were being creeps. The reaction, by and large, that I saw on Twitter (as it was then known), was men pecking out in 280 characters or less how they wouldn’t help women at the gym anymore out of fear they’d be used as content on social media. Because they couldn’t be sure which women were influencers eager to snag hate content, and which were just ladies buffing out.
The concept isn’t foreign, but the stakes are much higher for women. In the latter scenario, the worst thing that might happen is an annoying twenty-something influencer would be a troll and use a man’s face to score likes. In the former scenario, a woman might get killed, raped, assaulted or harassed.
Men and women are different. It’s unfair for dude bros to engrave this fact on every stone they see and then get upset when women have to operate differently than men. Our biology is different, our experiences in the world are different. So if you could, let us continue doing what we need to in order to keep ourselves safe.
Women’s safety matters more than men’s egos.
Here's the thing, Courtney. I will agree with you that there are certainly creepy men who have made lives difficult for women because they can. One day that shocked me once was a story my mother told me when we were much older. My mother, a career school teacher and a deep woman of faith, and not a feminist, ideologically speaking. She married the same man, my father, and loved him, and him, her, their whole lives. I saw before me the classic example of a Christian couple who love each other with Godly love, and love the Lord more. It made all the difference and so many people came and told me this when they passed.
But, my mother did have a distant memory of a neighborhood man assaulting her when she was a young teenage girl. And a creepy radio personality that tried to take advantage of her when she was a college student training to be a teacher. However, she never let such indict in her mind "all men." Because it was not true of all men.
As a man, I've seen examples around me of men who were less than gentlemen regarding women. This is true. BUT...I've also seen women who had their own versions. Ways they would use their power as women, and society's willingness to defer to their concerns, as weapons against men they felt had wronged them, real or imagined. They don't want men to feel protective towards them...until they want protection from something. And they talk about equality, until it comes to the dirty, uncomfortable, dangerous aspects of life that are low prestige.
God made men and women equal in esteem to Him. But not equal in ability or inclinations. Not superior or inferior, but complementary. There are things men are more suited for than women and vice versa. And, shock of shocks, we are drawn to each other in various ways. The problem is is when we do not put certain self-imposed boundaries around those attractions and recognize there is a time and place.
And nothing good comes when we begin to see each other as the "enemy" or not want to grant each other spaces exclusive from the other.
It is not that women are souless heart-tearing harpies, or that men are barbaric savages. People suck. Especially when Jesus Christ is excluded from the mix. Man is fallen.
But it does not have to be that way.
I know I personally seek better.
Prayers,
JS