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…
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…