I'm on the fence, what do you think?
(midwest.social)
Wren to 
WomensStuff
Jesus Christ today's men were raised so fucking terribly
I'm not sure I understand the title of this post. What are you on the fence about?
Telling men to never approach me at night. There are a handful of non-emergency scenarios I'd be alright with, but those largely fall on the men in question to be emotionally intelligent and aware of the situation.
What is the best thing for a guy to do in that scenario? Truthful, honest question.
Ask yourself "what would i do if she were a guy?"
The advice is literally to leave women alone at night. There's not much wiggle room there to be confused about to be honest.
First, to be aware of the rules of this community. Just in case.
Second, to just leave women the hell alone at night unless it's a real emergency. If a rando approaches me when I'm alone at night, I'm not thinking he needs help, I get ready to fight. That's an exhausting state to be in, so he better have a damn good excuse for talking to me.
Aye, I have seen things pop up on this community but not posted. Just felt this was important to ask.
So if we're walking opposite directions on the sidewalk, just continue looking ahead and give a bit of a berth
Treat her like a damned human and don't do anything you wouldn't do to a man
Feel free to post this as an ask lemmy and refrain from posting here if you want a deeper discussion.
I've been out as trans and living openly as a woman for only a few months now.
::: spoiler harrasment & violence In that time I've been sexually harassed, physically threatened, screamed at from cars, had people up in my face, up to and including pushing me over, raising fists to me, screaming slurs and derogatory words at me from inches away from my face, and being sexually assaulted in a crowded public place. :::
I know much of that can be attributed to transphobia but a lot of is just pure misogyny. Nearly every time I leave the house some man will aggressively intrude into my day and make me feel extremely unsafe. This is in response to me literally just walking around saying nothing, looking at the floor.
I always knew that women had a justified fear of men. Now I have it too. Whatever I thought I understood before from listening to women, it's nothing compared to what it's like to live it.
"Whatever I thought I understood before from listening to women, it's nothing compared to what it's like to live it."
I'm reminded of something I read a while back, where a man named Marty accidentally was mistakenly sending emails with his female coworker's email signature and was puzzled for a while on why people were being so difficult. When he realised it, he and his colleague, Nicole, decided to switch emails for a week, as a more deliberate, extended experiment. They both did a write-up of the experience. Marty's was a Twitter thread that I can't access anymore, but Nicole wrote a blog post covering her side
In Nicole's words:
"Nothing changed, except that our clients read me as male and Marty as female. I had one of the easiest weeks of my professional life. He… didn’t."
What I found so interesting about this story is that it sounds like this Marty guy was a genuine ally. Like, when Nicole called him out for speaking over her at meetings, he listened and started using his voice to bring attention to Nicole (and other women) at meetings. Iirc from his Twitter thread, he thought of himself as an ally who understood how hard women have it. Until this thing with the email signatures, that is.
I think you're right that even if some of the harassment you've experienced is transphobia related, a lot of it will be misogyny. And I think that part of why trans women are so prominently discussed by transphobes is because of the prevalence of transmisogyny specifically.
Thanks for sharing all that. From my perspective it's as if women all my life have been telling me about this horrible noise they hear all the time, and I've been like "wow that sounds really bad I'm sorry you have to go through that" but until I transitioned I never heard the noise myself and now it's like "damn you girls were not kidding about that noise holy shit".
Whoa this is a great analogy.
Yeah, especially early transition (in my experience) the harassment was fucking constant. It probably didn't help that I was in my early 20s still at the time. But in addition to a lot of these guys just generally being misogynists they tend to target women who look insecure, young, marginalized, etc. Don't get me wrong, it continues, but I've definitely found for me personally the everyday street harassment type stuff waned over the years. Well that or I stopped noticing all but the most egregious examples of it.
Congrats on the transition, unfortunately yeah the prevalence of aggressive misogyny was somewhere between accurate and understated
Thank you lovely, you were one of the first to welcome me here so I'm always happy to see one of your comments.
I'm glad to have made a positive impact!
I'm happy for you, that you're able to live openly now.
And sorry, yeah. It's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't been in the shit. There will be good experiences, too.
I once met the coolest men who were drunkenly celebrating a bachelor party and invited me to join (I was smoking a cigar alone on a beach after a break up) and we became friends, so I try not to close myself off to that kind of thing. At the same time all the shoving and shouting and touching makes it really fucking hard to do that.
I have a ton of great men in my life. Kind and gentle and protective in the right way. I'm not afraid of all men. But yeah the scary stuff happens often enough that I've learned to be very careful where I walk, to cluch my keys, to location share etc. It's just all the stuff that other women have told me about their whole lives. It's just quite an intense experience to have suddenly been dropped into it all in my 30s.
I don't envy you at all. But, it is nice to be validated by someone who's seen the other side.
Good luck out there.
I am so deeply sorry, honey. My heart breaks for you. I hope you know that you don't ever deserve aaany of that shit! I wish I could bite all their heads off for you and for everyone else these garbage bags harass. :(
I'm sending so much love to you over the Internet. I'm so damn sorry that this has been part of your welcoming to finding and living openly as the woman you are. I don't even know what to say, it's just not right!! It's extra fucked because it's like, this should be such a joyous time for you, and as usual the assholes ruin it for the decent, innocent people. I hate it so much. I'm all weepy over here for you. I'm sending you big, big Internet hugs, if you want them. 🫂💖
Hey it is actually the most joyous time of my life. For every one negative interaction I have several more positive ones. Warm, open smiles from other women, nods and smiles of queer recognition and solidarity etc. I'm just genuinely so very very happy.
I just wanted to share here because it's something that I got to see from both sides if you know what I mean. I used to be invisible and now I'm not. And now I understand what that fear feels like, before I used to just hear about from other women.
Thanks for being so kind. I'm really doing okay.
If we’re walking towards each other going opposite directions on the sidewalk or he’s sitting next to my path, he can say “good evening” (I live in a small city in Germany where this is common), ask me for something (I’m picturing panhandlers or smokers asking for a light), or tell me my shoelaces are untied, but I will definitely get a jolt of fear if a man follows or obviously goes out of his way to approach me at night when I’m alone.
If it’s multiple men, it can be more or less scary, depending on whether they seem sober. More men obviously have an even better chance of overpowering me, but I don’t actually distrust men as a whole, so the more there are in the group, the less likely it is that they’re all down to harm a woman. Of course, once we get up to 8+ men, peer pressure might make it difficult for some to speak up.
If a handsome, seemingly rich man approached me alone at night (for non shoelace/lighter reasons), I would be more concerned, like the other commenters. A) that feels like bait; B) I’m married and uninterested anyway, so it’s not effective bait; C) he’s still capable of overpowering me; and D) he’s less likely to be accepting of a no than a panhandler
If that man was driving, there are no circumstances where it wouldn’t scare me if he approached. Sometimes people are lost and they’ve got no phone battery or atlas, and I can imagine an innocent situation in which someone in a car might seek me out alone at night to ask for directions.
I might even give them, if I could ensure that there was a physical barrier between me and the car so I couldn’t be snatched. It would still definitely give me a shock though.
The single most terrifying thing to me is a white, moneyed young male
Those little shits are used to escaping consequence and dislike the word no.
Yeah, if you clearly and calmly signal your needs before you get too close then sure, no judgment, neighbors helping neighbors and whatnot. Hell, a guy just giving the head nod then staying on his way makes me feel a fair bit safer because he's communicated "I see you're there and that you see me". I'm still afraid because he could be lying about his intentions, but I can keep my distance a bit, stay on alert, and have my hand on my pepper spray while I explain that I have no idea where anything but the transit stop/station is.
The rich guy in the example on the other hand, what the hell does he want from me?
And hell, I distrust a large group of people coming up to me regardless of gender as well as anyone trying to get my attention from a car.
I'm so sick of white cisgender men acting like the most oppressed and persecuted minority on the planet. These days I find it very difficult to respond to people like this rationally without telling them to fuck off and hammer their faces some more.
What do I think? I think the middle message is yet another incel mouthing off because they have a personality that drives women off.
No it is clearly a wondrous man who women overlook cos they are greedy gold digging whores! It is the ONLY reason men are single
Especially not then.
This here. The kind of guy who's good looking and well-monied accosting lone women at night is very likely exactly the kind of guy who's most dangerous.
I mean if he's such a catch, why is he trolling for women who are alone at night instead of being in a relationship already?
My thoughts word for word.
Maybe if you're on fire or having a heart attack... Maybe
I've never been that worried about strangers tbh. All the worst things to ever happen to me were always done by people I trusted and didn't even think I needed to protect myself from.
But even if I'm not scared, I'm not going to, like, accept a proposition this way, so there's no point in it. It's not really a good vibe for getting someone's number.
No, not even then. If you do, it better be for a good reason and you should be meek about it.
