Reply to Are men aware when they have sexist views about women and just don't care?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Without going completely down this rabbit hole again, PPs, the point of that particular Twitter campaign was that many women share a common set of experiences related to discrimination, violence, etc. that is gender-motivated. The point was not that men are not abused, nor was it that all men are abusers, sexists, rapists, etc. It was simply that when an experience becomes common to that magnitude, it stops being a series of isolated incidents and starts being a pattern. The highlighting of the pattern was the point.

As for the victimization of women having a privileged status, I don't really know what you're talking about. A major incident had just occurred that had strong overtones of sexism. The Twitter campaign was a response to that incident. As a straight white woman, I do not experience prejudice or harassment based on my race or sexual identity, so I don't spend a lot of time commenting on those issues. I do experience sexism on a pretty regular basis, so in so far as sexism is "special" it's because it relates directly to my experience, which is what people were posting on Twitter.[/quote]

So, I guess what I'm getting at is to ask why the gender motivation of the violence matters. As you said, the major incident that had just occurred had strong overtones of sexism. But, even there was a gender motivation, the real world damage was done to, as it turned out, more men than women. Women expressed their experience, and that's fine. They are bad experiences and hopefully bad people stop doing bad things. But, is it sexist of me to hear about those experiences and just shrug because, overall, the world is more dangerous for men than women?[/quote]

I don't think it's sexist of you to shrug. Everyone has a right to care more about one issue than another. I am married to someone who went from talking about violence against women to a more complicated conversation about what masculinity means and the ways in which "typical" masculinity is toxic for many young men. He had a lot to say about the way that boys and young men are socialized, particularly related to violence. I found his perspectives (male child of Vietnam vet with serious PTSD) very informative and enlightening, if only because his experiences were things that I had not personally experienced. I spoke with several male friends who had really not considered the ways in which many women fear and simultaneously expect things like street harassment, getting hit on at bars, being called names for what they wear or what their bodies look like, etc. You are not required to be interested in and care about the same things as everyone else. I would like to think, however, that if a woman you're close to shared with you that she fears walking home at night alone, or that she was assaulted in college, or that she regularly has comments made about her body, that you would not just shrug because oh well, the world is a dangerous place for men too.

As for why the motivation matters, I read the manifesto of the troubled young man, and his entitled attitude, his feelings about his own masculinity and what was owed to him "as a man" were very disturbing. They would've been disturbing without his killing spree. I would also have been unlikely to have read them without his killing spree. It was part of a larger conversation that happens periodically when events related to gender occur. What happened in CA was definitely related to gender.

I heard this perspective from several people at that time - why can't we just talk about human rights? Why can't it be a conversation about violence in general? Why do we always have to talk about gender? Women are killers too, you know. The reality is that there is a strong legacy of violence against women throughout history. It's political. It's legal. It has been written about by thousands of scholars. Do you not believe that this is the case? Do you also believe that we should not discuss racially-motivated violence or violence that targets people for their sexual orientation?[/quote]

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