This is difficult to explain but it’s been something that bothers me. I feel when men talk about issues such as SA, harassment, sexism, abortion, even the murder rates of women, etc, they don’t talk as if they see it from the perspective that the woman is a human. They talk about it as a morality issue without relating it to the real pain, degradation, and unfairness of the matter. It really bothers me because you can argue all day long and they can agree on the immorality of a subject, but just because they can never understand the continuous fear and anger surrounding it they seem to argue exceptions for why a man may not always be wrong in these situations.
I’ve also noticed that while they can agree something is wrong, they don’t ever have anger on the behalf of a woman on the topic unless it happens to one of “his” women. His girlfriend, wife, mother, sister, daughter. And even then it’s like they get angry because of the disrespect towards themselves, not about the crime towards the woman. You see this so often in movies where a woman is violated in some way which becomes the protagonist male’s motive for revenge and character development. Even then they’re only thinking of themselves. If you really cared why would you not be with the woman to take care of her after the incident? The one who is ACTUALLY a victim? But often she is hardly portrayed in the movie again except as a two-dimensional image of the male gaze.
ANOTHER aspect of this is that it doesn’t seem to taint the way they see their peers. I work in a male dominated career and there are many men I work with who have done some heinous stuff in regards to women and I have heard about it. Their peers will be like “yeah that’s really shitty that he did that” and then go out for drinks with him and watch the game together anyways. There’s just a general lack of disgust. It’s like as long as he didn’t encroach on another man”s territory when he violated or hurt a woman, they don’t see it as a reflection of his character.
You see all of this so often in male movies. Stuff like The Wolf of Wallstreet and Goodfellas. Like being disgusting and abusive towards women signifies you reaching a low point, but somehow they still are idolized because they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps or made a good decision in the end? No, you’re a shitty person. Abusing someone weaker than you for no reason and then collaborating with the FEDs in the end doesn’t just magically make you a good person.
HATE THIS SHIT