earlgraytay:

residentgoodgirl:

residentgoodgirl:

I think one of my least favorite types of responses to people speaking up on sexual harassment and sexual assault is are articles like “in wake of weinstein, men wonder if hugging women still ok”, and comments like “this is why men don’t pursue women anymore”, “i don’t wanna work with women cause i don’t want a lawsuit”, or “i don’t even look at women anymore cause everything is sexual harassment”. this is a particular brand of rape culture, men acting as if women are overreacting, as if men don’t have the basic social skills to know the difference between wanted and unwanted advances, as if women simply setting boundaries is “cramping their style” and “emasculating” them, as if the rules of respecting women are super confusing, so confusing that they’re supposedly forcing men not to interact with us altogether.

this is an act they’ve been putting on for decades: playing stupid, pretending not to know better and then getting upset when we tell them what “better” is. if that doesn’t show you how emotional and emotionally manipulative they are, i don’t know what does.

 …I’ve seen this post a couple times and resisted the urge to comment, but I’m off my fibro meds and crabby so y’all get to hear the rant.

like. okay. I’m an autistic trans man, and if you haven’t lived as a man for any length of time, there’s something you won’t get. you’ve never had to try to internalise the rules guys have to live by, so you are looking at the (undeniably!) negative effects of The Guy Rules without seeing the processes that cause them, and you don’t understand where they’re coming from. and then you’re assuming malice because the effects are bad.

 the rules of respecting women are super confusing, because most of the time with most people, you’re trying to conflate two contradictory set of rules. 

like okay. there’s an older set of rules for How To Treat Women, and there’s a newer set of rules. i’ll call them the ‘traditional set’ and the ‘feminist set’ just to make things simpler. 

the traditional set of rules was coded an ass-long time ago and assumes that men and women are never going to interact outside of a romantic or familial context. if women’s place is in the home, then you’re never going to see a woman at work or school or war. therefore, the ‘traditional’ rules for how to treat women right assume that you’re going to treat any woman around you as either a possible romantic partner, a mother figure, a sister figure, or a daughter figure. you treat a woman ‘right’ by protecting her, keeping her safe, keeping her from having to do anything difficult outside the home, and so on. they are a garbage and terrible set of rules and there’s a reason people want them gone; they’re also really easy for predators to exploit (because if you’re supposed to treat all women like potential romantic partners, it’s normal to be a creepy creeper who creeps, right? gag me with a spoon). 

the ‘feminist’ set usually boils down to “women are people, treat them the way you’d treat anyone else”. they kind of assume that everyone is atomised, you don’t need to treat people like they’re a family member or a romantic partner to treat them right, or even make any kind of connection with them. they assume women can protect themselves and don’t need to be kept safe, that some women are going to want to do difficult things, and that women are gonna be out in the world interacting with men as a matter of course. basically, they assume that you judge men and women by the same standard and treat them as equals. I think that in general this set is better for everyone, especially women.

…the thing is, people aren’t consistent with which set of these rules they’re following. people mix and match between the two based on the situation they’re in and based on which set of rules they learnt growing up. people will go into a situation assuming that everyone is following one set of rules, and get a nasty shock when it turns out everyone is following the other.  

sometimes it’s deliberate hypocrisy. sometimes, people will hold women to a different standard than men, and shout at you that you’re a bad feminist if you notice or say anything about it.

sometimes, women will posture that they’re Strong and Independent and then try to use the traditional set of rules to manipulate men into doing what they want.   

…and, like, this is a thing everyone does on some level, because the traditionalist/sexist rules have permeated our society so much that you just can’t get rid of them. I’m not saying “everyone who has ever held men and women to a different standard is a bad person”.  

but because of this it can get very confusing very quickly to try to ‘treat women right’, especially if you got taught the traditional set of rules growing up and had to unlearn them. you never quite know what any individual woman is going to consider ‘treating her right’ and what she’s going to treat as ‘being a chauvinistic bigot who’s following the traditional set of rules’.  you never quite know what any individual person’s boundaries are until you spend time around them and get to know them. you never quite know what someone’s going to be a hypocrite about until you’ve been put in the situation where they start being a hypocrite. 

…don’t get me wrong, I think that most of the guys who are offended enough about this to write entire thinkpieces about how they never want to work with women again are dicks who are upset that it’s harder to game social rules so they can treat women like crap. 

But … I know that, since transitioning, there are some women I’ve avoided approaching to say ‘hi’ and make friends with, because I’ve internalized both “any interaction between an unrelated man and woman is a sign of romantic intent” and “you should not approach women with romantic intent without warning, and if you do, you’re a misogynist.” I know I’ve gotten much more awkward around women than around men, because I’ve started subconsciously assuming that women think men want only one thing if you know what I mean and overcorrecting to avoid being seen as a creeper. 

…it’s not deliberate manipulation. it’s not an “act” and it’s not “playing stupid” and it’s not so I can better ~mistreat women~. it is the natural consequence of being taught two conflicting sets of rules and having to decide which set to follow in what situation. and i’m not gonna say it’s as hard as dealing with sexism, because it’s not- but it’s still pretty fucking frustrating.