It doesn’t cause the abuse. It simply creates a social framework that provides better opportunities and diminished accountability, which IMO add up to a sense of permission-to, entitled-to, power-to and or power-over.
I don’t have a clue about what makes a female predator tick. Or a male one. The promptings come from somewhere, IMO not here, and society just provides the props and scenery for the individual drama.
IMO if we are signalling we have had enough of this type of experience as a society, then we are at a point of collective evolution.
The SNL video is a link to a Saturday Night Live sketch - song and dance routine - that's described as
Women (Saoirse Ronan, Cecily Strong, Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant, Leslie Jones, Melissa Villaseñor) address the ongoing sexual harassment allegations.
Thanks, Ck.
@Simon Toad the point was, as women, most of us can't remember how many times we have been touched up or groped, it's continuous and never ending. ...
Exactly.
My brother and I were both cute and blond. He hitchhiked a lot, and got hit on a lot by other men. I never did hitchhike or take similar risks - I was always careful - but I still got groped a lot more than he did.
I occasionally come across news reports of female teachers having sex with fourteen year old boys. This is clearly a case of female predation.
There are those cases reported (indeed a couple here in the last year) but very few in comparison with those by abusive males even if you exclude the limitation of teacher. Several reasons put forward. The first is that there actually are fewer cases of abuse by women. There's no basis for my reaction which is that that is probably true. Other reasons include the shame felt by the boy but I can't see why that is more than had the predator been male.
There is a rather notorious case of a female school head of a Jewish school in Melbourne who abused girls, then fled to Israel just before she was charged. There's been very real trouble trying to extradite her. All sorts of questions as well about how she was able to flee as she did.
Someone please explain. If men abuse women out of male privilege, what prompts women to abuse men and boys?
1. They don’t. Male privilege gives them more opportunities than female abusers might have.
2. Abusers have their own reasons for what they do - many and varied.
1. I disagree. Most, if not all, circumstances allow for the possibility of abuse of some kind
2. True but reasons may not be linked to opportunity. Opportunity is often created; it's called grooming
I recognize and have experienced similar kinds of abuse other women have mentioned. The sense of entitlement some predators seem to have, along with their opportunism never ceases to both amaze and disgust me.
For me one of the consequences of getting older and having grey hair has been that it doesn't happen very often now, for which I am very thankful.
The ‘move’ that GeeD has been subject to here is one I have encountered myself. I find myself wondering about a couple of points:
- Is GeeD a reasonable target for the anger that many people understandably feel as a result of the abuse they have experienced?
- Is it reasonable, helpful or kind to diminish GeeD’s experience?
- Is it reasonable or kind to reduce him to a gender label, and fairly directly associate him with the worst behaviour of others with that gender label.
I grew up in the North East of England in the 70s/80s, very near to the Medomsley Detention Centre. Medomsley is now the focus of the largest historic abuse / sexual abuse investigation in UK history. 1600 victims is an oft quoted figure. Lives ruined in exactly the ways you know. It is fresh in my mind as there were convictions just the other week. Reporting of Medomsley has most often been ‘regional’ rather than ‘national’. This is very different to (say) Rochdale. I have wondered why this might have been. None of the ideas that come to mind are pleasant or comfortable.
... I find myself wondering about a couple of points:
- Is GeeD a reasonable target for the anger that many people understandably feel as a result of the abuse they have experienced?
- Is it reasonable, helpful or kind to diminish GeeD’s experience?
- Is it reasonable or kind to reduce him to a gender label, and fairly directly associate him with the worst behaviour of others with that gender label.
I grew up in the North East of England in the 70s/80s, very near to the Medomsley Detention Centre. Medomsley is now the focus of the largest historic abuse / sexual abuse investigation in UK history. 1600 victims is an oft quoted figure. Lives ruined in exactly the ways you know. It is fresh in my mind as there were convictions just the other week. Reporting of Medomsley has most often been ‘regional’ rather than ‘national’. This is very different to (say) Rochdale. I have wondered why this might have been. None of the ideas that come to mind are pleasant or comfortable.
Best wishes
Asher
warning tl;dr
First of all I am grief stricken and appalled to hear of the abuses that took place in that center. I earnestly hope that all the affected parties can experience complete healing and recovery, preferably in their present incarnation, and sooner rather than later.
As to your three points, it seems to me that the neurology of trauma sets up a cycle. I have often observed it: the abused becomes the abuser. And here in this thread it seems to have played out just so.
Many women are mocked, ridiculed, diminished and silenced when they voice a complaint of this type of treatment. And so it seems to me that Gee has come in for the entire spectrum of the experience, from initial trauma to the post-trauma reactions of those to whom he has related his pain. The ones who should "know better" actually do, but it isn't their first impulse, and I think it's because of the deep wiring that this type of experience seems to solidify.
None of this behaviour is reasonable, and using reason after the fact comes across as rationalizing and insincere, as is shown in the feelings of insufficiency for the apology offered.
Is it reasonable or kind to reduce anyone to a gender label? Of course not.
But here's the thing that keeps sticking in my craw. Men own and run this planet. They have done so for millennia.
And if my own experience is any indication of human experience at large, I would venture to say that we all have had a turn to live a life in a man-shaped testosterone powered suit, and so just saying "I'm a woman, you own this shit you clean it up" isn't fair to half the current population who are currently taking their turn in the configuration of "man-suit". We are ALL responsible for this reality, there are no innocents.
So where do we begin to change the aspects of experience that are so undesirable about inhabiting male- and female-suits?
On the one hand, women have to say "enough is enough". But so do men.
I think that men need to understand how, when their daughters, sisters, mothers and wives come in for that kind of treatment, the culture of permission damages their relationships. Good men all over the world are surprised and offended that they are lumped in with others. They think that women should be reasonable and say "Not ALL men".
The way I understand it, trauma does not have its roots in, nor can it be discharged through the neural pathways of the mammalian brain. Reason is like a cop at the scene of the crime, he can tell you what happened and possibly why, but couldn't prevent it. We have to go deeper.
I think what many men fail to understand is that if they don't hold one another to account for their actions, if they don't participate in the divestiture of the social power and privilege that supports and winks at certain kinds of behaviour, then their relationships with their women will suffer because the energy mobilized by the trauma will have its release. Nobody likes to be a whipping boy, but the cycle will perpetuate itself.
If men want reasonable solutions, then they must do what is reasonable. And I think that's a fairly tall order.
If we want different results we have to do things differently. How and where do we start? I don't think that answer is here right now, but I do think that if a critical mass of both men and women decide that this is enough, then things will change organically on their own.
Many women are mocked, ridiculed, diminished and silenced when they voice a complaint of this type of treatment. And so it seems to me that Gee has come in for the entire spectrum of the experience, from initial trauma to the post-trauma reactions of those to whom he has related his pain. The ones who should "know better" actually do, but it isn't their first impulse, and I think it's because of the deep wiring that this type of experience seems to solidify.
None of this behaviour is reasonable, and using reason after the fact comes across as rationalizing and insincere, as is shown in the feelings of insufficiency for the apology offered.
AFF
I appreciate that this is much truncated from your post,but I just do not understand it - nor how you can psychoanalyse me from a distance.
This seems a timely moment to try and split the thread at this point. Gee D may well be a nit-picking pedant, but to have all the ills of toxic masculinity posted under a thread with his name on top is probably a bit much.
Bear with me while I try and work out how to do this...
It works! Please can you confine your comments on this thread to specifically roast Gee D for his pedantry, and take others regarding sexual harassment etc to the new thread, which is here.
Okay, @Gee D - you asked: 'But why use me as an example when what you say has nothing at all to do with my post? You say that you did not want to target me specifically but you did so. And without any basis.'
My post was actually focusing on Ck. Not on you. I felt she was being unfairly vilified for quite a natural reaction. And the purpose of my post was to challenge this, and also to draw attention to the effect of rape culture on women, and the fact that men in general don't really acknowledge it. But obviously her post was about a specific post of yours. It could have been about anyone though. I was focusing on the reaction and the reasons for such a reaction.
She herself has said it is more about the wider issue of the system. Such reactions often are. And she also said she wanted to move the conversation away from individuals. So I don't want to dwell on this. The way my mind works is to go from details to big picture. This is apparently an autistic way of thinking, and the more usual, non-autistic way of thinking is to go from big picture to details. So I understand if my using details to point to bigger issues, rather than vice versa, seems odd or even rude.
Anyway, I don't know you, and I don't think we've ever had any meaningful interaction. From my general observations of you on the ship, you seem to do a lot of questioning/arguing, and it often seems to be for the sake of trying to prove people wrong. Though that could be a writing style. I've never observed any indication of you openly listening and trying to see the other person's perspective. So I'm kind of wondering where you're going with this, and suspecting it may be a bit of a pointless conversation. I have a tendency to assume people are genuine and I try to interact in a genuine way with them, but this sometimes can be unhelpful, because they aren't always, and so it wastes time and energy. I have answered your question here, from the other thread, out of politeness, but it didn't really seem like a genuine, open question, nor did your previous one. I may be misreading, but it seems more like accusations - I am not seeing any indication of you trying to see my perspective, or reach any kind of mutual understanding. So if you are still failing to understand my answers, perhaps best to leave it, because otherwise I foresee hours of repeated answers, and no understanding. And I would only want to spend that sort of time and energy if I felt it was going to be constructive in some way.
I'd say that what got you into this mess in the first place was the decision in 1973 to join, followed by the vote a couple of years later to remain. That's not being clever, but de Gaulle was right when he said "Non" way back in 1963. The UK was not then ready to join Europe and it was not in 1973 either. Almost all the real Europeans were in the Liberal camp then, precious few outside. The others who voted so strongly in favour in 1975 thought that all they were supporting was a larger, more powerful, version of EFTA.
That's not to say that the UK should now be leaving. Having joined,it should adapt and stay. It has become far too enmeshed with the rest of Europe to consider that leaving is realistic.
Right, @Gee D, I am now annoyed enough to go and count how many times you've banged this particular drum. This is the 15th time: 6 on the Brexit thread on Ye Olde Shippe™, starting on 29 December 2016. And you couldn't stop banging on about this when we moved to the New Ship™ the first post is here in November 2018. On that thread you made the same or similar comment another 8 times. And on the new thread you've now said the same damn thing again. Enough already.
Anyone who remembers a vote 44 years ago is almost certainly well and truly over 60. Most voters on the current electoral roll have no memory of the original referendum and for many it was well before they were born. And de Gaulle's non, that was a decade before that, so anyone remembering that is in their 70s. But if you want to keep proving what an ancient old bore you are, just keep annoying the Brits by telling them how they really shouldn't have joined the EU in the first place, on a thread discussing the catastrophic mess that Government is making of Brexit.
Just observe how many of us are crapping all over the Aussie election thread reminding you of ancient history and how that should be taken into account with your current elections. Let me count. Oh, yes, that's why I couldn't, nobody is.
And while I'm in pissed off mode, here on the prayer thread @Huia asked for prayers as her city was expecting flooding. So you questioned her by saying
You are above normal flood levels, aren't you?
on the prayer thread! Surely the response to requested prayers is to offer them? Not question the petitioner.
Come off it. Huia knows she has my prayers and is in my thoughts. I was checking that she was pretty safe, not questioning her as you suggest.
As to the UK and the EU - past history. The UK was never committed to the EU and the present mess shows that. But thank you for your ageist post. This is your 3rd go at me and neither of he previous ones have got any board support.
Neither of you say what you support. I can't imagine it's support for the deeply hurtful and offensive post for which she gave a grudging half-apology (which I accepted). If it's the posts about the UK joining the EU in the first place, I stand by what I say and why I said it. You can't deal with the present mess unless you know what gave rise to the strength of the Leave movement. History is the answer there and I stick by what I've said.
No, you're both right, I shouldn't have called Gee D out on this, because it's not his fault and being assaulted is horrible. I should have ranted about the system in general that means women are sexually assaulted as a matter of course.
That you said you accepted.
Which I followed up by a pm conversation with @Doc Tor asking if he could split the thread when the discussion continued on this thread. And when the Toxic Masculinity thread started drifting back on to personalities said:
I asked for this thread to be split so that we could move away from specific discussions of individuals, having apologised for so doing within half an hour of the original rant.
But I can only bring criticism of the things @fineline pointed out above to Hell:
Anyway, I don't know you, and I don't think we've ever had any meaningful interaction. From my general observations of you on the ship, you seem to do a lot of questioning/arguing, and it often seems to be for the sake of trying to prove people wrong. Though that could be a writing style. I've never observed any indication of you openly listening and trying to see the other person's perspective.
That is how you come over. All your posts on the Brexit thread are coming across in the final word that the stupid Brits need to listen to, as of course you're right. And as most of us Brits realise, our press is not really reflecting what is on the ground. I've travelled over the UK over the last few years and talk to people in different places. What we hear is not necessarily how the press is slanting it.
It's that continual critical tone permeating your posts that made me read your questioning @Huia on the Prayer Thread as critical.
@Gee D I apologise for attacking you personally for the manifestations of toxic masculinity in the first post here.
I refuse point blank to stop attacking toxic masculinity. If you continue to take that personally that's your problem. Because you'll have to point out where I've personalised any further comments on toxic masculinity following that apology.
I will also continue taking you to task for your insensitive and boorish posts on the Brexit thread, should you continue in that vein.
And while I'm in pissed off mode, here on the prayer thread @Huia asked for prayers as her city was expecting flooding. So you questioned her by saying
You are above normal flood levels, aren't you?
on the prayer thread! Surely the response to requested prayers is to offer them? Not question the petitioner.
[edited to tag Gee D]
Sorry for coming a bit late to this, but I actually found Gee D's response really supportive. As Gee D says elsewhere I did know I had his prayers. I was panicking unnecessarily and his post was a reminder of an earlier comment I had made on the "Far Flung" thread, that my particular area was above normal flood levels.
I do realise it may have sounded differently to someone who hadn't read the earlier interaction.
Comments
They don’t. Male privilege gives them more opportunities than female abusers might have.
Abusers have their own reasons for what they do - many and varied.
I don’t have a clue about what makes a female predator tick. Or a male one. The promptings come from somewhere, IMO not here, and society just provides the props and scenery for the individual drama.
IMO if we are signalling we have had enough of this type of experience as a society, then we are at a point of collective evolution.
AFF
Exactly.
My brother and I were both cute and blond. He hitchhiked a lot, and got hit on a lot by other men. I never did hitchhike or take similar risks - I was always careful - but I still got groped a lot more than he did.
There are those cases reported (indeed a couple here in the last year) but very few in comparison with those by abusive males even if you exclude the limitation of teacher. Several reasons put forward. The first is that there actually are fewer cases of abuse by women. There's no basis for my reaction which is that that is probably true. Other reasons include the shame felt by the boy but I can't see why that is more than had the predator been male.
There is a rather notorious case of a female school head of a Jewish school in Melbourne who abused girls, then fled to Israel just before she was charged. There's been very real trouble trying to extradite her. All sorts of questions as well about how she was able to flee as she did.
1. I disagree. Most, if not all, circumstances allow for the possibility of abuse of some kind
2. True but reasons may not be linked to opportunity. Opportunity is often created; it's called grooming
I recognize and have experienced similar kinds of abuse other women have mentioned. The sense of entitlement some predators seem to have, along with their opportunism never ceases to both amaze and disgust me.
For me one of the consequences of getting older and having grey hair has been that it doesn't happen very often now, for which I am very thankful.
The ‘move’ that GeeD has been subject to here is one I have encountered myself. I find myself wondering about a couple of points:
- Is GeeD a reasonable target for the anger that many people understandably feel as a result of the abuse they have experienced?
- Is it reasonable, helpful or kind to diminish GeeD’s experience?
- Is it reasonable or kind to reduce him to a gender label, and fairly directly associate him with the worst behaviour of others with that gender label.
I grew up in the North East of England in the 70s/80s, very near to the Medomsley Detention Centre. Medomsley is now the focus of the largest historic abuse / sexual abuse investigation in UK history. 1600 victims is an oft quoted figure. Lives ruined in exactly the ways you know. It is fresh in my mind as there were convictions just the other week. Reporting of Medomsley has most often been ‘regional’ rather than ‘national’. This is very different to (say) Rochdale. I have wondered why this might have been. None of the ideas that come to mind are pleasant or comfortable.
Best wishes
Asher
warning tl;dr
First of all I am grief stricken and appalled to hear of the abuses that took place in that center. I earnestly hope that all the affected parties can experience complete healing and recovery, preferably in their present incarnation, and sooner rather than later.
As to your three points, it seems to me that the neurology of trauma sets up a cycle. I have often observed it: the abused becomes the abuser. And here in this thread it seems to have played out just so.
Many women are mocked, ridiculed, diminished and silenced when they voice a complaint of this type of treatment. And so it seems to me that Gee has come in for the entire spectrum of the experience, from initial trauma to the post-trauma reactions of those to whom he has related his pain. The ones who should "know better" actually do, but it isn't their first impulse, and I think it's because of the deep wiring that this type of experience seems to solidify.
None of this behaviour is reasonable, and using reason after the fact comes across as rationalizing and insincere, as is shown in the feelings of insufficiency for the apology offered.
Is it reasonable or kind to reduce anyone to a gender label? Of course not.
But here's the thing that keeps sticking in my craw. Men own and run this planet. They have done so for millennia.
And if my own experience is any indication of human experience at large, I would venture to say that we all have had a turn to live a life in a man-shaped testosterone powered suit, and so just saying "I'm a woman, you own this shit you clean it up" isn't fair to half the current population who are currently taking their turn in the configuration of "man-suit". We are ALL responsible for this reality, there are no innocents.
So where do we begin to change the aspects of experience that are so undesirable about inhabiting male- and female-suits?
On the one hand, women have to say "enough is enough". But so do men.
I think that men need to understand how, when their daughters, sisters, mothers and wives come in for that kind of treatment, the culture of permission damages their relationships. Good men all over the world are surprised and offended that they are lumped in with others. They think that women should be reasonable and say "Not ALL men".
The way I understand it, trauma does not have its roots in, nor can it be discharged through the neural pathways of the mammalian brain. Reason is like a cop at the scene of the crime, he can tell you what happened and possibly why, but couldn't prevent it. We have to go deeper.
I think what many men fail to understand is that if they don't hold one another to account for their actions, if they don't participate in the divestiture of the social power and privilege that supports and winks at certain kinds of behaviour, then their relationships with their women will suffer because the energy mobilized by the trauma will have its release. Nobody likes to be a whipping boy, but the cycle will perpetuate itself.
If men want reasonable solutions, then they must do what is reasonable. And I think that's a fairly tall order.
If we want different results we have to do things differently. How and where do we start? I don't think that answer is here right now, but I do think that if a critical mass of both men and women decide that this is enough, then things will change organically on their own.
AFF
I appreciate that this is much truncated from your post,but I just do not understand it - nor how you can psychoanalyse me from a distance.
Bear with me while I try and work out how to do this...
DT
HH
DT
HH
My post was actually focusing on Ck. Not on you. I felt she was being unfairly vilified for quite a natural reaction. And the purpose of my post was to challenge this, and also to draw attention to the effect of rape culture on women, and the fact that men in general don't really acknowledge it. But obviously her post was about a specific post of yours. It could have been about anyone though. I was focusing on the reaction and the reasons for such a reaction.
She herself has said it is more about the wider issue of the system. Such reactions often are. And she also said she wanted to move the conversation away from individuals. So I don't want to dwell on this. The way my mind works is to go from details to big picture. This is apparently an autistic way of thinking, and the more usual, non-autistic way of thinking is to go from big picture to details. So I understand if my using details to point to bigger issues, rather than vice versa, seems odd or even rude.
Anyway, I don't know you, and I don't think we've ever had any meaningful interaction. From my general observations of you on the ship, you seem to do a lot of questioning/arguing, and it often seems to be for the sake of trying to prove people wrong. Though that could be a writing style. I've never observed any indication of you openly listening and trying to see the other person's perspective. So I'm kind of wondering where you're going with this, and suspecting it may be a bit of a pointless conversation. I have a tendency to assume people are genuine and I try to interact in a genuine way with them, but this sometimes can be unhelpful, because they aren't always, and so it wastes time and energy. I have answered your question here, from the other thread, out of politeness, but it didn't really seem like a genuine, open question, nor did your previous one. I may be misreading, but it seems more like accusations - I am not seeing any indication of you trying to see my perspective, or reach any kind of mutual understanding. So if you are still failing to understand my answers, perhaps best to leave it, because otherwise I foresee hours of repeated answers, and no understanding. And I would only want to spend that sort of time and energy if I felt it was going to be constructive in some way.
Yes - having digested it, I can shit it tomorrow morning.
Right, @Gee D, I am now annoyed enough to go and count how many times you've banged this particular drum. This is the 15th time: 6 on the Brexit thread on Ye Olde Shippe™, starting on 29 December 2016. And you couldn't stop banging on about this when we moved to the New Ship™ the first post is here in November 2018. On that thread you made the same or similar comment another 8 times. And on the new thread you've now said the same damn thing again. Enough already.
Anyone who remembers a vote 44 years ago is almost certainly well and truly over 60. Most voters on the current electoral roll have no memory of the original referendum and for many it was well before they were born. And de Gaulle's non, that was a decade before that, so anyone remembering that is in their 70s. But if you want to keep proving what an ancient old bore you are, just keep annoying the Brits by telling them how they really shouldn't have joined the EU in the first place, on a thread discussing the catastrophic mess that Government is making of Brexit.
Just observe how many of us are crapping all over the Aussie election thread reminding you of ancient history and how that should be taken into account with your current elections. Let me count. Oh, yes, that's why I couldn't, nobody is.
And while I'm in pissed off mode, here on the prayer thread @Huia asked for prayers as her city was expecting flooding. So you questioned her by saying on the prayer thread! Surely the response to requested prayers is to offer them? Not question the petitioner.
[edited to tag Gee D]
As to the UK and the EU - past history. The UK was never committed to the EU and the present mess shows that. But thank you for your ageist post. This is your 3rd go at me and neither of he previous ones have got any board support.
More seriously, those who don't learn the present from the past make the same mistakes again. Trivial I know,but still tue.
That you said you accepted.
Which I followed up by a pm conversation with @Doc Tor asking if he could split the thread when the discussion continued on this thread. And when the Toxic Masculinity thread started drifting back on to personalities said:
But I can only bring criticism of the things @fineline pointed out above to Hell:
That is how you come over. All your posts on the Brexit thread are coming across in the final word that the stupid Brits need to listen to, as of course you're right. And as most of us Brits realise, our press is not really reflecting what is on the ground. I've travelled over the UK over the last few years and talk to people in different places. What we hear is not necessarily how the press is slanting it.
It's that continual critical tone permeating your posts that made me read your questioning @Huia on the Prayer Thread as critical.
I note the attempts to colourize the issue with negative terms and associations. Squid ink.
I refuse point blank to stop attacking toxic masculinity. If you continue to take that personally that's your problem. Because you'll have to point out where I've personalised any further comments on toxic masculinity following that apology.
I will also continue taking you to task for your insensitive and boorish posts on the Brexit thread, should you continue in that vein.
As should I.
Sorry for coming a bit late to this, but I actually found Gee D's response really supportive. As Gee D says elsewhere I did know I had his prayers. I was panicking unnecessarily and his post was a reminder of an earlier comment I had made on the "Far Flung" thread, that my particular area was above normal flood levels.
I do realise it may have sounded differently to someone who hadn't read the earlier interaction.