Reframing "Not all men"

[blimix]

Apologies if it's old news, but here's my take on the "not all men" phenomenon.

We live in a culture in which women have learned, quite rightly, to mistrust men. Men kill women. Men rape women. Men abuse women.

A man who is not abusive or violent may well feel defensive about this mistrust, feeling that he hasn't personally earned it. He might say, "But not all men are like that. I'm a nice guy. I would never do that. I'm not part of the problem."

But if that's your response, then you're part of the problem. The problem isn't you in particular. The problem is that women have good reason to fear men. When you focus the dialogue on yourself, not only are you failing to help, you are actively ignoring that the problem exists at all. By claiming that women have no cause to mistrust you, you're denying the validity of the lifetimes of experience by which they have learned that men are dangerous. And you know what? Their experience in this matter is much greater, and more relevant, than yours is.

If your solution is to quiet women who complain that there's a problem, then you are a huge part of the fucking problem.

You know what you can say next time a woman you've never met before mistrusts you? "I understand and accept your mistrust." Then just think this part silently: "Your experience with assholes has taught you caution. I'm sure it was a dearly bought lesson, and I would not ask you to disregard it."

If you are male, and want to be part of the solution, do a web search, or start here or here. (Comments for other good places to start are welcome.)

Comments

[jon-leonard.livejournal.com]

There may be some statistical illusions in play; the claim that black teens are no more violent than other teens mismatches the Bureau of Justice numbers with something like an 8-1 ratio; The interesting questions are "why?", "what else is going on?", and "what can be done to improve the situation?". But pretending the world is different than it is doesn't help.

[blimix.livejournal.com]

Sorry; I summed up poorly and incorrectly. What I had in mind should have more properly been expressed as, "Being black doesn't make people violent."

However, I wouldn't call the Bureau of Justice numbers "how the world is". Black people are far more likely to be prosecuted. Among those prosecuted, black people are far more likely to be convicted. Does this account for an 8-1 ratio? Probably not. But I doubt the BoJ numbers are adjusted to account for socioeconomic status (the racial disparity in which is a product of systemic oppression), which influences both violent crime (it's a rare mugger who isn't desperately poor) and the ability to get away with any crime (hiring a good lawyer or not being sought by police in the first place).

[jon-leonard.livejournal.com]

Well, there's the question of what it means to "be black", of course -- it's correlated with skin color, likelihood of type B blood, incidence of sickle cell anemia, excellence in professional sports, cultural identification, political affiliation -- lots of things, and the causal relations are pretty tangled up. The assertion that all observed disparities in violence are nonexistent, or due to oppression (by non-blacks), or statistical anomalies is a strong claim, which is undersupported by the evidence at hand. But so what? It tells us next to nothing about any individual black person, and certainly doesn't lead to any moral claim of collective guilt. I see claims of collective male guilt as similarly dubious, and furthermore counterproductive in terms of actually reducing the incidence of rape -- but you clearly disagree, and I'm not sure there's much point in discussing it.

[blimix.livejournal.com]

I'm not talking about collective guilt (a concept in which I have never believed). The point isn't that women are right to consider men guilty until proven innocent. It's that women are justified in being cautious around men, because they know that there's a reasonable chance that any man might be guilty. And that dismissing and taking insult at this caution is counterproductive.