To this day, she remembers the racing thoughts, the instant nausea, the hairs prickling up on her legs, the sweaty palms. She had shared a photograph of herself in her underwear with a boy she trusted and, very soon, it had been sent around the school and across her small home town, Aberystwyth, Wales. She became a local celebrity for all the wrong reasons. Younger kids would approach her laughing and ask for a hug. Members of the men’s football team saw it – and one showed someone who knew Davies’s nan, so that’s how her family found out.
Her book, No One Wants to See Your D*ck, takes a deep dive into the negatives. It covers Davies’s experiences in the digital world – that includes cyberflashing such as all those unsolicited dick pics – as well as the widespread use of her images on pornography sites, escort services, dating apps, sex chats (“Ready for Rape? Role play now!” with her picture alongside it). However, the book also shines a light on the dark online men’s spaces, what they’re saying, the “games” they’re playing. “I wanted to show the reality of what men are doing,” says Davies. “People will say: ‘It’s not all men’ and no, it isn’t, but it also isn’t a small number of weirdos on the dark web in their mum’s basements. These are forums with millions of members on mainstream sites such as Reddit, Discord and 4chan. These are men writing about their wives, their mums, their mate’s daughter, exchanging images, sharing women’s names, socials and contact details, and no one – not one man – is calling them out. They’re patting each other on the back.”
If anyone is unsure why women would chose the bear…
Dating in general these days seems like such a ugly slog I don’t understand how people even find time to do something productive and play this dating game.
Feels like marriage is becoming very much desired again huh.
Sending unwarranted dick picks should get you a sizeable fine, maybe 600 bucks and a 2 year registry in a sex offender list.
Give you a choice to stop fucking up and if you escalate and keep doing it then things get worse for oyu.
Unsolicited naked pics have no place in society. We’re not talking porn here, we’re talking Joe sending a picture of his schlong to Mary like she is going to be ohh yeah let’s do that.
People with that mindset are seriously damaging other people. They’re the reason women are afraid to go on walks at dusk.
The penalty for that deserves some staying power. You’re on the list; to get off the list, you need counseling and a psych eval. I’d go so far as to say mandatory house arrest until you get the counseling and eval.
Why an expiry? It’s the digital equivalent of flashing someone. In australia that gets you a six month sentence, a $1,100 fine, or both.
It would limit watering down the register with ‘minor’ offenses. It would also help avoid trapping an idiot teen in a negative spiral, due to a stupid drunken mistake 10 years previously.
I’m not excusing the behavior, nor do I do this. I am saying it’s not nearly as ubiquitous as the author tries to make it seem. She’s biased because it happened to her, and of course she would be. But, don’t look at her claims as some sort of careful study.
It’s not all men, it’s not anywhere close to a majority. “There are forums with millions of members on mainstream sites…” still doesn’t constitute a huge percentage of men. And, I’m sure only a small percentage of those are sharing original pictures. She has way overstated the problem.
Please show your data that states how many men share women’s personal pics without consent.
Sorry bro she did a study, not one single man out of billions is calling out this creepy shit. Really it’s quite amazing, this is the first time we’ve all 100% agreed on anything.
“I went to places where people congregate for this kind of thing and was surprised there weren’t people calling it out”
Well DUH. The normal people see that shit and don’t bother to register an account on the forum to post. And if they do, the mods removed it. How is that surprising at all? There are numerous instances on Lemmy that have the same behaviour(albeit for normal hobbies). Are you really surprised that in the Conservative instances it’s not wall to wall “you guys suck”?
This is just confirmation bias. You found what you were looking for while actively searching it out.
How dare your insult her internet skills, she did her own research!
It’s like she hasn’t ever considered that there are men that don’t even know it’s happening.
But sure, yeah - I’m totally patting wannabe rapists on the back. I won’t be reading misandry as a response to misogyny.
As I read this, she just tries to tell people, both men and women, about her experience. It’s not an uncommon experience either unfortunately. Isn’t that how men will get to ”know it’s happening”?
I know the initial reaction of feeling a bit hurt when someone makes broad statements about men, I’ve been there. But the more posts like hers I read, the more I understand the problem.
There’s 9 billion people and 80% of them are on the internet. Anything you want to imagine is happening in large numbers on the internet, and if you search hard enough you’ll find it.
Confirmation bias is indeed a problem, but that’s all this problem is. Don’t go looking for tape roleplay if you don’t want that.
I know a lot of guys in the comments are saying they don’t see it so they don’t have the opportunity to call it out. And some of those guys are making good points! These communities probably don’t interact much with men that treat women with respect.
But I also wonder how much of that stuff happens and they don’t realize it’s harmful to women. Obviously sharing photos isn’t okay so that’s an easy one to call out.
It’s not a man’s fault that he doesn’t see it, necessarily. You don’t have the same experiences as women and it just doesn’t occur to you as often. Women are on alert 24/7.
Kinda like that thing about the number of guys who feel safe walking to their car at night vs the number of women. (I know some men are anxious in that scenario too, but nearly ALL women are.)
When I was an elementary school aged kid, I was afraid to play outside at my grandmas house because a man drove by yelling cat calls. This actually happened a couple times growing up.
At 14, a random man followed me home from school.
In my college there was a flyer in the restroom about how something like 1 in 6 women will experience sexual assault or rape. But really that’s just the number reported.
Every single woman I know has experienced sexual assault or rape of some kind. (I didn’t ask my coworkers to be fair).
That’s bonkers.
But I do appreciate those of you that are trying to be better! The comments here are reassuring and give hope for the future!
There are some cultures that are so female unfriendly it isn’t funny, some of that has to do with religion and some of that doesn’t. That’s also one of the harsh realities of combating things like this because some people actually grew up and learn that women and worth less or some other kind of bullshit.
The other side of this coin is that in books and articles like this and heck even your comment only women get victimized or men get targeted. Yes statistically men are way more the cause of (sexual) abuse, misogyny or whatnot. Same with that women have it statistically worse partially because of some culture and partially because some people are just dicks and/or sick in their head. Some men (especially gay’s, minorities and insecure people) get (sexually_ abused by women or other men, but that generally flies under the radar way more since they are often not believed.
That’s why I always feel the need to mention it just incase it helps somebody down the line. Let’s do better together!
You’re absolutely right about sexual assault against men. I thought what Terry Crews did was heroic. Even when he didn’t want to speak out, he knew he needed to be a leader and he spoke up.
I didn’t leave it out from a lack of concern. I was just making a point by how unsafe women feel in every aspect of their lives, not just occasionally in a Reddit forum.
Trans people, especially black trans people, are targeted in at a whole other level and are often ignored in reporting. They don’t deserve that.
Crazy that we all can’t just respect each others right to live.
It’s not just about how you’re treated by these communities, it’s how they work mechanically.
For example, on reddit if you engage with these people, you will not only be deleted and banned from their sub, you will also be auto-banned by a bunch of opposing subs. You get one chance to participate before you need to circumvent the platform by creating a new account.
It’s simply not feasible to engage with them online in this way, and that’s ignoring the time and emotional energy you need to spend to do it in the first place.
The issue needs to addressed at a societal level. As a society we value all the wrong things in men and few of the right things. A lot of these guys end up in these communities specifically because they feel they can’t meet the ludicrous standards created for them, and place the blame solely on women instead of our wider culture.
I’m sorry, wasn’t this you victim blaming hours ago?
Ah yes, let’s keep painting everyone dating some redpill asshole as a gigantic powerless victim who needs help from men to be freed. Give me a fucking break.
If you choose to fuck a known redpill male, you are an asshole and you deserve to be called out for it. I’m sick of this bullshit mentality that people’s sexual choices are beyond reproach, and if anything goes wrong with them, then they are a victim and it’s someone else’s fault.
I’m feel for people who are actually victims of abuse, but not for people who made a shitty choice and now want to offload their role in the decision to “society”.
Amazing how you can drum up all this sympathy for red pilled men - which I agree with on some level, because usually targeted, vulnerable men turn to these communities and are in many ways victims themselves - but you are so hostile to the people they mistreat and put so much onus on the victims they then target to do something about it. Not to mention your whole point was “they’re not all victims” while also arguing these men are “misunderstood” and need help at the “societal level” - not their partners though! That’s the woman’s fault for sticking around.
It’s unbelievable. You’re tying yourself up in knots to make this idea work.
Choosing to fuck a piece of shit, when you know they’re a piece of shit, doesn’t make you a victim, and I’m not entertaining this pity party claim that everyone fucking a MAGA asshole is in an abusive relationship. They aren’t. But I feel for the ones who are.
Also you’re putting words in my mouth. I never said these men were “misunderstood”. I explained how they got there in the first place. Their beliefs and actions are clear as day. I do not sympathize with them more than abused women. But you don’t want to engage my actual points, you want to set up a straw man and pull your self-righteous, self-pitying manipulative bullshit instead, which is exactly what I knew would happen.
If you dine with a Nazi, you are a Nazi. If you befriend a Nazi, you are a Nazi. If you fuck a Nazi, you are a Nazi.
choosing to fuck a piece of shit
Jesus Christ what is wrong with you? Right out the gate your total disdain for women is on full display.
All this sympathy for abusers, none for victims. You are so backwards on this. You need to reevaluate your online communities man. You are getting red pilled HARD. You are in dangerous corners of the internet.
Davies was contacted by seven men over seven days who had all been scammed or catfished by seven different fake accounts that were using her images. She wrote an Instagram post to warn others and a BBC journalist got in touch, leading to her first documentary When Nudes Are Stolen. This was life-changing. “It was the first time that I had sat down with campaigners and experts who laid all those images out and said that what happened to me wasn’t OK,” she says. “No one had ever said that before. No one had ever said: ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ It was such a moment for me. It lifted the weight off my shoulders.”
Good Lord, that’s depressing. When people take advantage of you, it’s not your fault. What is this world doing to people?
AI will fix this. Everyone will have nudes of everyone, and nobody will believe anything is real.
Even watching porn will be weird, when you can only assume what youre watching is a computer trying its best to not turn the womens bumhole into a picture of a dog.
I don’t know, photoshop exists, and it hasn’t stopped anything so far.
AI makes it easier, but may not do much to stop it.
Just look at Facebook, or the puff-jacket late pope. People do take AI-generated posts as the real thing so much of the time.
Photoshop is still too much effort and requires some skill.
Once you can tell ChatGPT to “to make me some nudes of my classmate Alice” then that will change.
Just look at drones. RC planes existed for ages but you needed some skills to assemble and use them. Now you can buy them ready made and now we need all sorts of regulations that idiots aren’t flying them over airports.
I, however, don’t subscribe to the notion that it will normalize nudes. Those will be still used to bully those girls cause sadly people don’t really need a reason to and that counts double for the young in school or collage.
Isn’t white knighting a derogatory phrase?
Any decent man who has spent enough time in locker rooms understands that ~30% of men are shitty people and of those, somewhere around half are probably violent.
Once you have a daughter or put youraself in womens shoes, you realize how terrifying those odds are for women trying to navigate this world.
That just seems… Insane? My experience certainly doesn’t reflect this. But I never do averages based on a sample size of one.
~30% of people being shitty tracks with voting patterns
God I hate that you are right. I only have like one male friend because I legit had to distance myself from ao many other male friends who were just horrible people and I couldn’t stand to listen to them anymore.
This is 100% correct. I have 4 daughters myself and an amazing wife. I see it almost daily. In the current landscape, it’s even harder. My older female family members don’t even care. They “got theirs” and could give a shit about women growing up in this world.
I will always defend women, and I patiently wait for the day a woman in my presence gets disrespected by some Chad, Andrew Tate loving motherfucker.
I’m here for all my human sisters, as we should all be equal on this planet. Fuck these men with no morals and no human equality compass. Scared of something they don’t understand or what incels tell them to act like. Its madness and makes me sick.
This is why when my daughter announced she was gay, I was absolutely thrilled. She gets to go on this new journey with the part of humanity that 1) can’t cause a teen pregnancy and 2) much less abusive
Though, do be careful because there are abusive same-sex relationships and sometimes it’s even harder to get away because the people around you are telling you “but women can’t be abusers!”
Yeah, look at Facebook when there’s news about some 13+ male kid who got raped by a woman. You’ll get grown men saying how “lucky” that kid was, and that they wish the same had happened to them at his age.
But hey, other way around it’s also often shit like “look at her clothes, she was asking for it, can’t be surprised”.OMG I’ve witnessed so many abusive lesbian relationships. Women can be straight up psychos too, and are often a lot more calculated about it.
Statistically, lesbian relationships are far more likely to be abusive than hetero ones.
https://www.standffov.org/tdvam/abuse-in-lesbian-relationships/
And what’s the average duration of a lesbian relationship compared to a hetero one? Because if they’re longer, that would partially explain the difference.
Also, lesbian households are financially worse off than straight ones, which are in turn worse off than gay male ones. That’s because, even now, men get paid more than women for equivalent work (and be aware that employers sometimes try to obfuscate this by using different job titles for essentially the same jobs).
I didn’t want to be the one to say it… But yeah, I’ve known some downright scary lesbian women.
Me too, there were some in my dojo. Dedicated fighters, hard as nails. It was an honor to train with them.
I can’t be bothered to read the paper, but here are some evergreens that make this result hard to interpret:
- The sample includes women from all ages and boomer Karens would not report abuse
- On the other hand, being bi or lesbian has only been accepted by society since the last 10-20 years. Don’t believe me? Just watch some 90s sitcom like Friends.
- Being bi or lesbian still comes together with a special type of discrimination that a straight woman most likely will never experience; hence, straight women are potentially less sensitized to abuse / might have a different bar for what they consider abuse
- Putting together these very different groups of people with very different experiences on what is “normal” will result in them having a very different sensitivity towards what they would consider abuse
- In other words a young, bi/lesbian woman is probably more likely to report abuse than an old straight woman, an old lesbian woman who is just happy might never engage with researchers because of the past societal stigma that makes her keep her life private
Of course we don’t know any of that, but these psychological studies are difficult to conduct because in theory you’d have to account for these effects and in practice that might be impossible. But again, I haven’t bothered to read the whole thing just to prove a point.
Well, you’re really just throwing out what-ifs. But you happened to chance on one theory that some researchers think could partially explain the discrepancy:
Being bi or lesbian still comes together with a special type of discrimination that a straight woman most likely will never experience;
Being oppressed causes stress, stress causes lack of control. The idea is it’s a similar driver to why poorer couples have higher rates of abuse.
That’s probably not the SOLE cause, but it’s likely a factor.
I think it’s good that you’re trying to back your claims by sources / papers but your response tells me that you’re not trained (yet) in reading papers critically. Those are just some random question that came up from the top of my head and that any scientist would ask if someone were to present the findings of this study at a conference. This kind of rigor, to not blindly accept results but to critically evaluate them and poke holes in the arguments is what makes academia academia. I’m kind of surprised that you throw around papers and then get offended if people don’t blindly accept whatever you say, it’s kind of an interesting appeal to authority fallacy.
The study that statistic comes from is seriously methodologically flawed.
The statistic is that lesbians are more likely to have experienced abuse in previous heterosexual relationships. These are lifetime prevalence rates.
Or might just have reported more vs others, which idk but would be similar to e.g. sexual violence statistics in Scandinavian countries where officially they have much more harassment etc. than other countries, but this is just because women are more encouraged to actually go to the police and report it.
What places do you go? My pool is super chill, I have seen all kind of uplifting moments. Maybe certain gyms have a selection bias? I don’t know.
I was thinking high school locker room when I read it. Cause it fit my experience there.
I played hockey in high school and that was my experience too. Insanely toxic attitudes towards women. Yet we elevate these assholes because at least in the US we still value athletics in men more than anything else.
Oh, I guess different school systems, so that didn’t even come to mind to me. At least in my country high school is from 15 to 19, I think lots of people thankfully mature and change after teenage years.
yeah people suck welcome to Earth
These are forums with millions of members on mainstream sites such as Reddit, Discord and 4chan. These are men writing about their wives, their mums, their mate’s daughter, exchanging images, sharing women’s names, socials and contact details, and no one – not one man – is calling them out. They’re patting each other on the back.
I suspect there is some amount of survivorship bias type thing going on here. The type of men to hang out in such places are the type that enjoy it, and as such would never call out such behavior. The men that don’t enjoy such will tend not to come across such content in the first place.
So the first group just doesn’t care, the second doesn’t see it in the first place.
There is also probably some degree of the second group of men acknowledging that trying to call out such behavior won’t go very far. If you said “hey don’t share this woman’s pics” on 4chan, you’re going to immediately get laughed at, ignored, and probably called a bunch of slurs. And then they’ll keep on doing it because you told them not to. And that’s in no small part because these places are puedo anonymous.
Men can’t get away with such behavior as easily outside of the internet. Calling them out in real life is far more likely to go somewhere. However ther are caveats. Again comes the survivorship bias thing I mentioned. But worse, if done in real life and calling out that behavior backfires, it becomes a teaching moment. “Don’t tell other men to behave decent or they’ll ostracize and harass you”.
It’s a fucked up situation all around.
Let’s not forget that the people that call out said behavior get banned and their comments deleted… you can’t authentically claim nobody calls them out because you don’t actually know if anyone is or not… because ban.
I’ve called these assholes out on reddit to in the past. My reward was not only getting banned from their sub, but also getting auto-banned from a bunch of unrelated mainstream and progressive subs.
The idea that we can just go in and win an argument with these clowns is incredibly naive. I get the sense that the author didn’t actually try to do this herself. Social media is specifically built to push people into impenetrable bubbles because the algorithms intentionally favor combative tribalism, which drives up engagement.
But social media is only part of the problem. We have bigger issues related to how we think about men, and how we raise boys, that drive them into this mentality in the first place. Toxic masculinity is not new, it’s just been spread rapidly by technology.
I think so to. I’ve seen a lot of pornography and never encountered a community like that. I think the vast majority of dudes are just skimming the surface and never get into communities about it. Most of the guys i know would think doing so was weird. I had a couple dudes try to show me pictures their girlfriends sent them in the past but I did call them out for that.
I think the vast majority of dudes are just skimming the surface and never get into communities about it.
I’ve come across them. But only on 4chan, which there is fuckall anyone can do about, short of breaking into their site.
Most of the guys i know would think doing so was weird.
I would hope the same of my friend group. I’ve tossed a lot of friendships in the trash because of their behavior. So those that remain are hopefully those that are actually good.
An apropos of that. I’m Chinese/Viet half-and-half and was born in the UK. I have friends in the UK that are half-Chinese and half-British (white/caucasian). I had no idea that there were so many “half-Chinese” specific groups online.
Also, I can’t remember but there was some business about having a Chinese dad was better than a Chinese mom (I could have them switched). However, it’s mainly boys/men with this problem and they’re having issues dating or with school and everything and blame it all on their Chinese parent. My friend tries to chime in to talk some sense into them but the self-victimization is really strong and he gets pushed out.
However, it’s mainly boys/men with this problem and they’re having issues dating or with school and everything and blame it all on their Chinese parent.
Yeah that touches on a related problem, the fact that we’ve designed society to be anti-social.
- You can’t easily hang out with friends, because they’re half way across the city/state/etc.
- Nobody has consistent free time due to the enormous energy and time requirements for a financially stable life if you can even have one.
- There are no third places to meet people
- Cars divide everything with highways, busy roads, and slow traffic.
It’s incredibly hard to have a social life, and as a result people lash out. And they tend not to care about if the thing they lash out against is the correct thing to lash out against.
And it’s a self feeding cycle. Because men tend to lash out in the form of right wing populism, and any woman who knows anything will steer clear of that nonsense. So it feeds into itself.
In your case it’s self hatred racism, but it’s driven by the same forces.
- Cars divide everything with highways, busy roads, and slow traffic.
I’m glad you pointed this out. I realized how isolating cars are after moving to a walkable neighborhood. I’m convinced walkable neighborhoods foster community.
I’m living in a city in England that’s very near the 15-minute city ideal. I know my neighbors from at least a dozen nearby households on my street and adjoining streets, mainly from the nearby park, the pub, cafes and dogwalking. I’m very near the point of getting rid of the car, since I only use it about once a week and could use public transit for those occasions (it’s not perfect, but also not bad and slowly improving).
Asian Mom White Dad is more likely to be seen as fetishized, or in a monetary relationship, especially if the man is older than the woman. White Mom Asian Dad is seen as a sign the man is rich or success to pull a white woman, especially if she is younger.
There are asymmetries like that in marriages between members of many groups. For example, Arab Dad, Anglo Mom is far more common than vice-versa. Same with Black American Dad, Asian Mom. And yeah, how those relationships are viewed includes a large measure of internalized colonialist grovelling.
I stumbled upon /r/theredpill(?) many years ago as a 17 year old girl who had never had a boyfriend, and it lead to me developing a severe distrust of men for several years after. I simply had no solid concept of this type of male sex culture, and it eventually lead me into the rabbit hole of the manosphere. I read through their new posts and “strategies” frequently, mostly out of a sort of morbid fascination, but also a desire to protect myself from men.
It made me believe that, as I grew into a young woman, I had to be careful, as men are terrible predators that only care about sex and the feeling of conquest. I started to understand that the way I perceive relationships might be vastly different from a certain male ideal. Ironically, what I wanted from a relationship was inspired by a quote written by Louis de Bernières, a man:
Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and, when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.
The only thing that undid those feelings was putting myself in the position to make friends with guys – “beta males”, specifically, made me feel a lot less threatened – and coming to understand that what I feared was a certain type of man, which did not represent every man. Now, I feel that I’m quite capable of navigating around toxic masculinity and keeping it out of my life, and have been with my partner for over a decade in a relationship that has developed roots.
It is really disturbing how there are entire online communities of men basically dedicated to teaching each other how to be abusers.
“beta males”
Just keep in mind that the whole alpha/beta/etc taxonomy is a myth created by the misogynists.
I’m a big man with a gravelly voice and a shaved head. Bikers always give me the nod. I doubt if anyone would call me a beta (not that I care) but I’m fully bought into not being a shit towards women. So associate with whoever you want to, but don’t assume from appearance or behavior that only one certain type of man is less toxic. It’s not that simple.
It’s more of a generalisation and not really a word I would use in pretty much any other context, which is why I used quotation marks. A passive-aggressive criticism.
I tend to judge men as individuals, based on what I know about toxic behaviour combined with intuition. So far, this has kept the shitters out of my life.
I read through their new posts and “strategies” frequently, mostly out of a sort of morbid fascination, but also a desire to protect myself from men.
Sound advice, it’s useful to recognize the bullshit lingo & rhetoric that’s all a part of these idiotic schemes (see: “Pickup Artists”). I realized that one of my acquaintances had started slipping those catchphrases into convos years ago, and it caught me off guard. They hadn’t seemed like much of an asshole before, but it raised my hackles knowing that they weren’t just reviewing the media, but integrating it into their personality/beliefs without any sort of filter.
The red-pill/PUA industry preys on the weak-willed. They exploit vulnerable and weak-willed women for sex, and weak-willed men for money.
r/FemaleDatingStrategy is/was a subreddit as well (seems inactive since 2023), it was basically the same as r/theredpill, just for women.
Weird that this is getting downvoted so heavily, but nobody is elaborating why, just downvoting it and moving on.
They have moved to a dedicated website now.
Honestly knowing what I know about guys, I wouldn’t date them either if I was a chick.
“Chick”?
Chick is slang for female.
deleted by creator
they moved onto other subs once that got banned, or on another platform, they are sitll there on places, like twoxchromosone, femcels,etc. alpha, beta thing came from pickup artists videos, and incels/and other men binge on that content.
beautiful quote, saved…saved to my wank bank! had you going there for like 7 periods! I need to share this on twitter
but no very pretty never heard it before
I think part of why she didn’t seen men fighting some of the shitty stuff online is due to the echochamber effect of those communities. Any resistance is downvoted, dogpiled with hateful comments, and maybe even removed by a biased mod. A lot of the good men who would defend in those comments don’t even browse those specific forums because of how toxic and shitty they can be.
IDK, instead of picking fights with random fucks in their own echo chambers where I’d just get banned anyway, I strive to be a positive example for the youngins around me in real life.
The good men aren’t there and don’t even know what’s going on. I’ve used Reddit and Lemmy but have blocked the NSFW/NSFL stuff. There is no opportunity to denounce or report because I remain deliberately blissfully ignorant.
If you happened to go in there and speak against them, you’d just be banned and have your post removed.
Also why would I ever recognize a space like that and not run away. “Calling out” is still participation, and why would I want to participate (incl. from the legal perspective). I have the moral obligation to do that because…I am man? As if being a man was being part of a club.
I have the moral obligation to do that because…I am man? As if being a man was being part of a club.
They explicitly don’t want us non-shitty men there to harsh their vibe and will refuse to listen, so yeah, what the fuck are we supposed to do?
If I see it happening IRL I shut it down and use my 6’4" powers to look down at whoever’s doing it and give them a good scare, but I’m not gonna go to the fucking incel forums and make my day worse for no goddamn reason
Right. In real life you can look someone in the eye and see some semblance of humanity (or at least fear). Online, it doesn’t matter what you say or how you’re perceived, because people get to hide in their perceived anonymity. And you never know when some psychopath with no morals or sense of decency is going to have you swatted.
I believe we (as in, people) all have a responsibility to hold each other accountable. But we can also only do so much, and inserting yourself into a toxic community founded for the sole goal of normalizing that toxicity in some misguided attempt to reform such people is beyond what any one person can be expected to engage with.
I believe we (as in, people) all have a responsibility to hold each other accountable. But we can also only do so much, and inserting yourself into a toxic community …
Me too, both. That we have responsibility for others and that we are not obliged to put ourselves at harms risk.
But this is a particularly shitty, maybe wicked problem. There are three groups: A bullies B, and C could stop A, but isn’t bothered by anyone. Now, is C obliged to pick a fight with A, or is B just in bad luck to be born as a B?
I think here, it is very easy to have strong opinions, while very hard to formulate a concise moral argument. Things get muddier/harder the more we factor reality in.
Precisely. It’s completely different from doing that in your group of friends, where confrontation is a way to establish common values, and in an internet cesspool where anyway I am going to be moderated out.
Just yesterday I was reading a great article about how social medias compare to TV when it comes to feeling part of a group. “Calling out” people in such places wouldn’t be anything else that virtue signaling (to yourself) to reaffirm your own identity (I stand up to sexism), and at the same time allow those people to reaffirm themselves (I get confronted because I am speaking truth).
Basically it would be at most a performance.
Instagrams algorithm purposely pits extreme opposing view points against each other to drive engagement via hate comments to sell enraged consumers knickknacks and graphic T-shirts.
Christian vs atheist
Red vs blue
Abortion vs choice
Even vegan vs carnivore
The faster we abandon social media sites the better.
What’s the point of wrestling with a pig? You both get muddy, and the pig likes it.
Maybe it’s because I grew up with the old, “mean” internet, but my response to communities full of trash is to leave them alone and let the blind lead the blind. Seriously, what the hell is arguing with them going to do? They expect to be challenged, they will not see reason, they will not suffer to be helped, and you are not going to be the person who changes that.Additionally, those kinds of shitbags routinely get tossed out of respectable places. What brings the manosphere, and things like it, together is usually a shared experience of rejection and isolation.
Right. As a guy, I’ve never received a nude pic of a girl from a friend. I’ve never had a friend tell me that he sends girls dick pics. I’ve never been in an online community where photos of women are traded like what is described above - I wouldn’t even know where to start looking for this. I’ve never heard about anyone I know having their pictures shared, or anyone I know sharing pictures of someone else in an unethical way. This is quite simply a social sphere that I am completely excluded from. The idea that I have any responsibility or capacity to police this kind of behavior is ludicrous - what am I supposed to do? Talk to my friends and say “So, look at any unethical porn lately, bro?” Or spend my time seeking out toxic communities so I can debate them/report them, instead of going outside and having a life?
“I’ve never had a friend tell me he sends girls dick pics” Well he wouldn’t, would he? They know it’s toxic behavior even though they enjoy doing it and might even brag about it with equally toxic guys. This is a problem women constantly have, the men in their lives don’t believe things are happening because it doesn’t happen when they’re there. It’s a far less niche sphere than it appears to you, and I agree it’s probably not going to be out in front of you for you to do something about. But you can start by assuming women mostly don’t bring things up unless they’re really bad, because they put themselves at risk by doing so. So if they do, they’re probably not lying or imagining it. Even if your experience of that guy is completely different. And you can (continue to) shut down the more “minor” conversational shit that normalizes and perpetuates that mindset.
And you can (continue to) shut down the more “minor” conversational shit that normalizes and perpetuates that mindset.
I don’t think their intention was to shut anything down and or about not believing women.
It seemed like the user your responding to was expressing frustration over the portion of the excerpt that implies it’s the fault of all men for not calling this out when there’s a lot of men who don’t ever encounter this directly to call it out like that.
But you can start by assuming women mostly don’t bring things up unless they’re really bad, because they put themselves at risk by doing so.
Ideally I wouldn’t assume anything based on such broad generalities. I would base my understanding on my understanding of the person making the claim. If the woman making the claim has shown tendencies in the past of lying and starting drama, I will likely do nothing, and will sort of quietly wander away to find another conversation because I don’t want to be involved in whatever shit she is starting now. Though I will also probably never be present for this conversation, since I probably would have removed this person from my life a long time ago and would actively avoid interacting with them, because it is an unpleasant experience. If I know the woman to generally be trustworthy and straightforward, I will say “wow, that sucks, let me know if I can do anything to help you feel better”.
I’ve known several women who confessed to me that they’d been sexually assaulted in the past. My response, more or less, was “wow, I’m sorry that happened to you. Let me know if you want to talk about it more, or if there is anything I can do to help.” And that is the extent of what I can do, since I have no idea who the people who assaulted them are. It’s not like I can just bust down some random guy’s door and beat him up.
And you can (continue to) shut down the more “minor” conversational shit that normalizes and perpetuates that mindset.
Such as…? I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. I assume you are talking about the conversations where guys say things like “no means yes, yes means anal” - which, again, I have never, ever been involved in. Like, ever. I don’t know who these people are or where they hang out. I infer they exist based on second hand accounts if others. But they seem to not like me, and don’t invite me to their parties.
When my male friends and I talk about women, our conversations usually go: ugh, why don’t girls like me?; ugh, my girlfriend is being distant and standoffish; ugh, my girlfriend broke up with me. I’ve never had a friend speak poorly of women in general, say they “deserve” anything as a group, or anything like that.
So, again, this seems like a big case of “I can’t do anything about this, so I’m not going to worry about it.”
You’re absolutely right, but haven’t I read that they’re learning to lie about their presence in the manophere? So if it’s, say 10% who actively think and act that way, plus 15% passively subject themselves to it without going all in, but who aren’t really judging, that’s 1/4 guys who I wouldn’t risk a relationship with, many of whom are actively hiding their positions. I can see why it wouldn’t be worth it to date any man. Especially for someone with her experiences.
And my IRL impression is that it’s way more guys than 15% who intentionally expose themselves to it, and slightly more than 10% who fully buy into the misogyny.
I agree, and in my opinion, women and partners in general need to get better at leaving piece of shit men (or shitty partners in general). Many of them keep acting like this cause they get away with it after some small talk and a nice dinner just to be a piece of shit again next week. I’ve known girls who date men who genuinely claim that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote and all i can think is “why is this girl staying with someone who hates them?”
I agree, and in my opinion, women and partners in general need to get better at leaving piece of shit men (or shitty partners in general)
I understand you’re being well-intentioned but this is such a great example of how society has failed to recognize these partners as victims as it continues to put the onus on the victim to deal with the abuser.
- We don’t tell addicts “just say no” anymore because we (largely) understand it’s ineffective against a health issue.
- We don’t tell people with depression “stop being sad.”
- We understand people can be brainwashed/emotionally and mentally manipulated to unbelievable extremes - watch any of the hundreds of cult documentaries that have come out over the last decade.
- You don’t tell someone who was robbed “you should’ve had better security/lived somewhere else.”
TL;DR: Victims of abuse are victims who need external assistance. The abuser needs to be dealt with. You are putting too much of the onus on the victims (and in some ways the blame as well though I highly doubt that’s your intention) when you say “they need to take responsibility and leave.”
The fact that you know someone who stays with someone who thinks she shouldn’t vote should tell you how seriously difficult this all is.
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I don’t understand your argument and you haven’t addressed the issue at hand.
Please spell out for me why a woman in a relationship with a man who believes that women shouldn’t have the right to vote, can’t exit that relationship?
Victims of abuse are victims
Note that the person you responded to didn’t mention abuse, you introduced the term “abuse”. We’re talking about women in relationships with assholes, not abused women.
Victims of abuse are victims who need external assistance.
You may better understand what someone is saying if you respond to their whole sentence and not just the part you wanted to attack.
Abuse is abuse regardless of how small you as an outsider perceive it. Women in relationships with assholes who believe they should have no rights are always being abused by the aforementioned asshole.
Women in relationships with assholes who believe they should have no rights
Firstly, the original commenter who described the kind of relationship we’re discussing didn’t say “no rights” they said “shouldn’t be allowed to vote” which is a very much more limited view than what you’re raging against.
are always being abused by the aforementioned asshole.
That’s not the situation that was described by the original commenter. Just because someone is an asshole and has reprehensible views, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are abusive. There’s a difference and if you can’t see and acknowledge that difference then you’re just engaging in misandry. In which case, best of luck, take care, bye now.
You sure do like to cherry pick and blast incel rhetoric eh?
Don’t worry about further response, you aren’t worth the time.
Misandry is when someone says men who believe women shouldn’t be allowed to vote are abusive.
Thank you for that elevated, nuanced take, king.
Have you forgotten the entire context of this thread? Did you even glance at the article? They also talked about women “not leaving piece of shit men” and a man who doesn’t want his partner to vote. Can you really not infer anything from that?
Have you forgotten the entire context of this thread?
Nope.
Did you even glance at the article?
I read every word.
They also talked about … a man who doesn’t want his partner to vote
That is not what they talked about. They said “men who genuinely claim that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote”. That is not the same thing as a man who displays controlling behaviour over their partner.
Can you really not infer anything from that?
There’s no need for anyone to infer anything in this discussion, it’s quite clear and explicit what people are talking about.
You have a very narrow understanding of what abuse is and clearly you can’t extrapolate larger points and only take things at face value, so I’ll be direct and concise: you are defending and engaging in victim blaming as you hide behind cheap rhetorical tricks.
Later dude. This isn’t going to be productive. You’re clearly grinding an axe about some social hangup you have.
Victims of abuse are victims who need external assistance.
Agreed. Assistance, implementation of which requires understanding of why they’re not leaving those assholes, worse, returning to them, or fall into the same pattern with a different asshole, all on their ostensibly free will.
The question is “how can the capability to leave the abuser be built”. It involves, in one way or the other, a change in the victim. Getting better at leaving pieces of shit.
Seriously I have difficulty, and this might be male perspective, to equate “need to get better at” with the frame “you’re at fault”. At some point, I needed to get good at cooking. Was it my fault that I couldn’t cook? Nope. It’s not like I didn’t show interest as a kid, it’s that noone ever bothered to actually teach me anything, so I didn’t know anything. Still had to get good at it. It’s a problem so you solve it. Why would I care wasting my breath blaming my upbringing it only distracts from learning. It can provide an excuse, but excuses don’t make dinner.
Ah, fuck it, let’s risk it. My edgetake on why some women end up again and again with assholes: Because noone told them (early enough?) that they can go to a kind guy, start a tickle fight, and get all the thrill they’ll ever want. It’s a function of attraction to the capability to throw down.
Unfortunately this is a very gendered/male take, I agree with that. You’re falling into the same pits I described above. You’re essentially saying “just nut up and do it.” Comparing it to overcoming the inertia of not cooking for yourself is, frankly, bizarre to me. That isn’t the same situation at all. Your kitchen isn’t some force conspiring against you. Your cookware isn’t changing tactics and emotionally manipulating you or taking away your phone.
You’re essentially saying “just nut up and do it.”
No. I said that the question is:
how can the capability to leave the abuser be built
I didn’t ever compare what’s necessary for that with learning to cook. The cooking thing was about how it’s silly to go from “doesn’t know how to” to “you’re at fault”. I used, specifically, an example far enough from abuse so it could be a general point, not tangled up with the dating assholes bit.
Where I did get into “How can it be built” was my edgetake later: Figure out why assclowns are so damn attractive that some women go back to them, put up with them, and then don’t blame the woman for having that attraction, but find a safe outlet. I’m sure that’s not the whole of the solution but I do think that it’s a necessary component.
We understand people can be brainwashed/emotionally and mentally manipulated to unbelievable extremes - watch any of the hundreds of cult documentaries that have come out over the last decade.
Steven Hassan’s BITE model is a good start for that kind of information, the interesting thing being that a lot of those cult-manipulation techniques are visible in anything from individual relationships (not just romantic ones either, parent/child in either direction, “friends”,…) over cults and religions to workplaces and political movements.
These women don’t leave because these men are narcissistic assholes who have destroyed their self-esteem and made them think they are worthless and won’t find anything better and can’t live on their own.
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Fear.
We should have social systems to help people over come those fears and protect them from threats, both physical and financial. No one should be forced to be with someone they fear because of finances, childcare, safety, or loneliness.
Not all shitty partners induce fear. I’ve known some girls who are just head over heels due to how attractive, wealthy, or mostly sweet a guy is. The good times outshine the bad times and they get into the “i can fix him” mentality. My brother is like that where he has gotten away with cheating with nearly every partner he has had. It usually takes the girl months to finally leave him and say its been enough. Hes the chad gym type and genuinely doesn’t have to try to pull women. Any time they threaten to leave he gets all sweet, shows up with gifts and acts romantic and sexy just to get caught cheating again next week.
We need to be hard on ourselves sometimes and push manipulative people out of our lives. I think an erosion of IRL friendships has influenced this trend as well. I used to know girls who would band together to help a girl get rid of a shitty guy they were infatuated with but that is much harder to do online than in person.
We should have social systems to help people over come those fears and protect them from threats, both physical and financial. No one should be forced to be with someone they fear because of finances, childcare, safety, or loneliness.
I don’t disagree with that. I would support that in a heartbeat if I had the funds to do so.
Not all shitty partners induce fear. I’ve known some girls who are just head over heels due to how attractive, wealthy, or mostly sweet a guy is. The good times outshine the bad times and they get into the “i can fix him” mentality.
Sure, not all shitty partners, but there is often more going on behind closed doors than many people realize.
My brother is like that where he has gotten away with cheating with nearly every partner he has had. It usually takes the girl months to finally leave him and say its been enough. Hes the chad gym type and genuinely doesn’t have to try to pull women. Any time they threaten to leave he gets all sweet, shows up with gifts and acts romantic and sexy just to get caught cheating again next week.
That’s called “love bombing” and is a common part of the cycle of abuse.
We need to be hard on ourselves sometimes and push manipulative people out of our lives. I think an erosion of IRL friendships has influenced this trend as well. I used to know girls who would band together to help a girl get rid of a shitty guy they were infatuated with but that is much harder to do online than in person.
I don’t disagree with that, however, people like this tend to worm their way into positions of authority like a parasite that you can’t get rid of. The fact that they often have zero issues lying through their teeth to get you on “their side” is a massive issue that many of the general public simply cannot grasp (“why would my wife/husband/preacher/friend/etc lie to me?” etc…).
It gets even worse when someone like that gets their hands on the very methods used to build those organizations and tears them all down. See the current state of the USA for example. I lived with an abusive partner for 11 years, and there is an unbelievable amount of parallels between them and the current US administration. What they are doing right now is incredibly triggering, knowing that I essentially have no escape from it.
Yup. I’m not going to actively hang out with shitheads just to try and change them. I will however steamroll over them if they come into MY space and do it.
I explicitly stay away from such groups. I call it out in person, and politely check my friends when they say something that they might not realize is harmful, exactly the same way I expect them to check me, but that’s just it. That kind of discourse isn’t welcome in these groups because they were created with one explicit purpose: to justify and normalize the absolute shittiest behavioursof the most sexiest of male culture.
She’s right, it isn’t a small amount of men. But it’s a supermajority in certain circles, and a tiny, neglible minority in others. She, unfortunately, exposed herself to the worst of men enmasse. We should instead go to those latter circles, and avoid/ostracize those former circles, until they realize if their only goal is sex, they’ll have to figure out how to be a decent person first. And men, choose to be better.
Guys seem to like going into a game together and fighting against overwhelming odds, working together to shoot down the enemy. Even if they “die” several times.
Maybe it would be interesting to get together and make a raid/foray into one of these manosphere forums, supporting each other’s arguments and shooting down sexist crap.
We should weaponize bots to do this. With AI it doesn’t even need to be real people anymore.
They’re using them against us and it’s long past time we responded in kind.
r/conservative has already disproven that experiment, no matter how much opposition, they will spin a million excuses and point out how their echo chamber is being “brigaded” by bots or whatever
You’d be banned faster than trying to say “Tiananmen” on grad
Several studies also describe the backfire effect, I.e., people getting more entrenched in their position when confronted with opposing arguments. I doubt I can ever succeed where a decade+ of education system failed.
By yourself probably not. But a battalion of opposing arguments could possibly turn the tide. These guys have already demonstrated how susceptible they are to peer pressure, after all. And they’re not all online at once, so if they’re suddenly in the minority in their usually toxic forum…
So you need a coordinated effort of thousands of people who will get continuously moderated, banned or censored. OK, I admit that it’s possible, but I think I’d rather invest my time in other ways…
Well, if you have some to invest, could you see about getting “i.e.” into the default autocorrect database so we don’t have to go back and force it every time?
get together and make a raid/foray into one of these manosphere forums, supporting each other’s arguments and shooting down sexist crap
Such behaviour is called “brigading” and it’s very much frowned upon.
As a middle-aged man, I agree that there are some completely shitty men (loosely) out there. A real man should be compassionate, caring, protective when wanted, supportive when needed, and should never do the absolute scum things this poor woman experienced. This is on fathers (mostly) and mothers to teach their sons what it means to be respectful to everyone around them, not just women but men as well. Fathers need to model the behavior so their sons don’t grow up to be terrible humans. It is on parents to address online safety. It’s uncomfortable to do this but really, really needed. As far as the man sex culture, I’m not sure that is a fair statement. That would be like saying a woman sex culture. From what I’ve seen in my life, you will always be proven wrong if you stereotype anything about any perceived group of people.
The thing is most of these dudes are highly desired and taken already so what you get on tinder rotation is absolutely not that.
From what I’ve seen in my life, you will always be proven wrong if you stereotype anything about any perceived group of people.
Not always but the exceptions (or as close to exceptions as generalizations can ever get you anyway) are usually cases where the stereotypical behavior is entangled deeply with the very definition of the group, e.g. the vast majority of kids of rich parents can’t understand the struggles of being poor.
I understand what you’re saying, what I meant was every time i got to the point where I had a preconceived idea about a group of people, I was proven that I was wrong. There are always exceptions - that is my point.
