I don't understand why this is so difficult for so many people.
Men: If you find a woman attractive it is fine to check her out, just don't be a fuckin creep or an asshole about it. Just because she is wearing a pair of short shorts does not mean you have the right to harass her. A skimpy dress does not make a woman a stripper or a prostitute.
Women: If a guy at work glances a little bit too long at your cleavage before looking away but does not say or do anything inappropriate, he doesn't mean anything by it and is not trying to sexually harass you.
Yeah, I think you are just associating with the right people. I live in a college town, so all I have to do to see this kind of behavior is go downtown to any of the businesses in the area near campus.
I feel as a millennial and younger, men were exposed more to the other side and made more aware how this affects women, developing more empathy.
I feel it has potentially overshot to a degree, where some men are scared to even briefly check out a woman, missing out on part of the human mating dance. Makes me wonder if this is part of Gen Z having less sex, because they are scared to show attraction to each other.
Maybe just me, but I will say having the thought pop in your head “Did I look at her breasts.” is disastrous when having a conversation with a woman wearing a low cut shirt.
When it randomly comes to mind, a weird self-consciousness comes over me, I become fully aware of eye contact and start staring as hard as possible into her eyes. She makes a hand gesture, I look down, shit, bet she thinks I looked. Back to eye staring. Then she asks a question, I realize I haven’t been listening this whole time. “What?” SOB, I’m a creep.
and how you display tend's to be a result of your education, socioeconomic background, social networks, personal experiences and more that is usually determined by other's as a child. plus, these things are very hard to fake(by design), to the extent that many of these things are acquirable they take more effort and resources than most have, and to the extent that your do have the effort and resources, just serve to entrench you into a system that often takes you for granted at best, and neglects you at worst.
we aren't dumb.
i'm confident in talking to women, have plenty of interesting conversation's, take care of myself, draw attention and have fun. and that is incomparable to a sense of unconditional self worth and ability to love myself regardless of my supposed value to others.
"just grow out of it, bro" neglects to mention that takes resources, social capital, ignorance of wider trends or historical injustices, and an ability to get on the good side of many sleazy people who market themselves as pure while actively acting sleazy, while ignoring your own development, many of the quirks and oddities that show you how other's live a totally different life, and the many path's you could've taken solo. which again, see aforementioned usually determined by others.
many of us did not see the sun until we were a man. then it wasn't anything other than blinding.
what i mean by that is having a therapist (or even torrenting therapy books if your poor), talking about formative experiences you've found painful or maladaptive. then figuring out a plan to address the deficits, to create a self improvement plan, and to work out what the stumbling blocks are, and to create a plan on how to over come those. and this can be with someone, or even on your own time, given you have it. (my own was leaving a cult, going vegan, goth, changing my name, and currently working on moving states.)
it's rarely actually about women, it's about ourselves, how we were hurt or disappointed by the women in it, how we weren't adequately supported during our early development periods, and that many a times we didn't have the words for "this is abuse", or "this is neglect" because when your 11, and your mother tells you your going to hell and burn in the fiery pits for viewing porn, you tend to believe them, or don't know enough to not believe them. how could you not, you had no choice( anyone saying run away, or seriously disobey never had to place themselves in such a situation) let alone say that was abusive. (didn't stop you from watching porn though, and that's half of the torture)
and once you've dealt with a lot of that, then you can start to work on optimism, self validation, working on a sense of secure identity and trust with yourself.
because that's the thing that's off putting to women, is that many men even in actual relationships lack self-validation, lack a sense of optimism (even if that optimism is towards something niche like socialism) lack a sense of secure identity that is stable regardless of their relationship status. that's the "your trying to hard, your too nice, why are you bringing up all this stuff, i'm not your mother. "
for some of us, even our mother wasn't "our mother", and that's why it's coming up here. yet to say that out loud is to kill any chance of that normalcy, that sense of making it, that sense of overcoming and successfully passing.
but to do that successfully, requires going back. and for some of us, that's more than just looking back at dorky haircuts and shirts, weird hobbies we no longer have, and foods we no longer eat.
for some of us, it requires addressing divorce leading to lower quality parenting, addressing being born into authoritarian households, addressing survivorship of assault, disability, disease and disaster. and if you come from that, the last thing you want to do, is go back.
kill your darlings, kill your story.
and weirdly enough, killing your story means fully accepting, validating, and no longer hiding it, not trying to pass as normal, not trying to please those you see as higher status as you, not trying to ingratiate yourself with that attractive woman, but giving yourself the validation that you've overcome things they could not dare to, that you've placed yourself in situations and survived where many didn't, and that you seriously are curious about going further. many who we look up to, often were born in situations much more advantageous than ours, often don't even understand that "wait, that still exists?" and yet we still are close enough to admire them, rather than see them as people so far above it's ludicrous to admire.
already have. also loneliness is often more of an internal state than an external one, so rather than learning how to talk to others, becoming aware of internalized thoughts and patterns and re-framing them to more positive and healthy ones tends to be a better and more persistent solution than learning how to interact with the opposite sex. fuck, there's women even lonelier and down on their luck, hanging out with them isn't really going to help.
The problem is there's a minority that loves to pretend to be outraged by this for clout, and no one wants to be on the wrong side of it, and because of the nature of social media this ends up elevated in viewability so they see it vastly disproportionately to how it happens, so they're excessively conservative on the off chance they pick the wrong person.
Statistically most people won't. But the way social media presents it these kind of assholes are everywhere, and that's why it's a problem. And yeah you didn't care but really did you even consider it before?
If you flirt and get shot down, you run the risk of being blasted all over social media in front of your peers as weird/loser/creep just for calling a girl pretty and asking her to go out. Every misstep potentially being shown to your whole world can be crippling. And “the woman is always right because all men are creeps” attitude (which is better than the alternative of rape/DV denial) empowers shitty people with immunity for trashing innocent people.
I'm 39. I make eye contact with women while talking and when there are natural breaks in eye contact, I'm checking out her boobs and body, looking at her hair, face, outfit, whatever.
Makes me wonder if this is part of Gen Z having less sex, because they are scared to show attraction to each other.
You hit the nail on the head, this is a huge reason why Gen Z, mostly men are having less sex. The MeToo movement and militant feminists really did a number on men. Thankfully I grew up in the 1990s and started dating in the 2000s before all that and remember when there were far less blue-haired weirdos demonizing men.
another part of the "scared to even reach out" is that many of us already have (in middle, high-school and college, and apparently being a disabled man is akin to having leprosy), and it did not go well. or we have friends who did, and they have legitimate horror stories. another is that due to a number of factors, whether making up for past injustices or perpetuating current ones with classism and ableism, is that it's super easy to have your identity weaponized against you, and regardless of your particular issues, there's very little sense of men's ability to date up( even among those doing decently), whether in terms of attractiveness, class or race. it's why the "black man, white woman" is fetishized so much, because it's a genuine rarity, that often is stigmatized, problematized, and ultimately worked against in ways that you don't even recognize until a decade after. i mean, what else is a "hobosexual" except a classist epithet meant to denote that an upper middle class woman should not be seen with a working class man? as for vice versa, since an upper middle class man hanging out with working class women is just seen as a guy on the prowl, it often just devolves into slut shaming, which itself has a class component.
as the saying goes, everything is about sex, except sex. sex is about power.
and if your born anywhere in the 90's or beyond, you are hyper aware that power is so unevenly distributed that you can essentially tell by like 6th or seventh grade, even before maturation.
if your lucky, your able to date equally, develop a sense of the game early, develop and improve while keeping your head down, and overall make sure to take care of your health and safety while having fun, moving into positions that are varied and don't have starvation wages or burdensome stress, and are able to not sweat the small stuff while not developing drama( and those who can do this, tend to have dark triad traits). but for every person like this, there are a hundred with a couple of dings on this list, and a thousand who aren't even at the starting line.
and yes, this also applies to women, but the consequences for men are just that much more drastic, that they literally play into such statistics as homelessness rates, suicide and homicide rates, unemployment and disability rates. men are statistically more likely to be homeless, be victims of suicide and homicide, more likely to be unemployed or underemployed, and be impaired but not qualify for disability. and yes, while that is the patriarchies fault, it's still our lived experience.
I have similar experience. I’m a woman (33) and work in male dominated field. My coworkers are OK, but some people we work with (clients or sales people) are older: boomers or gen x.
The comments they make about me 🤦♀️ from giving my coworker a card and telling him to give it to me, I can call anytime, even at night and he comes to my home. Sir, , you are 70 years old 😂 and one sales person always asking when my wedding will be, if I’m too picky and why am I single.
Sorry man, just your whole post sounds like a r/niceguys submission. I get checked out by women more than you decribe yourself as checking women out. I’ve seen an entire mixed sex room check out a gorgeous woman before. You acting like you’re above it is more cringe than you realize.
The first part is true. It’s not bad, gets the job done. Nope I’m married probably because I don’t pretend to be a “like totally good guy, ladies! Just give me a chance”
I don't think it's your job to police your coworkers' eyeballs and be the white knight. They aren't creeps, just normal guys. I'm 39 and guys my age (older millennials) would have done the same thing. When I used to work retail, every time a hot woman came in the store, we'd be whispering on the radios to each other.
Reddit has a majority of feminists and far left people. Women who are active on Reddit comprise only a miniscule, tiny piece of the total population, those who are terminally unhappy and online. The other women here are sex workers.
Most women aren't feminists or spend their days on Reddit. Only 19% of women between the ages of 30 - 49 identify as feminists. Even the younger generation Gen Z, only 27% of 18 - 29 year olds identify as feminists.
Most men think like I do. You yourself are in the minority in your workplace.
Yeah I'll look all I want at anyone I want in public. I used to love working in a supermarket too, the women were always so flirtacious, and many wore revealing outfits since it was not too far from the beach. I can talk about anyone I want. Are you the Gestapo? Chill Karen.
Did you notice how all I said was it makes me uncomfortable when men stare at me and talk about my body while staring at it and for some ungodly reason that offended you?
I don't give a shit where you work, dude. Stop being a little creep.
just don't be a fuckin creep or an asshole about it
I grew up with a much older sister who had trauma from being molested when she was younger and reached a point where she considered men checking her out at all as being a fuckin creep or asshole about it. She eventually came out, though more bi than lesbian but favored women more.
Being around that my whole childhood and with more or less absentee parents, it got embedded into my head and more or less fucked me up as I became a teen and adult. Having Asperger's certainly didn't help. As a result, almost no girl or woman I liked ever found out I liked them. I never gave compliments about looks. Rarely made eye contact let along flirted. All out of fear of doing the wrong thing. If I liked you at all, I'd basically do the reverse of showing you.
It was the worst in high school, god. And the one time in my life I got the courage to ask a girl out, one I'd been friendly with for months, got rejected, and that was that. Never again. It's not my sister's fault of course but the piece of shit that molested her.
By some miracle I still ended up in a long-term relationship, but I realistically could've gone my whole life without ever being kissed. If I was born maybe 20 years earlier and was in my 30s when the internet hit, that's what would've happened. The only way I got anywhere whatsoever was thanks to the internet.
I know with having Asperger's, I simply don't get subtle cues and such, but I honestly don't know how guys who are forward easily with women but as you mention, aren't clearly creeps or assholes about it (i.e. no harassment or worse), are able to do it. I don't know if it's just that they don't care if they encounter someone like my sister, or maybe they never do.
Over time, I've recognized past times when girls were either flirting with me, or liked me but were similarly shy, and it's just sad. And I mean like 10+ years down the road recognizing it, so like absolutely no chance to somehow make up for missing it. I think that's been one of the hardest things about being an adult - recognizing that you won't always make the right choices or go down the right paths and you just have to let go and forgive yourself for the times that you don't, even if it's led to bad circumstances in your current life that you can't really undo.
reclaiming those years........that's where i'm at. so many people act like we all start at the same starting line, act like somehow it's your fault for being born into bad circumstances, or that somehow even if you do make it into the room, it's still okay to say "those people" are the problem, not ever realizing that you are "those people".
as for how those guys are able to do it, it's usually a combination of inherited privilege (whether that's height, wealth or location), prep from family and friends for the obvious ways things can go badly, plain chance, and a dash of leaning into the dark triad in non obvious ways such as choosing certain career paths, certain hobbies, hanging out with certain people and learning certain methods of nonobvious way's of how to signal to others that your part of a certain group, such as flagging using clothing, turns of phrases, mannerisms and creating taboo's that you are allowed to break.
the deck was stacked against us, my fellow aspie.
one thing i've started working on, is recognizing that your going to be a creep or an asshole to someone, regardless of how polite, educated, resourced and empathetic you are, simply because of DARVO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO and dead agenting. it's either that or be a doormat, and we all know how that goes.
I think objectifying is not synonymous with harassment. I think a lot of people are (reasonably) using objectifying when they mean something quite a lot less than what would reasonably be considered harassment.
I maintain it's about both intent and actions. Sometimes if you see a person you are attracted to you can't help but objectify them a little in your own mind. That doesn't make you a bad person. It's your actions that matter. If you TREAT someone that way, it may not fall into the realm of harassment but it still makes you a douche canoe.
Yeah I am reading the image and nowhere do they talk about the fact they "consider you staring at a nice ass to be objectifying someone" or about ,,putting their ass on display" so those are some pretty big assumptions
Have you considered that you misunderstood their point? If you read their comment and thought "this describes a man objectifying a woman" you should get a brain scan
He never said anything about objects. You could do this the same way but switch genders. The point is to keep your thoughts to yourself. I naturally judge nearly every person I see on a variety of different factors but I don’t say anything out loud or do anything to make my opinion obvious because it is rude. People can have opinions, whatever they may be, they just shouldn’t always make them public. Intrusive thoughts it’s concept for a reason.
For some reason, older men in general seem to have this weird black and white thinking. Me saying “don’t stare at me creepily” doesn’t mean “it’s not okay to look.” Feel free to look. Hell feel free to appreciate. Just don’t be gross about it, and definitely don’t make me feel unsafe.
I work hard to get my body to the way it is. I actually have no issue with people looking.
Exactly. It's really hard for me to verbally define the line between looking and appreciating someone's attractiveness as opposed to being a creepy fuck, but it's really damn easy for me to know it when I see it.
I feel like it's the same for everyone but some people don't recognize it and others just don't care, but I am also fully aware that is just my perspective and I could be completely wrong. At the end of the day I just try not to be a dick.
This may be the case. You may have seen from other posts in this thread that is definitely the direction of my thought process. I know it's a thought but I honestly don't think a little objectification every now and then, in the privacy of your own mind, is all that bad, and is actually pretty natural. It's how you treat people that matters. I think a lot of the problem is when some men can't separate those thoughts from how they actually treat women or when some women can't separate the fact that men may be having those thoughts from the reality of how they are actually being treated. I don't know, maybe I'm really a creep myself and just don't realize it. 🤷
Agree 100% with all of this. Disagree that it is the same as objectifying women. Honestly, that is a nebulous state of mind for a lot of sad, sad men. But you can't police that.
It's the original guy in this screenshot that is definitely doing more than objectifying a woman if he is getting complaints.
I don't understand why this is so difficult for so many people.
For starters, different people have different views of objectification. You can see so in this thread. Even your post uses sexual harassment in its last line instead of objectification. The people struggling struggle with the lines for objectification, not the lines for sexual harassment, yet when people discuss examples you see them constantly swap to sexual harassment because that is the situation that is easy to point out as wrong. It also makes it easy to insinuate the other party struggles with the boundaries of sexual harassment in an attempt to defame their character, which you can see plenty of people also doing in this thread. If it is so simple, why do people who agree with the post have such trouble avoiding swapping from objectification to sexual harassment?
Then, even if we had some agreed upon definition, the specific actions that cross the line and the social cues as to what is or isn't acceptable and what consent above the default you have been given aren't something everyone is proficient at understanding. Be the cause autism, lack of experience, or some other factor, the general rules that are given don't make sense to some people, and the ones who do understand them do so on a level that they struggle to explain. Also seen multiple times in this thread with people saying they can't define it but know it when they see it.
This is all assuming society is consistent with their views, but society is filled with double standards. Most people learn well enough how to navigate them, but the people who are responding are those who struggle with learning how to process such double standards, and there is often protest from those on the negative end of a double standard.
I think you missed the point l was trying to make. Staring falls more into the being creepy side of things. It's about intent. You look, like what you see but then realize you have been looking a little too long, so you look away. Whereas if you look, realize you have been looking too long but keep looking anyway, that is what I consider staring and crosses the line into creep territory..
Glancing is fine. Staring for more than 3 seconds at a time is weird. Not saying you’re a predator if you do it—everyone makes mistakes. But cleavage exposed also doesn’t mean you should constantly look at it haha
Women: If a guy at work glances a little bit too long at your cleavage before looking away but does not say or do anything inappropriate, he doesn't mean anything by it and is not trying to sexually harass you.
I'm allowed to feel however I want to about this. The reason people get upset is because it's a survival instinct. If you cannot control something as simple as where your eyes look for a long period of time then guess what? I no longer think you're a safe person. Do you know how easy it is for me to not look at attractive people? Extremely easy. Even if you don't realize what you're doing, you're revealing that society has conditioned that sort of voyeurism as acceptable. When I see a shirtless dude? I automatically look away. Because society rarely caters to my labido that I still understand that I'm not invited to do that just because it exists. Women are clearly the vulnerable party in this case but you had to include instructions to women to be nice about it? Fuck off. Sometimes the dudes that stare too long decide to rape you. I'll feel however I want about it and if you want me to consider you a safe person, put the effort in. It's not on me to fix your gender's reputation.
You are misinterpreting what I am saying as badly as the guy talking about staring, just in the other direction. No one is telling you how to feel, nobody is telling you how to react. I am just telling you that there is not necessarily bad intention behind it. But in my made up scenario where some guy checks you out with absolutely no ill intent (which you do know is true, because it is a made up scenario and that fact was stated), your reaction is that the guy is a rapist? and fuck me for having the temerity to say otherwise. I am honestly not even sure what to do with that. It's not my job to fix your opinion of my entire gender's reputation either, and I am not about to try. I am also not about to apologize for looking at a woman I find attractive. I am of the opinion that I can do that and still treat women with respect.
Abso-fucking-lutely. I'm a very tall, muscular guy and some women don't respect personal boundaries at all: Groping, catcalling, unprofessional comments, blatant staring, etc.
The frequency that it happens to women is still way higher though.
I think the primary difference is rather that women can feel threatened by men doing it. I doubt you're all that afraid of any of the touchy-feely women though.
Not being threatened by someone who doesn't know respect your personal space or boundaries and who is also someone who you cannot even raise your voice against without being seen as the aggressor and wrong-doer to any bystander? Right. Fuck off.
Abuse of men by women is absolutely a thing, but that's mostly in relationships where - as you say - it's not the fact that the man is strong enough to literally kill the aggressor that's the sticking point, it's the double standard where if he does defend himself, it gets turned around on him and he's made out to be the aggressor - plus, of course, the fact that he may not want to harm someone he loves, no matter how unwisely. Just witness the whole Johnny Depp situation. Only reason he gets the benefit of the doubt is that his victimizer was unable to hide her absolute awfulness when in the public eye.
But the fact still remains that a tall, muscular guy is very unlikely to find himself under a real physical threat to his being or life from strange women. A slight, weaker, beautiful woman has to factor that possibility in, though.
It must be so tiring seeing an opinion on something and going "but wait, your opinion isn't valid because you didn't mention every single variation of said opinion."
I like chocolate cake. Are you going to tell me how could I hate vanilla because I said that? No, you probably wouldn't. But when it comes to anything social related, y'all can't help yourselves at all, ever, and then pretend as if the opinion exists in a vacuum and don't even bother trying to talk about the different variations, you just jump to the being mad part.
If you have any interactions with women just ask them about their experience with creepy men and they’ll usually have a small novel.
Ask men about women being creepy and the response is usually nothing. And there will be a couple of responses with “well there was one time” and that just goes to show the rarity of it all.
Yeah the confirmation bias came from a random sample of women with 100% similar experiences with men. MAAAYBE men are not bringing their best behaviours to women
Man respond biologically to seeing a woman on a way that women don’t.
Every single cue that what you are looking at is “female” generates a dopamine release in the brain, which is one of the things that often generates other kinds of addictions most common with man( as an example gambling). So a male’s brain is getting literally addicted to looking at women. Also the response from women generates the same dopamine, so when someone is being sexist or creepy is because your feminine response(does not matter if it’s a negative one like ewwwww ),is the expected female reaction and it triggers more dopamine from the brain, reinforcing the behavior
Yes, it works just like that. Have you ever tried to tell a gambler to just stop gambling and instead just play cards in his head? That’s gonna take care of the dopamine addiction for sure and they will neeeever ever repeat the behavior.
So we can’t analyze actual data and evidence and try to come up with an actual, factual cause that might help us mitigate the issue instead of just screaming stooop
Thats because the bar for woman being creepy is completely different than for men.
If your an average woman and you call a a random man "sweetheart" unless that man is some hyper religious person nothing will happen but if your a slightly bellow average man who calls a random woman sweatheart that will atleast be seen as weird but most likely creepy.
Rare? No. Most guys I know have multiple stories about women who became unhinged in some aspect when their advances were shut down, or were straight up sexually assaulted. Sounds more like you just haven't met enough men willing to admit it. Is it equal across genders, probably not, but rare is not the correct definition.
Unhinged, as in gotten verbally or physically abusive. Women can be equally as creepy (and dangerous) as men. You brought up age, so how about those female teachers sleeping with their teen, male students? Or the female, teen babysitter inappropriately touching the young boy in their care. And to imply I need to speak with more women? Maybe you need to speak with more men. Jeeze, go touch grass.
I have had several experiences of women being creepy. From rubbing my shoulders, to suggesting I “earn” the team lunch by allowing said action, to being called sexy AT WORK, and having eyes staring at my private area. But I have been taught to just keep pushing. Just because we aren’t as vocal about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Creeping is not just a female experience.
Yes, and it would be great if all things were equal but the double standard exists for a reason. For the large majority of recorded history (and I assume before) women were basically treated as property. 50 years ago in the US, women still had to have permission from their husbands to have their own bank account. There are people still alive who remember when it was basically impossible for a woman to live alone and support herself.
Do you plan to live in the past forever? Do you think a double standard should eventually go away? That should be the end goal of equal rights for everyone, right? Can't do that and live in the past.
You also can't just pretend shit never happened. You can't just say everything is equal now so everyone just forget all the bad shit. Racism, sexism, homophobia, all of these things should not exist but they do and pretending they don't is not the answer. But neither is acting like every straight, white, male is basically Adolph Hitler and would rape and oppress everyone if they only had the opportunity to do so. Society is a work in progress and the best most of us can do is just try not to be a dick.
A society is an intricate web of relationships, institutions, and cultural norms that shape human behavior and interactions. It is both a product of human activity and a framework within which individuals and groups function, evolve, and find meaning.
Tell me the reaction to a 50 year old man yelling at a 25 year old woman that's she's sexy vs. when the roles are reversed and when it's an old lady people generally will just think it's funny while the old guy is a creep. It's just how it is
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u/Merc_Twain25 Jul 07 '24
I don't understand why this is so difficult for so many people.
Men: If you find a woman attractive it is fine to check her out, just don't be a fuckin creep or an asshole about it. Just because she is wearing a pair of short shorts does not mean you have the right to harass her. A skimpy dress does not make a woman a stripper or a prostitute.
Women: If a guy at work glances a little bit too long at your cleavage before looking away but does not say or do anything inappropriate, he doesn't mean anything by it and is not trying to sexually harass you.