Not for men only - a place to discuss men's trauma issues (comments welcomed from all)

[Mee]

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...nder-bias-statistics-rape-abuse-a7839361.html


Was looking for something else but this came up. Thought it useful here.

 

[Mach123]

I'm sorry this winked out. Most things do here after a while. The either or of gender. It's just like men are disposable and don't have any feelings, about sex particularly. I didn't read this before because I was not ready? Men are swords and guns. Men are all like "well, if you feel like that, we can just cut your thing off and then give you a rifle and right back to the front, you'll be all set." Any kind of sh*t about "you're feelings," and we'll just shoot you. I mean, if you have to waste time talking about that sh*t, just go back with the women. Either that or you're gay. My therapist is sweet and she "believes" you know that it's not like this. I think that to imagine that men are not like this is a utopian fantasy. Men don't have to be like this but it never totally goes away. My dad's generation and he was not like this but he was scarred by it, the way they dealt with the boys was if you showed any weakness, they slapped you right across the face. I'm not part of that but I don't think it's wrong or condemn them for it. That was how it was. They had all come home from saving the world after the war.

One of the most poignant examples of this is Shelby Foote in Ken Burns "The Civil War." when he said, (not exact) "every boy in the south sees themselves that morning looking up that hill at the Union lines at Gettysburg." The day of Picketts' charge.

It never really goes out of your mind, or at least it never really goes out of mine.

I suppose on the womens side they would say "you just think I'm for sex and that's it and you don't consider me as anything else."

This is just what I'm thinking about this morning? I think about it a lot. I experienced a lot of violence and sexual violence and csa and gender dysphoria and whatever. WTF? Do you know what I mean?

 

[somerandomguy]

I think it's easy to say "men are this" and "women are that." Generalizations, while sometimes correct, aren't applicable to everyone. Even if a majority of women really do love the color pink, that just means that potentially 49% of women HATE the color pink. (Thank you @Friday for this useful analogy.)

It is useful to put generalization into context. For example: Men have traditionally, in general, been socialized to not express their feelings. In general, that means that some men stuff their feelings down to the point that they can't feel their feelings, while other men are able to feel them but are unwilling to talk about them. We should be VERY clear that this is not men's faults! It's very easy to blame men for acting like (or actually being) emotionless robots, but if a man has gotten the message from an early age that this is the only way to be, how is this his fault? There are usually very serious consequences for stepping out of line.

I think we can address sex in the same way. Many, many men are currently feeling extremely confused about sex and gender roles. The culture is changing right in front of their eyes, and this is a scary thing (men, in general, do not like to feel scared). Sometimes it seems like everything we've learned is now wrong. Men can either adapt, which is extremely hard, or not, which will eventually probably not go well for them individually.

 

[Mach123]

One of my opinions about all this is, when the shooting starts, the old gender roles are going to be there and they never left. All this nonsense is peacetime twiddling. We have it so easy. When things are not so easy again, I think you'll hear people "pipe up to a different air." I do think the women can serve equally as they do in the IDF. I guess that's evolution of a sort. The only time I was ever abroad I visited there. It was a real eye-opener.

Women in the Israel Defense Forces - Wikipedia

Could I get a date? Is there a dating site for this lololol!

 

[Fadeaway]

I am sorry that men aren't experiancing validation of their feelings.

 

[Mach123]

I have to make a joke guys sorry! I thought of some "wicked funny" stuff today while I was out and going over all this in my mind. This and a couple other threads. Those women in the IDF in those pictures? Seriously? First of all, it's wicked hot and second of all, what if she got mad at you and third of all, that's even seriously hotter? OK, just kidding. : )

 

[Swift]

@Mach123 , I hate to harsh your buzz, but I thought the whole point of this thread was NOT to be sexist?
These women are professionals doing a job... they should be evaluated on that rather than your concept of "hot."

I get that you were "joking".... but honestly, it's pretty not-funny to me and every other woman who's been objectified while trying to do our jobs.

This is another thing that bugs me - gendered expectations of humour. Like men are supposed to crack jokes about how hot women are, which is a pretty damaging expectation. Women are supposed to weather that with a smile and an "oh, you"...

I was having a conversation the other night with a bunch of like-minded queer peeps. The general gist is that "men" and "women" don't start having conversations about sexism and the ways in which it impacts each until anger has reached boiling point on both sides. For example, I'm not angry about the above comment. I'm angry about all the times I've been groped at work, belittled at work, had my sound-desk fiddled with (I bought a t-shirt that said 'f*ck off, I'm mixing' on the back), had some guy flop his dick out in the beer garden to get me to sign it AT WORK. I asked the manager to kick him out, the male manager didn't. (I told him I would except I couldn't find the room to write). I'm a rape survivor so you can imagine how much fun that was. Creeper hung around for my whole set putting his hand in my back pocket when I bent down to fix cables.
And... that was an average night on that job.
And... while I'm working, I can't tell creepers to f*ck off and die. I can't pour my beer on them. I can't make a scene because I've got 5 1/2 minutes before my next set and I need to be on my game. And... if you do that, for every tiny micro-aggression.... you get a reputation for being 'uptight' in a male-dominated field.

So yeah. And then - men don't call each other out either, out of fear of being ostracized. It's shitty and it sucks. I don't believe most men think it's okay to blatantly bully women. I don't think most of them 'want' to say the things that come out of their mouths. But... performance demands it.

 

[Swift]

I apologise if my words were too harsh but I believe my point stands.
Moving right along....
Are there particular ways women can act in men's personal space that are less threatening for men with trauma?

Like, I take a pretty hands-off approach to people of all genders because I believe that's best.

Basically, there are particular ways men are taught to be aware of their physical presence in traumatized women's spaces. Is there anything women or people of other genders can do physically to make men who've been traumatized feel safer around us?

 

[somerandomguy]

@Swift - thanks for that. Your frustrations are very evident and I think we need to be reminded that this happens.

What I'm seeing more of is men learning better boundaries earlier in their lives. I see my son and his friends doing this:

Kid A: "Those IDF women are hot."
Kid B: "It makes me a little uncomfortable when you say that. Those women are putting their lives on the line so I don't think their attractiveness really matters?"
Kid A: "Oh. Sorry."

End of discussion. This works. This conversation snippet may or may not work with older adults, depending on their levels of empathy.

This is way better than a call out, which some activists use exclusively. Call outs are meant to shame the person who said the hurtful thing, and they make everything worse, because some people literally do not know what they are saying hurts others. No one should be blamed for ignorance. If no one ever had a conversation like the above with a guy, that guy might really not get it, due to his privilege. It's like walking around with blinders on. But it's not his fault he's walking around with blinders, and those blinders should ideally be removed with empathy, not harshly, or he's going to staple them back on and they'll never come off again.

 

[somerandomguy]

Are there particular ways women can act in men's personal space that are less threatening for men with trauma?

Ask. Ask. Ask. Ask. Always ask, and ask with everyone, whether or not they've been through trauma or not.

My yoga instructor, for example, loves to hug. Loves it. It's part of her personal philosophy of making the world better. But she always, always asks first and is completely non-judgmental when I say no thanks and doesn't make a big deal about it. And that's why I go back to those classes.

Kids of all genders are often forced to hug family members from a young age. It's a terrible precedent to set, because it teaches them other people have the right to control their bodies.

 

[Swift]

Damn right. I always ask.
Mine is "handshake, hug or no?" Said from a distance of a couple of feet...
I think people really aren't mindful enough of the fact that men's bodily consent is just as important as women's.

Particularly with little boys... no one calls women creeps if they fawn over little boys in ways that they wouldn't find acceptable for grown men to interact with girl children. It shits me.

 

[Swift]

You're right as usual @somerandomguy .
I guess my poorly articulated point was that we don't start having the conversation, as grown women and men, until all of us are sick to the back teeth of what we see as negative expectations on our gender(s).

Then when we do start having the conversation, we all get set off about particular things. I know I did that just then, and I do apologise.