some dude just told me "men aren't going to bother protecting women anymore" and in all sincerity I am genuinely trying to think of a single time in my entire adult life when a man has ever protected me
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Also, what a just clown-shoes crazy, sick-in-the-head thing to say. Is this in relation to the whole bear thing? Because I still don't get being so upset about that that you're like, "if you prefer the bear, and I'm just going to let terrible shit happen to you. Because I'm better than the bear."
Ugh. I've had to argue with the woman side of this (as a woman who totally sympathizes) - if you're camping in bear country, they recommend leaving your car unlocked so you can escape aggressive bears, if needed.
BUT that requires a level of trust of whatever men might be out in the woods near you.
I can say unequivocally that the rock outperforms the stick by every relevant metric. What it lacks in pointability, it makes up for with sheer hitty-ness.
Sorry to jump in off-topic, but what exactly *is* this bear thing? I've seen quite a few references to it on English-speaking Bluesky, but not quite sure what it's about.
Thanks! Turned out to be embarrassingly easy to google. (Though in my defence, I actually tried googling earlier, but didn't find it then for some reason)
Should have seen the responses I got when I started a comment on reddit wit "As a femboy* I can understand why they'd take the bear. I would too after the shit I've been through."
* "androgynous and genderfluid, to the point I am more often than not mistaken for a boyish girl" makes it hard to read
Ranged from guys denying there's problematic men, to saying I deserved to get assaulted, to someone implying I should definitely pick the bear instead of him, which is just fucking wild.
Point being, a lot of these dudes are the very reason women would take their chance with a bear encounter.
It's fucking self-evident, and these chuds literally cannot take five seconds to think about it.
They can't reflect on it, that women feel safer around a wild animal they might be able to avoid if lucky, than them who are making a conscious choice to be the worst version of themselves.
I saw that, and his example was that he walks on the outside on the pavement. But he might not be so keen if told the origin of this was to protect women not from cars, but from having slop buckets emptied over them from overhanging upstairs windows.
Honestly it’s guys like this which are a threat to Women and if there was less like him there wouldn’t be any need to Protect Women any differently than we Protect society as a whole Filthy Incels.
I've had a guy "protect" me when I absolutely did not need help. And I have had men ignore my very real and obvious distress from another man's behavior. And two men, strangers, saved me from a guy who drugged my drink, and got me safely home.
The one time I called & asked him to meet me at a bus stop bc there was a seriously creepy dude on the bus & if he got off at my stop I DID want protection, my husband showed up for me. Despite the fact that I'd also let him know the guy had gotten off the bus ten minutes earlier. Which. I mean. :)
A lot of people I would never have thought would be incels have revealed themselves over this whole thing. Shame on me for missing how deep that rot goes, it was the whole point of the discourse to begin with.
The guys that were going to protect women in the first place aren't going to change their minds over a thought experiment. Those guys know why women feel unsafe and who they need protection from. It's not bears.
A man once protected me from another dude in a bar when I was 19. I remember it very well. BECAUSE IT WAS SUCH A FREAKING ABERRATION. Has not happened since.
That anymore is killing me. It was 24 years ago when my district manager, a woman, found me up on a tall ladder doing displays, only to find out my store manager demanded it of me. She lit into him and told him if she found me on a ladder again she'd fire him.
there's an idea of a knight being there for a woman in increasingly patronizing but mostly well-meaning ways and there are real men who see themselves that way but never actually bother
oh, you don't feel like fighting for a woman's affection anymore? maybe stop beating your wife first joshua
This bear thing has really gotten under the skin of a lot of men, and I'm here for it. They need to wake up and realize that THEY are the problem. Now whether they'll take the needed next steps is up to them, and many don't have the emotional depth to pull it off.
I am having a little moment here, as I realize I bought into the men-protect-us thing with nothing to actually put into that column, and SO MUCH to put into the other column
I'm betting twitter would give you a lot of "when there was one set of footprints, that's when I was protecting you" style fables. Each one as true as the next.
"Every morning that you awoke where you didn't get beaten to death the night before, that's because I was protecting you. From my fists. You're welcome."
Or, on a lower-stakes level, "let's see who's happy when men don't pay for your drinks anymore!" I think if I tallied up all the times a man paid for my drink out of a sense of chivalry it'd add up to like $45
Heavy on "Not a single man protected me not when I was a child, not a teen neither an adult, they could tear me apart for their male-ness which they did. But never protect. No man has the right to say I protected her because even when they did it, they were dreaming of something more malicious"
I loved being 9 months pregnant and discovering on my train commute that not only do men literally NEVER give up their seats for women who clearly need them, at least a few times I was actively shoved aside by a dude trying to get to a seat first
the only men who ever gave me a seat when I was riding the T from Dorchester to Cambridge, 8 months pregnant and miserable about it, were young Black men on the Dorchester end
financial district guys and Harvard kids reading on the train: lol no
I was visibly pregnant and on a flight and went to get my bag down from the overhead compartment and a little old lady stopped me and jumped to get it for me. we were surrounded by men who offered nothing
I remember that one time I was commuting on crutches after leg surgery. I boarded a full subway car and the only person who offered her seat was a pregnant woman... I only took it because she insisted she was getting off at the next stop but still felt weird about it.
I was really grateful though as I was a tired hot sweaty mess at that point. Do not recommend the subway commuting on crutches in full business suit in the New York summer...
The only men who ever helped me in situations like those have been teen boys and young men of color
I permanently injured my back trying to retrieve a box from a high stack as a paralegal while three white male attorneys stood and watched and didn't lift a finger
Just a neat fact to come across after an entire lifetime of hearing about how we better watch out or someday this fountain of chivalry we all depend on will dry up.
I found that men holding doors etc. stopped as soon as I started using a mobility aid. It's not done based on whether you need help, it's done based on whether they think you're attractive. One lecturer who'd been tying to get me into bed bolted out of Tesco when he saw me in my new wheelchair.
NYC subway. Quite pregnant. Nearly fainted. THREE women leapt to their feet to give me a seat, give me a bottle of water, ask if I needed them to alert the driver, etc. Dudes looked away.
Not only do they not protect you, if you try to tell them that you feel threatened by a man they think is a good guy, or even just an ok guy, they explain that you misunderstood ok guy's actions/words.
I'm sure plenty of men have protected you by saving you from hearing loss by doing the "pull your headphones out" while you're just trying to get to fucking work.
Well that is really sad on so many levels, as a man I will always protect a woman. Like when walking with them I will be on the street side so if a car jumps the curb it's me that gets hit not them.
That is the one thing I miss from Xitter - The World Bollard account or whatever it was. So many of us contribute less to the conversation than bollards do. I too try to stick to the outer edge of the sidewalk, but that is to prevent my slew of children from teetering on the curb. All. The. Time.
Familiar feeling: if in doubt, whoever is more likely to be more alert goes closest to the cars. I'd trust my children to not rush in front of a car 99% of the time...
I was 22 and while riding my bicycle in the center of Rotterdam, some white guy grabbed me by the arm. Broad daylight, lots of people, no-one helped me. Until a huge black guy saw what was happening, walked up to me and said: let me walk you home, honey. And he did just that.
“Nice” men don’t know much, but generally if they see another guy put his hand on the wall next to one’s head, they intervene. Thats about it, but it’s something.
I am sorry you have never met such a man. I was the oldest of seven, two sisters, dad said early on the protection was expected. Unfortunately it never stopped.
I’m sure that the very normal and well-adjusted gentleman who said this will be completely understanding and polite when a woman tells him that she doesn’t want any of his damn “protection”
The author describes manhood as something like “an abstract rage to protect” and really gets into the exhausting farce of modern manhood’s frailty. But in a nuanced interesting way, not how I just did it.
it's probably not my place to speak on this as some1 who doesn't identify as a woman but i can't think of a single adult who has ever protected me besides my mother
I was physically abused until I was about 11 and bullied pretty severely from late elementary to late high school, at one point even being sexually assaulted by a girl in my class, and not a single adult did fuck all or paid any notice
The fact my mother was able to blow smoke up some of their asses enough to spur some form of action was both a blessing and a curse. It taught me that help was a possibility but it also taught me that my attempts at self-advocacy were not to be taken seriously
Even now I don’t think I’ll ever be able to believe that I can speak about my own issues in a way that will be heard. It’s like I have to have someone bigger and older than me as a mouthpiece at all times for all remotely serious discussion
And the only times I really ever got any personal attention or guidance about it is if I ripped my past open and bore my heart in my hands and let people dismantle and study and ogle it. I don’t want to have to owe anyone that.
I frequently think about the damage it’s done to me, and how that damage has continued to last in every social setting I’ve been a part of since, and if the people who I know and care about resent me for it. It’s a quiet form of psychological warfare.
A lot of men out here really showing their true colours. I find it interesting when things like this happen and people say "Why would you say that...just keep your mouth shut."
No, keep talking. Show everyone who you are.
I've done women some solids by just being a big galoot and interfering if some guy's being creepy on the bus or walking co-workers to their cars at night or whatever but that's not anything special.
When I was working as a bartender, I had to escort far too many women to their cars for free of being followed by the creepy guy who won't leave them alone
I have one from freshman year in college—MIT, 1982. Guy obsessed w/ me breaks into my room at 5 am w/ nefarious intentions. Men in my dorm figure out what's happening w/in minutes & remove him. They spent the next 2 years making sure he didn't get near me, sometimes in extraordinary ways.
Guys have never walked you to your car, made sure you got through your front door, or held your drink when you went to the bathroom, etc? Your guy friends must suck.
(that anyone would treat this as conditional and not basic courtesy is BS. Also women obviously do this for each other too)
That's genuinely sad (in a state of society kind of way, not a judging you personally kind of way). I've done it for friends and colleagues but we also exist in different contexts.
It is sad. You just can't trust nobody, and I personally made the experience that it's very often the people close to you who hurt you most. Nowadays, I wouldn't even trust a friend enough to keep an eye on my drink.
From the bear, apparently. Please refer to the circulating statistic of men's collective delusion about which apex predator they think they can take on in a 1:1 fight.
I do , however, remember being pinned to a wall by my drunk college boyfriend while several "men" were in the next room, heard what was going on, and didn't even move to step in and try to stop it.
This is an organized crime tactic . Give them what they want or they withdraw "protection" and you get hurt. By that man, possibly. Dude basically sees himself as a racketeer and women as victims.
This is 100% guaranteed said only by men who never once seriously thought about protecting any woman other than with the same view of protecting their "property."
"We're not going to protect you any more!" Okay cool! Get the fuck away from me, you rotten patriarchal dipshits. I'll fucking protect myself. I'll fucking shiv you in your sleep, you fucks
A maintenance guy was hitting on me, I was uncomfortable. He told me to lighten up, then said I “would be the type of chick to have safety bars on the windows, wishful thinking.” So we went from “let me take you out” to scoping my windows on hearing no? It’s why the bars are there. I protect me.
That's just vile.
I remember the sewage system guy hitting on my very young and pretty neighbor. I had recommended him, because the family seemed like decent types.
Gd was I wrong.
It’s an insidious quality. Another man’s service place was highly recommended in my town. My son was around and the man started inviting us to come see his classic car garage that’s nearby. I said no, so he started INVITING MY 6 Y/O DIRECTLY. “If you’re ever by that garage-“ I’m like “you don’t go.”
Honestly, the older I get and have to live through watching how so many men act, I am amazed that we still reproduce. I am so sorry that women have to deal with this stuff. It's repulsive.
To them, protecting means not actively assaulting. To them, not engaging in aggression is an active decision, as it is their passive behavior. By this, they will mean that they will stop pulling their punches, basically.
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BUT that requires a level of trust of whatever men might be out in the woods near you.
* "androgynous and genderfluid, to the point I am more often than not mistaken for a boyish girl" makes it hard to read
Point being, a lot of these dudes are the very reason women would take their chance with a bear encounter.
They can't reflect on it, that women feel safer around a wild animal they might be able to avoid if lucky, than them who are making a conscious choice to be the worst version of themselves.
I think he needs to be told "just shut up and do the right thing."
And that counts, right? That's basically the same as being a real protector.
It has, without fail, been incredibly annoying, bc they were, without fail, not situations that I required protection in. :)
His statement implies that he is one of the things you'd need protection from.
Earn my own money
Pay my own bills
Drive my own car
Stab my own dickwads
I will not be taking any questions.
So sorry my gender has disappointed 😞
oh, you don't feel like fighting for a woman's affection anymore? maybe stop beating your wife first joshua
HAPPENED
to it"
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/07/01/1184749528/men-are-hunters-women-are-gatherers-that-was-the-assumption-a-new-study-upends-i
A woman *always* stood for me. Every time.
financial district guys and Harvard kids reading on the train: lol no
I permanently injured my back trying to retrieve a box from a high stack as a paralegal while three white male attorneys stood and watched and didn't lift a finger
YA'LL LEAVE HER ALONE OR ELSE!!
Perhaps we should just replace men with bollards and save a step.
If a car is on the sidewalk so many things have already gone wrong I don’t think any pedestrian action is going to do much at that point
Familiar feeling: if in doubt, whoever is more likely to be more alert goes closest to the cars. I'd trust my children to not rush in front of a car 99% of the time...
Because this is far more likely to make women safer than some traffic based self insert hero fantasy.
The dudes surrounded him and the women surrounded us
You know, like something that never happened.
The author describes manhood as something like “an abstract rage to protect” and really gets into the exhausting farce of modern manhood’s frailty. But in a nuanced interesting way, not how I just did it.
No, keep talking. Show everyone who you are.
I’ve protected some women in my life but every time it was from another man so… my manness is kinda ratio’d by theirs when you think about it🤷🏼♂️
I notice that only young men and men of colour are coming up as having ever stepped up for women and, every time, it's from other men
(that anyone would treat this as conditional and not basic courtesy is BS. Also women obviously do this for each other too)
On a similar note, I'm not going to bother running marathons anymore.
I will keep choosing the bear.
Some truely pitiful men out there.
Yes. I know.
It wont happen again.
I swear.
I remember the sewage system guy hitting on my very young and pretty neighbor. I had recommended him, because the family seemed like decent types.
Gd was I wrong.