Snakes

The original tweet is a response to people who are annoyed at being stereotyped. I get it. I have daughters I wish didn't have to worry about this shit. But I also think we're not addressing the problem the right way. It's actually making the problem worse and isolating people enough that they fall to the sway of fascist propaganda.

If you take this same tweet and swap out men with [your minority racial/religious/gender group of your choice] it'll probably get you banned in most communities here. But it's about men (generalized) so it is for some reason allowed.

Square or angular heads generally mean they're venomous. Rounded heads mean non-venomous.

That doesn't mean non-venomous is safe. They can still bite and could transfer a bacteria. If you don't know for sure, just keep your distance.

::: TW: Discussion of sexual assault, rape, penetration, math

Ooooh, actually, I made the mistake of looking at where that claim came from, and it came from a comment they made. In it, for evidence of their math, they link to this article. The article is... something, but I'm setting that aside because the claim the article makes is patently incorrect; the data comes from this surveillance study at the CDC. (Got the link from the article, trying to leave an obvious path here.)

The claim is that the numbers are artificially uncoupled because the rape statistics for men don't include forced penetration of another person, where the male is the victim. However, this is a line directly from the Results paragraph-

"An estimated 43.9% of women and 23.4% of men experienced other forms of sexual violence during their lifetimes, including being made to penetrate, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and noncontact unwanted sexual experiences. The percentages of women and men who experienced these other forms of sexual violence victimization in the 12 months preceding the survey were an estimated 5.5% and 5.1%, respectively."

Emphasis mine.

The main premise of the Time article, that the report doesn't include being made to penetrate is false. The 40% number isn't backed up here, either, and the thing that the Time article is linking for it's evidence is a summary of a series of phone surveys! It's kind of an update-to-the-data thing... Why bother citing a random summary when we can just refer to the wholesale data the CDC was updating?

Since we clearly value the CDC reporting (since that was the only source used in the previous Time article), I'll use them!

Here's a webpage, from the CDC, titled 'About Sexual Violence.' Surprising perhaps no one, it states unequivocally the following:

Over half of women and almost one in three men have experienced sexual violence involving physical contact during their lifetimes.

Still concerned that the number here isn't representing men being forced to penetrate someone? Well that CDC page has, after that sentence, a citation of a study- one done also by the CDC- but the weird thing is, they didn't hyperlink it. That's okay, they included the name of the study and the people who did the study, so I was able to find a PDF of the information, and now, you can view it here if you like as well. For clarity's sake, this is titled, "The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2016/2017 Report on Sexual Violence." And in it, it defines sexual violence-

This report addresses five types of sexual violence. They include rape, being made to penetrate someone else (males only), sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and sexual harassment in a public place.

Why is this important? Because if you add together the 12.6 million men who reported being made to penetrate someone in his lifetime to the 4.5 million men who reported completed or attempted rape victimization at some point in his lifetime you'd get 17.1 million. We'll assume that every single one of those victimizations was a woman assaulting a man with zero male on male aggression.

Your claim was that 40% of all rapes were female. Let's roll this math forward.

Same page, 33.5 million women claim completed or attempted rape at some point in their entire lifetime (I have chosen to leave out any other types of sexual violence against women, to try and make this a more even thing, because I am actually trying to get as close to a good-faith number here as possible). Hm. Total victims here, 50.6 million, of that 50.6 million, we are generously saying 17.1 million are male (no overlap, straight math, all assaults and penetrations are counted separate).

33.79% of all victims of physical contact, sexual assault, were male, leaving 66.2% to be female. This does not support that 40% of all rapists are women.

Do I think that male numbers are underreported? Yes. I also think female numbers are underreported. I never reported any of the terrible things that happened to me, and I'm a woman- I know other women who have said the same thing. But misrepresenting these numbers helps no one, and inserting an article where someone claims erroneously that these numbers don't reflect reality, and using that as your only source, really doesn't help. If we want to help, we have to provide factual, no-nonsense information, and we have to provide resources for survivors, not skew information to try and make the awful, awful reality look different than it is.

TL;DR- No, it's not 40% of rapists are women. Closer to 34%, and that's assuming a lot of things to favor a higher number being perpetrated by women.

Edited to add- I forgot a sentence that was kind of important, and also I cleaned up the language a bit. And then I edited it because I realized I'd left some language in there that, without the bit I cut that was after it, looked like I was minimizing rape, which was not my intention.

:::

If it's not about you then don't worry about it

On top of not suggesting that making men feel bad is the point (it's not), this comment seems to provide helpful tips: https://reddthat.com/comment/18247122

What I'd also recommend is being an ally to women in your life already. If women felt more male allyship during the inside/day, then maybe they'd be less fearful of men outside/at night.

Not getting mad when someone feels threatened by you is a pretty good start.

If it's the same two women every day then you could say hello and introduce yourself?

Me: exist without an extensive list of precautions.
Women: oh no!

But to be honest, I've stopped looking at people at all because this costs me so much energy and at some time I just gave up. If this makes me look like a threat then I'm sorry.

So I have to run through a check list for every single encounter I have just to not be treated like an animal. I can't just exist and go about my life? I mean, I don't see this helping the problem.

You say that like a joke but that is unironically what I do. Am I an idiot?

If its late at night and a woman is walking in front of you, lower your speed. Let them get some extra distance. Then its not so awkward for you going the same way either.

I'm going to disagree because then it seems like you are following them. Changing your behavior because they are present is paying a lot of attention to them.

Acknowledging them, maybe stating where you are going without asking where they are going, and passing at the same speed has been very successful in my experience. The worst reaction I ever received was "I don't care where you are going" which means they were comfortable giving me grief. The best reaction, which has happened a few times over the years, was a response that they were going the same way and asking to walk with me.

Bad take, you're dismissing society's effect on the psyche of many men by saying these things

Hating and fearing are not the same

There are a lot of exceptions. Most of them, as it happens.

Vipers have that "neck" and a wider head than their bodies. Elapids typically don't, and can be extremely venomous. In fact, the most deadly venomous snakes in the world are elapids including cobras, taipans, and black mambas.

Tl;dr: Rarely wise to step on snek.

Better than an orangutan fucking an onion.

"Men are rapists" was nobody's point

Then why have I seen multiple adult women say that and mean it?

I'm with you that the dude you're replying to is gross, but let's not pretend reality isnt what it is, yeah?

Those examples are used because there is plenty of well-known racism and religion...ism (forgot the word) discussion along those lines. It's like asking why people use squares and circles as their go-to example shapes, it's part of the cultural consciousness. They're using those examples because they know people consider them to be racist, and using that to imply that "men are rapists" is similarly sexist. It's easy to twist this behavior into something problematic, but it's really not.

There can be multiple factors, we call it intersectionality. You're feeling unsafe because of social class or nationality or another factor. That does not mean you do not benefit from being male in a world ultimately built around men. That's why people use the term privilege, since you have at least one advantage (others could include health, straightness, etc). And fortunately it's less of an advantage today than it was a hundred years ago.

And that's not to say life is perfect under that category-- I literally just mentioned some men's issues. I'm just not exactly worried about someone stalking or kidnapping me over it.

This doesn't make sense as any kind of "gotcha."

No, that's not an invitation to explain it. This whole post is pointless and stupid rage-bait.

These are the kinds of mindless internet posts that have eroded our very society because it amplifies everyone's voices equally, and not all voices are equal. There are TONS of people we wouldn't listen to if we knew their agendas, their ages, their backgrounds or their investment in the topic.