The Swedish #MeToo movement took an unexpected turn

[Emily Lake]

Speaking as someone who has been attacked while wearing grungy jeans and tshirts, sitting in a friend's apartment, or dorm room, or simply hanging out at a family member's home when I was too young to have even thought about kissing a boy--it's not what I was wearing or how I was acting or anything else except some guy thought he could do something that he couldn't do because he was a lot bigger and stronger. Turns out they were wrong. Yeah, I stopped that shit. Cold. Few times, someone besides me ended up on the ground.

First response: {hugs} I'm sorry you went through that.
Second response: {cheer} Hooray for being strong and standing up for yourself!
Third response: {clink} This is what all women should feel empowered to do!

I don't fool myself. Any of those situations could have turned out differently. My advantage was that the guy vastly underestimated me. And was only looking for easy pickings. They did not expect me to fight back, much less lay them out. If any of those incidents had happened in a more isolated place where there was zero fear of being discovered or anyone coming to my rescue, or if any of the creeps had been more psychopathic, it could have been so much worse. So I never, ever, ever blame someone for deciding not to fight back and to live. Heck, if I had thought a second, that might have been what I did. But in terms of fight/flight, I'm fight, as it turns out. Luck genes.

Still thoough. I kind of think that all girls should be issued brass knuckles as a menarche present, and undergo firearms training when they sprout boobs.

 

[Lion IRC]

Some societies endeavour to prevent scenarios where a woman is alone with a strange man in an isolated, unsupervised area. They utilise concepts such as chaperones, courtship, betrothal, debutante..

 

[Toni]

Some societies endeavour to prevent scenarios where a woman is alone with a strange man in an isolated, unsupervised area. They utilise concepts such as chaperones, courtship, betrothal, debutante..

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In only one of those cases was I alone with the guy. When I was alone with someone, I was quite young and had no idea that I had any reason to be in the least concerned. Nor did my family. There was no reason to even think about such a thing as far as any of us knew. As I said, I hadn't even really thought about kissing a boy, much less someone knocking me to the ground and saying he was going to fuck me. A propos of....absolutely nothing.

 

[Toni]

Some societies endeavour to prevent scenarios where a woman is alone with a strange man in an isolated, unsupervised area. They utilise concepts such as chaperones, courtship, betrothal, debutante..

View attachment 34128

In only one of those cases was I alone with the guy. When I was alone with someone, I was quite young and had no idea that I had any reason to be in the least concerned. Nor did my family. There was no reason to even think about such a thing as far as any of us knew. As I said, I hadn't even really thought about kissing a boy, much less someone knocking me to the ground and saying he was going to fuck me. A propos of....absolutely nothing.

Maybe the real solution is that boys and men have chaperones.

 

[Lion IRC]

Imagine if Mike Pence or Billy Graham said men should have chaperones in certain inappropriate situations.
*rolls eyes*

 

[thebeave]

I agree that it's all horrific. I just see a bit of a distinction between some children being abducted in order to be drafted and made to become members of a given society against their will... and some children being abducted as objects treated as non-human property.

Eh, I don’t think the abducted boys were not treated as non-human property—killing machines, to be exact.

I admit to not having an in-depth knowledge of this. In most cases of child soldiers, if the killing machine performs well, they receive honors and status and are promoted within the army. They have the possibility of being eventually treated as equals worthy of respect.

Don't get me wrong - it's still horrifying and I am strongly opposed to it. It is something I wish never happened in the past, and would never happen in the future. I just don't think it's identical to being stolen to be a slave with no humanity and no rights and no agency of any sort.

I wonder if you two actually read the article I linked to. It's not so much that the boys were abducted and turned into killing machines. Hell, Uncle Sam does that (more or less) when there's a draft going on. The article I linked to states that since 2009 thousands of boys were murdered and tortured, and as J842P stated, some were "burned alive". So, I was really comparing the killing of (many more) boys versus the kidnapping of girls. Yet, few people seem to know about the boys' stories. Maybe you two started to read the article and fell asleep when you got to the part about thousands of boys getting murdered, as apparently the killing of men isn't much to get excited about. Thus proving my original point about people (and in particular the media) caring more about harm to women than to men.

 

[Toni]

I admit to not having an in-depth knowledge of this. In most cases of child soldiers, if the killing machine performs well, they receive honors and status and are promoted within the army. They have the possibility of being eventually treated as equals worthy of respect.

Don't get me wrong - it's still horrifying and I am strongly opposed to it. It is something I wish never happened in the past, and would never happen in the future. I just don't think it's identical to being stolen to be a slave with no humanity and no rights and no agency of any sort.

I wonder if you two actually read the article I linked to. It's not so much that the boys were abducted and turned into killing machines. Hell, Uncle Sam does that (more or less) when there's a draft going on. The article I linked to states that since 2009 thousands of boys were murdered and tortured, and as J842P stated, some were "burned alive". So, I was really comparing the killing of (many more) boys versus the kidnapping of girls. Yet, few people seem to know about the boys' stories. Maybe you two started to read the article and fell asleep when you got to the part about thousands of boys getting murdered, as apparently the killing of men isn't much to get excited about. Thus proving my original point about people (and in particular the media) caring more about harm to women than to men.

I did not read the article. I have read about boys abducted and forced to be soldiers while they are still children, and many atrocities associated with wars, warlords, drugs—money and power.

Believe me: I think that is horrific enough. Kidnapping children, murdering them, burning them alive, using them as sec slaves—like I wrote earlier: some things are just so horrible that it is impossible to rank them—this atrocity being worse or not as bad as the next. Which is worse: the Holocaust or the Trail of Tears or the Killing Fields of Cambodia? Which is worse? Raping boys or raping girls? It’s all so horrible that my brain can only partially take it in.

 

[Toni]

I admit to not having an in-depth knowledge of this. In most cases of child soldiers, if the killing machine performs well, they receive honors and status and are promoted within the army. They have the possibility of being eventually treated as equals worthy of respect.

Don't get me wrong - it's still horrifying and I am strongly opposed to it. It is something I wish never happened in the past, and would never happen in the future. I just don't think it's identical to being stolen to be a slave with no humanity and no rights and no agency of any sort.

I wonder if you two actually read the article I linked to. It's not so much that the boys were abducted and turned into killing machines. Hell, Uncle Sam does that (more or less) when there's a draft going on. The article I linked to states that since 2009 thousands of boys were murdered and tortured, and as J842P stated, some were "burned alive". So, I was really comparing the killing of (many more) boys versus the kidnapping of girls. Yet, few people seem to know about the boys' stories. Maybe you two started to read the article and fell asleep when you got to the part about thousands of boys getting murdered, as apparently the killing of men isn't much to get excited about. Thus proving my original point about people (and in particular the media) caring more about harm to women than to men.

I admit that the sentence was poorly constructed--but I was NOT saying that the boys were not treated horrendously or that their murders were not horrific. In fact, I was pushing back on the idea that being kidnapped and forced to be a child soldier is not as bad as being kidnapped and forced to be a child bride. Or trying to. I wrote poorly.

I think that this is an important topic that could get the discussion it deserves better in its own thread rather than in a thread about the #MeToo movement. As it is placed here, I am afraid that some people would simply toss it off as an attempt to distract from the horrible things that girls and women go through. Of course that's not what you are attempting to do.

Maybe you should start a thread about it separate from this discussion where it could get the thoughtfulness and attention it deserves.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Some societies endeavour to prevent scenarios where a woman is alone with a strange man in an isolated, unsupervised area. They utilise concepts such as chaperones, courtship, betrothal, debutante..

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Which is quite limiting for those women.

 

[Lion IRC]

Yes.
And limiting for certain types of men.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I think this is an unhelpful male vs female dichotomy.

Men are way more likely to victimize other men. Men are inherently violent. For good or for worse. While women, less so. Yes, it sucks for women that they risk getting raped when they're out jogging. But sure beats getting murdered. Which is what can happen to men who are out jogging alone. Serious physical assault and murder of men is way more common than rape of women.

Men have way more reasons to be afraid than women when out jogging alone. So I think it's unhelpful to see this as a uniquely female thing to have to worry about.

Worth noting is that men worry less than women about getting assaulted. Women are much more afraid than men about getting attacked while having less reasons to be afraid.

When it comes to violence I think it's a bit touching how our various human societies place so much emphasis on protecting women and children while we treat men as largely disposable.

I too think this way. Our newspapers seem to do it as well. If you read how these kinds of stories are framed men are only given attention when they fight back.

I think it's basic human instinct. In Lacanian/Freudian terms, the way we think of this is that men protect the tribe, while women are the tribe. An attack on a woman or a child is an attack on something sacred. While men are seen largely as cannon fodder to be sacrificed to protect the greater good. Which I suspect is the reason why men more often start pointless fights. As well as assault women. They rarely value themselves as highly as women do.

Hmm... interesting. Let's try a thought experiment.

You're going to get into the ring with an opponent. Your objective is to physically dominate them without weapons, and there are no rules of conduct. You get to choose your own sex, as well as the sex of your opponent.

If your objective is to win... Do you choose to be a male or a female? Do you choose your opponent to be male or female? Why did you make those choices?

I don't understand the point of your thought experiment?

The goal of evolution isn't to create fairness, make us safe or even make us happy. It's to spread genes. It sucks sometimes. I'm sure peacocks are super annoyed by their huge tail feathers sometimes. Large breasts can give women a lot of problems, in spite of this boob jobs are popular among women. Do you think the women who get bigger breasts do it to win physical fights?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Wow.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvv.pdf

The disparity is shocking.

but apparently we're "neurotic" for wanting this to change.

Ok, fine. But what do you want to change? Changing fundamental aspects of male psychology and physiology are not available.

We've reached a point where men, in general, are bending over backward to make life less dangerous for women. Which I have no problems with. But I fail to see, personally, what more we can do without going back to the olden days of genders being physically separated where one gender was hidden away at home away from public life.

Whether we like it or not, our species, have some inbuilt conflicts and problems that we're likely never going to be able to get rid of. Perhaps the best we can do is minimize violent crime toward women. No, that's not ideal. But when we can't get what we want we'll need settle for what we can get.

 

[Toni]

Wow.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvv.pdf

The disparity is shocking.

but apparently we're "neurotic" for wanting this to change.

Ok, fine. But what do you want to change? Changing fundamental aspects of male psychology and physiology are not available.

We've reached a point where men, in general, are bending over backward to make life less dangerous for women. Which I have no problems with. But I fail to see, personally, what more we can do without going back to the olden days of genders being physically separated where one gender was hidden away at home away from public life.

Whether we like it or not, our species, have some inbuilt conflicts and problems that we're likely never going to be able to get rid of. Perhaps the best we can do is minimize violent crime toward women. No, that's not ideal. But when we can't get what we want we'll need settle for what we can get.

Really? Because according to the stats I am able to access, rapes have gone up significantly in both Sweden and Denmark (chosen because of your familiarity with those countries).

https://knoema.com/atlas/Denmark/Rape-rate

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_...mber of rapes reported,24% in the past decade.

I may be crazy but I don't think that not raping women is 'bending over backwards' to make women feel safer. In fact, quite the opposite.