The following paragraph is a question, posted by a woman to the aggregator site, reddit.com. To be fair to the woman who posted this question, she is most likely honest in her intention. However, the question illustrated social assumptions which merit more detailed examination than what I posted as a comment reply to that question.
The Question:
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Give a girl some tips: What’s a better way to tell my girlfriends “Don’t make guys feel creepy for no reason”?
This question comes up because a girlfriend of mine lives by herself, far away from family and she doesn’t know her neighbors. Her new (male) next door neighbour knocked on her door and offered to take her trash (which was outside) to the dumpster along with his. She didn’t open the door for him, she only told him “no thanks”. He took the trash down anyway. He seems like a nice enough guy, but she feels that she’s in the position to not give him even an inch, because she has to watch out for herself. I totally agree with her, I mean, everybody has the right to not talk to somebody, especially a stranger. But I found myself trying to explain to her how important it was to just not make him feel like a creepy guy. I think this is important because if she does, and he really is no trouble, then this might discourage him from being gentlemanly in the future. What is another way to express this sentiment to girlfriends? How can we ladies still keep our distance without, you know…making you feel like a creepy guy?
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My response to this question was as follows:
[box type=”download” icon=”none”]The question is mis-phrased. What you’re actually asking is – how to continue to operate in a state of high paranoia and total distrust – treating all men as potential predators – without tipping them off that you’re treating them as predators. The answer is to stop buying into fear. Men are more likely to be victims of violence than women, in all areas of life – yet women are more likely to live in a state of fear – its your fear, deal with it, or don’t, but treating all men as possible rapists/creeps/predators is YOUR issue for you to get over. Or you can keep on behaving like that, and enjoy the social isolation you will create for yourself.[/box]
However, this answer will, because of the perceptive filter most people see through, be misunderstood. So, I’ll try to rephrase that answer, being more explicit than what I posted as a response on reddit.
An individual subject to bigotry against his or her ethnicity is under no obligation to accommodate the fear or the emotional issues of a racist. In spite of who suffers as a result of racism, the responsibility rests not on individuals victimized by racism, but on those who adhere to a bigoted view of the world.
It is the racist’s emotional problem, not the “nigger’s”.
I know that word is offensive – that’s the point. A hundred years ago it was commonly used, because a substantial fraction of the European descended Western world looked at visible ethnic minorities with an ignorant distain. And now, racism is rightly vilified as a regressive, atavistic social toxin.
This is the same problem faced by a woman who believes herself correct in treating men with suspicion, fear, and ignorant contempt she probably doesn’t even admit to herself. Her question, posted in the forum of Reddit, looking for a way to conceal her acculturated hatred and fear – while continuing to treat human beings with distain and contempt – and imagining herself correct to do so, but also realizing that humans treated with such hatred will reciprocate with distance and contempt of their own. And they will be right to do so.
In addition, the woman posting that original, misguided question included the following:
“But I found myself trying to explain to her how important it was to just not make him feel like a creepy guy. I think this is important because if she does, and he really is no trouble, then this might discourage him from being gentlemanly in the future.”
In other words – how to conceal acculturated contempt for men from them, while continuing to use them as a convenience and utility.
How big a dose of self awareness this particular female bigot is capable of swallowing at one sitting is a matter for speculation, but I sincerely hope men still working from a blue-pill-view of the world learn to recognize their own social position as a hated and feared utility to be exploited by women whose goal it is to not shed their bigotry, but simply conceal it. And when that hatred is recognized, for men to simply refuse any accommodation towards anyone who doesn’t regard them as a fellow human being.
So what is the answer for that semi-aware woman, asking how to conceal what she imagines is socially correct fear and hatred? Just as it was for our culture as it grew out of a once-acceptable racism, is to grow up, and to dispense with fear and hatred based formerly on skin colour, and now on sex.
And for those who promote and foster this hatred, now against men, the appropriate response is exactly the same treatment a healthy society affords to open racists.
