I sense the argument coming, so I want to put something out there.
Let’s think about this using the game Among Us for a moment, hm? Forget about the gender war for a second, just think about Among Us.
In Among Us, there are, let’s say, ten people trapped on a space station, but one or two of them are actually aliens pretending to be human. Their job, naturally, is to eat the other humans, in addition to creating enough plausible deniability that they won’t be caught.
Now, some common arguments.
“Not all colorful little human beans are aliens trying to eat you.”
Well, we know that some of them are, and they really don’t want to be noticed. So, how do you avoid being eaten, then? That’s right, a little bit of paranoia. In this environment, a lack of trust becomes a survival skill by necessity.
“The ‘alien’ problem is overblown. In fact, I think they barely exist.”
Well, we know, in this video game, that they do exist. The tic-tac people are not going to survive the game by pretending the aliens aren’t there. In fact, by refusing to accuse any of your friends, you are enabling the aliens to eat more of your people without consequence.
“I agree that aliens are a problem, but why does it have to include me? I’m not one of them.”
Well, in Among Us, it is not possible to know who is or is not an alien on sight alone. You are forced to, by the game itself, demonstrate to other players that you are safe even in cases where you were never dangerous to begin with. Some kind of social etiquette is necessary when our other senses, our eyes for instance, cannot help us.
“Thinking all your friends are aliens trying to eat you is prejudice. It’s kind of like being racist to black people.”
Well, unfortunately, in this video game, we know with certainty there are secret aliens trying to eat people. As with the point above, we’re not going to solve this problem by pretending they don’t exist. Is it a little bit unfair that other players are forced to distrust you? Maybe. But, you just can’t build trust on this space station without somehow pacifying the alien threat that is built into the game. Every player understands this dynamic.
In real life, let’s imagine we have no idea whatsoever how often male aggression presents itself. We don’t know if there are or are not aliens.
We can agree, I would hope, that being an alien would be a bad thing, though, right? So, is it not enough to say “I will not be one of those men, and I will stop other people from being one of those men,” whether or not those men actually exist? At worst, you’ve committed to a fight that will never ask you to do any fighting.
You do not have to buy into the idea that most men are monsters to be an enemy of monstrous men. You do not need to concede that you are a monster to be an enemy of monstrous men.
If you insist on fighting about this, I have one or two ideas about that.
You don’t believe that monstrous men exist at all, so the paranoia is unjustified. Okay. I think that you’re in denial. Talk to some of the women in your life. Ask them about what they’ve dealt with.
You feel insecure and lonely because people naturally distrust you. I get that. That’s hard. Especially in a world where you can barely make friends without a car or money, that’s really tough. To a point I’ve made twice, though, if monstrous men are real, if they really exist, then this unfairness you’re subject to will not go away unless the thing that’s causing it is dealt with. This is a non-negotiable bit of math that you need to come to terms with.
I think the problem with your argument is the measure of paranoia. It’s 100% reasonable to be suspicious and cautious around men, strange or familiar, if you’re a woman. The issue I think most men have to this isn’t reasonable suspicion or reasonable caution, but rather the over the top reaction women online seem to have.
An example of this might be a youtube video about women checking into a hotel alone vs a man checking into a hotel alone. The man checks in and goes right to bed, the lock on the door automatically engages when the door closes. The example with the woman has her block the one way peephole, double check the deadbolt, brace a chair against the door handle, string a tight rope from the door handle to a firm anchor in the bathroom, unplug the phone, close the blinds, check that the mirror isn’t see through, and sweep the room for listening devices. You see this and think it must be satire, and it might be, but then you go into the comments and there’s a ton of women saying how true this is and how you gotta be careful of men when traveling alone. Every so often you’ll see a comment from a man about how this is insane and all the women respond how he’s privileged and doesn’t understand why women have to do all this.
No man is going to begrudge a reasonable reaction to strangers and safety, but relating to a comic about seeing a spam notification about singles in your area and locking your door is ridiculous. It’s this over the top reaction that men become offended by, not reasonable caution.
The issue I think most men have to this isn’t reasonable suspicion or reasonable caution,
What level of suspicion is reasonable?
Granted, I will not pretend that women are somehow above being very superstitious and silly. I’ve seen armored SUVs marketed to suburban house moms that are beyond parody. But still, for a demographic of people who largely do not have to deal with predatory men, being men themselves, how do men know what a reasonable degree of caution looks like?
but relating to a comic about seeing a spam notification about singles in your area and locking your door is ridiculous.
Well, this comic is… comedy. It has to be a little silly for the joke to land.
Locking the door with a common deadbolt has less to do with actually protecting anyone and more to do with being visual shorthand for a comedic sentiment.
Please forgive me, but I’m going to answer your post in the opposite order it was given.
I completely agree about the comedy and the satire of the original comic, I’m not opposed to it being over the top to deliver it’s comedic message. I’ll also say that the message is comedic in a dark way. The issue inherent to it is when you have people giving seemingly literal agreement to satirical statements, which is what a lot of these comments have devolved into. Your own post was 659 words, 44 lines, and 14 paragraphs obviously this discussion isn’t just about visual shorthand of a comic, it has some amount of real world investment.
As to your first question, I can’t give a concrete answer. As with many psychological things I can’t tell you what is a reasonable amount of suspicion, but I can say what is an overreaction. Similarly, I can’t tell you what a reasonable amount of collecting is, but I can spot hoarding. I can’t tell you what a reasonable attention to detail is, but I can spot an obsessive compulsive behavior. I’m not a doctor, and won’t pretend to be one, so I can’t tell you in definite terms what a reasonable suspicion is, but I can certainly identify an overreaction.
If someone sees an overly dramatic comic about women being fearful of men and their reaction is to defend the over dramatic behavior then that’s an overreaction. When men call out this behavior as overly dramatic and someone defends it, and in fact doubles down on it, then it’s clearly not just satire or a dark joke.
If we’re using the example of the hotel room I would venture to say that a reasonable level of suspicion would be to lock the door, turn the deadbolt, put the swing arm on, and don’t open the door for strangers. If you start getting into hiding, configuring contraptions, barring the door with chairs, and checking the mirrors to see if they are see through, that’s an overreaction in my book.
The issue inherent to it is when you have people giving seemingly literal agreement to satirical statements,
I will just take this at face value: what makes this an issue?
I don’t know if my neighbor has double-locked their front door, should I go and check?
this discussion isn’t just about visual shorthand of a comic, it has some amount of real world investment.
Yes, I am aware that jokes are political.
My reading is that this is yet another rearing of the man vs. bear debate. Our eternal prison.
so I can’t tell you in definite terms what a reasonable suspicion is,
I’m not asking for definite terms, I’m suggesting that women have more experience dealing with men and danger and dangerous men than men do. Men do have a lot of opinions about it, though.
If we’re using the example of the hotel room […] If you start getting into hiding, configuring contraptions, barring the door with chairs,
In the comic, she just engages the deadbolt.
It has been some hours since I last looked at this thread, but I imagine that men are not upset she’s being overly cautious, but rather that the comic is suggesting that they—they are taking this personally—are scarier people than women are. They are responding to hurt feelings.
And then when a woman is raped and murdered in her hotel room, men like you will be saying that she must have wanted it because she didn’t even take basic precautions to make sure no-one could get in.
So when women start taking these precautions, because generations of women before them have learnt from experience that when a man rapes you, it’s your fault for not taking precautions… men like you now complain that women are overly paranoid and making things worse for themselves, because their precautions are hurting your feelings.
First off, uh no I would not blame the victim for being raped and murdered and the fact that that is what you lead with is pretty telling. Next I think it’s really telling that you are saying the over reaction is “basic precaution.”
If a woman does a normal amount of precaution, such as locking the door and not opening it for strangers, that’s normal and perfectly reasonable. If the woman literally barricades herself in that’s insane. In either case, if she is attacked or raped it’s not her fault and but that doesn’t mean overreaction isn’t overreaction.
Your analogy doesn’t include some important details for the subject. In the game, crewmates and imposters are on different teams and only one of them can win. It’s not “wrong” for an imposter to kill a crewmate because that’s how they play. All players support imposters killing crewmates because it’s what they signed up for. But in real life, we are on the same team. We are all crewmates doing our tasks, although I guess we have the option to kill each other. Acting as if someone doing their tasks near you wants to kill you is then a more meaningful personal judgement rather than just the impersonal scrutiny expected in a social deduction game.
More importantly, it’s relevant that this is one group of people making a judgement about another group of people based on group membership. So it would be like green crewmates assuming a red crewmate is an imposter on the basis of them being red, not any suspicious activity they have noticed. If crewmates had equal innate suspicion towards each other regardless of color (as should happen in the game) then there is no issue.
It’s not “wrong” for an imposter to kill a crewmate because that’s how they play.
This analogy is specifically from the perspective of crewmates. It is wrong for crewmates to die, actually, because this brings your team closer to defeat.
I think you might also think that I view the crewmates as women? No. The divide drawn here is between cooperative and uncooperative. Citizen and villain. The presence of imposters makes all crewmates less safe to be around. Unless you have ways of managing risk.
So it would be like green crewmates assuming a red crewmate is an imposter on the basis of them being red,
If the game were programmed such that red crewmates were exclusively the ones chosen to be imposters, regardless of how this might damage the video game’s fun, don’t you think that being near a red crew member would set off some alarm bells? Wouldn’t you think of green crew members as more safe?
I’ve played plenty of RPGs where certain kinds of treasure chest, and certain kinds of treasure chest alone, require a degree of caution because I cannot know if they are mimics.
This analogy is specifically from the perspective of crewmates. It is wrong for crewmates to die, actually, because this brings your team closer to defeat.
I think you might also think that I view the crewmates as women?
No, I didn’t think you were making the crewmates just women. My point was, it’s not morally wrong for the imposters to kill in the game, because unlike real life, the sides are diametrically opposed and all players want their opponents to earnestly try to win. Crewmates don’t want imposters to just let them do tasks because then there would be no game. In that sense, killing crewmates is cooperating by making it a fun challenge for everyone. By the same token, it’s not morally wrong for crewmates to make accusations against people in meetings or otherwise treat them suspiciously, it’s how everyone wants others to play. But the moral weight to accusations in real life means it’s not ok to make them casually. There is a burden of proof to overcome.
If the game were programmed such that red crewmates were exclusively the ones chosen to be imposters, regardless of how this might damage the video game’s fun, don’t you think that being near a red crew member would set off some alarm bells? Wouldn’t you think of green crew members as more safe?
I don’t know where you are going with this. I guess my level of caution would depend on frequency of imposters. If half of red crewmates were imposters, sure. If it’s 1 in 1000, I wouldn’t be alarmed. But that’s not representative of real life either. Neither predators nor victims of sexual crimes are exclusive to any group. We could talk about statistics but this is about perception of threat and fear. They’re only very loosely tied to reality, especially when it comes to small samples like individual encounters with strangers.
I sense the argument coming, so I want to put something out there.
Let’s think about this using the game Among Us for a moment, hm? Forget about the gender war for a second, just think about Among Us.
In Among Us, there are, let’s say, ten people trapped on a space station, but one or two of them are actually aliens pretending to be human. Their job, naturally, is to eat the other humans, in addition to creating enough plausible deniability that they won’t be caught.
Now, some common arguments.
“Not all colorful little human beans are aliens trying to eat you.”
Well, we know that some of them are, and they really don’t want to be noticed. So, how do you avoid being eaten, then? That’s right, a little bit of paranoia. In this environment, a lack of trust becomes a survival skill by necessity.
“The ‘alien’ problem is overblown. In fact, I think they barely exist.”
Well, we know, in this video game, that they do exist. The tic-tac people are not going to survive the game by pretending the aliens aren’t there. In fact, by refusing to accuse any of your friends, you are enabling the aliens to eat more of your people without consequence.
“I agree that aliens are a problem, but why does it have to include me? I’m not one of them.”
Well, in Among Us, it is not possible to know who is or is not an alien on sight alone. You are forced to, by the game itself, demonstrate to other players that you are safe even in cases where you were never dangerous to begin with. Some kind of social etiquette is necessary when our other senses, our eyes for instance, cannot help us.
“Thinking all your friends are aliens trying to eat you is prejudice. It’s kind of like being racist to black people.”
Well, unfortunately, in this video game, we know with certainty there are secret aliens trying to eat people. As with the point above, we’re not going to solve this problem by pretending they don’t exist. Is it a little bit unfair that other players are forced to distrust you? Maybe. But, you just can’t build trust on this space station without somehow pacifying the alien threat that is built into the game. Every player understands this dynamic.
In real life, let’s imagine we have no idea whatsoever how often male aggression presents itself. We don’t know if there are or are not aliens.
We can agree, I would hope, that being an alien would be a bad thing, though, right? So, is it not enough to say “I will not be one of those men, and I will stop other people from being one of those men,” whether or not those men actually exist? At worst, you’ve committed to a fight that will never ask you to do any fighting.
You do not have to buy into the idea that most men are monsters to be an enemy of monstrous men. You do not need to concede that you are a monster to be an enemy of monstrous men.
If you insist on fighting about this, I have one or two ideas about that.
You don’t believe that monstrous men exist at all, so the paranoia is unjustified. Okay. I think that you’re in denial. Talk to some of the women in your life. Ask them about what they’ve dealt with.
You feel insecure and lonely because people naturally distrust you. I get that. That’s hard. Especially in a world where you can barely make friends without a car or money, that’s really tough. To a point I’ve made twice, though, if monstrous men are real, if they really exist, then this unfairness you’re subject to will not go away unless the thing that’s causing it is dealt with. This is a non-negotiable bit of math that you need to come to terms with.
I like this analogy so much and it’s so on-point. Thanks writing this up
I think the problem with your argument is the measure of paranoia. It’s 100% reasonable to be suspicious and cautious around men, strange or familiar, if you’re a woman. The issue I think most men have to this isn’t reasonable suspicion or reasonable caution, but rather the over the top reaction women online seem to have.
An example of this might be a youtube video about women checking into a hotel alone vs a man checking into a hotel alone. The man checks in and goes right to bed, the lock on the door automatically engages when the door closes. The example with the woman has her block the one way peephole, double check the deadbolt, brace a chair against the door handle, string a tight rope from the door handle to a firm anchor in the bathroom, unplug the phone, close the blinds, check that the mirror isn’t see through, and sweep the room for listening devices. You see this and think it must be satire, and it might be, but then you go into the comments and there’s a ton of women saying how true this is and how you gotta be careful of men when traveling alone. Every so often you’ll see a comment from a man about how this is insane and all the women respond how he’s privileged and doesn’t understand why women have to do all this.
No man is going to begrudge a reasonable reaction to strangers and safety, but relating to a comic about seeing a spam notification about singles in your area and locking your door is ridiculous. It’s this over the top reaction that men become offended by, not reasonable caution.
What level of suspicion is reasonable?
Granted, I will not pretend that women are somehow above being very superstitious and silly. I’ve seen armored SUVs marketed to suburban house moms that are beyond parody. But still, for a demographic of people who largely do not have to deal with predatory men, being men themselves, how do men know what a reasonable degree of caution looks like?
Well, this comic is… comedy. It has to be a little silly for the joke to land.
Locking the door with a common deadbolt has less to do with actually protecting anyone and more to do with being visual shorthand for a comedic sentiment.
Please forgive me, but I’m going to answer your post in the opposite order it was given.
I completely agree about the comedy and the satire of the original comic, I’m not opposed to it being over the top to deliver it’s comedic message. I’ll also say that the message is comedic in a dark way. The issue inherent to it is when you have people giving seemingly literal agreement to satirical statements, which is what a lot of these comments have devolved into. Your own post was 659 words, 44 lines, and 14 paragraphs obviously this discussion isn’t just about visual shorthand of a comic, it has some amount of real world investment.
As to your first question, I can’t give a concrete answer. As with many psychological things I can’t tell you what is a reasonable amount of suspicion, but I can say what is an overreaction. Similarly, I can’t tell you what a reasonable amount of collecting is, but I can spot hoarding. I can’t tell you what a reasonable attention to detail is, but I can spot an obsessive compulsive behavior. I’m not a doctor, and won’t pretend to be one, so I can’t tell you in definite terms what a reasonable suspicion is, but I can certainly identify an overreaction.
If someone sees an overly dramatic comic about women being fearful of men and their reaction is to defend the over dramatic behavior then that’s an overreaction. When men call out this behavior as overly dramatic and someone defends it, and in fact doubles down on it, then it’s clearly not just satire or a dark joke.
If we’re using the example of the hotel room I would venture to say that a reasonable level of suspicion would be to lock the door, turn the deadbolt, put the swing arm on, and don’t open the door for strangers. If you start getting into hiding, configuring contraptions, barring the door with chairs, and checking the mirrors to see if they are see through, that’s an overreaction in my book.
I will just take this at face value: what makes this an issue?
I don’t know if my neighbor has double-locked their front door, should I go and check?
Yes, I am aware that jokes are political.
My reading is that this is yet another rearing of the man vs. bear debate. Our eternal prison.
I’m not asking for definite terms, I’m suggesting that women have more experience dealing with men and danger and dangerous men than men do. Men do have a lot of opinions about it, though.
In the comic, she just engages the deadbolt.
It has been some hours since I last looked at this thread, but I imagine that men are not upset she’s being overly cautious, but rather that the comic is suggesting that they—they are taking this personally—are scarier people than women are. They are responding to hurt feelings.
And then when a woman is raped and murdered in her hotel room, men like you will be saying that she must have wanted it because she didn’t even take basic precautions to make sure no-one could get in.
So when women start taking these precautions, because generations of women before them have learnt from experience that when a man rapes you, it’s your fault for not taking precautions… men like you now complain that women are overly paranoid and making things worse for themselves, because their precautions are hurting your feelings.
First off, uh no I would not blame the victim for being raped and murdered and the fact that that is what you lead with is pretty telling. Next I think it’s really telling that you are saying the over reaction is “basic precaution.”
If a woman does a normal amount of precaution, such as locking the door and not opening it for strangers, that’s normal and perfectly reasonable. If the woman literally barricades herself in that’s insane. In either case, if she is attacked or raped it’s not her fault and but that doesn’t mean overreaction isn’t overreaction.
Your analogy doesn’t include some important details for the subject. In the game, crewmates and imposters are on different teams and only one of them can win. It’s not “wrong” for an imposter to kill a crewmate because that’s how they play. All players support imposters killing crewmates because it’s what they signed up for. But in real life, we are on the same team. We are all crewmates doing our tasks, although I guess we have the option to kill each other. Acting as if someone doing their tasks near you wants to kill you is then a more meaningful personal judgement rather than just the impersonal scrutiny expected in a social deduction game.
More importantly, it’s relevant that this is one group of people making a judgement about another group of people based on group membership. So it would be like green crewmates assuming a red crewmate is an imposter on the basis of them being red, not any suspicious activity they have noticed. If crewmates had equal innate suspicion towards each other regardless of color (as should happen in the game) then there is no issue.
This analogy is specifically from the perspective of crewmates. It is wrong for crewmates to die, actually, because this brings your team closer to defeat.
I think you might also think that I view the crewmates as women? No. The divide drawn here is between cooperative and uncooperative. Citizen and villain. The presence of imposters makes all crewmates less safe to be around. Unless you have ways of managing risk.
If the game were programmed such that red crewmates were exclusively the ones chosen to be imposters, regardless of how this might damage the video game’s fun, don’t you think that being near a red crew member would set off some alarm bells? Wouldn’t you think of green crew members as more safe?
I’ve played plenty of RPGs where certain kinds of treasure chest, and certain kinds of treasure chest alone, require a degree of caution because I cannot know if they are mimics.
No, I didn’t think you were making the crewmates just women. My point was, it’s not morally wrong for the imposters to kill in the game, because unlike real life, the sides are diametrically opposed and all players want their opponents to earnestly try to win. Crewmates don’t want imposters to just let them do tasks because then there would be no game. In that sense, killing crewmates is cooperating by making it a fun challenge for everyone. By the same token, it’s not morally wrong for crewmates to make accusations against people in meetings or otherwise treat them suspiciously, it’s how everyone wants others to play. But the moral weight to accusations in real life means it’s not ok to make them casually. There is a burden of proof to overcome.
I don’t know where you are going with this. I guess my level of caution would depend on frequency of imposters. If half of red crewmates were imposters, sure. If it’s 1 in 1000, I wouldn’t be alarmed. But that’s not representative of real life either. Neither predators nor victims of sexual crimes are exclusive to any group. We could talk about statistics but this is about perception of threat and fear. They’re only very loosely tied to reality, especially when it comes to small samples like individual encounters with strangers.
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