Nearly all women have been sexually harassed repeatedly and ongoingly since they were young children, but we don't have to "see it oppositionally"? Do you even hear yourself? And this is a dynamic that hasn’t improved an ounce since I was a child 40 years ago, getting approached and scared by men and boys.
If you read all those comments of mine, you'd have noticed that I repeatedly said that young men need to be taught better social skills. That we live in a culture that never bothered with that and that still blames girls and women when boys and men are at last given some consequences for their behavior is a huge problem.
Something like 39% of college guys have admitted to researchers pressuring women into sexual things that they didn't want to do - all the while not seeing this as rapey behavior, but as just how guys "play the game." In other words, this is not "a few bad apples" problem - it's a pervasive cultural dynamic that harms women.
I've never once said that males are "villains" but it's not exactly in dispute that historically and to this day guys are culturally messaged that women exist for their pleasure and enjoyment and that this leads to women being victimized for decades of their lives with mostly nobody caring, or if they do, blaming them for being upset and traumatized.
The fact that there was even any discussion on Ossiana's story proves my point. We need a massive cultural shift where masculinity is not envisioned as "getting some" from women and where guys learn the skills that would allow them to talk to someone they might like to meet in a respectful and appropriate way. FFS, I’ve spent a lot of time in sex/swinger’s clubs and the environment there is a lot more respectful and appropriate than out in the general culture — because that’s the tone that has been set and is expected.
Ossiana self-identifies as autistic, but even autistic people can learn the rules of thumb of whether or not someone is welcoming or uncomfortable. This stuff isn't "obvious" to a lot of men because they've never been taught they need to care about what the woman wants so they don't need to pay attention to her cues.
Studies have shown that men tend to overestimate a woman’s interest in them, based on what she is wearing and how interested he is in her. However, when researchers prompted study participants to actually pay attention to emotional cues such as facial expression and body language, they did a much better job of accurately gauging interest.
When men look past their cultural programming that attractive women are there for their pleasure, and actually pay attention to what the woman wants, they are quite capable of grasping if their interest is reciprocated or not, but they don’t always make that effort — in part because the culture doesn’t require them to - although a lot of women are pretty fed up with that and not just accepting it as inevitable the way that they used to. They want to be able to go out in public places without running the risk of being treated like a cake in front of hungry children. We'll never have actual equality until that happens.
Help to be a part of the solution instead of telling people who have been victimized by this shit to be nicer. Otherwise, you're just a part of the problem.
