A.K.A. "The thread I'm going to regret making".
Note: I read some great articles earlier this year regarding this topic and unfortunately I can't find them at the moment. I apologise for this.
Since the, sometimes rather heated, discussions in the Slutwalk thread regarding female rape and accountability, it brought to life a topic that's been burning my mind for a while.
Now one of my favourite private blogs tends to keep me up to date with a lot of articles about male health and social issues. I've read some pretty chilling articles on the general treatment of men in many social and legal cases.
Now I want to establish one important thing right off: I am not, in any way, trying to claim that men are entirely innocent and do not or have not done things to be shameful of. White males especially are guilty of generally being involved in some horrendous things over the centuries.
I have read about tales where men have been unable to get certain jobs or not been allowed to work with certain people like children because of negative stereotypes and suspicious based upon age, gender or ethnicity.
Here is an article from just over two years ago about the amount of men working in prim
ary schools being at between 1 or 2%.
Tales where women would be more likely to be offered jobs with children or infants or be allowed to change the nappies of or look after young children, possibly unattended, where men would have to be accompanied by a woman, if at all.
I've read some scary articles on men refusing to risk helping children for fear that their concern would be seen as predatory. Essentially: we are risking the well-being of children on stereotypes and suspicion.
I watched some of ABC's fantastic "What Would You Do?" segments, and one was a follow-up to another that they did (that I haven't seen yet but they showed clips of) where would you speak up if you saw a man slipping something into his date's drink. It did appear that people were very quick to speak up and many were (rightfully) quite vocal about it for fear of the woman's safety.
In the case of the man though, only one person, another woman, spoke up. It probably didn't help that the man was set up as being fairly well off which might have made the other people jealous when his date was boastful about his "boat", but a bunch of men that saw actually almost seemed glad and joked about reading about what had become of the poor bloke the next day.
I think it is pretty awful when we would fight to protect a woman, but would not offer the same for a man regardless of his status.
Another had a young underage boy having his attractive female flaunting and showing off affection to his distress. It seems that the general attitude, especially from other men, was that they wouldn't interfere. When the boy "played along" with the romance nobody spoke despite it being illegal.
I know for a fact that had this been an older male, attractive or not, with a young girl then people would be way more likely to speak up and much sooner. It seems that a young boy having a relationship with an older woman is either considered "amusing" or at least almost "attractive".
Regarding rape: Now we all know that this is a terrible thing so I won't go into all that, but I would say that male rape is probably reported much less than even female is. There's quite a question over if men can even be raped at all and an almost fear within men of being seen as "weak" or whatever for not wanting a woman to have sex with them or shame in being raped by another man.
My mother has plainly said to me that she doesn't believe men can be raped, at least not by a woman.
This is pretty chilling for me when I've always fought for and believed in total equality for all.
I apologise now that this topic hasn't come across as well as I hoped. I'm pretty bad at putting my thoughts forward and expect some pretty bad responses to this.
Thanks for reading.
Note: I read some great articles earlier this year regarding this topic and unfortunately I can't find them at the moment. I apologise for this.
Since the, sometimes rather heated, discussions in the Slutwalk thread regarding female rape and accountability, it brought to life a topic that's been burning my mind for a while.
Now one of my favourite private blogs tends to keep me up to date with a lot of articles about male health and social issues. I've read some pretty chilling articles on the general treatment of men in many social and legal cases.
Now I want to establish one important thing right off: I am not, in any way, trying to claim that men are entirely innocent and do not or have not done things to be shameful of. White males especially are guilty of generally being involved in some horrendous things over the centuries.
I have read about tales where men have been unable to get certain jobs or not been allowed to work with certain people like children because of negative stereotypes and suspicious based upon age, gender or ethnicity.
Here is an article from just over two years ago about the amount of men working in prim
ary schools being at between 1 or 2%.
Tales where women would be more likely to be offered jobs with children or infants or be allowed to change the nappies of or look after young children, possibly unattended, where men would have to be accompanied by a woman, if at all.
I've read some scary articles on men refusing to risk helping children for fear that their concern would be seen as predatory. Essentially: we are risking the well-being of children on stereotypes and suspicion.
I watched some of ABC's fantastic "What Would You Do?" segments, and one was a follow-up to another that they did (that I haven't seen yet but they showed clips of) where would you speak up if you saw a man slipping something into his date's drink. It did appear that people were very quick to speak up and many were (rightfully) quite vocal about it for fear of the woman's safety.
In the case of the man though, only one person, another woman, spoke up. It probably didn't help that the man was set up as being fairly well off which might have made the other people jealous when his date was boastful about his "boat", but a bunch of men that saw actually almost seemed glad and joked about reading about what had become of the poor bloke the next day.
I think it is pretty awful when we would fight to protect a woman, but would not offer the same for a man regardless of his status.
Another had a young underage boy having his attractive female flaunting and showing off affection to his distress. It seems that the general attitude, especially from other men, was that they wouldn't interfere. When the boy "played along" with the romance nobody spoke despite it being illegal.
I know for a fact that had this been an older male, attractive or not, with a young girl then people would be way more likely to speak up and much sooner. It seems that a young boy having a relationship with an older woman is either considered "amusing" or at least almost "attractive".
Regarding rape: Now we all know that this is a terrible thing so I won't go into all that, but I would say that male rape is probably reported much less than even female is. There's quite a question over if men can even be raped at all and an almost fear within men of being seen as "weak" or whatever for not wanting a woman to have sex with them or shame in being raped by another man.
My mother has plainly said to me that she doesn't believe men can be raped, at least not by a woman.
This is pretty chilling for me when I've always fought for and believed in total equality for all.
I apologise now that this topic hasn't come across as well as I hoped. I'm pretty bad at putting my thoughts forward and expect some pretty bad responses to this.
Thanks for reading.
