I’m a dude, but I grew up with little sisters and kind of am void of piggish tendencies due to that I think, I realize women aren’t objects at least. Kink is kink and sexuality is sexuality, but I would assume women want to be able to post photos without some nasty ass dude or neckbeard in the comments section commenting about how fat her ass or boobs are or how they would “hit it”. Or walk down the street without some dog trying to hit on her.
I just saw something like this happen on twitter unfortunately and ive seen it life as well from some of friends who I tell to their faces they’re being pigs.
I feel like every guy absorbs some of thr radiation of if from culture. It is just a negative set of behaviors we have to work to unlearn. I think thinking of it as seperate from liberalism or any other normative pathology probably isn’t helpful. That being said it can be hard for some people to unlearn. The behaviors tend to be self rewarding and rarely punished. I got into a drunken fight with a guy about it at a party once. That kinda guy likes fight so it didn’t really discourage him and it was shit of me to do besides.
A huge eye opener for me was a college project where we recorded conversations and then tallied how much people talked and who interrupted who. The imbalance in how much men talked and how much men interrupted women was shocking to me. And even having spent like fifteen years trying to train myself out of it I still interrupt women more than I’d like. On the other hand, if I notice other guys doing it in conversations I’ll just refuse to acknowledge them at all and maintain my eye contact and attention on the woman they interrupted. It’s usually very rude in the sense that it’s transgressing the norm of switching your attention to the man who interrupted and it seems like that’s enough to jar most people and get them to knock it off, at least temporarily.
Honestly I feel like that project, just recording like 30 minutes of conversation then tallying each person’s speaking time and each interruption, would be a really strong way of showing how transparent sexism can be, especially when you’re benefitting from it.
The behaviors tend to be self rewarding
only in the short term they will leave you miserable and empty.
Much like gaslighting, I feel it’s overused and an easy excuse to be shitty. I think it’s from being mostly also in more or less leftist tonradliv groups irl that mansplaining can just extend to a cis guy explaining any disagreement or correcting any misinformation. I’ve seen enough people gaslight by being told they’re gaslighting and also just people do legit remember things differently all the time and deception doesn’t always fall into play.
