Please excuse the very general title, but I wanted to put an issue I have had before the community. I recently made the mistake of entering a conversation I happened to be overhearing among some feminist acquaintances. It was the usual stuff about how women are all oppressed by ‘rape culture’ and the institutional/ economic/ political power men have compared to women. They also all claimed to have been raped. It all sounded a bit fishy to me, so I introduced myself and said that, actually, I think we all get a pretty raw deal. I said that there are socially engineered gender roles for both sexes and that, if we consider the number of men who have killed and been killed in wars they partake in due to masculinity myths, modern day ‘rape culture’ looks pretty pale by comparison.
The response I got was that, basically, they all think rape culture is worse and I should stfu. I asked them how they reached this conclusion, ie, how is the physical, emotional damage etc of ‘rape culture’ worse than that of wars, be they modern or historic. At this point, they all started reciting personal experiences of ‘rape’ (which were in fact very mild sexual assaults, if that, in my opinion. although I was tactful enough not to say this aloud. Someone touching your bum in a club doesn’t really cut it.) and said that, therefore, because of *my* experience, rape culture is worse.
Now, in the politest possible terms, I said you can’t really use anecdotal evidence to support such a general claim. Don’t get me wrong, my argument could be wrong, I accept that, but they simply made no effort to be rational. The response I got was a few remarks about me being a white male and therefore I should stfu. I point out they are again being fallacious (ie, argumentum ad hominem and genetic fallacy), and that is when things kicked off.
To be honest I thought they were going to attack me, but instead they just verbally abused me a lot (don’t worry, I will not utter the language of Mordor here). They got in my face shouting at me, trying to be as intimidating as possible,and basically telling me what a monster I am, etc. Things I have enough self-esteem to know aren’t true. In the end I gave up trying to reason with them, and they were asked to leave the café.
Don’t get me wrong, I think feminists have some valid points and that feminism in general is a good step towards equality. However, people like this just strike me as crazy. They define ‘violence’ and ‘rape’ so loosely everyone is a victim except, of course, us evil oppressive white men.
I accept my argument may have been crap, and I concede that I may have been foolhardy to engage with these people, but I would actually posit that the way they reacted was terrible. I disagreed with them, therefore they demonised me and attempted to intimidate me. No attempt at rationality was made. These ‘feminists’ (I’m not sure how representative they are) were hypersensitive, abusive, and in my opinion had created the illusion of victimhood for themselves personally. They all seemed like pretty affluent white girls to me. My question is, am I really a woman hating monster, or have other people had similar experiences?