Friday, January 04, 2008

 

Forget the Men, Woman Afraid

One of my infrequent readers left a comment to my post about Philadelphia making the city more woman friendly with no apparent concern for men. In three sentences she sums up the myths of why it's OK to ignore men.
Here's the answer to your questions: women are physically afraid of criminals. Which can be broken down to: women are weaker than criminals and criminals, being stronger than women, are therefore men. Men are not weaker than criminals (since they are criminals) and therefore have no reason to be fearful.
My response:

I understand the being afraid of criminals but what about the sidewalks, etc? I pushed my kids more than their mother did. Plus plenty of men are physically afraid of criminals. I know very few men over the age of 25 (or actually any age) who could effectively defend themselves from me, a 56 year old man, if I attacked them barehanded, let alone with a weapon. What about elderly men? Do we just forget about them because they'll die soon anyway?

Who are the victims of criminals? In 2005, for every 16.6 female victims there were 25.6 male victims. Big difference.

And then there's this: "According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, most murder victims were male, 79% in 2005." 4 men murdered for every female murdered. Bigger difference.

You use the typical emotional reasoning seen so often in women's issues. "I'm scared." And everyone goes, "Oh, you poor dear." If a male says he's afraid he's ridiculed and belittled, "Be a man!" "What are you some kind of wimp?" "You big pussy." And, that's just be beginning.

Men are not weaker than criminals (since they are criminals) and therefore have no reason to be fearful.

This is crap. Most violent criminals are men but if you read the newspaper, watch the news or check out CNN.com and FoxNews.com, you'll find plenty of female criminals. Here's one and here's some others. Here's a whole bunch. (Hat tip to DrHelen.)

Few men can confidently walk the streets believing they are bigger and stronger than almost any criminal they may encounter. I'm a big guy, pretty strong and used to be quite athletic. But, I knew plenty of guys bigger and stronger.

Now, at age 56, I can still do over 40 push ups (just did 45 to be sure) but my 14 year old son is stronger than I. How confident do I feel when I see a group of unruly youngsters on the street? Moderately at best. What if they have a knife, gun or club?

Stand outside your own female psyche and try to see that men experience the world very differently than you believe. Your comments are grossly simplistic, demeaning and callous. Unfortunately, those words probably reflect the thoughts of too many others.

Comments:
Nice point. For even more backup, go and read this little nugget from the MD Filter. Out of 207(or 209) murders in Orleans Parish for 2007, 91% of the victims were men. Additional demographics over there, but the numbers are staggering.
 
NOLA had a very bad year for murders, 209 according to CNN. This is way beyond Cincinnati's highest, which is 80 something. Plus, Cincinnati is a larger city. I'd be willing to bet the percentage of men as victims is very high in Cinci also.

I would really like to see NOLA recover but Nagin isn't up to the task and the violence scares people away.

BTW - UGA crushed Hawaii. I thought Hawaii would at least make it interesting but no. Go Dawgs!
 
As I said on the original post, I was trying to be sarcastic. I was trying to make the point that the writer of the original article's unwritten assumptions were "grossly simplistic, demeaning and callous".

I'm sorry you couldn't hear the tone of my voice.

But, hey, it gave you an excuse to put up your very excellent rebuttal as a post!
 
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