'You Feminists Spread Fear'

This type of anti-feminism pops up at least twice a week on socials. ‘You feminists are making it up, spreading fear and talking bullsh**.’ Yes, this person’s trolling, but I often respond to call them out or give others an option for answering the nonsense.

This particular gem was in response to a tweet from Dr Charlotte Proudman, who said:

“Women feel unsafe in our own homes, schools, workplaces, on the street, public transport, the gym, parks. The real question is where do women feel safe? Nowhere because we are never safe from male violence. 2 women are killed a week and 1 in 3 suffer domestic abuse.”

The statistics Dr Proudman references are from the UK’s Office for National Statistics, and it’s worse than twice a week, but even once a week is once too many.

As for making it up? I recently wrote about the billion-dollar industry built on the dangerous world women must navigate. Rape alarms, self-defence classes, pepper spray, drink covers, just to name the ‘best sellers’. Anyone see the irony? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t insist our fears are baseless and then demand we ‘protect’ ourselves by flooding the market with repellent products.

How come sales are through the roof if women aren’t afraid?

And what makes them afraid?

That would be increases in rape and assault statistics and the knowledge that there’s no ‘profile’ to avoid. Sexual predators come in all shapes and sizes, from every background and demographic, and they strike at any time. Not just in a dark alley after the woman has drunk too much and become separated from her friends.

Side note — Whenever I remind rape apologists that women are wary of all men because we don’t know who’ll hurt us, they hysterically accuse me of suggesting we develop a profile (which I’m not). Would it, they demand, be okay to profile people of a specific colour based on the increased numbers of violence in their demographic? No, of course not, but if you insist we can’t or shouldn’t profile rapists, stop demonising us for being wary of all men.

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Here’s the funny thing, though: it’s often men who instil the fear, as expressed succinctly on Reddit a few months ago:

“Weirdly enough I feel like our earliest fears concerning men are instilled by male relatives telling us to be afraid of men who aren’t them.”

Who hasn’t seen the “funny” photos of girls or young women with a dad issuing a not-so-subtle threat to any boy who might come near them? They’re often holding shotguns, too. Here’s just one of many ‘joke’ items available on Etsy. (Not only treating daughters as property but ignoring the point that they’re not safe from … men.)

Sadly, a response to the Reddit comment will strike a chord with many women:

“In my case it was the male relatives who presented the actual danger.”

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Here’s another funny thing — How often do we hear men shrieking about the horrors of being falsely accused?

To quote a few guys from X, they fear “long-term imprisonment, bankruptcy, and the loss of literally everything in your life”. Men like Danny live in constant fear: “I wouldn’t even go into the post office after hours yesterday until a woman came out. I didn’t want to be alone with her in there.” (One might question why he wanted to go in after hours, but hey — anything to make his point eh?) Some men even insist that the penalties for falsely accusing should be the same as for rape.

As I’ve written previously, men have more chance of being raped than of being falsely accused. No one denies that if genuinely falsely accused (as opposed to insufficient evidence to prosecute), some men’s reputations take a hit, but again, the chance of it happening is remote. Yet some men demand we take it very seriously while they downplay rape at every opportunity.

And yes, rape is downplayed every day. Statistics showing what happens to most rape allegations are woeful; most don’t even make it to a formal charge, let alone a court appearance. Women frequently report being dismissed as soon as they mention their attack.

Between January 2021 and August 2022, a team of UK academics conducted sequential deep dives on the police response to rape in 5 police forces. Called Operation Soteria, the report found that –

“… disproportionate effort has been put into testing the credibility of a victim’s account, and there is a need to re-balance investigations to include a thorough investigation of the suspect’s behaviour”. In other words, they believed the suspect more than the victim.

It identified a need for “Challenging internal cultures which undermine fair and equitable rape investigations necessary as a matter of urgency.” As one anonymous respondent said, “If police are not taking it seriously enough and it is a criminal offence, why shouldn’t society do the same?”

This letter illustrates that girls and young women in schools don’t fare any better as this letter illustrates. When complaining about harassment, the response to one girl who told teachers and the school police officer was appalling. “One teacher asked: “Why do you let it bother you?” The police officer told her to “stop bitching”.

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So guys (and some gals), until the statistics start dipping drastically, don’t try to gaslight women about the dangers we’re exposed to. The ONS above report stated that:

An estimated 1.1 million adults (798,000 women and 275,000 men) were victims of sexual assault in 2022 in England & Wales. That’s well over 15,000 women sexually assaulted (primarily by men) weekly.
The figures show an increase of 31%, to 193,566 police-recorded offences, compared with the previous year.

In case you’re gearing up with the percentage of women it happens to, (approx 2.359%, around 1 in 50), here’s another statistic. The ONS’s Crime Survey of England and Wales estimates that 20% of women have experienced some type of sexual assault since the age of 16, equivalent to an estimated 3.4 million female victims. 5 in 6 victims (83%) did not report their experiences to the police.

Sexual violence against women (usually by men) is a huge problem. It can happen to any woman, although the largest percentage of rape victims are those raped by an intimate partner or someone they know.

When men accuse women of exaggerating our fear of rape and assault, it shows wilful ignorance of the facts and thus seeks to dismiss and silence us. Until such men take our concerns about rape and assault more seriously, we’ll leave the fight over false accusations to them. We’re a tad busy trying to stop male violence against women.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean?

My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence

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