Now that I’ve thought about this more, and I actually remember my thought process from the original post and reblog, here is my response. Yes, I have said things that are misogynistic in the past, and because I know that I haven’t yet been able to pick out the misogyny, and because I am a human being who makes mistakes, I will probably have misogynistic behavior in the future. It’s possible that I have an odd view of gender. It is literally impossible for me to know everything that I’ve said and understand every single way the post that I made could have come off incorrectly. But I literally do not see any misogynistic intent here.
This post was not directed towards or about women at all, and it wasn’t even about how supportive people are. The ideal audience of my original reblog was likely other men who have been in this situation. I was using a statistic that is more commonly talked about and more people may be familiar with, in order to lead into a less commonly mentioned statistic, as well as bringing up that because one is lower than the other, the group of people with the lower risk think of themselves as immune. I imagine women are more supportive of men who are victims, just by raw numbers if nothing else. That makes sense. This wasn’t about supportiveness, though. This was about what a given person assumes they are at risk for. The following sentences “that’s a lot higher than zero/higher than you thought it was/men and boys are not immune” were directed towards men. Because there is an attitude in male circles that ignores the concept of men being possible victims entirely, and so men especially tend to have a pretty low percentage of what they assume the male victim rate is. And to go from assuming you are safe, to finding out you are not immune to being a victim of such a thing is fucking terrifying. Other guys who are or have been in this situation are the people I am talking to in this post. That is what those sentences meant. I only brought up the 1 in 5 statistic because it’s something that a lot more people have heard, and because when I was told the statistics they were presented together. That is it. I bring up gender because it is a factor in my reaction in the first place. It is a common assumption for men that ‘because of my gender, I am safe’. I am not adding gender to a conversation where it wasn’t already relevant.
I was under the impression that, because I am not a public figure and I have no desire to be, accountability for me would look like apologizing for something that I said or did incorrectly and then doing my best to not repeat the behavior. I don’t have a PR department. The best I can do is apologize and try not to do it again. Yes, I have probably victimized myself. I don’t doubt that. There are probably things I missed that I haven’t taken accountability for because I literally did not see them because other things take up my time. I get the impression that when I am in the real world and people have more opportunities to interpret my tone and my words, I am viewed a lot less negative than I seem to be viewed online. I assume this is because in person people tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and not immediately assume that the underlying message of everything someone says is bigotry. Sometimes people are scared and sometimes they say something that is misunderstood when their intentions were completely benign.
I don’t know why people on the internet are dead set on making the most negative interpretation of what other people say, with no benefit of the doubt, and I don’t doubt I’ve done it before myself, but I literally do not see it in this post. I was scared, and making a post about how someone in my position doesn’t typically assume they could be a victim of something like stalking because they’ve heard that other statistics are higher, and so they think that their own statistics are basically zero. That is all. I don’t see a point talking any more about this.
