Walking While Fat and Female – Or, Why I Don’t Care Not All Men are Like That

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized

NOT ALL MEN! NOT ALL MEN! NOT ALL MEN!
(Never once has a woman yelled “fatass,” or anything else, at me in public. Not one single goddamn time in 37 years.)

12 thoughts on “Walking While Fat and Female – Or, Why I Don’t Care Not All Men are Like That”

  1. The difference in people’s perspectives can be quite startling. I hear what she is saying, and yet I walk everywhere like Snow White with the little forest creatures trilling at me. Schizophrenic air guitar guy always tips his hat when I go by. Men open doors, they give up their seats on the bus, they offer me directions. I feel protected, looked out for.

    I think it’s a real shame what we’ve done to relationships between men and women. We arm women with these scary stories and rape prevention lists and they go out into the world believing they have a 50/50 chance of being victimized. Even if it never happens, eventually that’s all you can see. It’s almost a self fulfilling prophecy. If you think the whole world hates you because you’re female, you’ll find the proof you need to validate your belief system.

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  3. It really ticks me off, women who blog about how persecuted they are, how victimized and powerless, and how awful men are, are very popular on the internet. They’ll get hundreds of comments, be freshly pressed, and praised for their…endless feelings of persecution.

    Try talking about how lovely men are, what a delightful world we live in, and people will call you insane and avoid you like the plague. Hence the name insanitybytes. What can I say, if this is what being insane is like, sanity is highly over rated 🙂

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    1. I’m not sure what your endgame is here. Do you think these women are lying or misrepresenting their experiences? Or just that they ought to not talk about it? Being subject to catcalls and harassment when you leave your house isn’t a “feeling of persecution.” It’s an actual thing that happens.

      I’d prefer it if the men involved would just stop being scum.

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      1. “Being subject to catcalls and harassment when you leave your house isn’t a “feeling of persecution.”

        I’d have to say that 90% of it is your attitude, your perceptions, and what you chose to focus on. I have seen women walk down the street so self absorbed they take every little thing personally, even when it has nothing to do with them at all.

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          1. Of course, I’ll drop it…at least on your blog. I have no desire to upset you. As unpleasant as that horrendous crime is however, statistics show that is actually men who are victimized by homicide the most. To set up this false dichotomy that suggest men are evil and women are victims is well, false, but also, it’s quite harmful to women. We start to live in a world that is not based on the truth, but rather on mediated reality.

            Anyway, peace!

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    2. I think it’s important to remember that your positive experiences don’t invalidate the negative experiences someone else has had. Nobody has ever yelled denigrating names at me, but I have had men confuse my ass for someone named “Hey Baby Girl” and it’s not a pleasant experience despite all my other commonly positive interactions with men.

      I can only imagine how this woman’s heart sinks each successive time it happens to her, and how difficult it is to be positive about it.

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  4. While we’re talking statistics, care to let me know the last time a group of men were targeted in a mass shooting for the crime of being male? Because the last time it happened to women was yesterday. Literally. Fucking. YESTERDAY. From here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/05/24/shooter-kills-at-least-six-people-in-rampage-near-uc-santa-barbara/

    “For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I have been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires, all because girls have never been attracted to me,” he said, looking into a camera on the dashboard of his vehicle with palm trees in the background.
    “I will punish all of you for it,” he said with a sinister laugh, saying he would enter a sorority. “I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up blond slut I see inside there.”

    There is no– NO– similar scale or category of violence, hatred, or anger against men. It does not fucking exist anywhere on this planet, period, and this shit was NOT a matter of “attitude, perceptions, or what you choose to focus on” among the people he killed today. They were killed because this fuckwit hated women, and this fuckwit who hates women is embedded in a culture that daily– as in your last few posts– blames women for their own fucking oppression and the violence, rape, and harassment directed against them, and excuses it as “not all men” from the men who perpetrate it.

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  5. Thanks very much for reblogging this – I hadn’t seen it and it’s a great post.

    I agree with the comment above that one person’s positive experiences don’t invalidate the negative experiences of others. I walk a lot, but aside from the odd catcall or honk once in a while, have never had anything more invasive than that. But the issue that by simply being out and about while female puts you on “display” in a way that means you should expect comments – be they positive or negative (or, in the worst cases, threatening) is something I’ve thought about often. And I’d agree with one of the article’s points that the fact that men who don’t do feel they can say “I’m not like that” or “you shouldn’t have been walking there” and the issue is solved, makes it difficult to take a discussion on the more threatening cases of this anywhere.

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  6. Wow. I like your determination not to care what people think about your weight. What does it matter if a man has an opinion of it or not? You didn’t ask for it.

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