Menslib: Black men, white women and sexual harassment

I saw the post about women/girls being touched and harassed in public but didn’t want to derail the conversation so I decided to make my own post. This article talks about the dynamics of white women, black men, and sexual harassment. But to expand on that, as a black man in a predominately white area a lot of the points made in the article on the other post reminded me of experiences I had growing up. For example the first time an adult (white) woman made a comment on the size of black mens peepeees to me I was 13 or 14 years old, all through out my first job at 15 the women I worked with and the clients made inappropriate comments to me about my body on a regular basis. This trend continued into adulthood I’ve had multiple white women touch me in inappropriate ways, sit down in my lap, grab my crotch, etc, I had to quit a job as security at a music venue I was doing for a friend because I was getting grabbed and groped on a constantly and regular basis by mostly white women, and further more every black man I know has had multiple experiences that are similar to these.

Unfortunately the vast majority of people who abuse their power, have also been abused.

Even white, straight, cis, Christian, good-looking men with no disabilities (physical or mental) can know what it feels like to be abused, to have their autonomy taken away from them, to be out of their own control and in somebody else's.

Unfortunately, experience alone doesn't always prevent people from enacting the same harm on others.

If you don't see other people as human — or fully human — then you might not see your actions as abuse. You might think those people deserve some harm that you didn't. You might think it doesn't affect them the way it affected you. You might even just want to exhibit some control over someone else, because that control was once taken away from you, and you're trying to get it back in whatever way you can.

It sucks because, obviously, this creates a pervasive, infectious problem. One person gets abused and they may go abuse 100 others, and each of them can, in turn, abuse 100 others, and so on. Systems of oppression make this even easier to accomplish. The people at the bottom get abused over & over again, from all angles.

That's why it's great to identify abuse, in all its forms. Even when the perpetrator is themselves a victim of abuse (systemic or not). It's important to not drown out their own history, but it's important to identify the abuse wherever it happens.

long story short, thank you OP for bringing this up.

I admit I think we should be teaching everyone to be better. That isn't a "both sides lol", it's just an acknowledgement that we should expect goodness of everyone and teach it to everyone, and not just assume that anyone will naturally be a perfect angel without being taught to be.

And conversely there should be real and proportionate consequences for negative behavior to reinforce its unacceptability. Universally and equally applied. Key word being *proportionate". None of this "he looked at me put him in jail" or "he r*ped her sure but do we really need to ruin his life?", nor any "she couldn't have done that women can't assault men" nor "bitches get it too easy they deserve what they get for playing hard to get". Those are all fricking awful and wildly disproportionate.

We have cultivated an idea, at least in America, that exceptional people shouldn't care what anyone thinks, because nobody truly grasps their genius. We have also cultivated an idea that everyone is unique and special and exceptional. There are benefits to both of these lines of thinking, but both also come at a cost: social consequences for being a shithead have less effect on actual shitheads who are convinced of their own untapped yet boundless potential if only the pesky real world would get out of the way.

But because everyone wants to be special and be the genius others just don't understand, and the internet offers anonymity and global reach, there's way too many places for terrible people to gather and comfort one another that it isn't them,it's everyone else that's the issue.

As with everything else, we should be helping people understand, early, the unintended consequences of their actions, and helping them be the kinds of people who want to make better choices. Punishing them after the fact shows a failure to help them be better before the issue.

Lots of people suck. Very few of them couldn't be better if they understood how.

My point in this is that the subject of sexual and harassment is usually framed as “teaching boys not to…” but that’s not the whole story, in this case white privilege and the privilege that if I as a black man get physical (push away) or yell at a white woman it’s gonna probably be assumed I did something wrong, these both in this instance plays more of a role in sexual harassment then is usually discussed. I’m not denying the patriarchy plays into the harassment of women but I feel like it doesn’t give a full scope of why people behave that way. For multiple reasons (racism, patriarchy, etc) a number of white women seem to think they have a right (can’t think of a better word) to black bodies and when that access is questioned or denied things tend to ugly very quickly, for example I recently watched a live stream where a black man was debating a white woman and when he disagreed with her, her immediate response was something along the lines of “you obviously want me so bad, maybe we could work something out” and when he rejected her she accused him of being racist.

Unfortunately the vast majority of people who abuse their power, have also been abused.

Even white, straight, cis, Christian, good-looking men with no disabilities (physical or mental) can know what it feels like to be abused, to have their autonomy taken away from them, to be out of their own control and in somebody else's.

Unfortunately, experience alone doesn't always prevent people from enacting the same harm on others.

If you don't see other people as human — or fully human — then you might not see your actions as abuse. You might think those people deserve some harm that you didn't. You might think it doesn't affect them the way it affected you. You might even just want to exhibit some control over someone else, because that control was once taken away from you, and you're trying to get it back in whatever way you can.

It sucks because, obviously, this creates a pervasive, infectious problem. One person gets abused and they may go abuse 100 others, and each of them can, in turn, abuse 100 others, and so on. Systems of oppression make this even easier to accomplish. The people at the bottom get abused over & over again, from all angles.

That's why it's great to identify abuse, in all its forms. Even when the perpetrator is themselves a victim of abuse (systemic or not). It's important to not drown out their own history, but it's important to identify the abuse wherever it happens.

long story short, thank you OP for bringing this up.

I have seen this up close and personal and it made me extremely uncomfortable. It was two white females and one black that continued to make back handed comments to the young male( maybe 20) and really explicit comments that I dont beleive were quite out of earshot. I, personally, have seen more sexual harrassment by females than I have males my entire life and it always pisses me off. Even here on reddit, its totally fine to objectify a post with a good looking male than it is a female. I ALWAYS make a comment about the hypocrisy and always get downmarseyd to oblivion. It is completely unfair that things like the hashtag me too movement was so popular but if such a thing were to be started for males in sure it would be vilified as trying to take away from the importance of females. My last two years in the military my unit was predominantly black males. More than once I saw white females try to ruin careers because they felt slighted for something completely unrelated. As a white female, I dont feel like I have ever been sexually harassed. I dispise posts that make widespread assumptions for claims that have no real way of being quantified. Its b.s. that this type of thing is still so taboo in today's culture of recognizing inappropriateness and addressing it. Now I'm riled up and havent even had breakfast.

This particular part hit home for me:

"The confusing seesaw desire of wanting to be an ally for someone’s struggle while not having your struggle recognized in return."

Not being black myself, it's difficult to relate to the specific nature of oppression this author speaks of, but I believe his article speaks to a much deeper issue we are facing in our society. It seems like most people move through life with some form of care-meter, a meter which takes measure of the struggle another is experiencing and, through some arbitrary processes dictated by personal experience and knowledge, places that struggle somewhere among a list of struggles ordered by the amount of attention and concern they each deserve. Our standard for caring about things as a society seems to also fluctuate with regards to how many peoples' care-meters rank the same issues as warranting the most concern. Through this, having ones personal struggle duly acknowledged becomes a task of proving a large enough group of people endure that same struggle, and raising that struggle's ranking on the collective care meter.

I think a lot of this has taken form as a consequence of the internet. Through the way we now receive information, we have become exposed so frequently to so many struggles which were formerly invisible to us that our care-meters are going a little haywire. Not only does this overexposure dilute our attention, the algorithms influencing how that attention gets spent also provide us with the raw materials for developing powerful frequency delusions. We are far less able now to see our neighbors and their str