I have to say personally I surround myself with wonderful and kind men so it makes sense that I’ve never met someone in real life who so adamantly hates all of them.
I understand being wary of men for statistical reasons, for example I won’t get into a situation where I’m in a room alone with a man I don’t know well, but that’s not to say I assume every man I meet is a rapist.
Hell, hot take incoming (this one is controversial): we can even acknowledge that a lot of men have raped people without knowing it for many years because of the way they were socialized with media that encouraged pestering for sexual attention. A lot of men I know are guilty of this but I think it’s important that that can be redeemable if they recognize that it happened and have since changed their behaviour. This seems to be an extremely common experience and I wouldn’t go as far as to call them rapists because that was not their intention and they are usually horrified when they realize it.
Sorry for the tangent, I do feel like this isn’t talked about enough.
I completely agree, while rape is technically what happens in those situations, the word seems to hold more weight than the action (in those specific situations where it’s more a result of clumsy socialization and lack of communication).
Like, by the very semantic technical definition, I’ve been raped, but since there was no power dynamic and since there was no malicious intent, I do not call it that because it doesn’t feel accurate. I am not traumatized.
I’d say the best way to move forward is to socialize children with the understanding of what consent is, and raising them with the autonomy we expect for ourselves. Basically if we want children to grow up with empathy and respecting the autonomy of others, we need to treat them with empathy and respect their autonomy.
Basically how can we expect people to follow rules like “get consent before doing anything” if we don’t have a consensus on what “consent” is?