03-12-2021, 09:32 PM
(03-12-2021, 09:03 PM)Morph Wrote: Ye that's true about Twitter.
For me I wasn't meaning to knock it as not influential or daft just recognising that the comments that get the most interactions are always the most controversial so always steers away from genuine debate and not always a reflection of what the majority actually think about things. That's why I think we shouldn't pay much attention to the daft shit because it does end up getting a pretty extreme reaction out of folk and just turns them away from showing much empathy to the actual issue and they just want to rant about blue haired bams or whatever.
I do agree with your post though, Twitter is unfortunately the place where these sort of debates are carried out these days but I don't think it's something necessarily to be embraced but more challenged.
I think it's maybe easy for us to say that on this platform as we're engaging with the issue. There are plenty of people saying it *is* all men, though (saw a few earlier that clarified it's only all cis men though, just so they weren't generalising
). My issue with that is, who's listening to this message and taking the time to understand it? The people who are listening will largely consider their behaviours and do their best to help make women feel safe. I'm sure a lot of us will be more aware of ourselves in the future and do wee things like cross the street if we're walking behind a woman at night. That's obviously a really good thing, but those people were never the danger. I just won't be convinced that saying “it is all men†is productive when the people who aren't engaging are already the more likely to exhibit toxic masculine behaviours, and is seeing a message like that without being engaged in the issues going to change that mindset/culture, or is it more likely to entrench it? This conversation is long overdue though. Abuse of women in all walks of life is so hyper normalised. I mind being in that club that used to be Mercado's at Waverley one night and caught this fucking guy taking photos up the barmaid's skirt. Reported it to the bouncers and they laughed and told me they didn't see it so couldn't do anything.
Even in my work - I'm quite often made to feel like I'm a miserable bastard because I challenge folk when they act in a misogynistic way. Had to pull up my boss for making sexualised jokes towards female members of staff
He knows (thinks) he's harmless though, so he doesn't see the issue. I've been thinking about maybe half a dozen of those types of wee incidents in work the last few days and I am glad I'm in a place in recent years where I challenge it, whereas in the past I might have laughed along or been a bystander to it.
![[Image: maxresdefault.jpg]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/c5FsadHcoVA/maxresdefault.jpg)
It's pretty draining being that guy, and you get a lot of “WE'RE ONLY JOKING†type comments before they go away and reflect, and normally they come back and say yeah, that was out of order. But that's in a place where people are educated and supposedly aware of these issues, and somewhere I feel comfortable challenging folk.