I think clinical anxiety is probably strongly correlated to experiencing situations which make one anxious. I seem to remember that anxiety is strongly self-reinforcing. So if a large number of women have experiences which mould them into anxious hyperreactors, we ought to be asking what is happening to them and why is it happening so much?
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I think weâre trying to tell you what is happening to us and why weâre collectively an anxious bunchâŚ
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This. Itâs hard enough to land a good fish pun on the Internet, let alone have a serious conversation.
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I think this song kind of sums up this issueâŚ
âforgive and forget/ but itâs me who has to changeâ
Maybe I misunderstood @Lakelady; I thought the sentiment was âthe problem isnât aggressive weird men, itâs that sheâs clinically anxiousâ; hence my response.
If itâs any help, I spent several months feeling unable to leave the house due to victimisation, (and physically useless on the 2 or 3 occasions when I had to go out) so I do understand! Luckily it came at a time when I was shortly to leave for university, so I was able to get the time and space to rebuild myself in a new place where I didnât know many people
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Probably not a million miles off.
Sounds like PTSD to me. It is very possible that her anxiety is due to having been abused in some way in the past. And the fact that itâs men that make her anxious suggests that the aggressor was likely a man.
Freudâs first case, Dora, was the daughter of his friend. His friend was committing sexual assault on his daughter for years, and she was starting to be âanxiousâ and âhystericalâ and act out. So the friend brought his daughter to Freud to be fixed. When someone has been diagnosed (or self-diagnoses) as âclinically anxiousâ, that doesnât actually say anything about what the cause might be.
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It could also just be the fact that men are the ones who systematically trigger it now - if sheâs scared of people looking at her or unwelcome attention in general, it could be a lot of things.
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I take no issue with your position on this issue, but I do take issue with your use of the Poisonous M&Ms analogy to justify your position.
[From its entry on the Debunking Denialism blog:][1]
âWhy is the poisonous M&Ms analogy monstrous?â
Because it can be used to prop up any kind of harmful stereotype about groups such genders, ethnicities, religious and political communities without having to engage the objections to unfair generalizations. In reality, the poisonous M&Ms analogy is a more manipulative version of the general tactic known as the âI know not all X are Y, but [flawed generalization]â.
âŚWhat sets the âPoisonous M&Msâ formation apart is that it is tries to defend discriminatory stereotypes by pumping intuitions in people who are statistically illiterate rather than to promote overt absurdities that most people already know are erroneous.
Why is the poisonous M&Ms analogy flawed?
Little to no specificity: because the argument has essentially no specificity, we can revert the argument back to the group making it. If white supremacists use it to support their indefensible stereotype of African-Americans as criminals, we can apply it back to white supremacists. If conservatives make the argument against liberals, the argument can be sent back with the corresponding stereotype of conservatives.
âŚ
Assumes that ârisk-freeâ is possible: the analogy also tries to exploit the human tendency to think that it is possible for an event to be risk-free. After all, the moral of the analogy is that even if there is a small risk of getting poisoned, it is reasonable to not take one. You only want to eat M&Ms if there is virtually no risk of getting poisoned, right? Most people would probably not eat one of the M&Ms even if there was a 1% or a 0.1% chance of being poisoned. In reality, any event such as walking across the street, traveling in a car or drinking a glass of water is not risk-free. However, proponents of this analogy would never argue that you should not drink water because of a small risk of choking.
âŚ
Predictors exists: it is commonly believed that you cannot tell criminals apart from non-criminals. However, this is not true as there exists several predictors of criminal behavior: childhood maltreatment, failing school, poor moral reasoning and empathy, excessive alcohol and drug use, certain personality traits such as impulsivity and insensitivity as well as hanging out with criminals and extreme commitment to traditional masculinity (Bernard, Snipes and Gerould, 2010, p. 353). However, the analogy assumes that all M&Ms look the same whether or not they are poisonous or not. If there was a way to distinguish the two, it would not matter that a certain proportion are toxic as you could just not pick them.
Again, I want to emphasize: I completely agree that online discrimination against women (particularly by men) exists, is prevalent, and needs to be addressed. However, I strongly believe that discriminatory methods in the opposite direction will only serve to escalate the dilemma.
I sincerely apologize if it seems like Iâm sealioning; it just really gets my goat when I see people employing such a harmful, logically unsound analogy that is as easily used to defend abhorrent ideologies as it is used to denounce them.
[1]: Poisonous M&Ms: The Irrational Monstrosity of Bigotry - Debunking Denialism
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Shut up, vile male pig! I vowed to protect women from such unreasoned, poorly cited ad hominem attack! Crawl back under that rock from whence thee came, foul scum!!!
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Dude, what the hell⌠you take issue with my mostly sarcastic hyperbolic throw-away joke? And thats it? Nothing else anyone has said on this topic jumped out at you as needing to be addressed? Just that one throw-away super super SRS line? This is perilously close to tone-policing, you know that right?
And if youâre think youâre sea-lioning, coming in at the end of a mostly finished conversation, with a wall of text with bolded bits (that I didnât read out of spite) then yes, youâre sea-lioning, and you should stop.
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Now I understand why Van Halen wanted all the brown M&Mâs removed. UmâŚit was because they were racists. Right?
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Maybe he just means we should go with the bear-shark analogy of Louis CK?
Also single item posts always me makes wonder if there are Google alerts involved. LOL
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No no no, what you are doing is called mansplaining.
It would be sealioning if you indignantly demanded to see sources for the 5% figure.
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I want to share a related story that is kinda off-topic, as it is about a man getting hounded by trolls, but also very on-topic, as it relates to how groups of men, or men as a group, behave badly on the internet.
In trying to level up my guitar-playing skills, Private Tricker on YouTube has been a revelation. He jammed all the songs I love, he has all the gear I want (including fly t-shirts), and heâs got great chops.
After years of getting thankless flack comments on his channel, he shut it down and went moderated. For a guy whoâs been mostly anonymous in pursuing his passion project, I found this good-bye speech to be painfully poignant.
If the jerks on the internet can wear down white, male, southern, skilled-as-fuck guitar player, then heaven help anyone whoâs got a bit of intersectional going on.
My wishes to the OP.
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This isnât what the internet was intended for⌠It was supposed to uplift humanity. To make us better. To make us more human, and to help us appreciate and share with each other.
I hate to post heretical images⌠But⌠I canât help but feel this is apt for how I feel after this:
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I watched that whole thing. Iâm not a guitar head, so I had to kinda sit here and bear it. But I feel ya, and his point about YouTube trolls. If Twitter sucks shit, then YouTube sucks stinky week-old diarrhea. I hate reading YouTube comments. Itâs sad because there are so many talented folks and a great spirit of togetherness thatâs possible, but a bunch of fuckin infantile, serious assholes get in there and totally fuck it up for everyone. Iâm for moderated comments and forums. Itâs a massive undertaking. Moderating things takes a huge amount of money and time, on the siteâs part. Boingboing is shelling a massive dollar to keep things relatively clean here for the ~27k users, and Iâm keenly aware having administered smaller sites and know how much time and effort it takes.
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So, what can men do? Call it out when you see/hear it. Silence lets the perpetrators believe you must think like them.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
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