Complementarian Christians Do Not Think Women are of Equal Worth to Men – Case 2 – Christian Men Mocking the “Me Too” Sexual Assault and Harassment Twitter Tag
This post contains salty language. If you are a snail, you might want to stay away.
Part 2.
To get you up to speed, if you skipped part 1–
I myself am right wing and do not refer to myself as feminist either – however, I also despise sexism, no matter where it comes from, right wing or left wing.
Reminder, if you skipped part 1:
Here is the tweet containing a screen shot of two Christian men, “Bible Thumping Wing Nut” (Twitter handle: @Biblethumpingwi) and Fred Butler (Twitter handle: @Fred_Butler), mocking the “Me Too” twitter tag, which women have been using to share their experiences of being sexually assaulted or sexually harassed on jobs:
Bible Thumping Wingnut’s tweet says,
Today a female security guard referred to me as “love”. #MeToo I don’t feel safe anymore. ///
Fred Butler replied:
Was she hot? ///
Note that both men, and the several who replied to defend those two, were ridiculing a serious issue: the (Link): “Me Too” tag began after sexual abuse and harassment stories (Link): about movie producer Harvey Weinstein broke.
This should be apparent to all, but it’s lost on those who are paranoid of the “Me Too” hash tag, of women wanting male accountability for male sexual misbehavior against women:
All sexual misconduct against women is wrong, A-L-L of it, whether it’s considered more serious – such as rape – or not as serious – such as cat-calling, or groping, or unwanted flirtation.
It’s not cute, appropriate, or funny to mock a hash tag that is being used by women to discuss their experiences with sexual abuse or harassment.
Some of the women using that Hash are Non-Christian women, and if or when they see the insensitive tweets by so-called Christian men mocking their rapes and abuse, such as published by Tim or Fred Butler, they will want no part of Christianity. Maybe that is what Tim and Fred really want.
Part 2 – RICKY MAUSER
I jumped in under one of the Tweets prompted by the complementarian Christian men who were mocking the “Me Too” hash tag, to make a comment or two earlier today (I began composing this post on Dec. 7, 2017) to Mr. Bible Thumper Wing Nut, and some guy named “Ricky Mauser” left me a few comments in return.
I don’t think Ricky Mauser is the sharpest tool in the shed, which will become clear to anyone reading along, as I discuss his objections.
Before I get to Mauser’s arguments or responses to me, I want you to note where his concern really resides.
Mauser is concerned that a Christian seminary he approves of may supposedly be on the receiving end of misrepresentation or false information by a few people in these exchanges on Twitter (Tweet embedded below, or view it (Link): here).
Mauser’s tweet reads:
Hmm so master sem publicly states that the article she wrote was incorrect and you think Tim pointing this out is trying to discredit her in some hostile way? So you will go on record saying masters sem is deceiving the public….where did you get that intel?
11: 18 AM – Dec 8, 2017 ///
In (Link): this Tweet, Mauser accuses Dee of lying about Mastser’s Seminary.
I just want you to be aware that Ricky Mauser, as you can see in that tweet above, defends a Christian school ((Link): Master Seminary), but he is not willing to defend women sexual assault or sexual harassment victims, who are being ridiculed by his friends Tim (a.k.a. “Bible Thumper Wing Nut”) or by Fred Butler, and god knows what other men were piling on defending those sexists in these Twitter threads.
The tag line on the (Link): Master Seminary site actually reads, “Because Lives Depend On It.”
Oh, the irony. A seminary that is attractive to sexist men, and which draws men to defend it on social media, obviously does not care about the lives of women.
That seminary, and their “fans” and adherents, sure don’t give a damn about the experiences of women who are speaking up under the “Me Too” hash tag on Twitter, as evidenced by their attitudes, comments and behavior to and about women.
Edit. I just looked at the Master’s Seminary tag line on Google results more closely, and it reads:
“We train men because lives depend on it.
Ah, yes, MEN’S LIVES.
The Master Seminary site’s actual tag line should read, as this is far more accurate of their stance and the attitudes they are producing in the men I see defending them on Twitter, as such:
“WE ONLY CARE ABOUT MEN HERE. WE DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT WOMEN.”
(To paraphrase Jesus of Nazareth: A non-sexist tree would not produce such sexist fruit.)
The Master’s Seminary is in theological error: the Gospel and lives of everyone do not depend on men.
The first people to share the Good News – and they shared with men – were WOMEN.
Speaking to Mary, Jesus of Nazareth said (from (Link): John 20):
17 Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
18 Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her ///
Look at that. Jesus entrusted the news that he was risen to a WOMAN, and he told her to go and instruct his male disciples of it. Jesus did not brush Mary aside to wait for a man to come around.
I’ll address some of Mauser’s points here, the ones he Tweeted at me the other day:
MOCKING THE ‘ME TOO’ TAG IS THE SAME THING AS MOCKING WOMEN VICTIMS OF SEXUAL ABUSE or SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Ricky told me in (Link): one tweet that mocking the “Me Too” hash Twitter tag is not the same thing as mocking victims.
It is exactly the same thing, because most of the women using the “Me Too” hash are using that tag precisely to speak up about sexual harassment or rapes they have endured.
Others are using the “Me Too” hash to share articles about sexism or the sexual abuse of girls and women.
Therefore, mocking the “Me Too” tag is exactly the same thing as mocking women victims of sexual abuse or harassment.
NOT A VICTIM-HOOD MENTALITY
Ricky Mauser accused me of having a “victim mentality,” though he doesn’t know the first thing about me.
I am, and have always been, a right winger.
I am not a liberal feminist.
I take it by use of the phrase “victim mentality” that Ricky Mauser is referring to the tendency of far left wing liberals to think and constantly broadcast they get the short end of the stick on everything.
Some liberals do behave that way, and they can act like victims. Some of them cried and needed therapy dogs after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 elections.
Problem is, I am not, nor have I ever been a liberal, a feminist, nor did I vote for Hillary Clinton.
Secondly, women have, and are, in fact victims of sexual abuse, rape, and harassment.
Ricky’s Twitter friend, Bible Thumper, started all this fuss by making light of the “Me Too” twitter hash tag in a Tweet he made to someone.
The women tweeting about their experiences with sexual harassment (whether it was unwanted sexual flirting, or on the job sexual harassment, or having been raped), were actual, honest to God, Victims.
They were not “playing victim” or holding a “victim mentality.”
Unless you are so warped to think that being raped or sexually harassed on a job is no big deal – but then, you are a man who likely never experienced such treatment yourself, so of course you have no empathy, because you’ve not endured it first hand.
Rape, male entitlement, sexism, sexual harassment, unwanted sexual male attention, men treating women like sex objects, sex trafficking of girls and women, cat-calling, groping, and the like, are all VERY REAL phenomenon.
Those things are not products of “victim hood mentality” and are not creations of secular, liberal feminists.
Though I am a conservative and was a Republican my entire life, and
- though I lived a traditional values, Christian life, and
- though I remain a virgin past the age of 45 (I never married though I was engaged once, so I have remained sexually abstinent my entire life),
I was never- the- less subjected to occasional sexual harassment by men from the time I was a teen to my adult years, as have most women.
To offer but a few examples to what I refer:
I was approached by men I did not know when I was 18, 19 years old when I worked as a sales clerk at a store in the mall, where the men would walk up to me, make it a point to let me know they were leaning over to peer down my blouse (to view my breasts), then they’d comment on my bosom…
The men at the store would make crude, sexually suggestive comments to me, the male customers would do sexually inappropriate things to our store mannequins, knowing full well I could see them fondle and do other sexual things to the female mannequins (they were trying to scare me, sexually intimidate me), and so on.
Again, I was about 18, 19 at the time, a very devout, chaste Christian woman, and these were grown men ranging in age from 30 to 50 behaving inappropriately to me or in front of me.
Grown men were sexually harassing me, a teen girl. It made my working there uncomfortable at times.
Did you, Ricky Mauser, experience that sort of sexual harassment on a regular basis, as I did, when you were a teen and worked at a minimum wage job at a store? Probably not.
And why not? Because you are a man, you live a life of male privilege in your male bubble, where men are rarely the recipients of such disgusting and frightening sexual behavior from males, or from females.
In one of my college classes when I was in my early 20s,, one male student would NOT leave me alone. I did not want, ask for, or enjoy his amorous attention.
My male class mate was keen on dating me. He was always approaching me, flirting. His attention made me uncomfortable.
I was in that class to learn and make good grades, not to flirt or pick up a boyfriend.
My Christian mother, though, taught me, and my mother assumed that the Bible tells women, to never to hurt someone’s feelings, don’t be direct, so I could never come right out and point blank tell the guy in my class, “I am not interested. I don’t want to date you, please leave me alone.”
However, his male buddy in the class could read my facial expressions and body language – which conveyed I was annoyed by the guy’s romantic attention, and wanted him to buzz off – and the friend of the guy told the guy, “She’s not interested. Leave her alone.”
But did the guy leave me alone?
No. He continued with more of the same behavior, every time class met.
The male classmate would not get the hint I was not interested in flirting back, or with dating him. I was Greta Garbo, and my body language made it plain: I wanted to be left alone.
Persistent, unwanted amorous attention is NOT something most men endure from women. Receiving unwanted romantic overtures from men is scary, it is exhausting, and it’s annoying.
You men do not experience this most of the time, not nearly as often as girls and women do.
If you, a man, experience it from a woman, you feel comfortable telling the woman to stop it –
Most women, however, have been conditioned by culture and church to believe that it’s wrong, mean, or too “man-like” for a female to be blunt, bold, and so assertive with a man – we are taught to suffer this sexist garbage in silence, and pray and hope that the sexist man tires and leaves us alone.
Going to class every day became stressful for me, because I had to endure unwanted male attention.
The male student’s unwanted flirtation was not amusing or cute.
I had a difficult time concentrating on my school work in that class because of him.
Those are all facts from my life. Those are FACTS, not me making up “victim status” or wallowing in “victim mentality.”
And men usually are not subjected to this sort of crap, not AS OFTEN or as on a SEVERE a level, as girls and women are.
As a teen and 20-something, I’ve had men I do not know, as I was walking along city or neighborhood streets, slow down in their cars, to follow me –
Some of these men didn’t say anything to me, while others would cat-call from their cars – both types of “attention” frightened me, because I did not know if these sexist sleaze balls were planning on tossing me in the back of their car, kidnapping me, and raping me, or if they would just drive off.
And yes, those incidents made me a victim of sexual harassment. I was a victim in reality in those situations, I was not living in a “victim hood mentality.”
As to being approached by sleaze balls as a teen sales clerk working at a store, I was there to perform a job, not be flirted with, not have men make crude comments to me or sexually proposition me – but they did so.
I did nothing to “ask for” or “deserve” the sexual harassment from any of those men.
I dressed modestly (though how a girl or woman dresses should not be a factor in these situations).
I did not enjoy the harassment, and at times, the harassment scared me, because I did not know if the man in all these cases would stop with lewd comments, or try to rape me or kill me.
In this (Link): news article, the man raped the woman who pulled over to give him a lift in her car.
By the way, these two New York cops pulled over and then (Link): raped a teen aged girl.
There are news stories out there of men posing as police officers for the express purpose of kidnapping and raping women.
So, a girl or woman cannot always even trust a man who is in a police uniform.
If you’re a man, you probably won’t be raped by a cop, male or female. So this sort of thing never crosses your mind. You never have to worry about it.
So it’s quite easy for you, Ricky Mauser, to lecture women that they are just “being victims” or, like sexist douche blogger Matt Walsh, insist all women are “just being paranoid of men, they should trust men, men are actually gentlemen.”
See: (Link): Ariel Castro kidnappings
Castro kidnapped and held young women as prisoners in his home for years, raping them, getting them pregnant, and beating them up to cause them to have miscarriages.
Castro even snapped the neck of one of the kidnapped girl’s dogs to kill it, because the dog was trying to protect the girl for this sick perverted piece of filth. I hope that Castro is rotting in Hell, if there is a Hell.
These women were truly victims – they don’t have a “victim mentality.”
If you are a man reading this, truthfully, how worried are you that a “fake” cop is going to pull you over and then rape you? Probably nil.
Because the majority of the time, this sort of shit really only happens to girls and women.
It is a FACT that some men harass and sexually abuse women. This is not something I am making up.
Noting the reality of the world in which we live, that some men do sexually exploit or harass girls and women, is not “acting like a victim,” nor is it a sign of a “victim mentality” nor is it “being paranoid of all men.”
BIBLICAL PATRIARCHY
Most cultures over time have been patriarchal, with men having control over women.
That very thing can be seen in the biblical text itself – women in ancient cultures were treated like property by the males in their family. This type of view of women is still in place under Sharia in Muslim culture and religion to this day.
Complementarian Christians admit that, in their opinion, that God supposedly forbids women from teaching, preaching, and placed men in charge or authority over women.
Married women are told by complementarians that they must engage in a “one way” submission to their husbands, by way of Ephesians 5: 22.
(Speaking of the results of the complementarian interpretation of Ephesians 5:22, please see (Link): this post on this blog.)
All of that spells out that Christian complementarians teach and believe that men should be in power over women, and that this male hierarchy was designed by God, they claim.
Of course, I am (Link): no longer a complementarian and believe that complemenarians interpret such biblical passages incorrectly.
I do not believe that the Bible promotes a male hierarchy (or male headship or male only clergy) but that the Bible states that God actually stands opposed to male rule of women, in all contexts: church, marriage, secular culture.
The God of the Bible noted, after the fall of humanity in Genesis, that women’s response to living in a sin filled world, would be to turn to a man for security, identity, and comfort – rather than to God – and that men, God predicted in the book of Genesis, would exploit this female tendency through the ages to rule over, abuse, and exploit women. And this in fact did happen.
That is God declaring that, are you going to say God has a “victim-hood mentality”?
ALL UNWANTED SEXUAL ATTENTION BY MEN TO WOMEN IS BAD
Rape may be worse than cat-calling, but neither one is acceptable or excusable.
If you try flirting with a woman, and she turns you down, or is otherwise giving signs she is not into you, then BACK OFF and LEAVE HER ALONE.
Men need to learn that women do not play “hard to get.”
Some of you men think you’re being “persistent” (or charming or endearing) by “pursuing” a woman, but all you are really doing is STALKING her, possibly annoying the hell out of her, and guaranteeing a restraining order.
It’s really difficult to explain any of this to men, because most men go through life not spending every day or week or every encounter, as women do, putting up with insults based on their gender.
Men are blind to the every day sexism women have been putting up with their whole lives.
Men are not sexualized near as often as girls and women are, or to the same degree.
CHRISTIANS SEXUALIZE GIRLS AND WOMEN, NOT JUST SECULAR CULTURE
It is not just secular culture that sexualizes girls and women: it’s conservative Christianity too.
The (Link): church sexualizes girls and women by telling them their bodies are sexually alluring to men, (Link): they must dress modestly so that “a brother in Christ will not stumble.”
Christians also teach the following gender stereotypes (quite wrongly, as this is not biblical, but rather based on secular cultural assumptions) that (Link): only men like sex, (Link): women don’t like sex, and (Link): only men are “wired by God” to be visually stimulated, so, women are taught from youth, in churches and in Christian material, that (Link): their value exists in looking and being sexy.
Perverted and sexist male complementarian (Link): pastors such as Mark Driscoll tells women, teaches them from his sermons, that God orders them to perform oral sex on their husbands.
Driscoll, like so many other conservative complementarian Christian men, therefore, reduces even Christian women to being sex objects, there only to please men sexually. Women are not valued for their intellect or devotion to God in this sort of teaching and thinking, but for what they can do sexually to please a man.
And you, Ricky Mauser, want me to think all that is nothing but “victim hood mentality”?
If it was YOUR gender being treated so reprehensibly so consistently for so many hundreds of years, (Link): including by your church or faith, you’d be upset as well.
Just as secular culture sexualizes females and instructs them their only value is in their looks, physical body, and sexuality, so too does Christianity.
Christian men hear and pick up these SAME sexist messages from culture and church that devalue women, internalize them, and then treat girls and women as “lesser than” men, or as though women were created only to be pleasing to men’s eyes, to be sexual play things for men.
This callousness or indifference to how women are faced with sexism constantly can result in something like some male idiot Christian on Twitter, say, I don’t know…
Something like Tim the Bible Thumping Wing Nut, thinking it would be amusing to make a joke out of something like the “Me Too” sexual abuse and harassment tag, and for another one, such as you, to say, “Aw, what’s the big deal, shucks, he was just jokin’ around.”
Men -both Christian and secular- are conditioned with male entitlement: they feel they all deserve a woman who looks like a model to date them.
Pastors even tell men in their sermons they deserve a hot looking, sexy woman. I have sat through such sermons and seen (Link): both male and female complementarians write such drivel on their blogs, books, or magazine articles.
Many men, especially the ones who don’t realize they have internalized the sexism culture feeds them (and this view is promoted by Christians as well, especially complementarian ones), feel as though they are entitled to female attention and at times get abusive when women spurn their advances.
SEXISM EXAMPLES
There are many examples online showing how men feel entitled to female attention and will react nasty or violently if they are rejected, here is but one (seriously, there is even a Tumblr blog that collects the many news stories like this one):
(Link): Man Confesses To Killing Woman Who Didn’t Want To Date Him, Police Say
As a man, do you feel that any and every woman is entitled to your body, having sex with you, getting a smile from you (even when you’re having a bad day)?
Do most women ever make you feel that way, that you “owe” them merely for being a man and possessing a penis, then they get angry when you don’t give them what they want and expect?
Do you ever have women you don’t know grabbing your ass, making lewd comments at you?
Have you, a man, ever had it implied to you by a male or female boss, that if you don’t “put out” sexually, that your job is therefore in jeopardy?
If you do turn a woman down if she asks you out on a date, do you ever worry she will respond by screaming at you in fury, hitting you, shooting you, or stabbing you to death?
Probably not, but this bullshit is pretty much run the mill for women, at the hands of men.
And you want me to chalk all this regular, recurrent male- on- female sexism against women as “victim mentality.” I don’t think so.
When liberals say that men have “male privilege,” they are totally correct on that point. Men do not experience, over a life time, the sheer number of unwanted sexual passes, groping, gender-based put downs, as women do.
Nor do men risk being date raped at anywhere near the same rate as females.
Men don’t have to worry about their drink being spiked with date rape drug at a bar and being raped back at a man’s place.
Nor do men have to worry about “should I get on this elevator with this dodgy looking guy, because he might rape me, should I take the stairs.”
Men don’t have to think about, or fear, being raped on your way to your car at night while out shopping, and so carry your car keys like a weapon, just in case you are attacked.
SEXISM IN THE FORM OF UNCONSCIOUS BIAS
You, if you are a man, don’t have to worry about not being called in for a job interview based on your gender, as due to (Link): unconscious bias, employers prefer male names on applications over female names, or do things such as take male employee input more seriously than they do female employee input.
So, you, as a girl, and later, as a woman, learn tricks as you go through life to combat sexism, such as, rather than sign your full name of “Mary Jones” on resumes or job applications, you send in all applications as “M. Jones”.
(Seriously, there (Link): have been articles highlighting that employers have a bias to favor male names on resumes (or other types of applications) over female names, and one way women can get around this sexism is (Link): by using their initials, rather than their first names).
I had one office job where one male co-worker subtly kept pursuing me because he had a crush on me. I didn’t like his romantic attention, but I kept my mouth shut.
Another male co-worker I had thought it was acceptable (when the two main bosses were out of office, and he was put in charge of the office) to make sexually suggestive or crude jokes, sometime at women’s expense, and he did so in front of women, which made me feel uncomfortable.
Then you have men who fire their female employees because they find the female worker “too pretty.”
No, really, it’s a (Link): true story (and the judge said it was okay the employer did that to her).
See also:
Do men ever have to worry about garbage like that, nearly as much as women? No.
It’s laughable, then, that men want to live in a fantasy world where they think women who bring up this common-place, rampant sexism against women are being nothing but “victims,” or that some men want to make the “Me Too” tag about men, by whining and crying about how their feelings as a man are hurt now, they are afraid to be around women now, they feel ashamed to be a man, etc.
RICKY MAUSER’S BAD AND WEIRD THEOLOGY
Ricky was going on in one Tweet about how God controls everything, therefore, I should not be upset that women get sexually abused or harassed.
I suppose Mauser was trying to say that I should trust that God will even everything out in the afterlife, and so I should just endure injustice here on earth, and grit my teeth and bear sexism, until I drip dead and am in a coffin.
First of all, no, God does not “control everything”.
God, should he exist as described in the Bible, could control everything if he wanted I suppose, but I notice God chooses not to deal with sin and humanity in that manner. Just take a look at the world around you, with all the crime, starvation, wars, and natural disasters.
I have never agreed with Calvinist theology (I take it that Mauser is Calvinist, possibly?) so you’re barking up the wrong tree there.
Calvinists have this very odd view of God and humanity, that God decides every action and reaction of humanity and everything else, down to controlling molecules of dust that flitter about in the air. Calvinists only believe that men are free to sin, not do good (I disagree with these views).
Secondly, God does permit evil to happen. God does not intervene every time a man sets out to rape a woman.
There are plenty of news articles reporting about men raping women.
There are plenty of news reports about men who (Link): sexually harass women in the workplace.
If there is a God, that God is clearly not halting each and every case of sexual harassment or abuse.
As a matter of fact, the Bible says God expects humans to step in and police other humans.
See the following verses or passages for more on that:
Christians are to police other Christians:
(Link): 1 Corinthians 5: 1-11
How people should respond to secular authorities:
(Link): Romans 13: 1-7
If God personally intervened to stop every rape and case of sexual harassment of women, why oh why does God tell Christians in the book of Romans to obey the secular authorities?
There would be no need to have a secular authority to answer to if God controlled everyone’s behavior to make them behave well around the clock.
Men choose to misbehave. Some men chose to be sexist. Some men choose to rape women or sell them into sex trafficking. Some men choose to sexually harass women. And God does not step in to stop these men from doing these things.
The Bible also tells believers (Link): to do good deeds for other people when and where they can.
If it were true that “God controls everything” then it would not be necessary for Christians to do things like (Link): run soup kitchens to feed the poor because God would supernaturally provide Manna for all the homeless people – but he does not.
God puts some of the burden for correcting sin in the world ON PEOPLE.
That is, God is not going to magically come down from Heaven and stop every act of sexism, or give a sandwich to a poor man: that is why God tells YOU in the Bible for (Link): YOU to give sandwiches to the poor and to fight injustices such as sexism.
You are God’s ambassador, the Bible indicates.
You, the Bible teaches, are supposed to act as God’s eyes, hands, and feet.
You are your brother’s keeper. Yes, YOU are supposed to help the suffering around you, not always just pray and expect God to send a legion of angels to clean up the messes created by other people.
God leaves a lot of “control” up to human beings.
God willingly turns over part of his control TO YOU. God expects you to take that control and help other people if and where you can.
You are meant to be a steward over the earth and your time, money, and possessions.
God isn’t going to magically, supernaturally intervene in every case of tragedy or injustice.
Meaning, it’s up to us to fight against things such as sexual harassment, because God isn’t going to clean it up all by himself (or, that’s not likely – God isn’t stopping all wars, starvation, kidnappings, or people dying from cancer…).
YES, MOCKING THE HASH TREND IS MOCKING VICTIMS
At one point, Ricky tweeted this remark to me:
“I see your points and I see what you’re saying but I think there is a difference between making light of the trend and making light of victims.”
Mocking the ‘Me Too’ hash trend is the same thing as making light of victims, because the ‘Me Too’ trend consists, for the most part, of women sharing their stories of having been raped or sexually harassed.
Mocking that “Me Too” hash is mocking victims.
ASHAMED TO BE MEN
The “Me Too” hash tag on Twitter is not about trying to “make all men feel ashamed for being men,” as Ricky seemed to be saying to me.
You need to face facts, Ricky: men, generally speaking, do have a problem, as the “Me Too” trend aptly demonstrates.
It’s not, by and large, women raping or sexually harassing men.
Yes, there are examples here and there of female on male sexual harassment, or even the occasional (Link): man- on- man / boy abuse or harassment incident, but the vast majority of the time, it’s men who are sexually preying on girls and women.
There is something men are programmed to believe by religions and culture, or that they learn from their parents, that causes so many of them to think they are entitled to own, abuse, or mistreat girls and women.
We do not see a similar set of patterns and behavior IN MOST WOMEN.
It is definitely a male problem, and you declaring that you are personally not raping or harassing women is not helping the problem go away. Be a part of a solution, not a part of the whiny, “but Not all men, stop making me feel bad for being a man” protest.
Nobody is making you feel ashamed of being a man, certainly not in the context of the “Me Too” Twitter trend.
Women did not start out making the “Me Too” hash with the intent of “making men feel bad to be men” but only to draw attention to their own problems with having been sexually attacked by men.
If you are feeling ashamed over the “Me Too” hash trend, that is perhaps your own guilty conscience speaking to you. Stop blaming women for YOUR guilty conscience.
Sexual harassment in and outside of the United States (Link): is widespread, across political lines, across professions (it’s in politics, it’s in journalism, the entertainment business).
Sexual harassment and abuse of girls and women by boys and men are not rare or isolated incidents.
So yes, I’d say that the “Me Too” hash trend on Twitter shows that men, their assumptions and biases, about women are greatly problematic and dangerous to girls and women.
And that truth makes you uncomfortable…
So, instead of trying to be a better man, learn how you can help fight sexism, you either want to-
- down-play the existence, severity, or common occurrence of sexism and sexual harassment,
- dismiss it by saying things like, “women who complain about sexism are just playing victim,” or else,
- men like you ignore it,
- mock it like your friends chose to do, or
- make it about you, make it all about how it makes you feel ashamed to be a man (that is self absorbed – the “Me Too” trend is about the plight of females, it’s not about males or coddling men’s feelings)
– that is how you want to respond to the “Me Too” twitter hash, really?
Men really and truly do sexually harass women, in public, even in churches, and at jobs.
But you, Ricky M, and men like him, want to just ignore this fact of life, pretend as though women are imagining it, over-reacting, that the whole thing is invented by left wing feminists who vote Democrat and wear “pussy hats” in Women’s Marches…
So you slap the “victim hood mentality” label on the entire ordeal, so you don’t have to reflect on your behavior, or to actually help women.
I think a lot of men, even the ones who try to be “nice” to or about women, hold a lot of deeply ingrained sexist ideas about women they may not even notice they hold, until it’s pointed out to them.
See, for instance:
(Link): Women are Kind and Men are Strong: How Benevolent Sexism Hurts Us All
(Link): The Problem When Sexism Just Sounds So Darn Friendly…
(Link): Why Aren’t Women Advancing At Work? Ask a Transgender Person.
(Link): Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist
(Link): Man and woman switch names in viral workplace sexism experiment
The staggering numbers of girls and women who mention that they have been sexually abused or harassed makes YOU feel uncomfortable – so what, girls and women have to EXPERIENCE said harassment or abuse first hand. You’re only reading about it, so spare me.
The Me Too hash was there to point out specific incidents of male on female sexual harassment or assault, it was not created to condemn masculinity or all men.
The fact that you are conflating men or masculinity with sexual assault or harassment is of your own doing, and maybe a sign of a guilty conscience.
But I find it revolting how men have the audacity to make everything about THEM.
That hash trend is about women for women, and it’s a public reckoning of how some men treat women very shitty, on a daily basis.
That trend is not about MEN. How dare men try to make it about THEM.
It’s pretty revolting that so many men have dared to cry or whine about the “Me Too” Twitter trend hurting their widdle fee fees.
(I thought men, complementarianism and secular culture tells us, were supposed to be rational, not all emotional with feelings, but they sure have been getting emotional over the “Me Too” trend.)
My god, we have hundreds to thousands of women sharing their real-life experiences of having been sexually harassed out of jobs, for God’s sake, or having been touched without their permission (e.g., groped), or raped, and you want to complain that the trend… makes you feel bad, guilty, or ashamed about being a man? I am playing the world’s tiniest violin just for you.
RICK’S TWEET TO DEE
(Tweet reads)
“Tim has done great work for the kingdom and his ministry to atheists and encouraging reformed believers. Tim was tired of jeffthegk trolling so now I think he is letting Jeff expose his #troll behavior. And now Jeff loyal troll fans all have come along side him”
I take it that “Tim” is “Bible Thumper Wing Nut’s” first name?
As I detail in part 1, Ricky M, it’s the very sexist attitudes and behavior of Tim’s that is driving me away from Christianity and has helped turned me into a semi-Agnostic. I am not a full-blown atheist, but maybe that’s okay with you.
From what I saw of JeffGK’s tweets, he was not a troll but one of the only guys standing up against the sexism of Tim’s and Fred’s tweets.
Ricky Mauser, your priorities are misplaced. I could not care less about Master’s Seminary. Stop trying to shift the topic.
The initial topic was your pal, Tim, and side kick Fred Butler, mocking women sexual abuse and sexual harassment victims.
Please invest more time helping women fight sexism (which truly exists in the world) and less time defending a stupid Christian school, or sexists such as Tim, Fred, and whomever else was chiming in on that conversation.
You’re not doing your conservative, complementarian Christian side any favors, Rick Mauser, by defending a “Christian” guy who is clearly behaving in a sexist, inappropriate manner on an issue that is painful to so many women, both Christian and Non-Christian.
Edit (Dec 9, 2017).
Ricky M. contacted me a few times on Twitter (such as) after I Tweeted him a link to this blog post and he apologized a time or two, which I appreciate.
The fact that he apologized makes him better than the majority of the Dude Bro Complementarian guys I have run into on social media.
He says he’s writing a response to my blog post here, which is fine, but I did tell him it’s not necessary.
Related Posts:
Christian Pundit 
Here is my response:
https://thetopsecretarea.com/2017/12/19/sexual-abuse-sexual-harassment-and-privilege/
I again apologize for the way I spoke to you when we first crossed paths.
I’m pretty firm. Not really the type to be passive. I have had more cases of romantic stalking from Christian men than non-Christian men. Now, I do admit that I tend to spend a lot of time in Christian circles but when non-Christian men have asked me out and I’ve said no, generally they’ve respected that.
It’s the Christian men in my life who have turned into stalkers when rejected. And in each case, they also flat-out lied to others in the church about their behavior and they were believed, while I, the female, was not. I had one guy who assaulted me and most Christians in that group said I was lying. Two of them saw him grab me and try to hold me down and refused to say anything because the others were so adamant that I was just out to ruin him. One (single) leader of this group told me that Christian women shouldn’t say no to any Christian man even if they were assaulted because “it’s too hard to be a guy” and “some guys are just awkward about showing their feelings”. Sorry, but intentionally assaulting someone is not “being awkward”. Two years later, many of those same people were standing around as this guy started to assault another woman. He had her pushed into a corner and she was telling him no and trying to push him away. He was laughing and body blocking her. The others were totally ignoring it even though this was happening in plain view. They only reacted when I knocked him out of the way and led her into a restroom to see if she was okay. BTW, I reported both incidents and this guy was still around for years.
Another guy, who sadly taught the singles Sunday School class at the church I attended, called me at work every day, sometimes 4-5 times. When I did answer, he would start talking and ignore anything I said for long periods of time. If I refused or couldn’t answer, he would just keep calling. Sometimes he would lie to others about the reasons for his calls. At church, he would get right up in my face, try to hug me, grab and hold my arms, then shout that I was mean for not letting him. This went on for 4-5 months. Then this man started doing to same to several women who visited the class. He complained to other men in the class that I was avoiding him for no reason and even though his inappropriate behavior was out in the open, none of them said anything. When I went to the male pastor in charge of the singles, he told me that he wouldn’t remove him and he wouldn’t come see for himself because “he didn’t have time”.
None of these guys were “just being awkward”. They were committing crimes. And the Christians present almost universally sided with the man and not the female victim. I do think that male victims would probably get the same treatment if the perpetrator was male, particularly a younger male.
And this is why I think people who disbelieve victims are always wrong in these situations.
Thank you for sharing your experiences, Ishy, but I’m sorry for what you went through.
The way both secular and Christian culture go, I think a lot of men are raised to think they don’t have to respect a woman’s boundaries. (Do they even realize that women have boundaries???)
I may have a post on my blog somewhere about how some people (many Christians, especially) think that women owe men a chance, or how they will say a pushy, entitled guy is just “socially awkward,” so you should just give him another chance and date him.
Men are never put into positions like this.
I would take it that some of the Christians you are describing are probably complementarian, or claim to value women?
If that were so, you would think that if one of the men there sees you being accosted by another man, that Man 1 would immediately step in to get Man 2 to leave you alone, but that wasn’t the case.
I don’t know how Christian men can say they view women as being equal in worth to men when they won’t actually get off their butts and help a woman out.
It’s been a long time since I read this, but it might relate at least a bit to some of the things you were talking about:
This Is Why Being a Nice Guy Just Isn’t Enough, link is to “Everyday Feminism” site