There are rotten eggs among both sexes. I'd say intoxicated males in groups are the worst since they are (in my experience) much more prone to become physically violent than women.
I'm kinda sure the men who sexually assaulted me weren't gay, but they were probably somewhat drunk.

in short - people are horrible

I wouldn't be so quick to generalize about gay men, or men in general, or women in general.

Alcohol can bring out the worst in people, but I wouldn't let some drunks color your perception of a whole group.

gay man are bad, women are bad

I don't want to get tooooo close but I'd say that's a bit tooo much of generalization lol

Nope. Just abusers.

The thread has barely gone up and an open (if brief) blame game just got dropped by the OP of all people. If it was supposed to be humorous you need to seriously consider how it reads, and make the joke more obvious. This is why we can't have nice things. I'm serious. Every time the subject of mens issues come up, it is nearly always associated with the judgemental trollish stuff, and that link just got to be a little more solidified. :/

My radar is broken. I'm having a hard time figuring out if you intended this thread to be serious or not. There were giveaways and an initial tone of sincerity but then this almost straight away, and a follow-up with "Yes you are lost on some of the few episodes of my life about harassment", which really makes it look like you weren't joking with your open judgement. You can't have it both ways. You can either lash out and revel in your catharsis at the expense of others, or you can try to have open and honest conversation and try to broker some form of little progress. The two do not mix.

What was doubly awful was to see how they started treating me differently. Like almost overnight all the qualities that made us friends disappeared and either I was either pushed into trying to sleep with them, or I was ignored because to them I was unfuckable.

THAT was a doozy for 13-year-old me to figure out.

I think what it is - for both genders - is young adults/teenagers see what behavior gets normalized and 'rewarded' and what behavior makes one vulnerable, and they make the broadly socially smart choice, not the morally or truthfully right one. Because women are socialized to not directly express their anger (in straight-up confrontations or with violence, like boys do), it comes out in more underhanded ways like you've described.

Wihle I was never the stereotypical girl at that age (my method for surviving teenage years was falling in with the nerd crowd and violently rejecting femininity to the point of being 'one of the guys' for a feeling of safety and personhood) I do remember having flashes of almost.... 'predator/prey mentality', almost. I remember stopping being friends with 'nerdier', less well-off kids because I sensed how low on the food chain they were - and if I made fun of them, I'd go higher up. I couldn't articulate it then, but that's what I did. I wasn't at the top, but I certainly wasn't at the bottom.

That could be what happened to the girls you remembered. They saw how 'normal girls' behaved, or wanted to run in a 'better' crowd, so they sacrificed your friendship to do so, and changed in a way that most likely ended up for the worse. It certainly was far less genuine. I doubt there's a person alive who hasn't made a choice like that at LEAST once as a teenager - navigating that shit is hard enough without all the cultural programming one gets about how to stuff oneself into either tiny, fucked-up 'man' or 'woman' box.

I want to save those kids from going through that. I think we'd end up with far, far, FAR better adults.

I absolutely agree with your last point - it is crazy-making to be around people who just won't grow up. Like wearing clothes that are far too small, it's embarrassing to be around. They've never learned to be a person, just a teenage boy/girl, and can only operate through that lens.

Real talk...

You seem to be conflating sexual comments with threats. They are not, in fact, one and the same thing, despite what certain people no doubt want to insist. While some sexual comments may be of a threatening nature, many are just annoyances unless you've got a chip on your shoulder.

I am not sure if you addressing me personally or people in general in your reply when you say, "Just think about other people and treat them with respect," but, in fact, I do. I would say generally I treat people with more respect than I am often accorded, in fact (case in point, I never have blacklisted anyone for a contrary opinion whether posted in plain speech or satire before). However, at the same time, I do not worry myself to death over whatever everyone around me might be sensitive to or triggered by. There is no pleasing everyone, as they say, nor is there any way to predict everyone's experiences. That said, I generally do avoid triggering other people when I am aware of an issue.

You're right that we're all in this together, and that should mean that everyone acknowledges the real complexities of social interaction, especially between men and women, and avoid both extremes of oversensitivity and actual threats. It also means both parties being held responsible for their actions and reactions.

However, that's not what most want to hear. Most just want something to be wound up over, especially if it earns them some virtue points in the eyes of a certain crowd. Yet, do you know what was considered the root of all virtues in the classical world? Patience. Not something I see being employed much.

Ready for more "respectful" blacklisting.

I won't be sharing my experiences, because this thread hasn't been up for long and already you yourself as the OP have made this comment, and high up on the first page is this reply, and I prefer not to offer up my personal stuff just for cheap lashing out or as ammo for people who seem to find the subject humorous.

I'm a little confused about how the other one could be seen as provocative? (at least as far as the opening post goes)

The disclaimers may have been quite pointed, but when you see how people instantly resort to accusing people of silencing and dividing, people get short on patience. It's also mystifying to me when shortly after this one opened up, people were already making sarcastic/strawman style humor posts, and the OP even dropped a miniature "gay men are bad, women are bad, drunk women are worst" comment high up on this very page. I'm seriously not getting what scale of provocativeness people are going by here. I was hopeful for this thread being a great counterpart to the other, but it was almost instantly wasted by the needlessly bitter mentality. After having seen that I don't want to open up my own stuff because it just feels like it would be adding validity to the people drawing senseless lines in the sand, y'know?

There's specific cases like the one he's talking and should be threated the same way. What If a girl like Ronda Rousey who as a mere example is your couple suddenly on a jealousy rant she beats you up badly. I mean there's a lot of girls that do martial arts, should they be threated differently in court just because they're women? He has a point

Sorry that explanation is partly stupid.

1. Yes mens have more aggressiv genetic stuff (hormones) and the education is that a man had to be strong. In a boygroup is that one the looser that show weakness (and its not funny for the guys that seen as weak). The boys/males at the top of that hirarchie get the girls.
   Sounds very easy... is very easy.... humans are animals (that can reflect more and change there behavior when they want and concentrate on it). A lot of people don't want see that fact because they thing a animal is in any way under the human. Not my thinking.

2. Yes. And this make it better when woman are the offender ? That is the reason for NOT the same RIGHTS for each gender (as wrote in the laws) ?
   I am not the strongest male but yes i am mostly stronger then a female... and what bring me that when i am the victim of sexual harassment or against that stalking ? When i use my strenght to defend myself against that then i will be punished not the "weak" woman. That's fact.
   On the other side each woman can use her strenght to defend herself against sexual harassement.

Woman kill too. Woman are not every time victims !
Read all around.. your sentence is so wrong that i question myself if you really think that this can be true.

And please not forget that most men's not go to the police because it is a shame.. it let them look weak (not good -education, groups and stuff i explained before- outside your flat/house with your partner that know your weakness too)

Disclaimer : I didn't read the post you were replying to. Skimming through replies before sleep. Sorry if I totally missed something vital, as this is more just a talking point and it does deal in generalisations. You're totally forgiven if you want to disregard this post given it is spammish ;P

"The reason why men and women are treated differently here is because 1. men are more likely to be violent"
I'm not so sure that takes into account the absurd number of abuses upon men that aren't reported. It's cyclical. They don't get reported because of how they are treated when they do, but the opinion that men are more violent and less effected by abuse is perpetuated because of lack of reported / resolved cases. Think of it like the rape reporting issue. If a system fails to properly respond, the statistics it generates are flawed.

It should make people consider how women would react if they were expected by their host culture to express less emotions, and were openly mocked for showing the full human spectrum. It stands to reason that they too would become pressure-cookers more prone to violent outbursts when their stressors (or specific buttons) become pushed. Violence is not something I easily glaze over, but as someone with a crazy layer of neurosis, an anxiety disorder and an inferiority complex, I'm all too familiar with the kind of dark seed it can plant in you when the only recourse you feel you have is total and utter silence and tolerance, or pretending it doesn't effect you and you have to laugh it off or be seen as less.

There are layered issues in our society, and the attitudes and pressures are a complex landscape that interplay with one another. What may seem like a simple (if horrible) stat often has an underpinning that can be addressed. I feel that one of the best ways to deal with negative issues that seem to stem from men, would be to take steps to rehumanise them. Unless you have an exceptionally small or infirm frame, a gentleman who loses his temper is almost immediately seen as a potential danger and something that needs to be immediately suppressed for the safety of others, whereas the fairer sex is typically assumed to have been provoked into that state and (somewhat patronisingly) has to be placated. It's surprising how these gendered attitudes usually have a dual role when damaging preconceptions are in play, which is why I still insist that in an ideal world, the whole 'gender wars' participants would be each others greatest allies.

I can't claim innocence either. I would love to claim to be a total and complete egalitarian in attitude and in action, but try as I might, because I like everyone else was raised with the whole gender stereotypes thing, I do feel a natural inclination to protect women if I happen across a public argument that seems to be out of hand. And yes, I do feel more threatened if I end up taking part in one and the other person is a guy. Though I try to mentally recognise that they're no more or less likely to engage in violence based on sex alone, that ingrained trend is there. My personal experiences should actually dictate to be more worried about violence from women, and how I also wouldn't be able to respond with a likewise degree of force without immediately being seen as the aggressor. Cognitive dissonance is a weird thing, but it pays to be mindful of the many pitfalls and oversights in ourselves and our interest groups / polling techniques, and always remember the traps that orbit around matters of statistics.

I don't even know where I was going with this. I think maybe bare stats without full consideration just irk me, and that I am almost never convinced by stats alone given peoples unconscious habits of bias. Anybody can attribute something to a sex without quoting credible sources (and credible sources can have crippling oversights or even direct disagreements with other credible sources). Reading between the lines is where the truth usually resides, and flat stats always make me go "hmmmm".

So uh...
Yeah.
I'm gonna... press 'submit' now, and hope I didn't come across as preachy. That one thing just tripped a ponderous stint, and I figured this thread was as good a place as any to drop it. Almost none of that was pointedly directed at you, just a spin-off rambling. xP

Yes it wasn't warranted and no interest shown, no eye contact whatsoever and never said anything to the person...

What made me even more uncomfortable was he said it as he was leaving the sauna and rubbed his hand across my knee ... I was horrified! I was only one in the sauna...

I figured it was his way of making a pass so as long as I didn't respond then I was good... but I stayed awhile in the sauna after he left afraid to do anything.

Statistics
91 guesses
46 players
45 solvers

Ah, ok, thanks! I thought you clicked in the image and it took you to the giveaway.

The meaning of the parallel is duplicitous:

1) that the scale and importance of one problem is several orders of magnitude greater than the other.
2) that replying that way would show a worrying lack of self-awareness, at best.

I didn't want to this to happen, EVERYBODY on both threads knows about how it happens, I'm not talking about the frequency of how it happens to males or females, i'm talking about how it happened and how some cope with it.

The other thread invited to create a new one about this topic, so I did it.

i didn't know women stopped random strangers in the street and forced them to work for them or buy them stuff, then discarded them.
i thought guys had a choice when a girl asked them something, unlike harassed women.

by making them believe there was a chance and pretending they were interested in them.

so you are saying men do all these things to get sex from a woman, not because men can be nice.
basically everything in this world revolves about either getting paid while working, or getting sex when helping someone.

But I'm sure people will say this is okay, something totally different.

I won't say it's OK but yes, it's completely different. What you're talking about is not abuse, it's manipulation. When you find out you're manipulated you can usually drop the whole thing and walk away. It's not possible with abuse.

And as Mully said below, sex is not some kind of reward for helping women, just like helping other men doesn't get you easy money or free beer.

There is a key distinction here that you are missing.
The word you are looking for is a "user". While that is dishonest and shitty, men also do this too, such as lying and also leveraging their stature, money and physical belongings to persuade for things they want without being forceful or hostile. It's a power dynamic that both men and women partake in, and yes, it results in a lot of honest folk being burned. People who are users are almost universally seen as douchebags, both men and women.

"Abusers" however are those who use open belittling or objectification, taunts, intimidation (both passive and active), mockery and coercion that skirts the line of legal fine-print. Catcalling is a form of abuse but thankfully one that is usually on the mildest side of the abuse spectrum, merely objectifying and annoying the target, though it can frequently segue into open mockery. The problem is that there are cases of catcalling that are more overtly (and knowingly) intimidating, though that is usually male catcallers on lone women, and usually preys on worries of people becoming violent, which is pretty much an act of coercion where the aggressor carefully makes sure they can claim innocence. When you mix these two sides together, it causes even innocent compliments or mild catcalling to take on a shade of doubt, where there is that underlying worry of it turning sour if the caller is rejected. Men are totally just as likely to receive a similar kind of negative attention, but it is just less likely to take the catcall (flirt / sexual) flavor, and instead be a challenge or a taunt by default.

At first glance, the difference between a user and an abuser can seem small, especially with how varied catcalling can be in intensity. However abuse is always done to a person, whereas users require participation from the target. Users are universally seen as douchebags, but abusers are sometimes ignored as something to be tolerated, and targets speaking up can be seen as 'whiny'.

I think it's an important distinction to make.
And yeah, people suck, regardless of what genitalia they're rockin.