What is the most hilariously/infuriatingly wrong thing you have ever heard about male biology from a grown woman?

But you have to understand why women are reluctant to speak up. We often do not get the support we need from other people if the person(usually man, but all people really) becomes aggressive and threatening. And this is a common enough scenario that women do not want to speak up.

Imagine for a second, you're sitting on the train and some dude comes over and sits next to you and splays out like that. In this particular instance he is much bigger than you, which is already intimidating, and he takes up your space like he owns it, which is very dominating. As woman, we are sociaized to make ourselves smaller to accomodate other people (this is not true for ALL woman, obviously, but for the sake of this example, let's take the rule rather than the exception).

You decide to speak up. You tap the man on the arm and ask him if he could squeeze in a bit better, because he's taking up space on your seat. There's any number of ways this could go aside from him saying "yes, of course. So sorry!"

  • "Why don't you just sit on my lap, baby?"
  • "Fat bitch like you shouldn't take up so much space anyway"
  • "No." (spreads out more)
  • "What? you don't like that? Are you some kind of dyke?"

These are things that are said constantly to women in public when they speak up and ask for their personal space. So many people think they have a right to our bodies and personal space that it is seen as a "bitch" move or some kind of insult if we DON'T want to be encroached upon. When you speak up, you are inviting a potential "conversation" with this person.

Once you say something to a man in public, you don't know if he is taking that as an invitation to continue talking to you and say or do whatever he wants. YOU might be a nice normal dude, but creepers come in all shapes and sizes and without knowing you, we have to evaluate the risk.

This is the problem. Man are not trained, on the whole, to proactively respect other people's spaces. They wait for someone to ask for it. Women, on the whole, are trained not to ask because speaking up invites potential harassment and, worst case, threatening behavior.

It would be great if both of us could change, but it's difficult because neither gender is ever totally aware that this is what they are doing in those instances. The social cues are very subtle and every instance is not isolated, it accumulates. Men think asking someone to move is a simple act women should be able to do. Women think closing your legs and keeping only to your seat should be a simple thing to do (because we are trained to do it) and they shouldn't have to ask.

/r/AskMen Thread