Number One: The implied meaning is that no men are "safe"
...
I've been saying that ever since I joined SI
This first statement of yours might be taken to mean something very different from the second one:
Number Two: watch them
you cannot tell the good guys from the bad guys
until it is too late
And any non-criminal, decent man who reads your provocatively worded post to mean Number One (no men are safe,) has a right to feel you've used the gender-equivalent of 'nigger' to him. Because he is safe, but you've written, provocatively, "no men are safe."
Of course, if all it means is that one has to beware males greatly more than females where sexual predation and/or violence are concerned until one has established that they are among the "good guys," who could differ with that sentiment, and who wouldn't advise their daughters the same thing?
I would suggest that no females are "safe," either, until they have been established to be "good guys" themselves.
One is a fool to make oneself vulnerable to strangers of either sex. Only naive people do that. Females can be predators. They can harm the unsuspecting. They can be as cruel and cold and dishonest and self-serving and devious and nasty and exploitative and manipulative and sociopathic and vicious as males. They can cause suffering, and do it on purpose, as readily as can males.
Female viciousness is less likely to manifest in physical violence, but not less likely to manifest.
Possibly partly because I've never been raped (though I was sexually molested as a child,) my personal experience has not at all been that females are more benign than males.
Personally, I'd say to anyone, don't give your house keys out indiscriminately to males or females, and don't cross or threaten a female boss any more casually than you would a male boss. If you do, you'll be sorry. I'd say to females essentially what you've said: until you know who a guy is, don't be alone with him in an elevator.
I suspect, X, by writing "no men are safe...I've been saying that ever since I joined SI," you've made a certain number of "safe" males (who didn't notice that you took it back by acknowledging at the end of the post the existence of "good guys,") feel like they'd been called an ugly name by a bigot.
And I suspect that this will color future interactions, and that you will feel victimized.
Just my take. I may be wrong. |
