Women's first experience with being sexualized is nearly getting kidnapped from the mall at age 12, men's first experience with being sexualized is just not a thing that happens for 80% of men. And even really hot men that do get objectified or sexualized are generally safe when they are.
It's just a completely different average life experience.
Yeah, go read the comments under the ample news stories of e.g. female teachers statutory raping their students. It's all full of "He should be happy", "What a lucky kid" and so on.
It's not seen as "being sexualized" but as "being lucky". So of course, if you frame it like that, nothing bad ever happens to men.
I think that's super valid at a macro level and probably explains a lot of women's feelings. At a micro level, it doesn't always hold water.
I, a male, was sexualised a lot from maybe the age of 14 by parents of my friends and even extended family. It wasn't comfortable. I was groped a lot. A lot of sexual comments.
That was my experience. Similar to the female experience in some regards. I don't feel any hate or injustice when men are portrayed like super buff unrealistic figures. I just think it looks cool.
In my experience, it's all an individual experience for how people feel about the media portraying unrealistic body image. I wonder sometimes if I had a large network of other boys that were sexualised, like women do, that I might have a different opinion.
1 in 6 men have been SAed. What you experienced wasn't a "woman experience", it's simply the reality for SO MANY children regardless of their gender.
What happened to you isn't lesser just because you're a man. Being molested isn't "the female experience". It's just something that happens.
🫂 It sucks seeing people minimize it happening to men or outright saying it doesn't happen, but you are valid in your experience. Never stop talking about it because the more you talk about it, the more comfortable other men will be in doing the same. Creating that network starts with talking about it.
I think another perspective is that men find appeal regardless in being sexualized because it's commonly seen as aspirational.
The ladies man was a stereotype for a reason.
You know the phrase "women want to fuck him, men want to be him". Yeah that's kinda the thing about JoJo.
I don't want to fuck any of the JoJo protags, but hell I'd love to be as musclebound as Jonathan, as cool headed as Jotaro, as suave as Joseph, and as determined as Giorno.
If your not attracted to them, they are presented as very aspirational. Most men who are presented as appealing are.
Is it a ridiculous standard, still yes, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still a thing.
It's just glossed over because Men stand from the opposite end because men are told they ought to be like this. They will have their dreams come true if they can meet this standard.
Its not because it's safe, it's because it's what all kinds of media tells us we are expected to be. He-man, Conan, Bond, JoJo, comics, etc.
I think avoiding that both versions of this are kinda bad for their respective gender, not just sexualizing women, is why toxic masculinity has dug as deep as it has.
And I love JoJo but I know that dudes genuinely do model themselves after these kinds of characters, and we don't have a million faces coming out of the wood work to tell us that it's wrong, that we shouldn't be destroying ourselves to meet an impossible standard.
You can't put the shoe on the other foot without checking the size first. And frankly I don't think most men can fill em' despite desperately wanting to.
No one is saying that men aren't also victims of the patriarchy in exactly the way your outlined, just that they don't get sexualized in the way women do.
To be honest, I don't even know what it would look like for men to be sexualized in this way. Why don't women sexualize men in this way, and what would it look like if they did? There are plenty of heterosexual female artists and writers, so why aren't they interested in sexualizing men this way?
They do, it is just in writing or yaoi or something. Judging from my female friends it tends to be smut, some sort of gay manga, or creating characters that they mod to have sex with each other in a mmo or something like that.
I think you likely haven't looked super hard then. For one example, Fifty Shades of Grey broke into the mainstream and got a trilogy of movies. With a little more searching, you start running into the erotica subgenre of novels, which includes such gems as seen below.
it's not considered aspirational because it's sexual though, it's considered aspirational because it's powerful. The power to physically engage something, the power to get the women they want, the power to not be held down by rules. The same could not happen with women because in the eye's of society women's power isn't valued, women aren't people, they're trophies- that's why women can be freely sexualized in media as a treat for the viewer but a woman being sexual in real life is called a slut and is looked down on when the same generally doesn't happen with men.
I agree to an extent that this isn't good for men either, the issue is it's harmful for different reasons, and when they're treated as the same it's often in service of minimizing the harm to women rather than highlighting the harm to men.
You have a point that the difference is power. Though I will argue that many sexualized characters are still shown as powerful.
That being said, I think those elements are kind of hand in hand and irregardless of how they spin:
they both still hurt people by presenting an impossible image that causes a ton of damage when one inevitably can't match it.
With the problem being we don't have anyone calling this out to the same extent. Its wrong for women to be presented that way, but like this comic, people are more than willing to go to bat for it, where men facing this issue get much more scrutiny if not vitriol.
I don't think either are ok, nor do i believe womens struggles with it should be minimized to prop up the other side of the issue,
i just think men ought to get more help in this corner of the issue, without minimizing what women go through with being sexualized as well.
There are some, yeah, but it's usually in spite of them being sexual not because of it- always exceptions to the rule obviously.
I do get what you're saying, the issue is most men don't identify the issue on their end, unfortunately. They just see the men as powerful and cool and that's it, that's a part of the patriarchy we have to contend with- even though men are also hurt by the patriarchy, the framing of it makes men out to be on top even though those who are are actually on top are a smaller group of wealthy and powerful people, men just disproportionately have a more power than women in comparison and that makes it harder to see the problems.
im not presenting it as a good thing, im presenting it as something that we are infact dealing with and have been.
look across media from the past 50 years. really earlier with stuff like dick tracy.
An emotionless strong shell of a man with chiseled features and boundless strength that solves the case gets the girl and can't form attachements with anybody, as he beats and shoots the bad guys.
Its the same stuff and its what we give to kids to be their heroes, who they want to become.
Thats entirely dependent on the content you choose to consume and the culture you happen to be born in but im not interested in your hypothesis. I have a son and the generalizations youre promulgating contribute to headlines about teachers raping young boys and adult men who cannot report assaults against them by men or women.
If you can't make your point without falsely speaking on behalf of all men, then its probably not a good point.
thats part of the problem, and I agree its a problem.
your assuming im in support of this generalization, and not that im pointing out its present and does infact affect people and cause the exact issues your describing.
Almost every guy I know is a victim of CSA or sexual harassment as a minor. You're making life worse for victims by weaponizing what we go through for gender war shit. It's fucking disgusting. Just stop.
Acknowledging that men are uncomfortable being sexualized is NOT an attack on NORMAL women. It's just an attack on women who feel entitled to sexualize strangers but don't want to be associated with who they deem "the villain".
I was an infant the first time I was sexualized. My mother still talks about it like it's funny. I've been SAed more than once this year alone.
My partner's mother was, and is, a sex addict. He's a victim of CSA and SA.
My brother is a victim of CSA.
Statistically, 1 in 6 men ADMIT to experiencing SA and men are significantly more likely to minimize their own experiences.
I promise you, you know a LOT of male victims but because you say shit like this, they simply don't feel comfortable telling you about it because they know the first thing you'll do is compare them to a woman.
This seems a bit like arguing for the sake of arguing? He still said about 20% of men experience sexual assualt, which is more than your 1 in 6 even. And yeah, on average, men are in a safer position when women when SA happens, and on a societal level these are issues of a completely different magnitude. I don't think it's useful to male SA victims to do this whole song and dance every time someone makes that distinction, rather than putting that energy into something more fruitful.
Edit: before I get a ton of arguments about me not getting it, let me get this out of the way. I'm a trans woman. Before my transition, I was SA'd. When I was 13, I was alone on the bus. An old man came to sit next to me. Cornered me. Groped me and touched me throughout the bus ride. I remember how scared I was, shooting glance upon glance of desperation to the bus driver who did nothing. It was horrible. I know a lot of men who have gone through the same, and many others much much worse. And they should get the support they need.
But ever since I came out as a trans woman, I've had experiences similar to that, and a lot scarier, much more frequently.
Hey, just want to point out that the sexual assault you experienced isn't what is counted in that 1 in 6 figure for men (or, similarly, the 1 in 4 figure for women). That 1 in 6 figure is for rape specifically, not just sexual contact.
For men and women, the rates of sexual contact of any kind shoot way up, with women hitting a staggering 80% and men at 40%. Many think the number of men is way lower than is reported, due to social factors. I know I'm terrified to experience the sexual assault I experienced as a teen because I know people are judgy, especially since 2 out of 3 perpetrators were girls.
The figure for men is actually higher than 40% now depending on the study you look at for it. It gets higher every year with more awareness about it coming out.
I'm trans masc, you can stfu about women "having it worse". Being a trans woman doesn't make you any less sexist.
It's 1 in 4 women vs 1 in 6 men and men are less likely to admit it. The numbers for BOTH are said to be much higher.
NO you're not "safer" as a man when getting FUCKING RAPED.
On a SOCIETAL LEVEL rape is equally bad and men having a harder time reporting it and often not being taken seriously when they do, because they're men, doesn't mean it doesn't happen to them just as often.
If someone is willing to rape you, they're are equally willing to kill you if they think you'll say something.
If a man is raped and murdered, you won't be able to tell unless they were also sodomized.
Rape is often about control and control over a man carries more weight than control over a woman. You're also less likely to get caught and can defend yourself easier than if you'd have raped a woman. There is more incentive to rape a man.
I have been raped twice this year.
I'm genderfluid and refuse to have sex in boy mode because I REFUSE to get raped as a man. I isolate that experience to me as a woman. If I am boy moding I stay in a powerful position or otherwise return to the state of being a woman.
You are hurting ALL victims by minimizing how often rape happens to ALL PEOPLE.
We need equal protections or we end up ALL suffering for it.
I'm not saying you're safer as a man than as a woman when you get raped.
What you went through is horrible and I'm not saying you don't deserve the same protection women do because you're trans masc.
But on a societal level, the sheer levels of magnitude and safety we are talking about between men and women is different on the subject of SA as a whole. You can ignore that for ideological purposes if you want, I can understand why you would in the position you are in. But I'm also not gonna pretend they are the same.
Im not appealing, im short and overweight and i have had multiple times where i got uncomfortable with people. The worst time when a woman was literally rubbing her ass on me up and down on my crotch.
Like i 100% agree women have it worse dont get me wrong. But to just say it doesnt happen to 80% of men is just outright not true.
Agree on it being a much higher degree among women and to a much more dangerous degree.
Don't agree with it being so uncommon among men that less than 20% of men ever experience it at all and when they do they're generally safe, multiple times in university I had male friends leave the dance floor cause women they didn't like were groping them. They just don't report things like that when it happens.
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u/Ramblonius 13h ago
Women's first experience with being sexualized is nearly getting kidnapped from the mall at age 12, men's first experience with being sexualized is just not a thing that happens for 80% of men. And even really hot men that do get objectified or sexualized are generally safe when they are.
It's just a completely different average life experience.