Thats pretty rough :/ i'd like to see the link that started this all but it's been taken down, it seems.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinio.....AczquQE4AgwTiP

Here's the original article, which is full of whiny cowards who let people die because they were too scared of the repercussions.

The whole thread Vitai started was sexist and rude. I'm usually not one to jump into a conversation like that, but after seeing a huge amount of "I agree" posts not even addressing how ridiculous the article was, I felt like I had to.

And I'm sorry women have called you misogynist simply for being gay. I've been told I'm a man-hater, that I "just need a good man to sleep with (in a much more vulgar way), etc. So it definitely goes both ways.

The amusing part is that i'm engaged to Ichi, who's a wonderful person and totally not a dude. I just think some people are way too stoked up about stuff, and given the semi-anonymity of the internet they go a little overboard. I bet if they all were talking face to face, the dialogue would be quite different on both sides of the fence. XD

While letting people die for lack of help is completely ridiculous, there's a small nugget of reality to the article. It has nothing to do with all the rude, "this is why i'm gay" and "women are evil" rhetoric, but in that society is experiencing a shift. It's never become terribly oppressive, but more than a few times I've felt that I was assumed to be in the wrong based on my gender. This isn't because women are "crazy" or anything. My thought is that it's the images the media bombards us with every day; how many TV commercials do you see where the men involved are portrayed as idiots or otherwise second-class citizens when you really look at the subtext involved, and the news is nothing but stories of rape and murder. Now, it hasn't gotten anywhere near oppressive, and isn't anything like being a racial minority these days, but it's there.

I think what it all boils down to, really, is that we live in a culture of victimization where everyone, regardless of what equipment they have between their legs or what color their skin is, feels like they're getting screwed because they live every day assuming that they are, and make it so out of pretense alone. I just kinda try my best to blow it off. XD

What do you think?

Naw nevermind, I completely missed the boat on that one. XD
This is why I shouldnt reply to things right after waking up. :p

I agree that some of the article had instances where men were wrongfully blamed. And the fact that the author decided "FEMINISM IS TO BLAME" is the part where I call bullshit. There is a culture of victimization, but then again, being a victim is all too common. Being a queer woman of color (hispanic), it unfortunately happens a lot. And some people will say "don't be a victim!" but what the hell am I supposed to be? I never asked to be a victim, and yet here I am, just existing. Overcoming victimization in a culture that does not favor you can be hard, and you're always fighting an uphill battle. And yeah, there are always people looking for someone to blame because they might happen to be a woman or a man or person of color or queer or whatever or all of the above.

And yeah, I hate when commercials make the man an idiot or dumb brutes. I also hate that virtually all cleaning commercials are targeted towards women. I've yet to see a man in a laundry commercial. Stereotypes suck, amiright?!

Also, congrats on being engaged! That's awesome. :3

Awwh thanks so much! <3

And yeah, I definitely noticed all cleaning product commercials show a woman so intensely happy to be mopping the floor, even though the social paradigm has long since changed from women being the stay-at-home maid sort. Also notice that any time there's minorities and whites in a commercial, the white people are always less intelligent, more poorly dressed and/or represented as a lower social status.

I'm not sure at what point I start just reading way too far into it but it's definitely something people should be more widely critical of.

It does seem silly to use an article like that to discredit a whole group. If they hadn't posted the "this is why I date men exclusively", it wouldn't have turned into such an issue, though I think that's kinda what the intent was on some level.

Yeah. Just the blatant woman-hating thread gets me. Vitai even responded saying he'd actually let a stranger die if he was in a situation like that rather than the SLIGHT risk of being labeled a pervert. So there's that. We see the true character.

Not defending, and this is not to say that I agree with his stance (because I do not), but fear is a damn powerful emotion. There's a reason it's called emotional scarring.

All in all, the whole sex offender listing has become an exercise of extreme social paranoia (albeit starting with good intentions), I know of at least 2 personal stories of men wrongly accused of sexual predation against minors, when in reality they were only looking out for the well-being of the child(one of them committed suicide as a result). Society as a whole has become too goddamn paranoid(in general), and the numbers do indeed show who is getting blamed more. The media is mostly to blame for this.

Fear is a very damn powerful emotion.

Wow, that's pretty awful. I'm sorry to hear about your friend. And see, here are indeed instances where yes, the media and paranoia are to blame, but not necessarily women as a whole, which is basically what this article had said. And fear is powerful. I just don't buy that it's powerful enough to not save a life in a non-threatening situation like entering a women's restroom. But maybe that's me. I shudder to think if I was a woman in that situation and the only person there to help was a man too afraid to act because I might cry molestation or something. It's quite sad.

The thing is, laws like that do exist for a reason, and it's unfortunate enough that enough sexual predation happened to minors for those laws to even have been made laws, you know? There's no good solution to it. Case-by-case is always going to have flaws, and it's terrible.

It's not so much that YOU might cry molestation, it's because of the PERCEPTION of others. a 2-year old cannot speak for themselves. If someone had walked in, saw the man in there, and were predisposed to the idea that he's probably a predator because wrong gender in restroom, then the perception would still send him away. Why? Because we as a society are so goddamn paranoid of everything. Is it wrong? Absolutely. Is it likely to change? Fuck no. Why? Because PARANOIA EVERYONE IS OUT TO GET ME OR MY KIDS.

Additionally, where the hell were the 2-year-old's parents, anyway?

Crimes of omission < crimes of commission in almost all cases, in my estimation. This is to say, I'll always fault someone for doing something wrong (even if it's an "accident" - which I don't give much weight) before I'll fault them for failing to do something.

On the other hand, there are a lot of whiny bastards out there who will use any excuse to not do anything in the face of a life-or-death situation... and that is horrifying. I'm not VitaiSlade's friend... and I don't think I'd consider it after reading what he had to say there. There are a lot of guys with misogynist streaks, especially gay guys in the furry fandom.

I do think that sex crimes should be held to the same standards of evidence (even providing that those are nearly always impossible to satisfy) as other crimes, i.e. "Beyond a reasonable doubt."

Anyway, I look forward to meeting you some day so we can spar. I miss doing more martial arts. :)

This may just be my simplified world view here, but I am pretty sure if you pull a drowning girl out of a river society is going to think "Oh, that man saved that girl's life!" and not "Oh wow, that dirty pervert touched a little girl." If you're scared that the slightest interaction with a child is going to land you on the sex offenders list, then there is probably a reason you have that fear, such as secretly being a pedophile.

Also, I seriously got a good laugh out of “Uncle Tims” — male feminist lapdogs eager to curry favor with their female and feminized masters — are everywhere, Smith notes. which has to be the most ridiculous thing I've read in a long time.

Right? I could barely get through the rest of the article after that! Whaaaaat.

EXACTLY!! Ahhh that's so true why did no one else in that conversation see that?!?