so if you didn't feel like you had to get a girl....

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I think it's down to every woman to decide for herself how much she needs to protect herself against male aggression or other forceful conduct from strangers, while in a street setting. It shouldn't be down to any man to decide that they don't need to try and protect themselves.

I feel that any man whose attitude is something along the lines of "Oh, well .. some women hit men and stuff, so that means no woman should be avoiding strange men as a form of protection against potential violence, when walking down the street alone.", should stop and consider what it might actually be like to be a women who is scared of such violence happening.

My brother used to say this sort of thing when he first moved to the city.... while complaining about how he is a lovely person and so women ought not to be scared of him and thus they ought to make no effort to avoid him by crossing the street, and so forth.
He's been there a long time now though, and is rather older and wiser.
So, he doesn't say that sort of thing any more.

if you read the rest of the sentence, i was talking about the kind of guys who are trying hard to get a GF (which is not all guys, obviously), those who will approach any random woman they find remotely attractive and ask them out because they are desperate to get a GF, the kind of guys that will set quotas for themselves like "each week i will ask out 5 women until one of them says yes", NOT ALL guys.

What I don't understand is how men are continuously portrayed as the enemy by women (and some men) who claim to be striving for equality. If men are portrayed as people who can't be initially trusted then how is equality ever going to be achieved. It has been said so many times in this forum that women are just as guilty of being hung up on men, yet there is still an ongoing gender war that is mostly one-sided. I obviously don't know exactly that every man on this thread's intentions are, but I bet that, like me, they are defending how we are often portrayed as something to be feared and the bad guys. Only one side is being seen by the women on here

This is ironic considering the thread is about men trying too hard to find a girlfriend and how much emphasis men put on being in a relationship. Women do this too. Who do you think all those men have one-night-stands with? Themselves? From personal observation, most men who approach random women are not asking them out for a relationship. They want sex with no commitment, and if the girl agrees, obviously she does too.

The WP's God has suggested a such quota approach. He seems to have a gf now tho.

Plus, the kind of man who sets a quota to ask a certain amount of women out per week until one says yes represents a very, very small minority of men

The US in the 40s/50s was incredibly sexist. That's why the second wave of feminism began in the 60s. My life, as I live it now, would be impossible...even in the 70s, here. The sexism was intensely oppressive, by modern standards. There's been a tremendous change in how it's acceptable to live, as a woman, in the US. Much, much more range. Which is precisely why it's not a big deal if we don't couple up. Or if we marry women, thought that second isn't true everywhere in the country.

I don't think the same changes have come along for men. But it's women who made those changes for women, and I suspect it will have to be men who make those changes for men.

I 99.9% of the time reject the women who show interest in me, and some of them get really pissed and lash out at me verbally or talk bad about me behind my back! So our experiences differ. My personal opinion is that it is an individual trait not related to being male of female. Some people handle rejection better than others.

if you would genuinely like to understand why so many women are fearful or distrustful of men in public, please read this, especially the comments from women sharing their experiences:

http://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/

if you are so upset about men not being trusted, then take it up with the all the guys responsible for the violence and aggression against women and not with the women trying to cope with the fear of violence and aggression from men that so many have experienced personally. getting angry at the women (many of whom are survivors of abuse/assault from men which is the source of their fear) for being fearful is kinda sh***y.

You are still only seeing one side of it. Yes, women get assaulted in a variety of horrific ways by men. Men also do this to other men. Women do this to other women. If a black man were to stab a white man, do you think that the white man should then get other white men to fear black men? Or would you consider him a racist?

I've noticed that all mention of incidence of resentment and violence in homosexual relationships is still being ignored. Should men who have been abused by their boyfriends fear other men?

Oh, and about this whole "must find man for baby" thing.

I don't know if you've noticed, but many fewer young women are having children in the US than used to. Fewer women become mothers, period. It's not the social necessity it used to be. If you've got money and strong family/friend networks, you can do it on your own. Some giant proportion of babies are born out of wedlock, now, and there isn't the pressure there used to be to marry the fellow, particularly if he doesn't look like he'd be that terrific a husband.

There's still tremendous emotion surrounding fertility *once a woman has decided that she really wants to have a baby*. It's just that that's not a given anymore. What I do hear much more often from men is upset because of not having a chance to become a father, because the woman end of the must-couple-up frenzy just isn't there the way it used to be.

My own story - I didn't even think about having children till I was in my early 30s, and I decided then that I wasn't going to go on a crazy baby-fever manhunt, because it seemed like a nutty thing to do, one that was asking for trouble. I figured actually I'd wind up adopting as an older mother, if I met someone good, someone who seemed like he'd be a good dad. Just luck that I met someone a few years later, and had my own.

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Last edited by billiscool on 13 Jul 2014, 6:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What? I don't believe anyone mentioned women wanting men for babies here.

Yeah, I think often there is a conflation of this, horniness and the need to want a 'real relationship'. It sort of seems to solve three issues at once and so much be a 'good thing'. Paying for sex is socially stigmatised , and although many men in this situation do resort to it, the covertness of it and the generally unsatisfying nature of the transactions usually makes it an unstable propostion- and so is undoubtedly seen as suboptimal solution, and this by itself would - if honesty was applied - account for the primary driver of the need to find a relationship in most cases. It's just the cunning of biology if you will, which always has ways of applying rationalisation.

People are also told that there is this pot of gold with someone who 'truly understands you', makes your life seem brighter etc. And frankly as many NTs as aspies get duped into this, But they have a 'normal' sex life. Some aspies convince themselves that they have found it too, when more often than not is that they've found someone who either has ulterior motives for being with them, or likes the degree of interpersonal control one can have over aspies. All of it is based on some kind of romaticist fallacy that everyone has some person who makes living life mutually a good thing. Some people do find this, but I read somewhere it is about 30% or so. Most people are just not psychologically cut out for permanent monogamy and/or have the sort of psychological profile that makes it worth being with other people close to 24/7. But in a way society, in its promotion of the value of marriage, needs this myth. Because before this marriage was purely a business contract, founded upon arrangements and family power. Once that disintegrated in the 19th century the legio-social structure sort of needed the narriative that gets people to buy into organised child-rearing units.

Something else I've noticed as I get older is that single men who are not visibly sexually active (and who are older, but not necessarily) have become more and more stigmatised as potential sexual deviants, especially around children. Single men who are a bit socially off are considered threats - I mean such a risk has always existed and such men have often been a subset of such groups so it is not irrational. But there has been an amplification of the fear because of a strong media thread about the risks of child abuse (though the fact that this is often takes place within the sacrosanct family structure is conveniently ignored). Being seen as not in a stable relationship makes you out as an other of a sort. And some of the pressure, especially as you get older stems from this. I mean I remember specially my mum telling me when I became old enough to be curious about it that paedophiles were men who were unable to have normal relationships with women so pray on children instead.

Confusion of motives can make a desire for something more intense, because the confusion about why you want something so badly is often a source of mental stress in itself.

Indeed. My family has both middle class and working class parts thanks to a complicated history, and it is extremely noticeable that the need to get some kind of relationship as young as possible and start producing children is typically the obsession of many working class families (and indeed often the matriarchs therein), whereas middle class people (and this includes people I know at work), find the whole thing impolite to force. But then this also changes by ethnic groups too. I have a middle class Indian friend who takes an attitude that finding a partner at all times is the most important thing, this even though in many ways he has disengaged himself from his parents cultures. I think it is just a set of assumptions people make and get attached to by life experience that forms these norms. Most people never choose to question their norms because to do so often would involve a social disengagement - and this applies to religions and whatever else.[i]

Last edited by Ferrus91 on 13 Jul 2014, 3:45 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Didn't you tell me saying most or a lot before talking about women is sexist ,yet here you are using a lot with men . o.O