Thread by @SaiyanSerenityV

Look. It's still all over my feed right now and frankly I'm not done talking about it so here we go.

Dudes on my feed who are genuinely afraid to be around girls right now, please hear me out.

I see you. Some of you are very good friends of mine. Let's have a chat.

I need you to get that this isn't an attack on you or your character. When I say these things I'm trying to be genuinely informative, but I'm undoubtedly gonna sound harsh at points. Ok.

Please take a moment to really reflect on your fear. *Why* are you afraid?

Are you afraid that you might accidentally make a woman uncomfortable or "accidentally" assault somebody?
If you really sit on this idea and think about it, it becomes more and more ridiculous. Verbal communication and basic decency solves this problem with ease.

Don't touch strangers. Ask permission to touch/kiss/any form of intimacy. TALK WITH THEM ABOUT THINGS INSTEAD OF JUST DOING THEM. Don't take advantage of somebody who is inebriated. Even if they seem to want it. Even if you are drunk too. Drinking doesn't rob you of your humanity

So that leaves the other question.
Are you simply afraid that a woman would falsely accuse you of assault? It's an ugly question, what it implies.
But a lot of men are thinking it, whether they want to admit it or not.
But even if it makes you uncomfortable you need to address it

This fear implies that you don't trust women. That any one of them could so easily throw out a dire accusation like that. To what? Ruin your reputation? Destroy your career. Do you honestly believe you are that important, that people would go out of their way to destroy?

And not only that, but would do so by accusing you of something so horrible?? I don't think you guys get, even with the metoo movement, just HOW MANY women are assault victims. Literally half the women I know are. That might even be underestimating.

I guarantee, without any doubts what so ever, even if I don't know you at all, that a handful of people in your inner circle have been assaulted, whether you know about it or not. No woman who has ever been affected by assault would falsely accuse somebody. Ever.

So I need you to take a step back from this question and consider how unrightly distrustful and defensive this fear is from the outset. If you have accidentally hurt somebody, and believe me misunderstandings DO happen, you aren't immediately a "monster" over something like that

But if somebody comes to you and tells you they weren't okay or were uncomfortable with something you did, ffs just LISTEN to them. Think about the incident in question. Talk about it, own it, apologize, learn, grow, move on and be better.

Treat women like people and you have absolutely nothing to fear.

(Granted this is directed towards dudes on my feed who likely mean well but are being a bit ignorant over all of this, if a dude straight assaults somebody and tries to deny/victim blame they can fuck right off)

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk, I'm going to work and my phone will be off.

But if you genuinely want to ask questions for the sake of clearing things up (and not to just to deflect and try and discredit my point 🖕) feel free to ask away.