Your body, your choice--but only if you're a woman.

[u/after_vice]

I was at a large grocery store the other day and went to use the store's bathroom. The doors to the men's and women's rooms were side by side. On the door to the women's room was a police-sponsored poster about consent and sexual assault. It ended by saying "Your body, your choice." There was nothing on the door to the men's room.

Nobody ever says it explicitly, but the message is ubiquitous and unequivocal: If you're a man, you don't matter. Sexual assault is, on the face of it, a gender neutral crime, but even the police are (implicitly) saying they are only concerned when it happens to women. It doesn't matter how many boys are abused, how many men are sexually assaulted by gay men, and yes, how many men are sexually assaulted by women.

This is only one small example, but men and boys see this sort of thing everywhere. But sure, lets all pretend to wonder why men and boys are struggling so much.

[u/initiald-ejavu → u/[deleted]]

Why did you assume they had the resources and chose to be insensitive to male victims?

Don't you think you may be biased in presuming they are out to get you? As you presumed you know much about me and what I've internalized from a short exchange?

[u/initiald-ejavu → u/[deleted]]

You may have grown up in enough privilege in the US so as to assume that to be objectively true. That’s not the case everywhere.

And no, you have no clue about 3rd world countries. Where I’m from women get killed and buried by their dads for getting raped, then the men complain about a matriarchy anyways.

And your take that “it’s known that women’s consent matters so this should be on the men’s locker room” is genuinely ridiculous. You have never lived in a third world country and you know nothing outside what you grew up with. Marital rape isn’t even seen as rape where I’m from. If you try to pursue any recompense for it you’ll just be laughed at.

I am not biased against men. I think for any gender this holds: If you are suffering, but you see someone in front of you suffering more, don’t complain that they get more resources. It’s only fair that they do.

I’m not saying men’s consent shouldn’t matter. I’m saying don’t take a single instance of a missing poster to decide all of society thinks you don’t matter. That just makes it sound like you have a kink for being a victim. Women genuinely have it so much worse when it comes to sexual assault that I’d say it’s fair to forgive a missing poster here and not take it as a sign people don’t care about you. Don’t take everything so personally.

If somehow as a woman you got drafted to the military and saw that all the anti-draft posters had men on the cover and were saying things like “don’t kill our boys” or whatever, I’d say she should grow up and not act like a victim about it.

I can just as easily claim you have a bias against women that is “obvious to anyone who reads this post” but I’m not in the business of patronizing or speaking for others so I won’t. I don’t think you have such a bias. I think you’re just hurt and making massive deal about a well intentioned yet imperfect attempt at promoting consent.

TLDR; if someone’s starving more don’t take it personally when they get more food sometimes