I wish there were studies on the actual damage men's torment does. The constant hyperawareness to prevent assault and the background noise of low-level stress from men "just teasing" or "just messing with" us cannot be healthy for our hearts. It hurts so much that they just LIKE to see us stressed and upset.
The other day I had a man openly admit to me that when I said I would not like a dick pic, it made him want to do it more. When I asked why, he responded "idk, just made me want to pick on you".
I don't care if it's nature or nurture anymore. I want to focus on the damage this constant awareness of danger does to women. I want to focus on how their constant need to fuck with us even in basic conversation leads to long term stress and damages women's confidence.
I hate to refer to a man on this and if anyone has other sources from female psychologists I would love them, but Dr. Gabor Maté, who is a very widely known psychologist believes that the reason why women get some diseases more often is because of the constant stress we're under, and how much we have to repress ourselves just to exist in this society. He's no feminist scholar, but even he can see the toll this takes on our bodies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taYVjQ0_ldA https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12535582/
To add to this: while men and women have similar or comparable rates of PTSD/CPTSD, the way that it is “developed” vary wildly.
Research has shown that men are far more likely to develop PTSD due to a standalone traumatic event compared to women who — as stated — are more likely to develop CPTSD due to prolonged traumatic events.
While different studies or papers will report slightly different numbers, all agree that women are more “tormented” by daily life than men and thus develop worse mental illness due to it. This study in particular even states that “cisgender women are 2 to 3 times more likely to develop PTSD and CPTSD than men, even when exposed to similar trauma types.”
TLDR; being a cis woman in the world is so traumatic we are 2 to 3 times more likely to develop PTSD than a man by simply living in the world with them.
Also why is there not more research done on male cruelty? Why do they do this shit? Why do groups of boys form together to do horrible things to women? Why is my local Target being tormented by a group of teenage boys yelling about sexual assault and rape in the children's section to the point that moms are afraid to go there with their kids? Why do they see innocent people and get glee out of tormenting them? I have never seen the sadistic glee of hurting other random people out of a fellow women like I frequently see in boys and men. Why are they like that?
Because we stopped publicly thrashing them/putting them in the stocks for bad behaviour.
