I think one of my least favorite types of responses to people speaking up on sexual harassment and sexual assault is are articles like “in wake of weinstein, men wonder if hugging women still ok”, and comments like “this is why men don’t pursue women anymore”, “i don’t wanna work with women cause i don’t want a lawsuit”, or “i don’t even look at women anymore cause everything is sexual harassment”. this is a particular brand of rape culture, men acting as if women are overreacting, as if men don’t have the basic social skills to know the difference between wanted and unwanted advances, as if women simply setting boundaries is “cramping their style” and “emasculating” them, as if the rules of respecting women are super confusing, so confusing that they’re supposedly forcing men not to interact with us altogether.
this is an act they’ve been putting on for decades: playing stupid, pretending not to know better and then getting upset when we tell them what “better” is. if that doesn’t show you how emotional and emotionally manipulative they are, i don’t know what does.
