All men start as Schrödinger’s Rapist - they are known to have the potential to be rapists, and they are known to not show traits that would specifically put them in the “yes” or “no” category.
But we do have some strong indicators of the potential, like “he ignores boundaries” - he keeps demanding attention, ignores “please leave me alone” requests, calls after being told “I don’t want to date you.” Another strong sign is defensiveness - reacting to that something said about a group he belongs to as if it were aimed at him personally.
If I said, “I work in a coffee shop, and sometimes, people who can’t pay come in and just stare at everything and make a nuisance of themselves. Not every man is unemployed, but any man I meet could be unemployed,” men with jobs wouldn’t jump on the post and say, “but I’M NOT UNEMPLOYED” nor “but you can’t just judge all men like that!” or “you shouldn’t accuse people of being jobless just because of what they look like.” No, there’d be some awareness that yes, some guys don’t have jobs, and while there are sometimes indicators of that, they’re not universal - “wears a 3-piece suit” is not a guarantee of having a job, and “wears ratty t-shirts and jeans that haven’t been washed in three weeks” does not mean he’s poor. Those might be the base assumptions when you see them, but you’re aware that those are just guesses.
Not every guy is a rapist. Most guys are not rapists. But - here’s the key part - we can’t tell who those are. There are no external identifiers we can use to say, “this one is a rapist; stay away from him.”
Cost for being cautious and refusing to be alone with a non-rapist, non-creep, honestly interested-in-you nice guy: You might be a bit lonely on a Saturday night.
Cost for failure to be cautious: You get raped or worse.
Statistics say the odds of Random Dude being a rapist are between 6% and 15%, depending on which surveys you think are more accurate.
Would you roll those dice? Eh; sometimes. But it’s not “abusive to men” to point out that those are the odds - that as many as 1 in 7, or as few as 1 in 15, of the guys around them ARE RAPISTS. And most of them are serial rapists - they find a method that works, and stick with it.
Most of them, of course, are not hiding in bushes with a club to grab women and beat them over the head. Most aren’t even slipping powder into strangers’ drinks at a bar. They’re going to parties, and looking for the girl who’s gotten wobbly, and pulling her into a spare bedroom even if she says “I don’ wanna,” but she’s too uncoordinated to get away. They’re telling their girlfriend “I just can’t help myself: I love you too much” after she says no. They’re telling themselves that their date is a slut, look at how much cleavage she’s showing, and they paid for dinner and the movie and they deserve something in return.
Dude, if you can tell us a 100% reliable way to spot these creeps, AND a way to refuse contact with them without getting physically attacked, socially ostracized, or losing our jobs, WE’D BE SO HAPPY to drop the “all men are potentially…” warnings we give to each other.
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
stormborns
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